Borrowing ideas across borders: Lessons from the academic advocacy of "chinese-english bilingual education" in China

Thirty-six years ago, the eminent American educational psychologist Benjamin S. Bloom lamented innocence in education and remarked that 'If I could have one wish for education..it would be the systematic ordering of our basic knowledge in such a way that what is known and true can be acted on, while what is superstition, fad, and myth can be recognized as such' (1972, p.∼334). Bloom's wish for "putting our house in order" and criticism of superstition, fads, and nostrums in education are no less relevant today, when the ever-accelerating global flow of ideas, knowledge, institutions, practices, and discourses spawns unprecedented opportunities to introduce new educational panaceas from abroad, especially from the "Center," the developed Western industrial countries, to the "Periphery", the developing or underdeveloped countries. As elegantly argued by Bloom, 'It is we educators who must look to our own field to ask why we have so much difficulty in distinguishing between myth and reality, or between sound remedies and worthless panaceas' (p.∼334). In keeping with Bloom's exhortation, this chapter critically analyzes the academic advocacy of "Chinese-English bilingual education/instruction", a recently introduced language education initiative in the pre-collegiate sector of the Chinese education system that involves using English to teach non-language school subjects to majority-language students.