中小学生参加南山龙鹰对话和设计节

    Zhang Qian

    zhqcindy@163.com

    More than 300 students from public, private and international schools in Nanshan District joined the Dragon & Eagle Dialogues and Design Fair on Saturday, with a theme of exploring the development of outer space.

    The Dragon & Eagle Dialogues was an English event designed for high school students to discuss international issues and topics. The event has been organized for seven years by the Nanshan District Education Bureau.

    This year, students from five public schools, two private schools and four international schools participated in the event hosted by Yucai No. 4 Primary School. While high school students joined in the dialogue to discuss outer space, younger students from junior middle schools and primary schools took part in a design fair focused on science, technology, engineering and the arts.

    Dialogue participants were required to discuss the themed topic after reading 10 articles and books at least twice. The participants also need to raise questions for their teachers and fellow students for in-depth discussion.

    After studying the reading materials, students were asked to speak publicly their thoughts and arguments about the theories and assumptions from the materials in English during the dialogue. Patience and courtesy were also required while talking and listening to each speaker.

    Before the real dialogue, an icebreaker was held to get the participating students into a multicultural and divergent thinking mode.

    Under the leading group from Yucai High School, the participants were divided into two groups to share and debate their different opinions on the topic with four subtopics: ancient observation of the sky in China and the West, modern cooperating projects in exploring space, science fiction and the earth’s position in space.

    The leading group was trained to host the dialogue with equal attention paid to each speaker and guided them to elaborate on their arguments from multiple angles in various forms.

    A student named Zhong Yuheng from Yucai High School participated in a discussion of “the Big Bang.” He said that to be able to utter his thoughts at the dialogue, he had to learn a lot of scientific theories by authors and scientists.

    “Though there are many problems that we can’t figure out at the moment, the collision of opinions and ideas at the dialogue helps us think outside of the textbooks and cultivate our independent and critical thinking,” said Zhong.

    All of the participants at the dialogue and design fair took part in a closing session, with students reading the revised U.N. treaty on the principles of outer space.

    Joseph Strzempka was the project designer of the dialogue and is the current vice principal at Yucai High School and Harbor School in Shenzhen. He said that the purpose of the Dragon & Eagle Dialogues was to guide students to learn from different cultures and spread ideas of peace to the world.