The Croydonian links to this, about a grovelling apology made to China by the Vice Chancellor of London Metropolitan University for confering a degree on the Dalai Lama.

Angered and offended by the move, Chinese students and Internet users at home and abroad called for a boycott the university, saying its conferment of honors on the Dalai Lama had hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.

Says the Croydonian:

Sensitive flowers, aren’t they?

My take is that this shows that they don’t really rate this particular university, which they call a London “school”.  If Oxford or Harvard gave a prize to the DL, would the Chinese government make this kind of fuss?

A week ago I noted the question, concerning the Chinese earthquake: Shoddy Chinese classrooms? According to the New York Times, the answer is: yes.

This is the picture that illustrates it.  On the left, a kindergarten.  On the right, a hotel.  The remnant in the middle is what’s left of the school.

How come the others staid put, but much the school fell down like a house of cards?

Here:

Idiots in the nicer parts of the nice countries say that violence, cruelty, compulsion etc. are not merely nasty, which they are, but ineffective, which they are not.  Given the objectives of those being nasty, nastiness, again and again, works.  If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be nearly so widespread, or nearly so difficult to argue against.  Even those subjected to it have a horrible tendency to believe that it was good and necessary.  And, of course, to pass it on.

As feared, thousands of classrooms destroyed in China.  Was their construction poor?  Official enquiry soon begins?

Favourite blogger of mine, Shanghaiist, is blogging about the Chinese earthquake.  Schools have of course not been spared.  This was Juyuan Middle School, in Dujiangyan.  “Death toll not confirmed. Rescue efforts still underway”:

Count your blessings.

The Times today has an excerpt from a book about The heroic Englishman China will never forget.  Turns out he was a teacher.  They used to make movies about this kind of thing.  Perhaps the idea is that they should again, but I don’t think that would now be on.

Hello.  I blogged too soon:

I found out about the forthcoming movie The Children of Huang Shi, at this place, while Googling for images of this man, whose name was George Hogg.  But the bit at the bottom of the Times piece where it says ...

A film inspired by the story, The Children of Huang Shi, starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Chow Yun Fat, Radha Mitchell and Michelle Yeoh, and directed by Roger Spottiswoode, will be released in the UK later following a US opening in May

... should have been a bit of a clue.

More about this story, and a picture of the real George Hogg, here.  It would seem that this is not the kind of movie the Americans made in the fifties, about a heroic Christian being persecuted by evil Communists.  This guy appears to have been very much an official Communist hero, or so it would seem.  All of which makes me want to read the book.

Remember Gillian Gibbons, the teacher who got into trouble in Sudan.  Now she’s off to China.

My bet for the next President of the USA (following on from this conversation) is Barack Obama.  He will beat Hillary and he will beat McCain, I think.

Here is a report about Obama’s views on education.  He is in favour of education being good and against it being bad.

He said the U.S. needed teachers who could instruct American children not only to excel in mathematics and science but also in other subjects.

Now why hadn’t anyone thought of that before?  But what is more interesting is that the way he decorates these vacuities is by talking about kids in India and China, hence the Hindu Times picking up on this.  They are scared of us!  Hurrah for us!  Hurrah indeed.

UPDATE: More about candidate education policies here.