As a part of the sociology G&T program, we were lucky to have Prof. John Hudson and PhD candidate Ms. Jiayu from the University of York to provide us with an online lecture about social policy on 7th December. This was a great opportunity to deepen our understanding of social policy beyond the school’s curriculum. […]
Social Policy Lecture Read More »
Before Christmas, Aimee Xia, Louise Liu, and me delivered our coursework in a presentation at the G1 assembly. During the assembly, we were discussing the topic to raise awareness for HIV/AIDs for our Global Perspectives coursework. We want to do this topic because many students in our school received limited knowledge about the topic. Only
Global Perspectives Coursework in a Presentation at G1 Assembly Read More »
Grace Xin A 2022 Graduate of SCIE, Currently studying at University of California, San Diego This passage is divided into three parts, all of which are some feelings and thoughts of my friends and I during the application season, as well as some comments from me sitting in the university library today a few months
Grace: A Beautiful Vision Read More »
We are used to being in a hurry in the campus for days and nights. One day when I walked to the large steps, I caught a glimpse of the green and straight Christmas tree has stood on the ground accidentally. The railings were wrapped by ribbons, pine leaves dotted with beautiful ornaments . It
SCIE 2022 Christmas Night｜A Carnival for Winter Read More »
By chance, I returned to the familiar campus earlier this year as an alumni intern, experiencing life at SCIE from a different perspective and making up for a lot of regrets. At the end of last summer, just as my classmates were starting their university careers, I chose to take a gap year while reapplying
What It’s Like to be a Trainee at SCIE Read More »
Cambridge school in China creates an evidence-based teaching and learning module to empower teachers and instructors Improving education in classrooms begins with empowering teachers. When teachers develop the skills they need, they also develop their ability to help students learn. The Shenzhen College of International Education (SCIE) knows how transformative it is to enhance the
A new online module for Continuous Professional Development created by Shenzhen College Read More »
http://www.scie.com.cn/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/S.-T-Yau.mp4 The 2022 S. -T. Yau High School Science Award came to an end on the evening of December 11. The five students from SCIE won two Gold Awards, one Bronze Award and two Honorable Mentions, as well as the Grand Prize ♦ Hongzhou Wu won the Grand Prize and Gold Award (Mathematics) ♦ Liu
SCIE Medalists｜2022 S. -T. Yau High School Science Award Read More »
Recently, the Arts Festival Week activities organized by Art Academy came to an end. Concerts, Art Exhibition, and Drama Shows were staged in turn, presenting a whole week of audio-visual feasts for the teachers and students of SCIE. Highlights of Arts Festival Art Exhibition Concerts Previous Next Drama Shows Performers’ Words Justin Huang The art’s festival week
SCIE Arts Festival Week Read More »
This story is written throughout the journey to record my unforgettable G2 Geography field trip. November 25 was a rainy day with a gloomy sky, but G2 geography students were so excited as they finally embarked on their first field trip since they came to SCIE. We are heading to the coast and chilling with
Between the Beach and the Sea Read More »
To meet the needs of students for diverse curriculum, besides Cambridge International courses, SCIE also provides Pearson edexcel English, Japanese and Drama to students. In 2022, SCIE students got 51 Outstanding Cambridge Learner Awards in total: 13 of them won the Top of the World, 28 of them won the Top of China, and 9
3 SCIE Students Won the Pearson Outstanding Learner Awards Read More »
My essay is on the recent development of China’s mental health care system and how it can help address this question. Though, I actually parried the question raised by the prompt, and I did not in the end emphasise too much that more care should be devoted to the socially vulnerable. Rather, I intended to underscore the complexity and ambiguity in any employment of these two notions — “socially vulnerable” and “responsibility” — in the concrete working of society. Through my study I discovered that the train of legislative efforts made in the 1980s to 2000s to legally recognise, to enhance public knowledge of, and to erect new asylums for, “the mentally ill,” in fact coincided spatiotemporally with government efforts in putting new agendas of foreign policies and city development to work. Thus, the recent development of China’s mental health care, from scratch to full maturity, is not solely the consequence of “humanitarian effort,” but also of some other ulterior motives. In my conclusion, I hinted that any answer to this question would entail empirical investigation into the concrete working of social institutions, and depending on the nature of this “socially vulnerable” group, claims of “responsibility” may be leveraged as veils for other purposes.
Before starting my research I did not by then have a well-formed hypothesis, but I did have Michel Foucault’s intriguing study on madness in mind. Due to the rather peculiar nature of the object of my study, I was not able to apply the sociological theories (Marxism, Functionalism, e.g.) I learnt in class to my own research. I must thank my sociology teacher for his encouragement and provision of many textbook resources and classical studies done in the field of mental health care. In addition to that, he prepared a statement of the school for my application to conduct short interviews at a local mental health hospital — this application, however, though quite expectedly, sank into oblivion — without his help this project would be very difficult.
I made a documentary “The Definition” about the situation of elderly in Shenzhen to enter this competition. As I have some previous knowledge in filmmaking, learning from TBU studio, I though it would be meaningful if I combined my filmmaking skills with sociology knowledge. In the meanwhile, after learning the very first chapter of sociology, The Family, I found out that the situation of elderly in the UK is different from that of elderly in Shenzhen. For instance, elderly have the responsibility taking care of their grandchildren and dance in the park for entertainment is distinctive in China. Therefore, I decided to make a documentary to record the interesting culture.
I learnt a lot during the preparation for the competition. I learned a lot about how to carry out an individual primary research when I was filming “The Definition”, which helps a lot in my current sociology study. Also, I understood sociology theories better. For instance, postmodernism used to be only a vague theoretical perspective for me, yet it amazed me knowing that elderly people participate actively in public activities can be considered as view of postmodernism.
Most importantly, I realized filmmaking can make some impacts on people, portraying problems of society. Experience of BSA opened my eyes and led me rethink about my future major in college. I want use my skills and knowledge to help more people, so I will probably try a major with humanity and filmmaking combined instead of pursuing the dream of being an artist alone.
Learning sociology gives me a new perspective in seeing how the world works, and it also lets me care more about the vulnerability in the society. Thank you to my sociology teacher, Richard Driscoll, who gave me lots of inspiration such as filming the dancing in the park, which is interesting to British people, and recommenced lots of sociological books about the elderly.
By listening to his advice, “The Definition” eventually divides into two parts: one is about the elderly in nursing home and the other is about people dancing in the park. Also, there is many interviews in the documentary to give a more well-rounded perspective.
I would like to thank my Math teacher Michael Jin and my friend Franchaska, who helped me with the voice over. Also, thanks to my family members, especially my dear grandmother, who gave me lots of insights related to the issue of elderly.
I made this documentary just before the deadline, thus it’s not so perfect. I’ll probably elaborate some shots and reedit it in the future.
If you are interested, you can click the link below and watch it.
Teng Xun Video：https://v.qq.com/x/page/u0862usad2v.html
Bilibili：https://www.bilibili.com/video/av38188271?from=search&seid=10452775157822232568
