Welcome to SCIE in 2023, an exciting year for us, as we reach 20 years old. What an amazing vision it was back in 2003 when SCIE was created as the first school of its type in the city and to give students here in Shenzhen the chance to prepare for an overseas university experience, a chance to prepare children for an incredible future in our modern, many-faceted world.
Since those early days, the vision of SCIE has grown from a few tens of students to 2000 students and we have seen more than three thousand students graduate and progress on to great university success.
I joined SCIE in 2009 and soon after that time the school developed from its early beginnings stepping forwards to be the major success that it is today, bringing in expatriate leadership with the experience of how to educate students preparing them for the modern world as true global citizens able to thrive in an English-speaking environment.
SCIE means Students in a Challenging International Environment – our environment is indeed challenging for our students as we prepare them for some of the most famous universities around the world. The curriculum is challenging as our students learn in English each of their subjects, achieving up to the highest levels and obtaining true mastery of the language, rather than merely enough to pass a test.
Our students learn Social responsibility, Creativity, Independence and Enthusiasm. All of these are important for our students from understanding the importance of their own culture and place in society, how to take responsibility for themselves and becoming independent so that they are prepared to take up a university place in their future and to study independently. Our students develop creativity, learning how to think critically for themselves, to understand what they are learning and to apply that learning in the real world.
It is always a pleasure to see the enthusiasm our students have, not just for their study of the academic subjects but also for their outside interests. Our students also learn how to take on responsibility for participating and organizing from the many clubs in our extra-curricular activities, through to our annual events and performances. Many actively take part in our House Competition, competing for their assigned house against other students and learning leadership in our prefect and student leadership programme.
We are proud of all of our achievements and those of our students but in addition to our views, we have also completed our re-accreditation with the Council of International Schools as well as accreditation with the Western Association of School & Colleges. What this mean is that international & US accreditors have come to review our school, assess our programmes and facilities and compare them with their international and US standards and to determine that the education that our students receive meets their standards of excellence. This provides our students and their parents with the assurance of the quality of the education they receive in the preparation for their future lives in the global environment.
What we wish for all of our students – past, present and future is for them to make the most of their opportunities here at SCIE and in the future that we are preparing them for, to carry on lifelong learning and to strive to be the best.
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