Farewell rote, welcome robot

China has a long tradition of rote learning in its schools, memorization based on repetition geared toward high exam scores. However, many educators and a new generation of parents have acknowledged that this method is outdated.

To counterbalance that, many schools are adopting an educational philosophy that encourages problem-solving skills and collaborative creativity.

One of those involved in driving such changes is the Danish toy company Lego, which now has a wide presence in middle schools in China in the form of robots that are made from its building blocks.

"Some schools in China are using the robots in classes, but they are mainly for middle schools," said Chen Zhiqing, president of Lego Education China.

Big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have run courses using the robots for the past 15 years, and about 10,000 schools across the country now have the courses.

The company has developed a series of brick sets and curricula that match those of primary schools and it says it wants to set up innovative centers or laboratories in schools.

"Under a five-year plan, we expect to build 100 laboratories a year," Chen said.

In addition, it wants to make its bricks part of curricula in more primary schools for important subjects such as literature and maths.

The Lego curricula, designed on the educational idea of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math), aims to break down the barriers between art, hard science and math.

"A teacher teaches across subjects, which means that teachers have to be more fluent in many different targets," Ethan Danahy, an engineering education specialist at Tufts University in Massachusetts, said.

"Teachers can often be the biggest challenge in the expansion and transition."

In November, Shanghai began a pilot program to introduce a curriculum in 12 primary schools and kindergartens that covers science, technology, engineering and maths, and more schools in the city are expected to join the program later this year.

Ren Hui, a science teacher at the primary school affiliated with Peking University, the first school in China to introduce Lego's education systems, said that at the time, she had no idea the methods were so hands-on.

"It was a brand-new teaching resource. I had to play and learn it myself from scratch. But the more difficult part was to adopt a teaching approach," he said.

In May, Lego Education conducted two workshops, in Beijing and Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, for more than 300 teachers from primary schools on how to use Lego bricks in the new model.

"These are our first workshops dedicated to primary school teachers," Chen said. "We will have more in the future if it helps teachers to get better acquainted with the bricks and education idea."