English as
a foreign language (EFL) in China is predominantly regarded as a tool for the
country to achieve modernization and for individuals to pursue education and
employment. Students from rural China, however, typically present little
interest and poor school achievement in EFL learning. While rural students’
challenges in EFL learning have long been a problem of economic and social
inequality, only little research addresses how rural students understand their
challenges in relation to current EFL education in China. The purpose of this
study is to investigate how rural students connect their challenges in EFL
learning with the structural system of EFL education in China through their
perceptions of EFL learning and their narratives of the challenge. Drawing on a
post structural paradigm, this study assumes that the individual rural
student’s partial and situated knowledge will inform what is constructed as
authoritative knowledge in and what is excluded from the context of EFL
education in China. A life story research was performed with an attempt to
foreground rural students’ knowledge and question the dominant standards and
practices in China’s EFL education. Twelve post secondary students originally
from rural villages participated in life story interviews, providing not only
factual details of their experiences and events regarding EFL learning, but also
narrations of their experiences and events. A narrative approach was adopted to
analyze both the participants’ experiences and narratives in their life
stories. The findings of this study reveal that rural Chinese students often relate the challenge in EFL learning to the current structural system of EFL education in China. In such a context, the dominance of cosmopolitan culture in EFL textbook contents, the prevalence of oral communicative class activities, and the dominance of instrumentalist ideology in foreign language policy impose subtle exclusionary forces upon rural students in their EFL learning. The participants’ understanding of what is constructed as dominant concepts and practices provides both theoretical and pedagogical implications for China’s EFL education. More educational and pedagogical efforts are to be made to uncover and reduce the subtle exclusion of EFL education for improving equity in foreign language education.
Nurses working in a South African COVID-19 clinic, based on a train, which travels to reach different communities.
Nine months into the pandemic, Europe remains one of the regions worst affected by COVID-19. Ten of the 20 countries with the highest death count per million people
are European. The other ten are in the Americas. This includes the US,
which has the highest number of confirmed cases and deaths in the world.
Most of Africa and Asia, on the contrary, still seems spared. Of the
countries with reported COVID-related deaths, the ten with the lowest
death count per million are in these parts of the world. But while
mistakes and misjudgements have fuelled sustained criticism of the UK’s handling of the pandemic, the success of much of the developing world remains unsung.
But statistical uncertainty and favourable biology are not the full
story. Some developing countries have clearly fared better by responding
earlier and more forcefully against COVID-19. Many have the legacy of
Sars, Mers and Ebola in their institutional memory. As industrialised
countries have struggled, much of the developing world has quietly shown
remarkable levels of preparedness and creativity during the pandemic.
Yet the developed world is paying little attention.
Many developing countries have both
greater and more recent experience in controlling infectious diseases
than those in the west.EPA-EFE
When looking at successful strategies, it’s the experiences of other developed nations – like Germany and New Zealand – that are predominantly cited by journalists and politicians. There is an apparent unwillingness to learn
from developing countries – a blind spot that fails to recognise that
“their” local knowledge can be just as relevant to “our” developed world
problems.
With infectious outbreaks likely to become more common
around the world, this needs to change. There is much to learn from
developing countries in terms of leadership, preparedness and
innovation. The question is: what’s stopping industrialised nations from
heeding the developing world’s lessons?
Good leadership goes a long way
When it comes to managing infectious diseases, African countries show
that experience is the best teacher. The World Health Organization’s weekly bulletin on outbreaks and other emergencies
showed that at the end of September, countries in sub-Saharan Africa
were dealing with 116 ongoing infectious disease events, 104 outbreaks
and 12 humanitarian emergencies.
For African nations, COVID-19 is not a singular problem. It’s being
managed alongside Lassa fever, yellow fever, cholera, measles and many
others. This expertise makes these countries more alert and willing to
deploy scarce resources to stop outbreaks before they become widespread.
Their mantra might best be summarised as: act decisively, act together
and act now. When resources are limited, containment and prevention are
the best strategies.
This is evident in how African countries have responded to COVID-19, from quickly closing borders to showing strong political will to combat the virus. While Britain dithered and allowed itself to sleepwalk into the pandemic, Mauritius (the tenth most densely populated nation in the world) began screening airport arrivals and quarantining visitors from high-risk countries. This was two months before its first case was even detected.
And within ten days of Nigeria’s first case being announced on February 28, President Muhammadu Buhari had set up a taskforce
to lead the country’s containment response and keep both him and the
country up to date on the disease. Compare this with the UK, whose first
case was on January 31. Its COVID-19 action plan wasn’t unveiled until
early March. In the intervening period, the prime minister, Boris
Johnson, is said to have missed five emergency meetings about the virus.
Experience gained by health workers during recent Ebola outbreaks in Africa can now be drawn upon during COVID-19.EPA-EFE
African leaders have also shown a strong desire to work together
on fighting the virus – a legacy of the 2013-2016 West African Ebola
outbreak. This epidemic underlined that infectious diseases don’t
respect borders, and led to the African Union setting up the Africa
Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In April, the Africa CDC launched its Partnership to Accelerate COVID-19 Testing
(PACT), which is working to increase testing capacity and train and
deploy health workers across the continent. It’s already provided
laboratory equipment and testing reagents to Nigeria, and has deployed public health workers
from the African Health Volunteers Corps across the continent to fight
the pandemic, applying knowledge picked up when fighting Ebola.
The Africa Union has also established a continent-wide platform for procuring laboratory and medical supplies: the Africa Medical Supplies Platform
(AMSP). It lets member states buy certified medical equipment – such as
diagnostic kits and personal protective equipment – with increased cost
effectiveness, through bulk purchasing and improved logistics. This
also increases transparency and equity between members, lowering
competition for crucial supplies. Compare this with the underhand tactics used by some developed nations when competing for shipments of medical equipment.
The AMSP isn’t unique. The European Union has a similar platform – the Joint Procurement Agreement. However, a bumpy start together with slow and overly bureaucratic processes led some countries to set up parallel alliances
in an attempt to secure access to future vaccines. The AMSP avoided
sharing this fate thanks to the African Union handing over its
development to the private sector under the leadership of the Zimbabwean
billionaire Strive Masiyiwa. He pulled together
the expertise needed to quickly develop a well-functioning platform,
drawing on his contacts and businesses across the digital and telecoms
sectors.
This contributed to the AMSP’s popularity with vendors and created high demand from member states. There are now plans to expand access
to hospitals and local authorities approved by member states, and for
additional support to be included from donors (such as the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and MasterCard Foundation). Again, a decisive
decision, focusing on installing strong leadership, has paid dividends.
Businessman Strive Masiyiwa’s involvement with the AMSP has built confidence among both buyers and sellers.EPA-EFE
Strong leadership on COVID-19 hasn’t been limited to African countries. The Vietnamese government has been widely praised for its clear and engaging public health campaign.
This has been credited with bringing the country together and getting a
wide amount of buy-in on efforts to control the virus.
Vietnam has also shown that good leadership involves acting on the lessons from the past. The 2003 Sars outbreak led to strong investment in health infrastructure,
with an average annual increase of 9% in public health expenditure
between 2000 and 2016. This gave Vietnam a head start during the early
phases of the pandemic.
Vietnam’s experience with Sars also contributed to the design of
effective containment strategies, which included quarantine measures
based on exposure risk rather than symptoms. Badly affected countries
such as the UK, which received warnings that its pandemic preparedness wasn’t up to scratch years ago, should sit up and take note. Vietnam has one of the lowest COVID-19 death tolls.
In Vietnam, masks are being distributed for free using both specially designed ATMs and simple boxes, such as this one in Hanoi.EPA-EFE
Finally, let’s look at Uruguay. The country has the highest percentage of over-65s in South America, a largely urban population (only 5% of Uruguayans
do not live in cities) and a hard-to-police land border with Brazil, so
it should be a likely infection hotspot. Yet it has managed to curb the
outbreak without enforcing lockdown.
Early aggressive testing strategies and having the humility to ask the WHO for information on best practices were among the ingredients of its successful response. Along with Costa Rica, Uruguay also introduced a temporary reduction in salaries
for its highest paid government officials to help fund the pandemic
response. The measure was passed unanimously in parliament and
contributed to high levels of social cohesion.
Of course, strong leadership isn’t limited to the Global South (Germany and New Zealand get top marks), nor do all southern countries have effective leadership (think of Brazil).
But the examples above show that good leadership – acting now, acting
decisively and acting together – can go a long way to compensating for
countries’ relative lack of resources.
Doing more with less
Necessity is said to be the mother of all invention – where money is
in short supply, ingenuity abounds. This has been just as true during
COVID-19 as at any other time, and is another lesson the developed world
would do well to consider.
Early on in the pandemic, Senegal started developing a ten-minute COVID-19 test
that costs less US$1 to administer and doesn’t need sophisticated
laboratory equipment. Likewise, scientists in Rwanda developed a clever
algorithm that allowed them to test lots of samples simultaneously by pooling them together.
This reduced costs and turnaround times, ultimately leading to more
people being tested and building a better picture of the disease in the
country.
In Latin America, governments have embraced technology to monitor
COVID-19 cases and send public health information. Colombia has
developed the CoronApp,
which allows citizens to receive daily government messages and see how
the virus is spreading in the country without using up data. Chile has
created a low-cost, unpatented coronavirus test, allowing other low-resource countries to benefit from the technology.
Ghana isn’t the only country
experimenting with drones. This Tunisian drone has a heat sensor
attached for checking people’s temperature.EPA-EFE
Examples of entrepreneurship and innovation in the Global South
aren’t restricted to the biomedical field. In Ghana, a former pilot
whose company specialises in spraying crops repurposed his drones and
had them disinfect open-air markets and other public spaces.
This quickly and cheaply got a job done that would normally have taken
several hours and half a dozen people to do. And in Zimbabwe, online grocery start-ups are offering new opportunities for food sellers to retain customers wary of shopping in person.
While these are handpicked examples, they illustrate the importance
of the capacity to innovate in conditions of scarcity – what is known as
“frugal innovation”.
They prove that simple, inexpensive or improvised solutions can solve
complicated problems, and that frugal solutions don’t have to involve
“chewing gum and baling wire” types of fixes.
The ability to deal with complex problems under resource constraints
is a strength that can be useful for all, particularly given the
pandemic’s eye-watering impact on high-income economies. Solutions coming out of developing countries may offer far better value for money than the elaborate and expensive “moonshot” solutions being mooted in countries like the UK.
Why not follow these examples?
This pandemic is another wake-up call. Since Ebola and Zika,
governments around the world have known that they need to up the “global
preparedness” agenda. It’s often said that when it comes to pandemics,
the world is as weak as its weakest point.
Global action, however, requires moving beyond national interests to identify with the needs of others. We call this “global solidarity”.
Unlike relationships of solidarity within nation states – which are
based on a shared language, history, ethnicity and so on – global
relationships need to recognise the interdependence of diverse actors. Global solidarity is so difficult to achieve because it must accommodate difference rather than rely on commonality.
So far, the virus has readily crossed international borders, despite control measures.EPA-EFE
The pandemic has shown why we need global solidarity. Globalisation
has made countries interdependent, not just economically but also
biologically. And yet in recent months, isolationist stances have prevailed. From the USA pulling funding from the WHO to the UK’s refusal to participate
in the EU’s Joint Procurement Agreement, countries are instead pursuing
do-it-alone strategies. Within this inward-looking context, it’s little
wonder that industrialised nations are failing to capitalise on lessons
from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
It’s not a lack of recognition that there’s knowledge and expertise
outside the developed world; it’s just that such knowledge is not seen as relevant given the structural differences between developed and developing countries. On this point, consider this final example.
Between the start of April and the end of June, the Rural Development
Foundation based in Sindh province in Pakistan on its own decreased the
spread of infection in the region by more than 80%. It did this by
engaging communities through information campaigns and sanitation
measures. Community-level approaches have also been successfully
deployed in the DRC and Sierra Leone.
During these countries’ Ebola outbreaks, rather than relying on tech
and apps, authorities trained local people to do in-person contact
tracing instead.
These community-level strategies were advocated by developed world
experts, including from the UK. And yet, despite the clear current need,
tried-and-tested low-cost approaches like this remain underused in high-income countries. They’ve been disregarded in favour of high-tech solutions, which so far haven’t proved to be any more effective.
Simple public health strategies that
revolve around putting people on the ground have worked in the past,
and can work again now.EPA-EFE
The problem, as this example illustrates, is the persistence of a
pervasive narrative in global health that portrays industrialised
countries as “advanced” in comparison with the “backward” or “poor”
developing world, as described by Edward Said in his foundational book Orientalism. Europe’s failure to learn from developing countries is the inevitable consequence of historically ingrained narratives
of development and underdevelopment that maintain the idea that the
so-called developed world has everything to teach and nothing to learn.
But if COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that these times demand
that we recalibrate our perceptions of knowledge and expertise. A
“second wave” is already on Europe’s doorstep. Many countries in the
southern hemisphere are still in the middle of the first. The much
talked-up global preparedness
agenda will require responses to be handled very differently from what
we’ve seen so far, with global solidarity and cooperation front and
centre. A healthy start would be for developed countries to get rid of
their “world-beating” mindset, cultivate the humility to engage with countries they don’t normally look towards, and learn from them.
Nurses working in a South African COVID-19 clinic, based on a train, which travels to reach different communities.
