Purpose
The proliferation of Confucius Institutes around the world has multiple purposes: the promotion and teaching of Chinese culture and language abroad, the encouraging of trade ties, and the extension of the Chinese Party-State's campaign of "soft power" into the educational sphere in foreign countries.
CIs develop Chinese language courses, train teachers, hold the HSK Examination (Chinese proficiency test), and provide information about contemporary China. The director of the CI program, Xu Lin, says CIs were started to cater to the sudden uptick in interest in Chinese language around the world; they also provide Chinese language teaching staff from the Mainland. As of 2011 there were 200 such teachers working in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Confucius Institute
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“Productive collaborations between family and school, therefore, will demand that parents and teachers recognize the critical importance of each other’s participation in the life of the child. This mutuality of knowledge, understanding, and empathy comes not only with a recognition of the child as the central purpose for the collaboration but also with a recognition of the need to maintain roles and relationships with children that are comprehensive, dynamic, and differentiated.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“I have never doubted your courage and devotion to the cause. But you have just lost a Division, and prima facie the fault is upon you; and while that remains unchanged, for me to put you in command again, is to justly subject me to the charge of having put you there on purpose to have you lose another.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)