The Confucius Institute at the University of Guyana has plans to expand and showcase more Chinese culture while integrating it into the education system.
The Confucius Institute is a nonprofit public educational organisation, which aims to promote Chinese language and culture to other countries. While the institute was established in 2004 and has spread to various universities and educational systems around the world, it came to the University of Guyana in 2014 in a partnership between the Ministry of Education and the People’s Republic of China.
Every last Saturday in the month of September, all the institutes around the world celebrate Confucius Institute Day, where they showcase the Chinese culture. Under this year’s theme of ‘Understanding Peace – Experiencing Chinese Delicacy,’ the institute yesterday showcased Chinese Tea Art and Calligraphy.
The institute currently offers a three-part Chinese language course that allows any student of UG to earn a single credit. “There are plans to expand the programmes and at the moment the formal programmes offered are in the Chinese language and a course in Tai Chi,” Al Creighton, Director of the Confucius Institute, told Stabroek News yesterday. “With the language, we are offering it in three stages: Beginners, Intermediate, and Advanced. At this point, since we’ve only been established for two years, we haven’t reached the advanced level as yet, which is our main goal for now.”
He said that since the organisation has been at UG about 600 students have registered for the language. “The programme has been going well and the number of persons that have registered has been encouraging. Many people drop out though, [perhaps] because they find that it is more work than they thought or because they just signed up out of curiosity,” he said. Creighton added that the primary aim is to have the programme reach the advanced level in the language.
Currently, the language programme is open to UG students and staff along with the general public. UG students and staff can take the programme for free, while the general public can pay $5,000 per semester.
There are also plans to introduce other subject areas such as Chinese history, art, and science.
“It is not intended that they would be full courses for credits but we want to contribute to other courses. Let’s say you’re doing a degree in history, we want to be able to contribute to it with Chinese History and so on,” he added, while stating that various experts are going to be brought in when the organisation is expanded.
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