A football team aging between 9 and 13 from Jiangsu Province's Zhangjiagang city in eastern China have a short-term training program at Berlin Football Talent Training Center (Fussball Talentschmiede Berlin) in Germany in August 2015. (Photo/people.cn)
A documentary film by British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has recently brought the "battle" between Chinese and British education into the forefront of social media debate, with several teachers from China experimenting a four-week Chinese teaching style in a UK middle school. Culture shocks and ideological conflicts are found everywhere in the documentary.
Also as a part of Europe, Germany may have some minor differences with UK in educational philosophy, yet is enough to greatly inspire the Chinese youth football players and their coaches receiving a typical training program in Germany, a football nation, for a very short time.
A head coach, accompanied by two assistant coaches, leads the football team aging between 9 and 13 from Jiangsu Province's Zhangjiagang city in eastern China to Berlin Football Talent Training Center (Fussball Talentschmiede Berlin) for a short-term training program in a sheer German manner.
It has been a great eye-opener, not only for the Chinese kids, but rather for the coaches.
Head coach Xu Hongshun told Xinhua that the German-style teaching is rendered effective and tactical. Even dozens of methods are applied in teaching them how to pass a ball.
Apart from the advanced tactics, what impresses Xu most is the smile-oriented pedagogy.
"In China, kids always face great pressure in the football training from the beginning to the end. Some may have fears. However, the praise-criticism ratio during the training is set by the German coach here as at least 7:1," said Xu.
On this point, German head coach Oliver Minow said: "A Quality Plus Joy mode has been adopted in our teaching. As a coach, I never put pressure on them. It's important to make them feel comfortable and joyful physically and mentally during the training. "
German Coaches would rather choose to stay on the sideline without interrupting the kids in a football match, let alone shouting at them: "You've done wrong!" "You! Do this way," or "No, that's not right," unless something really serious happens.
Such free reign given to the youth players serves to protect their self-confidence and improve the coordination capabilities, on their own initiative, in a team.
"Our approach is 70% play plus 30% theoretical and tactical teaching," Minow said.
Minow also expresses his hope that China could focus more on fostering training-related personnel in their ability to help China's youth players better enjoy the happiness of playing football.
Then, what did the kids say about their unique experience?
When asked the difference between the training in China and Germany, they answered almost with one voice: "At the end of the training here after a whole day, we feel happy and relaxed."
