But that way will not guarantee ex-tra credits for students in the schools of Changsha, Hunan Province.

"Say what you think. Be creative and free your mind," a teacher in the south-central Chinese city's Qingshuitang Elementary School encourages her students as she tries to explain the difference between solids and liquids.

In the class, students are welcome to interrupt or challenge the teacher if they have differing ideas. The classroom later turns into an activities hall as the kids mix sand and water in experiments.

Such a scene is still uncommon in China, but as the nation's educational authorities reform the old rigid teaching methods, the capital of Hu-nan Province may soon be a model for more and more Chinese schools.

Oriental traditions often give teachers an unquestionable authority, while students had to behave obediently. The traditional examination-based curricula also helped to form a score-oriented educational system.

But educators now fear that stu-dents learning by rote may eventually lose the pioneering spirit of explora-tion and ability to create, which could affect the nation's competitiveness.

Changsha was selected last year as one of 38 national trial areas to pioneer the reform plans of the Ministry of Education.

The central task of the reform is to move from indoctrination-dominated teaching methods to more interaction involving students, said an official of the ministry's Department of Basic Education.

Once students can enjoy learning or solve problems by their own effort, they will become increasingly motivated to study, the official said.

The experiment has been expanded to more than 500 of China's 2,800 counties this year, with nearly 10 million primary and middle school students involved.

At the Changsha No. 1 Middle School, students are encouraged to do research on topics of their own interest.

Some students discuss whether it is good to have boyfriends or girlfriends on campus, and some go outside the school to investigate how environmental pollution has affected local residents.

"The most important thing is not the conclusion of the research but the research process itself," teacher Peng Jiang said, "so they can learn many things not written in the textbooks, such as the spirit of teamwork."

Promotion of students' all-round development, rather than test scores, has become the top priority of basic education in the country.

(China Daily July 15, 2002)