Shaanxi

Shaanxi (Chinese: 陕西; pinyin:  Shǎnxī; postal: Shensi) is a province of the People's Republic of China, officially part of the Northwest China region. It includes portions of the Loess Plateau on the middle reaches of the Yellow River in addition to the Qin Mountains (Qinling) across the southern part of this province.

Name

The name Shaanxi means "Land west of Shan". Shǎn was the ancient name for the narrow mountain pass where the Yellow River flows from the Loess Plateau down to the North China Plain. It is now the Shanzhou District of Sanmenxia city in Henan Province.

The Chinese pronunciation of 陕西 (Shǎnxī) and its eastern neighbor 山西 (Shānxī) differ only in tone. As tone marks are often omitted, this would leave the two provinces indistinguishable and, to prevent this ambiguity, the Chinese government adopted the special spelling Shaanxi as an official romanization. The first syllable is derived from the Gwoyeu Romatzyh system of romanization, whereby tone is reflected by change in spelling. The second syllable, 西, would be rendered "shi" in Gwoyeu Romatzyh, but the Chinese government opts to transcribe it as the pinyin-derived "xi," meaning that the official spelling reflects the application of two separate romanization systems. When tone marks are noted, however, it is always rendered as the simple Shǎnxī and not Shǎanxī or Shaǎnxī.

China

China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a sovereign state in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of over 1.35 billion. The PRC is a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, with its seat of government in the capital city of Beijing. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces; five autonomous regions; four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing); two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau); and claims sovereignty over Taiwan.

Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometers, China is the world's second-largest country by land area, and either the third or fourth-largest by total area, depending on the method of measurement. China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes and the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts in the arid north to subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometres (9,000 mi) long, and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East and South China Seas.

Normal school

A normal school is a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Its purpose is to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name. Most such schools are now called teachers' colleges.

In 1685, Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, founded what is generally considered the first normal school, the École Normale, in Reims. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, normal schools in the United States and Canada trained primary school teachers, while in Europe normal schools educated primary, secondary and tertiary-level teachers.

In 1834, the first teacher training college was established in Jamaica by Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton under terms set out by Lady Mico's Charity "to afford the benefit of education and training to the black and coloured population."

The first public normal school in the United States was founded in Concord, Vermont, by Samuel Read Hall in 1823, which was dedicated to training teachers. In 1839, another Normal School was established in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It operates today as Framingham State University. In the United States teacher colleges or normal schools began to call themselves universities beginning in the 1960s. For instance, Southern Illinois University was formerly known as Southern Illinois Normal College. The university, now a system with two campuses that enroll more than 34,000 students, has its own university press but still issues most of its bachelor's degrees in education. Similarly, the town of Normal, Illinois, takes its name from the former name of Illinois State University.

Shaanxi Normal University

Shaanxi Normal University (SNNU) (simplified Chinese: 陕西师范大学; traditional Chinese: 陝西師範大學; pinyin: Shǎnxī Shīfàn Dàxué) is a key institution of higher education in People's Republic of China authorized to grant degrees in almost all kinds of subject. It was included in the 211 Project in 2006 and started its high-speed development. .

Overview

Directly administered by the Ministry of Education of China, Shaanxi Normal University, a key university under the construction plan of China’s national "211 Project" and a university under China’s Innovation Platform Construction Plan of the "985" Superior Discipline of Teacher Education, is a major base for training teachers and administrators of higher learning institutes and secondary schools as well as other high-level professionals in China, and is known as the “Cradle of Teachers” in Northwest China. During its 70-year history in education, the University, while rooted in China’s West, has embraced the whole country, developed a school spirit of “Morality, Learning, Aspiration and Action” and has seen itself become firmly established in Western China as an influential top-tier comprehensive teachers training university, as it strives to achieve the goal of building itself to be a major comprehensive research university distinguished by its teacher education. In 2014, the university was rank 71 in China, and rank 8 in Chinese normal universities.