From October 24 to 27, 2019, the 2nd RAISE 2019 Asia International School Conference was held by TopSchools Corporation in Shenzhen. More than 1500 delegates from 20 countries participated in the conference to discuss various issues pertaining to international schools, including their trends, management, operation, development, and use of educational technology.

IICE Professor LIU Baocun attended the conference and delivered a speech entitled ‘The Value and Plight of Whole-person Education in the Era of Utilitarianism’. Prof. Liu pointed out that the whole-person education could be traced back to North America in 1960s and 1970s, whose main purpose was to promote the overall development of human beings. This educational trend of thought, which criticized the problems of instrumentalization, fragmentation and mechanization in modern education, advocated the idea of enriching people's spiritual world and promoting people's overall development. It has had a wide influence in educational theory and practice in both Western and Eastern countries so far. Prof. Liu explained that the idea of whole person education was different from traditional education in various aspects in terms of training goals, curriculum setting, teaching mode and method, teaching environment and so on, and thus led to various reforms in worldwide education. Prof. Liu also explained the challenges of whole-person education.