As Confucius said, 三人行，必有我師焉 ("wherever three persons are walking, my teacher is surely among them"). This is a very interesting article for an American who has lived in east Asia for two three-year stays (mostly in Taiwan) and who has been learning the Chinese language since 1975. Much of what has been said about China in the first decade of the twenty-first century reminds me very much of what was said about Japan in the 1980s--that it was destined to be the leading nation of the world. Today, demographics and looking behind the official economic statistics, and considering that China has not yet democratized as much as Japan had in the era when the Liberal Democratic Party had a lock on national power all suggest that China is most likely to have a "lost decade" that continues into two or more lost decades as China's economic growth fails to keep pace with the Chinese regime's world power ambitions. Political unrest is an ongoing fear of the Communist Party of China regime, and there is little to suggest that Chinese "soft power" can overcome the misgivings of neighboring countries (e.g. India, Vietnam, and South Korea) that remember being invaded by Chinese armies in the recent past.
It is possible to become an American. I have seen it done. My wife, out of all the girls I knew when I first lived in Taiwan, was the LEAST interested in gaining a green card or even living in the United States as a student until we had occasion to enter the United States (her first occasion ever) as a married couple after a year of married life in Taiwan. Over time, she has become a Minnesotan American by choice rather than by birth, and indeed we have spent far more time in the United States than I had ever imagined possible when I first planned my adult life as an American with a university degree in Chinese language. There have been great opportunities for us in America and much that my wife can cherish even though none of her primary or secondary education was intended to prepare her for life in the United States, and none of my higher education was intended as anything but preparation for living in east Asia. The United States is open to immigrants, accepting of cultural diversity, and a second home for many people that becomes a more meaningful home than their first home. That acceptance of outside influence is America's strength, and why the United States and not China will be the superpower of the twenty-first century.
What the United States can learn from China (but even more so from Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea) is better provision of elementary education in government-operated primary schools, particularly in the subjects of mathematics and science. Native-born Americans like me who have lived in east Asia are APPALLED at the wasted opportunities that United States schools have with their lavish resources to provide a truly world-class education. United States schools do not do as badly as they possibly could, but they also don't do as well as they reasonably could be expected to do. Let's learn from China's best examples here in the United States. Meanwhile, I hope that the common people of China eventually learn from other democratized countries of east Asia how to come out from under a one-party dictatorship and to enjoy uncensored mass media, free elections, and a vigorous civil society.
> Native-born Americans like me who have lived in east Asia are APPALLED at the wasted opportunities that United States schools have with their lavish resources to provide a truly world-class education. United States schools do not do as badly as they possibly could, but they also don't do as well as they reasonably could be expected to do.
I know this is a popular refrain about American education, but it's only a half-truth. The only real direct, objective comparisons between different countries' educational systems are based on data from identical tests administered across those nations. However, as the results from the PISA[0] indicate, Americans rank near the top of their respective ethnic groups when they are separated in that manner. That is to say, American students of European descent are near the top of the charts when compared to European students, American students of Asian descent are near the top of the charts when compared to Asian students, etc.
This also applies to American students of African and Hispanic descent. However, students in African and Hispanic countries do so much worse than students in European and Asian countries that despite the American students of those ethnicities performing better than students in those countries, they still bring down the average American score below that of most European and Asian nations.
What this tells us is not that the American education system is just plain bad. Quite the opposite - take a student from anywhere in the world, and on average, he or she will receive a better education in America. The real problem is that our education system fails to provide an equal quality of education to all of our children.
As you probably already know, this result is because our public education system is funded by local taxes, and our car-based society allows us to geographically isolate us from the poor, who are overwhelmingly of African and Hispanic descent. Thus, the African and Hispanic students end up going to public schools that are poorly funded because their parents are poor, trapping Americans of African and Hispanic descent in a cycle of poverty.
The solution to this problem is not apparent, as attempts to integrate schools along socioeconomic & ethnic lines just results in the wealthy voting to defund public schools and sending their children to expensive private schools instead.
From your linkd article:
"So much for the bigoted notions that Americans are dumb and Europeans are smart." > "There are 3 parts to the PISA test, Reading, Math, and Science."
There is more to an education than reading, math, and science. The US is particularly famous for frequently forgetting that other countries even exist. Most of the Anglo world (including, but not just US) is seen with some derision in Europe for being so proudly monoglot. A comment of "My god, that person was so dumb" is usually about their lack of worldliness, not their skill with calculus.
Quite the opposite - take a student from anywhere in the world, and on average, he or she will receive a better education in America
The people that get to immigrate to the US are the best and brightest, otherwise they don't get in. It's unsurprising that their children perform well. Yes, the US education system is far better than the third world's (what a boast!) but even if you're talking about Finnish immigrants, they're not going to be unskilled louts. The mere fact that they're allowed in means that they have already passed a bar.
I agree that the real problem is the disparity and locally-sourced funding for schools, but that doesn't mean that there's no problem with the curriculum across the board. There are squillions of articles out there bemoaning all aspects of the US school system's race to teach the test rather than provide an education.
I think that probably the most telling is when you hear of tertiary educators saying that they have to dumb down intro subjects and teach students the skills they used to get in high school - things as simple as how to construct an essay (which doesn't sound like it's an objective 'reading, math, science' measure)
> There is more to an education than reading, math, and science. The US is particularly famous for frequently forgetting that other countries even exist. Most of the Anglo world (including, but not just US) is seen with some derision in Europe for being so proudly monoglot. A comment of "My god, that person was so dumb" is usually about their lack of worldliness, not their skill with calculus.
I won't deny the lack of language learning in the US, which is something that I find disturbing, particularly with the "flattening" of the world in recent years. However, I firmly believe that it has nothing to do with the education system. The real problem (if you can call it that) is that Anglophone countries don't need to learn any other languages. The reason why Europeans can speak foreign languages (most often English) is because they need to.
Moreover, if you live in an Anglophone country (particularly America, and I'd expect Australia is similar too, due to its linguistic isolation), there just aren't very many chances to practice a language even if you learn it. I know the public schools where I grew up required students to learn foreign languages (and they usually learned Spanish), but most of them forgot the language within a year of stopping classes, because they never got a chance to use it. This situation may very well change with the rapidly growing Hispanic population in the US.
OTOH, if you live in a non-Anglophone country, you're constantly bombarded with all kinds of media in English - on the web, in print, and on the silver screen. This effect is amplified in countries that speak languages with relatively small numbers of speakers. For example, the postage stamp-sized countries of northern Europe are more fluent in English than southern European countries such as France, Spain, and Italy, and a big reason for this is that their small size means that there is less domestic media to consume, so they turn to Angolophone content.
> There are squillions of articles out there bemoaning all aspects of the US school system's race to teach the test rather than provide an education.
Once again, I think this is largely a function of the quality of the school. Having graduated from a public high school in an affluent district after the turn of the millenium, I can say that contemporary US public schools do not solely teach to the test if the students are primarily wealthy suburbanites. We received plenty of stimulating education and in college we were thrown straight into the deep end of the pool, with lots of graduate-level material that we didn't understand for quite a while, a far cry from the reteaching of high school material that everyone says is happening. Then again, that's only my personal experience.
So I do not think financing is the main problem. You can always find ways to spend more money, but first it needs to be shown that the money is the problem, and it is far from obvious, as the data does not show that lavish spending leads to improvement in results.
as several commenters here on HN have mentioned to other persons who have shared the link, and anyway doesn't address the nub of my statement, which is that the United States, by OBSERVATION OF ACTUAL PRACTICE, is underperforming in providing lessons to young people in school,
The analysis in the first link you posted has flaws as well. The author does not deny that when you break down the US scores by ethnicity, Asian-Americans do as well as other Asians, European-Americans as other Europeans, etc. He bases a large part of his argument on the contention that the US should actually be doing better than it is right now - that "we can do more" - simply because we have a higher GDP per capita.
One example he cites is that the mean PISA score for Asian-Americans is 534, while the mean PISA score for Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong is 533. The author argues that since our GPP per capita is much higher than Japan / South Korea (and especially the Asian-American GDP per capita, which is probably slightly higher than the overall US number, given that Asian-American median income is about $1-2k higher than White median income), we should be doing better than we are now. This ignores, of course, that even this alleged observable underperformance must then be shared by Singapore and Hong Kong as well, which have higher GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power) than even the US (Singpore has $10k higher GDP per capita, in fact), but do only equally as well as US Asian-Americans / Japan / South Korea.
The author also argues that it the explosive growth of private tuition services are propping up US test scores, completely oblivious to the fact that the pervasiveness and ubiquity of private tuition services in many Asian countries (especially South Korea) make US private tuition services look like day care centers.
Finally, link-dumping 3 articles and a book that we'd have to purchase on Amazon really does not add much.
>our car-based society allows us to geographically isolate us from the poor
You think that a society needs cars to be geographically isolated from the poor? Ever hear of a thing called history? by this statement I can see that you have not. History tells us that our car-based society allows for more opportunity for the social underclass rather than the opposite.
If you think that funding for schools in poor areas is the problem with our education system - you are out of touch with reality. I grew up in one of those areas and observed first hand the problem. It is not that the children do not have the opportunity to study and get good grades, go to college and get out of poverty.... The problem is that the kids are lazy and they aren't pushed by their parent(s) to do their homework and study. They get into trouble on the streets or play video games instead, girls get pregnant and go on welfare as single moms, guys do drugs and join gangs ending up in jail. Then they blame white people for their problems.
I know this by observation. Why isn't anyone asking the students who come out of these areas with decent to good grades and make something out of themselves. Everyone has their theory but no one wants to hold the parents of these kids accountable. I personally think that parents should be punished if their children don't do well in school, have continual behavioral problems or commit crimes. Cut off the welfare and restrict these parents and their families to living in a shelter and eating bread and water (no money for cable tv, alcohol and ciggies). It is not a good solution, but it is the only solution that will work. No amount of money via welfare or social programs will ever bring the black community out of the continuum they are stuck in.
The Hispanic community has another problem. Most of them are from Mexico or are second generation. The immigrants are usually much better off financially than they were in Mexico even if they are making $6 an hour mowing lawns. Their kids often cannot speak English very well and don't think that that they should have to put in more work than their English speaking counterparts to stay at the same level. Often their parents both work very long hours and do not appreciate the value of their kids education. They like the black parents (but for different reasons) do not require a high level of effort from their kids in regards to education. Again, their has to be consequences for these parents. Investigate the parents of children who never do their homework or are clearly not giving much effort in school. Warn them, then if things don't improve - deport them. I think that we would see quite a lot better grades from Mexicans overnight if this policy was implemented.
If parents don't know how to motivate their children - offer them parenting classes.
When talking about education in China, given that I just graduated from a chinese high school last year(I'm chinese), I think I can have a different view-point from others looking outside.
The fact is that, chinese students indeed have really really lots of things to learn in the subject of science, especially math, but something has missed, gravely. For example, the spirit of science. In china, students are told to be well-behaved, from the first step of the primary school till you graduated from high school or university, imagine that a 6 year-old boy obliged to wear a red scarf(Honglingjin in chinese) as a sign of being young pioneer(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Pioneers_of_China), and saying "Be prepared, to struggle for the cause of Communism!", that red scarf will accompanied with that boy, untill junior high school, yes, time to step into Communist Youth League, it will end till the university, where you can really choose to join the party or not.
Back in to the education, students here will learn truelly lots of knowledges in math, but for what? the love of science? No, for the exam. this is what I really want to talk about, the real main spirit that construct the form of education in China. For a normal student, when it comes to the education, it's the exam, like a hash, no other values, education => exam, study => better grades, pursuit of science => nil. The summit of your life being a student is the GaoKao, takes place once a year, depend and only depend on which you can enter your ideal university. For lots of students, it's the whole family's "dream", parents and teachers will say again and again the importance of get good grades in GaoKao, some student even commit suicide when they faild their GaoKao. Maybe you can already feel that something goes wrong, yes, student take "good" elementary education(especially in math), but with the misleading of the meaning of education, math, physics, chemistry, are nothing but a game of grades. Can you imagine that in high school, only 2/3 of time you can really learn somthing, and the 3rd year of the high school is a full-time practice of topics in exam, everything you are told to do and really do is solving wired and meaningless topics. After doing all this, when you finish the GaoKao, it's done, it's the very end of study, lots of students know nothing about what they should do in the future, because the game finished, and their's no grades for struggling.
You know, after GaoKao, a lot of chinese students go study in foreign universites(especially US) for the sake of, for example, Freedom. When it comes to me(I'm going to France this year), I nearly think that I'm a "survivor" of the form of education in China, I know what I really want, the high school was almost a "prison of spirit" for me, so it's really really exiciting when I graduated, I can really choose what I want to learn, start a startup company, study the real science but not those meaningless topics, do lots of things that aren't "well-behaved".
We are tend to see only good points of other education systems, because we know our own weakpoints, and the solution may be find in other systems, but the underlying problems are easy to be ignored. I wish this will helps you guys to see a different aspect of education in China, and cherish good things in your education system.
Your comments are a great insight, thanks. It reminds me of an article I read about trainee Chinese pilots coming here to my country (Australia) to get required flight training. The Australian instructors are happy with their grades, but are generally not impressed by their spirit and attitude; i.e. they don't have a real love for flying.
You know what, part of pilots in China(not all indeed) come from families that aren't rich, or countryside(so they are really not rich), or just didn't get good grades in school. So become a commercial aviation pilot means family finance would really change, and enroll in the military is another backup solution when taking exam and going university is not a good choice.
I don't think this is a problem isolated in China, I grew up in the Australian education system, went to a top 3 public high school, and the situation(at least for math/science) is the same. Subjects are taught by teachers who follow textbooks, where textbooks are full of practice questions to make sure you can give the correct answer. The underlying motivation for the material is missing - very very few teachers know the material or truly want to properly educate students.
The only difference is that the material is comparatively much less/easier than in the Chinese system, and motivation for students to do well is much lower - the exam has much less impact on the students future.
I think the way to teach math is really the problem to be solved, the math itself is such hard to find motivation to learn for most students if not combining with orther subjects. Teachers may also be confused about that.
Being a chinese much older than you and in retrospective, the real problem in China education is the lack of first rate teachers who really understand the topic they are teaching.
Honestly exams are very weak once you really get the idea of what you are learning. I can absolutely know nothing about what I am learning and get a very high score in the exam. Richard Feynman also pointed this out during visiting years in Brazil. Students in China and Brazil suffer the same problem. There are first rate students, but without first rate guidance, most of them will be turned down to the levels of their teachers.
Interesting, my roommate back in Minneapolis a decade ago is married to a Taiwanese woman. The big difference is they didn't meet in Asia—it was at Nye's if I recall.
I have downmodded and flagged you. Derogatory slurs are not part of civil discussion.
In response to the inevitable response of it just being a joke or a reference, I submit three things: 1) jokes do not come across well on internet forums, as tone is lost and we lack the familiarity that friends have where we can easier infer intention; 2) even given that, it makes the level of discourse likely to decrease; and 3) the attitude of "can't you take a joke?" is one of privilege, that is, it is most frequently adopted by people who haven't been on receiving end of the kind of discrimination that sometimes comes packaged in with such words.
It is possible to become an American. I have seen it done. My wife, out of all the girls I knew when I first lived in Taiwan, was the LEAST interested in gaining a green card or even living in the United States as a student until we had occasion to enter the United States (her first occasion ever) as a married couple after a year of married life in Taiwan. Over time, she has become a Minnesotan American by choice rather than by birth, and indeed we have spent far more time in the United States than I had ever imagined possible when I first planned my adult life as an American with a university degree in Chinese language. There have been great opportunities for us in America and much that my wife can cherish even though none of her primary or secondary education was intended to prepare her for life in the United States, and none of my higher education was intended as anything but preparation for living in east Asia. The United States is open to immigrants, accepting of cultural diversity, and a second home for many people that becomes a more meaningful home than their first home. That acceptance of outside influence is America's strength, and why the United States and not China will be the superpower of the twenty-first century.
What the United States can learn from China (but even more so from Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea) is better provision of elementary education in government-operated primary schools, particularly in the subjects of mathematics and science. Native-born Americans like me who have lived in east Asia are APPALLED at the wasted opportunities that United States schools have with their lavish resources to provide a truly world-class education. United States schools do not do as badly as they possibly could, but they also don't do as well as they reasonably could be expected to do. Let's learn from China's best examples here in the United States. Meanwhile, I hope that the common people of China eventually learn from other democratized countries of east Asia how to come out from under a one-party dictatorship and to enjoy uncensored mass media, free elections, and a vigorous civil society.