Wanted in China – “an education” – Part 5/5

September 12, 2011

Aaron Brown introduces the fourth segment of this PBS: Wide Angle documentary on high school education in China, showing parents waiting anxiously for their children as the exams end.

Brown says that the students will not find out how they did for weeks after the test. He then tells us the results for each of the students the documentary focused on.  We learn that the results of the exam decide the college each student will attend.  The highest scores go to the top colleges while lower scores go to lower rated universities.

The high school, senior class president, scored high enough to fulfill her dream and went on to attend one of China’s top two colleges where she will study journalism.

She says, “When I was studying so hard, I thought the most important thing was freedom. You cannot demand freedom from this society, your school or even your own family. You must rely on yourself to find your freedom. If you can set your own heart free, than nothing can stop you.”

After learning the future of these students, Aaron Brown sits down to interview Professor Vanessa Fong, assistant professor of education at Harvard University, whose work has focused on Chinese youth and identity.

Brown starts out saying, “People (Americans/Westerners) that watch the film will say that it is almost inhumane how hard they drive these kids, how much pressure is on them, how much discipline is expected of them—all of that. How do they see Western education?”

Professor Fong replies, “When they are kids, they really envy it.” While doing her research in China, the Chinese students often asked her what American teenagers do. She answered, “They spend half their day at school but the other half they are playing sports or in school plays or hanging out with their friends or go out and party.”

The response from Chinese students, “That would be so nice.”

Aaron Brown questions the Chinese system and Professor Fong defends it by saying, “The exam system is the one level playing field most of them will see in their lives and that is why they value it. It is a place where the children of poor farmers and the children of high officials can compete on a level playing field without anyone knowing their name on a mostly multiple choice, objectively graded national  test anonymously.”

Brown asks if this is true and Professor Fong says it is true.  She says the fairness of this exam is so secret that any kind of corruption is likely to be crushed and one case of corruption could cause a major upheaval (riots and protests) in China that would probably sweep the nation.

Now that we have discovered how serious earning an education is in China, we now know that the title of a series such as this on American education may be titled, “Wanted in the United States – high self-esteem and lots of fun”.

Return to Wanted in China – “an education” – Part 4 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Education in the Real World – Part 2/2

September 6, 2011

Compulsory education in China for primary education is from ages 6 to 12, and in 2001, there were 121 million students enrolled in this system.

Unlike the United States, almost half of those 121 million students dropped out of school at age 12 or entered vocational training, while the other half went on to the junior secondary education system, which educates ages 12 to 15.

Another 54.8 million children drop out of China’s education system at the end of the junior secondary system at age 15.

China’s senior education system educates about 12 million students ages 15 to 18, which means China’s top 10% of all students, while in America, the public schools are still struggling to teach 90% of the children that started school at age 6, and about a third are not interested for a variety of reasons such as the self-esteem parenting movement, hunger or safety.

In China, to be accepted into the senior education system, students must take an entrance test called the ‘Zhongkao’, which is the Senior Secondary Education Entrance Examination held annually in China to distinguish junior graduates.

While exams in China compare students so only the best move on, exams in America do not do this. Instead, exams in the US are used to measure the success of schools and teachers, and students are not treated as failures no matter what their score.

When a student fails in the US, the teacher is often blamed—not students or parents.

However, China’s school system operates mostly on meritocracy so only the best students move on, while the US keeps every student until age 18 no matter what their academic performance, attitude toward education or classroom behavior is.

The reason so many students are kept in the American education system is that there is no competition among students to succeed since the system is designed to make it look as if all students are equal.  Often, one student graduates at age 18 reading at a 4th grade level, while another from the same class graduates reading at the university level and these two students may have been taught in the same classrooms by the same teachers.

America does this so students will not be embarrassed or feel bad about themselves. Instead of failing the student, the US fails the teacher for what the student did not learn even if the student did not study.

In China, if a student stays in school and makes it into college, he or she can be assured to be ready for university work but in the United States over half of high school graduates cannot do university work and must take remedial classes before enrolling in university courses.  This creates a huge economic burden on America’s economy due to a majority of Americans refusing to accept reality that countries such as China accepted long ago.

Return to Education in the Real World – Part 1

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This edited and revised post originally appeared on August 8, 2011, at Crazy Normal as Civil Disobedience and No Child Left Behind – Part 4

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

2 Comments | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese middle class, cultural differences, education, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Facts about Education — China and the world versus America – Part 3/3

July 30, 2011

Myth:  “American Universities Are Being Overtaken.” (concerning research and development)

ANSWER: “NOT SO FAST.”

Wildavsky says, Asia’s share of the world’s research and development (R&D) spending grew from 27 to 32% from 2002 to 2007, led mostly by China, India, and South Korea.

However, R&D spending worldwide massively surged in the last decade from $790 billion to $1.1 trillion, up 45 percent, and in 2007, the U.S. spent $373 billion (up from $277 billion in 2002) on R&D, which was very high by global standards totaling more than all Asian countries’ combined ($352 billion was spent on R&D in Asia).

Myth: “THE WORLD WILL CATCH UP”

ANSWER: “Maybe, but don’t count on it anytime soon.”

While the global academic marketplace is without doubt growing more competitive, the United States doesn’t have just a few elite schools as most of its foreign competition does, and the U.S. spends about 2.9 percent of its GDP on postsecondary education, about twice the percentage spent by China, the European Union, and Japan in 2006.

If this three part series of posts sparked a curiosity to learn more on this topic, I urge you to take the time and click over to Foreign Policy magazine‘s Website and read all of FP’s Think Again: Education written by Ben Wildavsky.  It’s always nice to discover the facts before you form an opinion or believe someone that does not know what they are talking about. After reading Wildavsky’s piece in FP, it is obvious that America’s schools are not failing and have never been failing and are actually either holding their own or slowly improving.

That doesn’t mean the US should stop working at improving the public education system.  It means that many of the opinions and claims you may read or hear are probably wrong and the key to improving education in the US rests with the parents and not the teachers.

Considering the handicaps and competition teachers in the U.S. public schools face from the average child/adolescent’s poor lifestyles choices while eating horrible diets along with lack of proper sleep and spending far too much time dividing his or her daily hours (more than 10 hours a day on average) watching TV, playing video games, social networking on sites such as Facebook, and sending endless text messages instead of reading and studying, the evidence says American teachers are doing an incredible job.

Return to Facts about Education – Part 2 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse