I was driven mad by the Chinese education system

http://en.chinaelections.org/NewsInfo.asp?NewsID=19911

by divia • 17 years ago

150 140 17 years ago

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DenisM• 17 years ago

He seems to have more problems with his relatives than the education system. However if this sort of treatment is culturally prevalent I can see this easily holding back the whole country - humans are fragile and fine instruments and perform at peak only when maintaned with utmost care.

carterschonwald2• 17 years ago

miniature versions of this happen in american high schools (especially magnet high schoos), where the children of recent immigrants will have to deal with a parent being angry if they do not get A/A+'s in their coursework.

ReverendBayes• 17 years ago

Was Bronx Science like this? It seems to me that the tech track magnets would be a little more enlightened, but I could be wrong.

vicaya2• 17 years ago

Again it usually happens when parents are not well educated. They only realize the importance of education, but they're not educated enough to evaluate their children's progress, so they often have to rely on the not always reliable association of good grades with good progress.

vicaya2• 17 years ago

Fortunately, such treatment is less and less prevalent in China, especially in more developed areas (the student is from a poorer province, where a top-tier college education often means a rare ticket to the prosperity for the whole family.)

jacoblyles• 17 years ago

Most of the anecdotes I have heard like this seem to come from societies where scores are very important to getting into college, and where a college education can make a vast difference in the material well-being of the family. India is another place that sounds like this.

tigerthink2• 17 years ago

I have always believed that to be successful intellectually, you should be driven by curiosity rather than fear.

jerf3• 17 years ago

Based on what I've seen in real life in the American version of this, you can be pretty "intellectually successfully" just from being pushed, although they lack the "spark"; I can't imagine this producing an entrepreneur (and I'm not just saying that because this is HN; that really is the opposite of where they end up).

The problem is that every other kind of success tends to be elusive, up to and including "succeeding in not committing suicide". (Fortunately, I don't quite know anyone who made it that far, but I know some people who came close.)

azharcs2• 17 years ago

I really liked your quote, I have just quoted you in my new blog post about the same topic. http://geeyk.com/what-is-wrong-with-chinese-and-indian-paren...

ps: I didn't link here to drive traffic to my blog post, The comment i have written on here is the same i have posted there. :)

tigerthink2• 17 years ago

Thanks!

For posterity's sake I should probably clarify that I haven't always believed it. It's just something I started saying to myself a year or so ago.

bokonist7• 17 years ago

My favorite theory about why the West and China diverged starting in the 16th century is that entrepreneurial capitalism thrived in the West. The ambitious acheived success by finding a competent master, learning a trade, and then making stuff people wanted, whether that be clocks or caravels. In China, the ambitious were sucked into the civil service exam system. They were judged by arbitrary tests rather than by producing useful things. The result was centuries of stagnation.

whacked_new6• 17 years ago

> The result was centuries of stagnation.

One of the factors, yes, but making such an attribution overlooks a lot: the Tang is often regarded as a renaissance in China. It follows the Sui, when the imperial exams started. General characteristics of each of the dynasties, and each of the rulers, have large effects on the policies and the culture of the era.

Simple example: if Bush was an emperor, and held power for a few generations, it isn't far fetched to see a dark age of bio research.

cglee2• 17 years ago

Good point. It should also be pointed out how difficult it was to sustain productive and fair policies in the dynastic system. All it took is one bad ruler to ruin centuries of progress.

This is why the integrity and structure of the system is more important than individual rulers. The best form of government may be a benevolent king, and even if that's somehow sustained for 5 generations, all it takes is one malevolent one to ruin everything.

f3lix• 17 years ago

"if Bush was an emperor, and held power for a few generations, it isn't far fetched to see a dark age of bio research."

The total federal research and development budget increased under Bush. The objection that some people have is his moratorium on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

This is a small part of all bio research that is morally contentious. I doubt your assertion of seeing a "dark age of bio research" is warranted.

pg5• 17 years ago

The first sentence is probably true. But the causes for this divergence are so complicated that I don't feel like I understand the question well enough yet to explain why it happened. For example, there was the court squabble that caused long trading voyages to be banned just at the wrong moment. If long distance voyages were a sufficiently powerful driver of European economic growth, that alone could have been enough to screw China. Especially since this was something of a zero-sum game.

bokonist7• 17 years ago

Here is a great article comparing the Chinese and the Portuguese approaches to exploration. The comparison between ship sizes is just stunning. It's the 15th century version of Lisp versus Blub :-) : http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-succeed-or-f...

Decentralization was a major factor in Europe's success. The Chinese government could issue an edict and ban trading voyages for centuries. No European ruler could afford to be so foolish. There was no single point of failure. When John II of Portugal refused to fund a voyage west across the Atlantic, Columbus simply went to Isabella of Spain and convinced her to role the die.

China was one monolithic civil service state. Europe was divided into a dozen kingdoms that were essentially profit maximizing family businesses. The intense competition between these states propelled Europe forward at a rapid rate.

chaostheory• 17 years ago

I feel that it's one of the factors, but not the main one.

To me the main factor for China's stagnation is that unlike countries in Europe, China had no equal (or near equal) for thousands of years (well the majority of it). There was simply no competition. To make a long story short, China simply rested on its laurels too long until the arrival of the modern era.

radu_floricica2• 17 years ago

You may want to read Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond. You'll definitely enjoy it. The short answer is yes, the long answer starts with geography and how Europe's facilitated lots of small countries and China's one big empire. My favorite example is how Columbus asked three kings to sponsor his voyage to America. In China the first "no" would have been final.

fuzzmeister• 17 years ago

Parents should push their children to succeed through positive reinforcement and good example, not through fear.

gcheong• 17 years ago

A big problem is that the whole "spare the rod spoil the child" mindset has become so much a given that people have a hard time believing any "softer" approach for anything other than babies and infants might work, even in the face of evidence that the current approach is not working.

Retric5• 17 years ago

I don't think things are failing so blaming "the current approach" seems misguided. I can't think of a single area where things where better 100 years ago than they are today in the US. Most trends are fairly positive over the last 30 years.

EX: People talk about an increase in the dropout rate but it's slowly falling across the US. (http://nces.ed.gov/ssbr/pages/dropout.asp) Edit: more recent numbers http://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=16

Violent Crime is falling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

There might be an long term increase in the unemployment rate http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=248 but if so it's swamped by swings in the economy.

puffythefish• 17 years ago

Ugh. This is why I hate the grading system. The basic premise the entire system relies on is fear of failure, which, to me, seems to be completely counter-productive to learning. When I am actually learning something, for instance programming, I don't learn by marginally getting better and going to a slightly higher level before, still succeeding at every step — I learn immersing myself in something completely over my head that I don't understand, and absolutely, miserably failing. When I finally get it, not only is the experience extremely gratifying, but I actually learn it; it's very difficult to forget something you now understand that only moments ago looked nearly impossible. In school, doing this is not only discouraged but nearly impossible — fail a class for even a few weeks and it will be very difficult to get your grade up and be able to get in any more honors classes; essentially, through the grading system you're labeled satisfactory (A/B, depending on your standards), average (C) or a failure (F), even though the only way to learn is through your mistakes.

I think a good indicator of how well you're learning something is to ask yourself, "If I asked myself about this subject 6 months ago, would I think I was an idiot?". In school, I can think of maybe 3 subjects that's true in, but not by much. With something I'm teaching myself through failing, like programming, I would probably think I was an idiot less than one month ago.

pg5• 17 years ago

I wasn't motivated by fear. It was more like trying to be high scorer on a video game. Which is also somewhat of a stupid motivation, but probably not as stupid.

I think the problem is not grades per se but the difference between what they're supposed to measure and what they actually do. That difference can be small (I can remember college classes where it was), but it takes an effort.

thinkcomp• 17 years ago

It's really depressing to read articles like this, partly because it does seem like there's no way out when you're in the middle of it, and partly because there are significant parts of the American educational system that are really little better. I did not have abusive parents or extended family members, and I did not have to endure the suffering that this author did in a far-away boarding school, but I certainly can relate to the notion of school being a prison. The idea of teaching to tests is really damaging, and it's unfortunate that the past eight years in the United States anyway have focused educational policy on testing scores alone.

mattmaroon7• 17 years ago

Test scores are like democracy, they're the least bad option. There's simply not a better way to measure progress, or one more accurate to life.

Rabidmonkey13• 17 years ago

I'm not sure I agree with this sentiment. Surely there must be a better way to show proficiency in something besides testing (in the conventional sense).

Besides, the US isn't a Democracy, it's a Republic, albiet a democratic one. The founders really hated the word and made sure it wasn't in any of the founding documents.

"Democracy: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard for consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy."

-1928 U.S. Army Training Manual

angstrom• 17 years ago

It's not that test scores are somehow the least bad option. It's that they're the cheapest least bad option. Actually assessing a students comprehension would require a verbal examination.

d0mine• 17 years ago

There are better options. For example:

1. A conversation.

2. Real-world problems.

tolmasky• 17 years ago

The problem is that we have testing all the way up the ladder. You can't implement a better option without hurting students when it comes time to take SATs or go to another school. For a better method to be developed you would have to somehow implement it across the board, which is probably not going to happen.

Alex39172• 17 years ago

"Test scores are like democracy, they're the least bad option. There's simply not a better way to measure progress, or one more accurate to life."

There are so many different types of tests that your statement is essentially meaningless.

mattchew2• 17 years ago

Which is why PG and RTM worked so hard to develop the admission test for YC applicants . . .

iamelgringo• 17 years ago

What can I do now?

Learn how to program, drop out of school and start your own startup. At least that's what the kids do here in America.

whacked_new6• 17 years ago

That's almost like saying, when a fish is suffocating because his pond has become deprived of oxygen, "stop eating plankton and start eating rodents; that's the way we lions roll here in the jungle."

In all seriousness, I can guarantee that this is far from an isolated case. If he is 10th or 12th in his class, just how many are there, between him and the 1st, who basically live with the same thing, but either don't write about it, or worse, write about it, but never get heard?

time_management• 17 years ago

That's, umm, not what most people who flush out of the US school system end up doing, even among the small percentage who have the ability.

Rabidmonkey13• 17 years ago

This article is by a kid who is still in this situation. I can't speak or write Chinese, but if someone can reach him via the comments on the original article, please tell him to leave there and explore the world. It's much bigger than the silly schools he's in and there are plenty of opportunities for him to become successful.

poutine3• 17 years ago

You really have no clue. This poor kid probably doesn't have the money for a train trip to Shanghai much less to explore the world. He has no ability to work other places inside China and nobody would hire him where he'd make any money where he is. He is trapped and a Chinese university degree is the only way out.

Rabidmonkey13• 17 years ago

Hey, that's just plain insulting! FYI I've been all over China - I spent 2 weeks there with a sports team in 2005 playing all over the country - literally east from Beijing to as far wast as Urumchi, which nearly hits the Russian border - in fact, Russians came down to watch the team play.

Have you ever been to China? I have. I know what it's like.

The kid obviously has internet access - isn't that something? There are so many possibilities inherent in that alone for him there, heck, even for something as simple as a solid friendship to keep him grounded. What gives you the authority to declare his fate?

Eliezer• 17 years ago

This goes beyond madness into the realm of Sparta.

drinian2• 17 years ago

You know, I went to a top-tier private school in the US, followed by a top-tier private university, and I never understood the obsession with getting As in everything. I certainly wasn't, especially once at university, but I didn't feel like less of a person.Even in the US, there is a stereotype that Asian parents drive their kids in a similar manner, although I have never heard of them treating them like property like this father does. Then there's the cram schools in Korea and Japan. I have to wonder why that, culturally, seems to be linked to Asians?

Culturally, though, this is the most disturbing part of the article: One day I brought in a book, The Collected Stories of Guy Maupassant, and it was confiscated. The head teacher said this book was useless in improving my grades and that these kinds of books only lead students into decadence and depravation. The next day after class I was flipping through a book of short essays and it too was confiscated. The head teacher would not even let me write small articles on my own because she believes that it is a waste of time to write anything unless it is required by the literature teacher.

One message I was always sent during my education was that the point of education was to become a whole person, not just to make money; literacy and humanism were an integral part of that. (I think a couple of Asian kids that I went to school with ended up in the humanities against their parents' wishes because of this). That attitude seems to be quite common among hackers as well. The shells of people that the Chinese system will turn out, if this is any indication, scare me.

whacked_new6• 17 years ago

> I have to wonder why that, culturally, seems to be linked to Asians?

This is a complex issue, but the shallow explanation is the test taking culture. There have been reports of widespread (and sophisticated) cheating in the national Korean university entrance exams over howevermany past years that I can recall. I was told that this is because Koreans basically get one shot at the exam. It practically makes or breaks your life. So everything you do in life, up until that point, is in preparation for the fight.

I must stress again though, that this is a shallow look at the problem.

pg5• 17 years ago

There's also a tradition of respect for parents, and parents like good grades. Indeed, at younger ages, grades are reports to parents.

jerf3• 17 years ago

"I was told that this is because Koreans basically get one shot at the exam. It practically makes or breaks your life."

People talk about the superior nature of the American higher education system, which might seem strange if you are used to hearing about how much it sucks, but of course those criticisms are talking about two different things. The American system is superior because you can get a second chance in almost anything. You'll have to pay, but you can get a second chance. If you don't like your major, you can change at any time, carrying over what you can.

This sounds so stupidly obvious if you grew up in the US that you may not realize that even in otherwise very enlightened societies like Europe, this is not how it works. In the UK, you declare your major in high school and from what I've heard talking to people who went there, it is possible to change, but very, very hard.

Now, match that against the number of people who change majors in the US... almost everybody does within their first year! Even if you count "real major" -> "real major", i.e., one real engineering to another real engineering and not something like "real engineering" -> "English degree", you're looking at a lot of motion.

It's really strange to me how much this has stuck in those places when, in general, it would be really easy to pick up that aspect of the American system. I suppose it should be pointed out that there are still some clear advantages to American culture, for as much as people love to dump on it.

megaduck4• 17 years ago

< I have to wonder why that, culturally, seems to be linked to Asians?

I can't speak for other Asian countries, but I know China. From what you wrote, your experience and the experience of Zhang Rui (the high school student) couldn't be more different. I've recently had the wonderful and depressing experience of teaching in rural Chinese high schools, and it was an eye-opening experience. The pressure and stress on those kids is simply astounding.

Unfortunately for Zhang Rui, there is probably no more important single event in his life than taking the University Entrance Examination (高考, or GaoKao). There are really only two life paths before him, depending on his score.

If Zhang Rui gets a decently high score, then he can attend a large university in a city like Beijing or Shanghai. He will receive an urban residence permit, and a small stipend that he can use to live as a student. He'll receive a degree without much difficulty, and he should be able to get a good job. He can become a professional, he can go into government, he can become a writer, he's got a lot of options.

If Zhang Rui gets a low score, then he has few or no options. He lives in a remarkably poor region, even by Chinese standards, and his father is probably a peasant farmer (or something close). He's probably also got a rural registration, so he'll never be legally allowed to leave his village. He can either follow in his father's impoverished footsteps or become an undocumented migrant worker, sweating in a factory or hand-mixing concrete on a construction site.

Those are the choices. Zhang Rui might be able to skip university and still lead a full and interesting life, but the odds are hugely against it. He'll have to fight the system until the day he dies.

This is the harsh reality that Zhang Rui is facing, and it helps to put everything into context. His father and teachers know all these things, and so it's likely they've boiled it down to a cold binary decision: either little Zhang gets into university and brings the family out of poverty, or he's another worthless peasant stuck in Anhui. The only thing that matters is the score on the GaoKao. It's horrible, but not uncommon.

I sincerely hope that Zhang Rui overcomes the system without losing his soul (or his life). He sounds creative, strong, and insightful. China could use more voices like his.

pg5• 17 years ago

Are some people in China really not legally allowed to leave their villages?

asmosoinio• 17 years ago

Thanks for the eye-opening insight!

katz• 17 years ago

"I have to wonder why that, culturally, seems to be linked to Asians?"

It is not Asians - it is most cultures where the parents are fairly poor and the children have a chance to succeed in life.

A second generation rich (well off) person will not work as hard as someone whose father is poor.

I doubt that the stressing and pressure that this guy is going trough is good - but the hard work that a lot of Chinese school children do is a good thing.

sounddust• 17 years ago

Can anyone translate, or at least summarize, the comments from the original article in Chinese? I tried using Google, but none of them made any sense except the first one (which was apparently written in bad Chinese by an American)

azharcs2• 17 years ago

After reading this article, All I can say is Indian education is very much identical. Some kids here are pushed even more than this Chinese kid; a kid sister of my friend goes to private tuition so that she could pass the entrance test of another private tuition which takes in less students and trains them to write and pass the entrance exam of a reputed college in India (so in simple words, she is going through two levels of tuitions to get into another tuition which she might go 4-5 years later).

Every other week I read in newspaper that a school or college kid killed himself/herself because they failed or got lesser marks than their peers. The most recent I read was a girl killed herself because she got 4 marks lesser than the topper of her class. It is scary and it is only getting worse day by day.

I have actually thought a lot about the reason “Why Parents are pushing their kids to the wall”, it is certainly not job uncertainty (there are plenty of outsourced jobs here and you can see almost anyone who is slightly not retarded getting one). The only answer I got was “Most of the parents in third-world countries lack good Identities” because they are in some jobs which are not very happy or proud of and the only way for them to escape from their ‘past or present’ is to change their future which they think is in the hands of their kids and not theirs. They constantly hear of stories of kids who studied well, got a job in some company and bought his parents house (which if he/she is lucky enough to hold on to the job might own it in next 20 years). As I have seen most of the pushy parents are highly incompetent who actually believe that their life is over, they can’t change it because they missed opportunities when they were young. A real person would go achieve what he wants at any age irrespective of anything else but pushy parents are not that because they are betting on their kids and that is much easier.

The other part of the problem is housewives (I am not sexist); this is a group which actually doesn’t have an identity. If you have ever been near one, most of their sentences start with “My son/daughter is…” most of these sentences end with an achievement of their kids which are incidentally better than other housewives kids. Now the housewives who were humiliated in the conversation go home force their kids to do well in whatever they do. It is certainly not limited to studies; it can be anything jumping a fence, throwing a ball or anything else. At the end of the day, their kid has to be better than other kids. It is kind of like playing a MMORPG where they want their avatar to be better than others and they want their avatars to level up faster so that they can fight bigger battles. So the problem is certainly not the education system, it is actually the society (housewives and people who are not happy with their jobs). So my solution would be think about the kids later, create jobs for housewives (idle minds are devil's workshop, they are the clear example of it). Keep the housewives busy and you would automatically see an improvement in kids who are back to being creative and independent like they always were.

Sorry for 600 words long rant, I am just pissed with how things are going on here right now. It actually took me an hour to write this. :)

kragen5• 17 years ago

Thank you for your fantastically insightful post!

identity86• 17 years ago

Being from India, I couldn't agree more. Its sad that the culture and system does not change. They do not value individuality. Hopefully over time we'll start to see some positive change.

luckystrike2• 17 years ago

All parents would like to see their children 'well settled'. Unfortunately, in our (Indian) society as of now, ticket to a well settled life is still 'perceived' to be a degree from a top educational institute. It was true to an extent in the days before economic liberalization (1991), and this mindset would take some time to change.

Rather than calling most of the pushy parents incompetent or reasoning them to be idle housewives (err homemakers), i think it's mostly the fear of the kid not getting to be as successful (by their definition) in his/her life. This fear sometimes is a product of their own perceived failure or hardships in life, or what they have seen around them.

Economic growth plus good education and thinking can go a long way in curing any society of most of such ills.

hsuresh• 17 years ago

Absolutely. I cannot blame the parents entirely, they have not even seen the same kind of opportunities as we see now. The moment they see more success stories in other fields (not just IT), i am sure they will put emphasis on the right kind of education.

hardik• 17 years ago

With all due respect, your views and analysis are only relevant to the urban experience.

"anyone who is slightly not retarded" does NOT land up a job in non-metros.

Just visit a tier 2 city like Nashik (I am not even talking about proper rural areas) and see the employment opportunities there. At such places success stories abound of sons and daughters of lower middle class workers who cracked some competitive exam or another have landed, and naturally students are inspired to work harder.

Go little deeper and in the rural areas, the socio-economic conditions there are such that kids who can attend schools and colleges consider themselves privileged. And these people do uplift the economic situation of the entire family.

The point I am trying to drive here is that the parents are generally right to emphasize the importance of education to their children. Of course, obsessive behavior as demonstrated in this article is wrong.

The inherent problem which leads to this is two fold: lack of seats and unscientific content in education.

Lack of Seats There is an utter shortage of seats in all educational centers in India. This leads to higher "cut off" grades leading to obsessive competition. The very idea that grades are the blanket deciding factor to deem a student fit to attend a certain school is very poor and it needs scrutiny urgently.

Unscientific content The Indian education, in its current form, discourages creativity, emphasizes solely on memorization capabilities (I have some friends who are now managers at Big Four IT companies who memorized essays for English exam and sums for Math exams and got super grades) and is highly politicized. It is geared to train students to be doers and not thinkers, it does not light the burning curiosity that I feel is very important to really learn anything (be it math, sciences, even history, etc)

IMHO, there is an need to modernize the educational system which should solve many a problems.

It is a mammoth task; grading system, content, creativity, the "tuition problem" to name a few obstacles. We can start out by accepting the problems.

Again, all due respect to your views. I can relate with them and probably would have completely supported them had I not had the opportunity to visit what some call the "real India" :)

luckystrike2• 17 years ago

Well written. The 'real' India is indeed far bigger than 'non-retards' working in IT industry.

And as was discussed in this forum a few days ago, teachers have the most important role to play in imparting good education and encouraging creativity and learning over marks. They can actually make a huge difference even with this current system.

diN0bot• 17 years ago

the housewife thing seems to be pure speculation compared to the controlling patriarch in the submitted article.

muon2• 17 years ago

Tuition for tuition? Hearing this for first time but I have seen students opting for two tuition simultaneously, one of which is correspondence course.

At times, peer pressure is more compared to ones from parents, which more dangerous.

dreamz• 17 years ago

the socio-economic conditions from pre-independence have created the vicious circles .... also lots have to do with caste system as well; where brahmins were known as the best .... after independence if you want to do better then you have to have better education and to have better education you need to have better scores .... now the situation is so worse that even if you have better scores you still can't get admission in good schools ... the competitiveness has grown because of non-availability of very few premier schools. Also there is something like Status Symbol - parents are just dying to get some kind of status in the society and that they try to get it thru their kids... poor kids, the young minds are sometime destroyed because on this unusual pressures.

Also there is not much importance given to other extra curricular activities/career.... this is also due to to not having good institutions/infrastructure. If you are from middle class and god forbid if you want to leave your studies for getting in to sports or music or modeling then the whole society will come down on you as if you're a sinner. Though this mentality is on the verge of changing (in urban areas only) but not at the pace of 21st century.

ideamonk• 17 years ago

Hey Zhang Rui, you're not alone, such a situation would soon arrive in India too. Recession is just another catalyst, for such way of thinking, to become popular here in India -- where opportunities aren't abundant and education system has been sleeping for years. The child of scarcity of opportunities and avenues -- Competition -- about which so many people speak with pride. The word which gives us a false sense that after its occurance, the outcome will be pure gold! The word which kills aapasi bhai chara and life at large. The reason for so many stressed out people in 20-30 years of age... and I guess what not. Anyways coming back to my point, I think competition is the main m&*#^# reason behind all this. And the reason behind the competition is the layed back approach towards education that our government has been adopting and the way we have been giving respect to the ones who get good ranks in a competition. We just keep forgetting that we as human beings we do, and yes we do, all of us, me you and everyone have the ability to learn things we like, to make changes to things around us to suit our needs, to devise better ways to do things, to create things, to do anything that we want. Now what fuck up competition does is that it puts a force, a palm on your back push you, all of you towards one direction. Now that is fundamentally wrong! You can't have the best outputs from me when you won't let me do what I want. And not everyone knows what one wants at ONE particular age. This introduction to competition at early youthful ages is the biggest fuck up of our life. Our education system is trying to hide its fallacies and fallouts under name of Competition and little are they aware that they are actually taking away our little right to do what we feel like at whatever time we want. I know my thoughts haven't been presented in an organized manner, loads of you might just say wtf is he trying to say. So go n relieve yourselves of the doubts and take a lesson, for if you enter the education ministry by your bad luck, your groundnut sized brains would also contain these ideas and with your rice grain sized heart, you would think, and not just think like they have been thinking after independence, you would rather DO something good for my kids, cousins and fellow young citizens who are yet to be born.

ekpyrotic4• 17 years ago

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the Chinese education system, coupled with discipline through fear works. I competed at last year's International Physics Olympiad (Viet Nam), who won? China, as usual.

China starts preparation for the competition when their participants are just 8; they work ~16 hours a day on physics problems. The result? Winning with ease. You have, I all presume, read Gladwell's latest book. The Chinese education system squeezes the 10,000 hours required for expertise in before the children are 18. I'm currently [one of] the best physics students in the UK and I'd pay anything to have had an uprising like that, instead mine was consumed with PC games, and posting on forums.

The evidence I have shown can only be used to defend the proposition that: "The Chinese education system is best for those students with a natural skill in certain areas; i.e., physics". It might be argued that while it has these benefits the negatives - I reference the article in question - might outweigh the former.

I hate to go all reprogenetic on you. But my argument would go something like the following:

(1) A productive society is one with experts. (2) Expertise is only accomplished with relentless practice. (C) The most productive society will be accomplished if citizens are made to constantly work at their discipline.

There will, of course, be a transition stage in which those that lack real expertise are weeded out; but, I'm ashamed to say, that seems the most productive society.

Until then I will carry on working on my physics/philosophy 16 hours a day - I only wish I'd been forced to start earlier.

wwalker32• 17 years ago

Doing well in the Physics Olympiad is not the same as doing well in physics.

In the Physics Olympiad, you solve simple problems based on well-understood formulae. In physics, you create new knowledge. It may be telling that China has won only three physics Nobel prizes, and all three of the winners got their PhDs in the US.

I admire your dedication to working hard on physics, but I think that creative, effortful practice is the key, not relentless drill.

ekpyrotic4• 17 years ago

Thank you wwalker3 for your keen response; however, I going to have to both agree and disagree - cliché through it is.

Doing well in the Physics Olympiad is a prerequisite to doing well in physics. Yes, I agree, creating knowledge requires a creative flare; however, I don't believe such heights can be achieved without first going through "the relentless drill". I'll use to example of literature to better illustrate my point. No doubt Hemingway's precision and restrain in writing was a creative leap; but that was founded on years of drilling; years of practicing alternative styles; years of relentless practice. Only then are creative insights possible.

First comes the drill; then comes the "creative, effortful practice".

kragen5• 17 years ago

Even if China's universities had developed first-class physics departments 30 years ago, you wouldn't see the effect in Nobel prizes yet.

I guess you're referring to Daniel C. Tsui, Yáng Zhènníng, and Lǐ Zhèngdào. Yáng and Lǐ won their Nobel in 1957. Lǐ got his Ph.D. in the late 1940s; Yáng got his in 1942. China in the 1930s and 1940s was not only a desperately poor undeveloped country; it was also being invaded by Japan. Nobody will argue with you if you say studying physics in China in the 1930s and 1940s was a bad bet.

The physics Nobelists in 2006, 2007, and 2008 got their Ph.D.s in 1974 (Mather), 1970 (Smoot), 1970 (Fert), 1969 (Grünberg), 1972 (Kobayashi), 1967 (Masukawa), and 1952 (Nambu, D.Sc. rather than Ph.D.). So really what we learn from China's lack of physics Nobel prizes in recent years is that China's physics schools were terrible in the 1950s and 1960s. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were happening there in the 1960s, and the problems with Chinese educational outcomes included things like "widespread illiteracy" and "professors sent to prison camps because students thought they were unpatriotic", not problems like "too much time spent on rote learning".

I agree that the Physics Olympiad is not the same as doing physics research; but people who can't do well in things like the Physics Olympiad (as it's been described here) lack the foundation to do physics research.

In computer science, there have recently been some very substantial results out of Chinese universities; Wang Xiaoyun et al.'s breaks of MD5 and SHA-0 and attack on SHA-1 in 2004 and 2005 come to mind. She got her Ph.D. at Shandong in 1993. So I am optimistic that in the coming years there will be many significant results from Chinese universities.

tungstenfurnace2• 17 years ago

I couldn't agree more.

Forcing oneself to do tasks is a pretty sure way to shut down creativity.

glymor2• 17 years ago

In order to do that they have to stream very early on, far before the Olympiads. I'm not sure what they use to stream but the proxy used in the west, math tests, are more an indicator of how well you can follow instructions.

Undoubtedly China is going to end up with a large number of very technically competent physicists I'm just wondering if they lost a few who could be Nobels along the way.

captainobvious2• 17 years ago

> I'm just wondering if they lost a few who could be Nobels along the way.

I don't think studying for an olympiad impedes this. Terrence Tao (Australian, to be clear), dominated math olympiads, went on to make fundamental contributions to math and won a Fields medal.

homme2• 17 years ago

Sounds like a great method to produce a mechanic but not a creator, i.e. an American Idol winner rather than a Bob Dylan.

ekpyrotic4• 17 years ago

My reply to wwalker3, hopefully, also, answers your concerns.

nostrademons4• 17 years ago

It makes sense that if you measure success by the same yardstick that drives education, the more highly educated will win. The Physics Olympiad is testing basically the same skills that a typical high-school physics education in China teaches. Naturally they'd do well at it.

The question is whether those skills are what makes a successful physicist. And I'd guess that they're only a small subset of the skills necessary for original research. Yeah, they're a necessary condition, but they're very far from a sufficient one - and perhaps some of the time spent on drill would be better off directed towards working on those other skills like creativity.

ekpyrotic4• 17 years ago

Thank you for responding nostrademons.

I'll answer your second point as concisely as possible. First, I don't intend to demean creativity; in fact, I intend - at the moment, of course - to pursue a career in the philosophy of science. And philosophy, I hope we all agree, holds creativity and originality at its epicenter.

I merely state, as you do, that mastering the basic skills of physics is a "necessary condition" to becoming a great physicist. I, however, put a reasonable threshold of 10,000 hours on this mastery.

I intend to defend the position that these 10,000 of practice should be worked through as quickly as possible and as early as possible; alike how the Chinese high school system works. I think this is a reasonable position to take.

Note: I don't intend to comment on the positives/negatives Chinese education past this high school, i.e., university.

screwperman• 17 years ago

I come from India, a country that does really well in the IPhO and the IChO. Most finalists coming from here treat these olympiads as training for entrance examinations.

It is no surprise that Indians do not show this stellar a performance in the IMO: the math sections of entrance examinations have little in common with IMO problems (exclusively multiple-choice, heavy on calculus; no Euclidean geometry and number theory).

The IOI situation is quite embarrassing. I've been invited to the national training camp. Most of my fellow competitors don't know jack about algorithms. They aren't even aware of some basic STL functions. Some wrote an O(n^2) sorting algorithm in the qualifying rounds, others memorized a quicksort implementation. But they seem to be good problem solvers, or perhaps a little mathematically-inclined; one of the problems for qualifying involved coming up with a recurrence in two variables and then optimizing the program with DP. Nevertheless, people should expect a lot more from a large country recognized as an "IT hub".

mattchew2• 17 years ago

I'm currently [one of] the best physics students in the UK and I'd pay anything to have had an uprising like that,

Sure, because you are (unrealistically) imagining yourself compelled to excel at your current aspiration. Consider instead the case where you were forced to put in 10000 hours becoming a master concertina player.

* 1) A productive society is one with experts. (2) Expertise is only accomplished with relentless practice. (C) The most productive society will be accomplished if citizens are made to constantly work at their discipline.*

Who do you admire and look up to? Did they have childhoods chained to the oar, compelled to excel with discipline through fear? Is that how they came to achieve amazing things?

I doubt it. I'm not a physicist at all, but I know at least that Richard Feynman and Freeman Dyson did not.

gravitycop• 17 years ago

(1) A productive society is one with experts.

Not according to Henry Ford: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/hnfrd10.txt

If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. [...]

None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert--because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible. [...]

As I have said, we do not hire experts--neither do we hire men on past experiences or for any position other than the lowest. [...]

It is particularly easy for any man who never knows it all to go forward to a higher position with us. [...]

There is not a single man anywhere in the factory who did not simply come in off the street. [...]

there is the pressing to take away the necessity for skill in any job done by any one. The old-time tool hardener was an expert. He had to judge the heating temperatures. It was a hit-or-miss operation. The wonder is that he hit so often. The heat treatment in the hardening of steel is highly important--providing one knows exactly the right heat to apply. That cannot be known by rule-of-thumb. It has to be measured. We introduced a system by which the man at the furnace has nothing at all to do with the heat. He does not see the pyrometer--the instrument which registers the temperature. Coloured electric lights give him his signals. [...]

The length of time required to become proficient in the various occupations is about as follows: 43 per cent. of all the jobs require not over one day of training; 36 per cent. require from one day to one week; 6 per cent. require from one to two weeks; 14 per cent. require from one month to one year; one per cent. require from one to six years. The last jobs require great skill--as in tool making and die sinking.

poutine3• 17 years ago

I'm a westerner working in China for years and hiring computer science graduates from the top tier universities. The quality of their education is shockingly poor. The Chinese education system is destructive and collectivist, promoting conformity of thought and narrowness of vision. Students graduate in to a world where connections, wealth, accident of birth and not talent determine your success in life.

You should be glad you didn't grow up in such a system. Be happy you have a shot at participating in something of a meritocracy, be it academic or corporate.

light3• 17 years ago

I'm uncertain as to how your comment is upmodded so much with statements like this:

'Students graduate in to a world where connections, wealth, accident of birth and not talent determine your success in life.'

This is clearly true everywhere in the world, and if you meant to say that this is MORE true in China, then you better rethink because there is far more opportunity there right now compared to most places in the world. Might I suggest a few reasons why you cannot higher the 'best' cs graduates:

The best will go where the money is, are you offering enough money? A lot will go overseas. Another good reason is CS is not where the money is at in China. You must also remember that IT is a new field in China, and not long ago a computer and the internet was a luxury, ditto for the education of CS.

I am a Chinese who moved to the Australia when I was 9, the education system here seemed to me like kindergarten at the start, it was just play all day and do nothing. This moved to Chinese primary school year 4 level at the start of high school.

Anyway, although I attended one of the top public schools (my year was very strong), it provides no where near the same rigor nor depth of education, and most importantly the majority of students here did not actually want to learn, which was probably the one thing I hated most about this system, nobody cared, what a waste of youth and talent.

Chinese students at the end of high school are amongst the most well educated in the world, not to mention the vast differences in education and life culture, which a lot of westerners are ignorant about.

The big fallacy of the Chinese education system is that its hard to get IN to a university, and once you're there you're pretty much assured graduation (or the mentality is there), this is perhaps the reverse of western society and needs to be fixed.

captainobvious2• 17 years ago

>who won? China, as usual.

I'll need to hear more details than that; China is the largest country in the world.

wim• 17 years ago

You can't generate passion and creativity by squeezing 10,000 hours of [forced] practice into someone (especially really young kids). It also leaves little time to explore ('find what you love'). Passion, creativity AND skills (in a lot of cases the first two lead to skills anyway) is what drives people to do amazing things. I'm glad you found your passion, I think most of us here did; but without it we couldn't do [so well] what we're doing now.

twosees• 17 years ago

Don't forget, if everyone achieves expertise, the average person's productivity will still be in the middle of the pack.

The American system puts a great deal more money per capita into education than China. Therefore, in money terms, the success of Chinese students to become select cadres comes only through their own hard work and an excess of good luck, not to be attributed to the Chinese education system.

rms2• 17 years ago

http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&...

Machine translation so you can see the comments... thoughts seem to range from "it's your parents fault" and "your parents are right, you can rest after your education" to "when you kill yourself take your teacher out with you."

radu_floricica2• 17 years ago

One of the proudest moments of my high-school life was when I decided _not_ to study for a test... with a teacher I liked and respected. I still remember his disappointed look at my grade. But it was something necessary, something to drive home the point that grades are not important.

Ras_• 17 years ago

In Finland, we have the exact opposite. When tuition is universally free (actually you get paid to study, because government has allotted a student benefit for 55 months in third tier studies for everyone) from 1st grade to doctorate studies, some tend to wander - even for years - doing community work in student unions, or change majors, read another MSc, searching themselves...

Just too many choices and the only opportunity cost is lost time. But it seems to work, at least according to PISA studies.

(we do have entrance exams for universities, and getting private tuition is quite common when people try to get accepted into Med or Law studies - but not for most fields)

jacktang• 17 years ago

No matter the education or the business, I think what the Chinese should pick up again is conscience.

kragen5• 17 years ago

Education is a laudable value, but cruelty in service of a laudable value is still cruelty and still reprehensible. Also, grades are not a great way to measure learning.

I wish more of the rural poor in the US would tell their kids things like, "You should also learn from your cousin, talk to him more--then you will develop your mind." There are a minority who do, a large majority who don't care. I wish the stress I remember from US high schools had been from wanting to do better academically instead of fear of physical brutality from the other students.

If this guy's family is typical, China is going to do really well academically in the next few decades unless their government screws everything up again. And it's going to have to deal with a lot of traumatized young graduates.

anthony_barker• 17 years ago

Funny thing is that you can then turn around and hire this top grad for 7000 rmb a month after college. Top grades are not a guarantee for high paying jobs. 7 million university grads per year.

triplefox• 17 years ago

I had something of an experience like this in the US system. My mom was overly concerned about my grades because, in her view, the only way to get a good education and "be successful" was to test into the top math+science classes, as that was what my older brother did. (She wasn't able to admit that until last year after I finished college and got a job. My brother is finishing his PhD and now realizes that he doesn't want to research math the rest of his life, he just liked studying it.)

Fortunately, the pressure was far less in my instance, and I ultimately found a satisfactory compromise in college between my own goals and "successful" goals, but the bitter feelings are the same. Learning isn't helped by making it a threatening experience.

quantumhobbit• 17 years ago

It is sad but this mentality seems to have spread to the U.S. at least in the form of Chinese grad students. It isn't very intellectually stimulating to discuss chemistry with someone whose idea of being great in Organic Chemistry is having memorized Org Chem textbooks in English before he could speak English. What is worse is that professors admire the amount of work Chinese students put in compared to their American counterparts. I feel a lot of pressure to work mindlessly and without any creativity. I think that this model of education is not sustainable and will damage American higher education in the long run.

Sometimes I feel out of place in graduate school in an engineering department. I'm the only person I know of here who reads Faulkner and listens to Coltrane in his spare time. I get the feeling that if I told my adviser that I was teaching myself French on the weekends, he would consider it a waste of time. Not that reading Faulkner helps me learn Quantum Chemistry, but I feel like a well rounded education will help me make breakthroughs later in Quantum Chemistry. But I'm finding that dissatisfaction with the slavishly work hard in one chosen area is the minority opinion and it is hard not to be disheartened by this.

I was driven mad by the Chinese education system

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