I think this Atlantic magazine piece, “The Education System That Pulled China Up May Now Be Holding It Back,” has many key aspects all wrong.
It’s not enough to recite “culturalist” interpretations of flaws like the emphasis on “rote learning” and “innately imitative” Chinese culture, which are a crutch for frustrated Chinese youth and defensive American educators alike.
Why is the gaokao, the high-stakes college entrance exam mentioned in the article, so punishingly hard? Because there are only about 2500 some universities in China for 20 million college students out of a total population of 1.3 billion — versus 4500-Title IV eligible accredited higher ed institutions in the U.S., 2800 of which are 4 year degree institutions; 20 million college students out of 311 million total U.S. population — so there has to be some way to control the numbers of Chinese students allowed to attend. If standards were lower, more students would qualify and more universities would have to be built. Don’t underestimate the sheer volume of people in China — a nation with “second” and “third tier” cities so populous they dwarf America’s largest cities, but “no one” [in the west that is] has heard of them. If only 10% more of the college-student age population went to university in China, there would have to be thousands more colleges built immediately. Literally over night. Maybe this is in the planning stages, but certainly it’ll take some time to occur. Consider also that China’s elite universities are barely a hundred years old.
Another thing that seems way off base in this Atlantic piece is the connection between free speech and intellectual inquiry. The Chinese government can’t have the Great Firewall and the Thousand Flowers of Internet Innovations Blooming at the same time, can it? Just think how radical open courseware would be both here AND there.
Finally, when I was last in Shanghai recently, I saw many green post office buildings on every corner which doubled as banks. These are community banks, as opposed to banks set up to facilitate commerce. I’d have to dig deeper but maybe the banking system and/or cronyism is partly what stifles small business entrepreneurship. If you need deep Party connections to get a loan and start a business, then it’s no wonder “only 1.6 percent of Chinese college graduates started businesses last year” — that number probably largely coincides with elite Party membership. (If reported figures of 80 million Communist Party members can be believed, divided by 1.3 billion Chinese nationals, then Communist Party membership would equal about 6.15%, and 1.6% would be the elite children of the elite). You know, kind of like Yale’s Skull & Bones…or the Bush dynasty that keeps threatening to rear its ugly head here in America.
As for the cutthroat competition and authoritarian learning/teaching styles, yes those are problems, as is Communist Party orthodoxy…ALMOST as rigid as truth-denying birther Teabaggery, Milt Friedman-style “free market” ideology, and Grover Norquist pledges for no taxes ever, wouldn’t you say?
(These sweeping generalization articles strike me as really poorly done, catering to an aggrieved Orientalism on the part of the west. I hope people arguing for better American public education have better sense than to eat this stuff up. What would be the point?)
We won’t “out-educate” and “out-innovate” China by denigrating them, as I hope I’ve shown we have our own challenges to surmount. For example, China isn’t yet hobbled by a widespread, benighted religious fundamentalism that denies international standards of basic science, including climate science, like we are. Their struggles involve raising the standards of education for a staggering number of people, whereas here in America many who have access to education don’t avail themselves of it due to cost and other factors. Simply railing against China’s perceived flaws in their education system is defensive and diminishing — to the United States. Instead, we should focus on what our unique gifts are, and borrow the aspects of other systems that are adaptable to our system.
After reading the above criticism, I had to go back and re-read the Atlantic article, “The Education System That Pulled China Up May Now Be Holding It Back.”
I thought the Atlantic article was well written, balanced, and informative. It explained very clearly the problems and challenges holding back China’s future development.
However, as I read the criticism, I detected a slight smell of Obamaism. What does “Yale’s Skull & Bones…or the Bush dynasty” and “Teabaggery,” or “Milt Friedman-style ‘free market’ ideology” have to do with China’s education system?
The author (admin) mentions “China’s perceived flaws.” How idiotic! There is nothing “perceived” about the flaws in China’s educational system – it is obvious. This problem is being discussed, debated, and challenged throughout China. The author’s criticism is misdirected, misinformed, and confused.
Being intimately involved with China’s education system since 1979, I suggest the author spend a little more time researching the topic.
Hmm, “Obamaism”? You mean the intelligent, well-substantiated, well-argued ideas of Tea Party members are worth discussing? Well, there’s the core of the disagreement right there. It’s no secret I think the benighted/outright dumb ideas of many Americans will be our downfall. WHO in their right mind would keep pursuing a matter like the president’s birth certificate long past the point of authentication? So you think this is mere “Obamaism”? Dynastic rule in America is okay, if it’s the Bush family? Seems distinctly un-democratic to me, and beyond what reasonable thought permissible in a less polarized age.
I don’t think you have to be an Obama supporter to revile the climate science denial, economic Darwinism, mean-spiritedness, woman-hating, and flat-out xenophobia and racism that we see from the far-right, every day. The political right’s rigidity and fear is the opposite of openness and evidence-based inquiry we need to thrive. The right is exhibiting every worst form of ignorance that education at its best banishes.
As for the scarcity of higher education in China, the limited availability of investment capital conditioned by Party access, and China’s own clampdown by the gerontocracy on the free spread of ideas while hypocritically lamenting lack of innovation — all of these are based in fact. There’s nothing misdirected, misinformed, or confused about these factors. Anyone who claims, as you have, to have been an observer or participant of the education system of China since 1979 would recognize the actual, material barriers to entrepreneurship in China that are given little attention by Gao.
My parents live in China several months of every year, they were born there, I still have relatives there, my cousin is a musician in Beijing, an uncle was a member of Academica Sinica, I’ve visited several times…Helen Gao lived there before coming tho the U.S., you say you’ve been familiar with the education system there since 1979…so what? Unless you specify further, these are not automatic foolproof claims to authenticity, nor can any one of us claim to speak on behalf of what all Chinese think.
But it seems you and the author would rather highlight perceived national characteristics as reasons why China doesn’t have its own Steve Jobs. You seem to say, if even the people of China are saying “We don’t cultivate creativity,” then they must be right. My argument is that imputing a national psychographic profile is unproductive even IF the people of China argue it themselves, because political factors (which they may be too afraid to discuss on heavily monitored chat boards and government-screened social media, a source of Helen Gao’s reporting) explain more simply and directly why they don’t have a Silicon Valley or whatever example of lack of innovation they would cite.
(There is a great deal of innovation and creativity in China — it’s not as if there aren’t any musicians, dancers, painters, sculptors, novelists, filmmakers, poets, or others of that ilk there. They may be severely circumscribed in certain things, but they are creating nonetheless.)
Attributing national characteristics to enormous swaths of people, a “culturalist” approach, is a crutch. It flatters Americans anxious about our own place in the world, distracts us from the concentration of oligarchal power in our own country bent on destroying our public education system, and it provides people in China a way to vent safely about structural things they dislike that they cannot change in the near term.
You say I need to do more research, but aside from fixating on political jabs that you personally don’t like, you haven’t engaged with my analysis of what I think are key flaws in Gao’s post. Since you began by urging me to do “more research,” I urge you to think more critically about Gao’s piece.