The Chinese-language website bbs.eduu.com is a popular platform for Beijing’s middle-class parents to discuss their one obsession: the education success of their only child. Most threads focus on securing a spot at a reputable junior high, a rite of passage of hosting guanxi (networking) dinners and customizing bribes so stressful that Chinese parents have likened it to their D-Day – the one battle that wins a war and defines a generation. Make no doubt about it: These Chinese parents, whose child is their full-time pre-occupation, are proud of their battle scars.
It’s common among Beijing’s middle-class for the mother to quit her job to focus on child-rearing full-time. These mothers rally around the flag not of Amy Chua, but of Lin Weihua who published the original battle hymn of the tiger mother, Harvard Girl. Harvard Girl revolutionized parenting in China by bringing scientific management to child abuse: According to Lin Weihua, to increase your child’s patience and endurance, you should make her stand on one leg for half an hour, and clasp ice until her hand turns purple.
And now this scientific management of child abuse has reached another milestone with “Wolf Father,” a rationally-minded businessman named Xiao Baiyou who maximized the use of something akin to abuse to push three of his four children into Peking University.
Like any proud Chinese parent, he’s written a book about his success, and started a school that arguably teaches parents the judicious use of physical abuse. Here’s some of Xiao Baiyou’s sage advice, as relayed by NBC News’s Bo Gu:
“Before the kids go to junior high school, spank them every time they make mistakes, but greatly reduce the frequency after junior high since the children form their own personalities by that age; The spanking tool is confined to the rattan cane only, which causes minor bruises; Only hands and calves are spanked, other body parts are spared; Mistakes are pointed out every time before the whack so children know why they are punished; Sisters and brothers must watch when one of them is smacked so they learn; The punished one has to count the number of spankings during each admonishment; The punished one cannot try to avoid the punishment, otherwise he/she gets more.”
While “Wolf Father” is generating a lot of media interest both inside and outside China, on the Chinese-language parenting website, the hottest topic of discussion remains the original Harvard Girl, Liu Yiting, who is now 30 years-old. Spawning multiple threads and intense interest, the big discussion is on whether Liu Yiting is just a housewife. (Her own LinkedIn account “cn.linkedin.com/in/liuyiting” says she works for a hedge fund).
Because there are so many housewives on the website, many have posted a defense of Liu Yiting (“There’s nothing wrong with being a housewife!”) – but many a Chinese “tiger mother” and “wolf father” must be wondering if staying at home full-time to torture your child is a noble sacrifice if all that happens is that one day your child will stay at home full-time to torture her child.
It could be worse for China’s tiger mothers and wolf fathers though. Imagine that you are a Chinese father who, in compensation for your own limitations, focuses on raising a son for greatness. Your son achieves all your wildest dreams, and is about to become the youngest Chinese ever to obtain a doctorate.
You’re so proud you write a book. But then one day your son decides to hold your dreams hostage against you.
Here’s the amazing story from Shanghaiist:
“Zhang Xinyang, a 16-year-old getting his PhD in pure mathematics at Beihang University, earlier this year refused to defend his master’s thesis until his parents agreed to buy him his own apartment. Finally out of options, Zhang’s parents rented an apartment in Beijing, and lied to their son about buying it. He’s found out about the ruse, but his demands for an apartment haven’t wavered.
‘When I graduate with a PhD, I won’t even have my own place to live in,’ Zhang says. ‘Is there any use to graduating with a PhD? Is there any use?’
Zhang doesn’t consider his request to be extreme. Since it’s his parents who constantly want him to stay in Beijing long-term, Zhang argues, it’s actually his parents putting the pressure on themselves to buy him a house.”
And the lesson here for Chinese parents is obvious: You can get away with abusing your child – just don’t write a book about it.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Bridging the Sino-US Divide (The Diplomat)
I want to thank Kevin Slaten for taking the time to respond to an article I had written discussing how Chinese undergraduates are failing to fit in on American campuses, and the possible consequences of this growing mismatch. I also applaud his efforts at Ohio State University to address this issue by creating and running a program to bring Chinese and American students together for their mutual benefit.
Kevin felt that he was arguing with certain sentiments expressed in my article, and I’m sorry he felt that way because I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that he conveyed in his article: that we could and should do more to ensure cross-cultural understanding on U.S. campuses, and doing so would have many positive effects for Sino-American relations. I wrote my article in response to the New York Times article “The China Conundrum,” which suggested that Chinese don’t fit in because they don’t speak English.
I strongly believe that the issue isn’t language, but the mode of thinking. To understand the differences in perspective between Chinese and Americans, read this passage from Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon:
“There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community – which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb. The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality. Humbugs and dilettantes have always tried to mix the two conceptions; in practice, it is impossible.”
To see how this difference manifests itself, consider the issue of how Chinese agents fake essays, recommendation letters, and transcripts for Chinese students who apply to the United States. Americans think it’s wrong because they practice anti-vivisection morality, and focus on the immorality of dishonesty, cheating, and fraud. But Chinese don’t think it’s wrong because they practice vivisection morality, and focus on the utility: everyone benefits, after all.
We at Peking University High School International Division teach our Chinese students dishonesty, cheating, and fraud are wrong. They believe it, but if forced to explain why, they’ll explain that cheating may help in the short-term, but will hurt in the long-term: they have problems understanding that there’s something inherently wrong with lying.
To overcome this and to help our students better adapt to the United States and to new cultures, we focus on teaching them empathy, the importance of which both Kevin and I can agree with. Teaching empathy (which is essentially to teach the validity of different modes of thinking) is the cornerstone of our program, and to that end we teach Western literature (traditionally the best way to teach empathy) as well as theater and writing, have organized a one-week canoeing trip in the U.S., and are in the process of planning a two-week service learning project to Botswana.
Of course, even American students could benefit from learning empathy. Instead of viewing Chinese students as a particular problem on the American campus, we can imagine them into a powerful teaching resource to build cross-cultural understanding. Both Chinese and American students need to learn to reach out to each other.
To start this process, I suggest U.S. colleges and universities organize mandatory week-long camping trips that pair Chinese with American students. In the wilderness, they would learn to focus on their similarities, and this bonding would be a great way for Chinese students to start their American adventure.
Kevin felt that he was arguing with certain sentiments expressed in my article, and I’m sorry he felt that way because I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that he conveyed in his article: that we could and should do more to ensure cross-cultural understanding on U.S. campuses, and doing so would have many positive effects for Sino-American relations. I wrote my article in response to the New York Times article “The China Conundrum,” which suggested that Chinese don’t fit in because they don’t speak English.
I strongly believe that the issue isn’t language, but the mode of thinking. To understand the differences in perspective between Chinese and Americans, read this passage from Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon:
“There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community – which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb. The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality. Humbugs and dilettantes have always tried to mix the two conceptions; in practice, it is impossible.”
To see how this difference manifests itself, consider the issue of how Chinese agents fake essays, recommendation letters, and transcripts for Chinese students who apply to the United States. Americans think it’s wrong because they practice anti-vivisection morality, and focus on the immorality of dishonesty, cheating, and fraud. But Chinese don’t think it’s wrong because they practice vivisection morality, and focus on the utility: everyone benefits, after all.
We at Peking University High School International Division teach our Chinese students dishonesty, cheating, and fraud are wrong. They believe it, but if forced to explain why, they’ll explain that cheating may help in the short-term, but will hurt in the long-term: they have problems understanding that there’s something inherently wrong with lying.
To overcome this and to help our students better adapt to the United States and to new cultures, we focus on teaching them empathy, the importance of which both Kevin and I can agree with. Teaching empathy (which is essentially to teach the validity of different modes of thinking) is the cornerstone of our program, and to that end we teach Western literature (traditionally the best way to teach empathy) as well as theater and writing, have organized a one-week canoeing trip in the U.S., and are in the process of planning a two-week service learning project to Botswana.
Of course, even American students could benefit from learning empathy. Instead of viewing Chinese students as a particular problem on the American campus, we can imagine them into a powerful teaching resource to build cross-cultural understanding. Both Chinese and American students need to learn to reach out to each other.
To start this process, I suggest U.S. colleges and universities organize mandatory week-long camping trips that pair Chinese with American students. In the wilderness, they would learn to focus on their similarities, and this bonding would be a great way for Chinese students to start their American adventure.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
The Clash of Civilizations (The Diplomat)
In conjunction with the Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times has just published a feature article on the 130,000 or so Chinese studying on American campuses. Ever since 2004, when the U.S. government relaxed visa requirements for Chinese students and American universities began recruiting Chinese undergraduates, Chinese not adapting well to American academic life has been a growing problem. And now, because the New York Times has pronounced it so, it’s officially a problem.
But what exactly is the problem?
The obvious answer is the language barrier, which results in Chinese students keeping silent in the classroom, and ostracizing themselves from campus life. Then, of course, there’s the cheating and plagiarizing, as well as the psychological and behavioral issues that arise from the culture shock.
The good news is that Chinese parents are themselves concerned, and Chinese students who are planning to study abroad are, as early as elementary school, taking weekend English classes, watching “Gossip Girl,” and attending summer camps in the United States. Chinese applicants to U.S. colleges and universities are increasing in terms of both quantity and quality.
But here’s the bad news: Cross-cultural tensions on the American campus may still increase because the problem isn’t Chinese students who can’t speak English – it’s fundamentally a clash of civilizations. Chinese and Americans have fundamentally different values, norms, and worldviews, and Chinese students on U.S. campuses is merely the first front of the inevitable struggle between the hegemon and its challenger.
Chinese students studying in America isn’t historically new – this is in fact the third wave. The first wave occurred around the turn of the 20th century, when a humbled China’s best and brightest, either on Christian missionary or government scholarships, went to a rising America to learn “science and democracy” to save the motherland. The second wave occurred after Deng Xiaoping’s opening up when China’s best and brightest went to U.S. graduate schools just to get the hell out of China. What distinguishes this third wave of Chinese study abroad students is that they are the children of a confident and assertive Chinese elite, and they have no intention of kowtowing to Americans; in fact, they think the world revolves around them, just like it did back in China.
In this way, many of these 130,000 or so Chinese students studying in the United States are no worse and no better than the scions of the South American, African, European, Asian and American elite currently studying in America. But what makes these Chinese students – many of whom while speaking terrible English are still much more polite and considerate than their American peers – stand out is that they’re Chinese in a time when a declining United States is more and more anxious about a rising China.
That’s why those Chinese students who are most frustrated with their experience in the United States are sometimes those who try hardest to surmount the cultural barrier. Read this paragraph from the New York Times / Chronicle of Higher Education story:
“[A Chinese marketing major] recalls one class in which, she says, the professor ignored her questions and only listened to American students. Also, while working on a group project in a sociology class, she says she was given the cold shoulder: ‘They pretend to welcome you but they do not.’ The encounters left a deep impression. ‘I will remember that all of my life,’ she says.”
Now read this comment posted online in response to the article:
“As a Chinese who studied in the U.S. with full scholarship, I appreciated the opportunity and the professors who helped me very much. However, I remember vividly how I was not so warmly welcomed by my fellow American students in group assignment…[M]ost Chinese like the U.S. That is why millions are learning English, watching American movies, and sending their children to the U.S. for their education are pro U.S…As a matter of fact, I got most of the negative image of the U.S. after I lived here for years.”
And these two Chinese students are hardly alone in their sentiments: For his college paper, Zhou Yeran, a former student of mine, wrote how many of his Chinese classmates at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, home to thousands of Chinese students, have negative impressions of America.
We can argue endlessly who’s at fault here, but the fact that China’s future elite will return to China one day and assume the mantles of power with such negative memories of their time in the United States isn’t a good thing. In fact, I know many overseas returned Chinese who have become wealthy thanks in part to their American graduate degree, but who nevertheless are far more nationalistic and xenophobic than the Chinese I know who’ve never been abroad.
The irony is that U.S. colleges and universities justify matriculating so many Chinese students as a way of bridging the vast Sino-American cultural divide. But some U.S. colleges and universities will say just about anything in order to justify using Chinese students to plug growing budget holes, even if doing so may have serious long-term geo-political consequences.
My fear is that trend of Chinese students studying in America is a ticking time bomb that will create an international crisis when it goes off: there are just too many there at a time when Sino-American relations are becoming more tense, and U.S. leaders are desperately looking for a scapegoat to explain away the problems they’ve created in the first place.
It’s good that the world’s most powerful newspaper has finally declared Chinese students studying in the United States to be a problem. It’s just that it’s a much bigger problem than we’re willing to admit.
But what exactly is the problem?
The obvious answer is the language barrier, which results in Chinese students keeping silent in the classroom, and ostracizing themselves from campus life. Then, of course, there’s the cheating and plagiarizing, as well as the psychological and behavioral issues that arise from the culture shock.
The good news is that Chinese parents are themselves concerned, and Chinese students who are planning to study abroad are, as early as elementary school, taking weekend English classes, watching “Gossip Girl,” and attending summer camps in the United States. Chinese applicants to U.S. colleges and universities are increasing in terms of both quantity and quality.
But here’s the bad news: Cross-cultural tensions on the American campus may still increase because the problem isn’t Chinese students who can’t speak English – it’s fundamentally a clash of civilizations. Chinese and Americans have fundamentally different values, norms, and worldviews, and Chinese students on U.S. campuses is merely the first front of the inevitable struggle between the hegemon and its challenger.
Chinese students studying in America isn’t historically new – this is in fact the third wave. The first wave occurred around the turn of the 20th century, when a humbled China’s best and brightest, either on Christian missionary or government scholarships, went to a rising America to learn “science and democracy” to save the motherland. The second wave occurred after Deng Xiaoping’s opening up when China’s best and brightest went to U.S. graduate schools just to get the hell out of China. What distinguishes this third wave of Chinese study abroad students is that they are the children of a confident and assertive Chinese elite, and they have no intention of kowtowing to Americans; in fact, they think the world revolves around them, just like it did back in China.
In this way, many of these 130,000 or so Chinese students studying in the United States are no worse and no better than the scions of the South American, African, European, Asian and American elite currently studying in America. But what makes these Chinese students – many of whom while speaking terrible English are still much more polite and considerate than their American peers – stand out is that they’re Chinese in a time when a declining United States is more and more anxious about a rising China.
That’s why those Chinese students who are most frustrated with their experience in the United States are sometimes those who try hardest to surmount the cultural barrier. Read this paragraph from the New York Times / Chronicle of Higher Education story:
“[A Chinese marketing major] recalls one class in which, she says, the professor ignored her questions and only listened to American students. Also, while working on a group project in a sociology class, she says she was given the cold shoulder: ‘They pretend to welcome you but they do not.’ The encounters left a deep impression. ‘I will remember that all of my life,’ she says.”
Now read this comment posted online in response to the article:
“As a Chinese who studied in the U.S. with full scholarship, I appreciated the opportunity and the professors who helped me very much. However, I remember vividly how I was not so warmly welcomed by my fellow American students in group assignment…[M]ost Chinese like the U.S. That is why millions are learning English, watching American movies, and sending their children to the U.S. for their education are pro U.S…As a matter of fact, I got most of the negative image of the U.S. after I lived here for years.”
And these two Chinese students are hardly alone in their sentiments: For his college paper, Zhou Yeran, a former student of mine, wrote how many of his Chinese classmates at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, home to thousands of Chinese students, have negative impressions of America.
We can argue endlessly who’s at fault here, but the fact that China’s future elite will return to China one day and assume the mantles of power with such negative memories of their time in the United States isn’t a good thing. In fact, I know many overseas returned Chinese who have become wealthy thanks in part to their American graduate degree, but who nevertheless are far more nationalistic and xenophobic than the Chinese I know who’ve never been abroad.
The irony is that U.S. colleges and universities justify matriculating so many Chinese students as a way of bridging the vast Sino-American cultural divide. But some U.S. colleges and universities will say just about anything in order to justify using Chinese students to plug growing budget holes, even if doing so may have serious long-term geo-political consequences.
My fear is that trend of Chinese students studying in America is a ticking time bomb that will create an international crisis when it goes off: there are just too many there at a time when Sino-American relations are becoming more tense, and U.S. leaders are desperately looking for a scapegoat to explain away the problems they’ve created in the first place.
It’s good that the world’s most powerful newspaper has finally declared Chinese students studying in the United States to be a problem. It’s just that it’s a much bigger problem than we’re willing to admit.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Selecting the Right Chinese Students (Chronicle of Higher Education)
You may have seen him on campus. He's a Chinese student who aced his SAT's, but once enrolled as a freshman he sits quietly by himself either in the library cubicle or at the back of the class. He has only Chinese friends, and thinks sports and parties are beneath him. Day by day, he misses China, and is uninterested in America. And year by year he multiplies on American campuses.
He's in America because he wants a college degree, and because his American college wants his money. But in this marriage of convenience, both parties suffer.
Much of the problem lies in how American admissions officers use hard numbers (standardized test scores) to evaluate Chinese students, and discount soft skills. The hard numbers may determine if a Chinese will excel as a student, but it's the soft skills that will determine if he or she thrives as a member of your campus community.
I have been working in and studying Chinese education since 1999 when I graduated from Yale, and for the past three years I have been working as a curriculum director in two prestigious public high schools in China preparing Chinese students for study in America. Even though our students are some of the brightest in the country, they have struggled to adapt to the Western classroom as much as their peers from less elite schools. Initially, I thought the American college-admissions process could evaluate the Chinese students best suited for study in America, but I've slowly become disillusioned with how American admissions officers select students based almost exclusively on hard numbers. This practice, I believe, benefits mainly the rote learners who thrive in China's schools, and hurts the thoughtful students who have the potential to be transformed by a rigorous American liberal-arts education and who, in turn, may transform the lives of their fellow students and professors.
To be fair, American college recruiters in China feel overwhelmed by the proliferation of cheating, lying, and fraud: Study abroad is big business in China, and young Ivy League graduates write essays for Chinese applicants while many a Chinese public school fakes transcripts and recommendation letters. Amid such chaos, it's understandable why American colleges fall back on standardized tests. But these tests tell only half the story. To really judge a Chinese student's potential to thrive on campus, American colleges and universities could add depth to the admissions process by including an oral interview, one designed to challenge Chinese students with focused questions that test their empathy, imagination, and resilience. Those American colleges that choose to do so will discover that their new Chinese recruits, even though their test scores may suggest limited English, will quickly adapt to a culture of critical thinking and intellectual inquiry in a way they failed to adapt to the Chinese education system of obedience and conformity.
To better understand how this oral interview would work in the admissions process, let's look at David and Michael, two Chinese applicants who are composites of students I've taught and who are now studying in America. David has an average GPA, a B, scored about 2000 out of 2400 on his SAT Reasoning Test, and was editor of his school's newspaper for two years. Michael has the highest GPA in his ultracompetitive high school, scored around 2300 on the SAT, got a 5 on the English Advanced Placement examination, and started his own business.
Michael is a student many American campuses would love to have, and he's set on the Ivy League (Duke is his safety school). But ultimately it doesn't matter where he goes, because he'll take courses that will ensure him a 4.0 GPA and get into a good business school. He'll be shocked that not everyone shares his passion for grades, and he'll attribute that to American shallowness. He'll drop history class because he got an A- on his first paper, and after a month on campus he'll shelter himself in his small circle of Chinese friends. After four years, he'll leave the campus very much the way he arrived.
Unlike Michael, David won't be a straight-A student. He plans to be an architect because he loves drawing, but he'll also try history and literature classes. He'll struggle to keep pace in seminar discussions, but he'll replay class discussions in his head, and one or two comments may linger with him for days. And one day he'll surprise his classmates and professors with a comment that will linger with them for days. Over the dinner-table he'll pepper his classmates with questions, and he won't graduate from college with his life all planned out like Michael. What he will graduate with is a lot of questions about himself and life, and his four years on campus he'll remember forever as a time of his intellectual blossoming.
If Michael happens to be the ideal, then American colleges and universities are in luck because Michaels abound in China. But David is much less common because the three traits he possesses empathy, imagination, and resilience are strangled at a young age in China.
That's why the toughest question you can ask a Chinese student is also the easiest you can ask an American: "What do you think?" Many Chinese students don't know what they think because their parents and teachers just order them about. Their education alienates them from one another, from the world in which they live, and ultimately from themselves. Unable to construct a self-narrative, they may live comfortably in their bubble but have problems overcoming new challenges. In short, a Chinese education does not prepare most students to study abroad.
And it's easy to figure this out in a 30-minute interview, which must become a mandatory part of the application process if American colleges and universities are to recruit Chinese students who will thrive on campus.
Here's how to conduct the interview. First, it ought to be focused, detailed, and deliberate. Here are some examples of good interview questions that look for empathy, imagination, and resilience:
Pick a novel or a movie, and discuss the characters. Which character did you identify with? Why? Which part of the book or movie made you sad? Made you angry? Why? What experiences have you had that remind you of events in the book or movie?
Pick a memorable experience, and explain why it was so memorable. Tell the story. Explain your feelings during the experience. Why did you have these feelings? Do you know anyone either real or fictional who has had a similar experience? Did they behave the same as you did? Do you think their feelings were the same as yours?
When was the last time you were angry or sad? What made you angry or sad? How did you get over your anger or sadness? What do you think will happen the next time you encounter the same situation?
Persist in asking "why?" Look for sincerity, for logic, and for clarity of thought.
In English class, my Chinese students and I read English novels together, and I use these lines of questioning in class. What's frustrating is that while I'm trying to get them to look into themselves, they're always trying to "read" me for the "right" answer. I persist because teaching these students to relate themselves to the text is crucial in the reconstruction of their lost selves, as well as a fundamental skill they'll need to thrive on the American campus.
As you may suspect, David is far more comfortable in my class than Michael.
In a 30-minute interview, David would talk about his experience editing the school's newspaper, how he was the last one out of the newsroom to make sure the papers got printed, how he had to prod his reporters to take on assignments, and how he had to think of ways to build team spirit among a group of high-achieving individuals.
Michael might talk fast and fluently about his business venture, but he wouldn't be clear and direct. Ask him which college he'd like to attend, and he couldn't give you a straight answer either. It'd be an uncomfortable interview because what he wants to say he can't: that he started his business to pad his résumé but that his real passions are increasing his GPA and SAT score; that he hasn't really thought about which college he'd like to attend because he plans to attend the most highly-ranked; that he's the one talking but it's really his parents who are pulling the strings.
An interview may not capture everything you want to know about these students. But it would be a start in the right direction, and that's exactly what American recruiting efforts in China need right now.
He's in America because he wants a college degree, and because his American college wants his money. But in this marriage of convenience, both parties suffer.
Much of the problem lies in how American admissions officers use hard numbers (standardized test scores) to evaluate Chinese students, and discount soft skills. The hard numbers may determine if a Chinese will excel as a student, but it's the soft skills that will determine if he or she thrives as a member of your campus community.
I have been working in and studying Chinese education since 1999 when I graduated from Yale, and for the past three years I have been working as a curriculum director in two prestigious public high schools in China preparing Chinese students for study in America. Even though our students are some of the brightest in the country, they have struggled to adapt to the Western classroom as much as their peers from less elite schools. Initially, I thought the American college-admissions process could evaluate the Chinese students best suited for study in America, but I've slowly become disillusioned with how American admissions officers select students based almost exclusively on hard numbers. This practice, I believe, benefits mainly the rote learners who thrive in China's schools, and hurts the thoughtful students who have the potential to be transformed by a rigorous American liberal-arts education and who, in turn, may transform the lives of their fellow students and professors.
To be fair, American college recruiters in China feel overwhelmed by the proliferation of cheating, lying, and fraud: Study abroad is big business in China, and young Ivy League graduates write essays for Chinese applicants while many a Chinese public school fakes transcripts and recommendation letters. Amid such chaos, it's understandable why American colleges fall back on standardized tests. But these tests tell only half the story. To really judge a Chinese student's potential to thrive on campus, American colleges and universities could add depth to the admissions process by including an oral interview, one designed to challenge Chinese students with focused questions that test their empathy, imagination, and resilience. Those American colleges that choose to do so will discover that their new Chinese recruits, even though their test scores may suggest limited English, will quickly adapt to a culture of critical thinking and intellectual inquiry in a way they failed to adapt to the Chinese education system of obedience and conformity.
To better understand how this oral interview would work in the admissions process, let's look at David and Michael, two Chinese applicants who are composites of students I've taught and who are now studying in America. David has an average GPA, a B, scored about 2000 out of 2400 on his SAT Reasoning Test, and was editor of his school's newspaper for two years. Michael has the highest GPA in his ultracompetitive high school, scored around 2300 on the SAT, got a 5 on the English Advanced Placement examination, and started his own business.
Michael is a student many American campuses would love to have, and he's set on the Ivy League (Duke is his safety school). But ultimately it doesn't matter where he goes, because he'll take courses that will ensure him a 4.0 GPA and get into a good business school. He'll be shocked that not everyone shares his passion for grades, and he'll attribute that to American shallowness. He'll drop history class because he got an A- on his first paper, and after a month on campus he'll shelter himself in his small circle of Chinese friends. After four years, he'll leave the campus very much the way he arrived.
Unlike Michael, David won't be a straight-A student. He plans to be an architect because he loves drawing, but he'll also try history and literature classes. He'll struggle to keep pace in seminar discussions, but he'll replay class discussions in his head, and one or two comments may linger with him for days. And one day he'll surprise his classmates and professors with a comment that will linger with them for days. Over the dinner-table he'll pepper his classmates with questions, and he won't graduate from college with his life all planned out like Michael. What he will graduate with is a lot of questions about himself and life, and his four years on campus he'll remember forever as a time of his intellectual blossoming.
If Michael happens to be the ideal, then American colleges and universities are in luck because Michaels abound in China. But David is much less common because the three traits he possesses empathy, imagination, and resilience are strangled at a young age in China.
That's why the toughest question you can ask a Chinese student is also the easiest you can ask an American: "What do you think?" Many Chinese students don't know what they think because their parents and teachers just order them about. Their education alienates them from one another, from the world in which they live, and ultimately from themselves. Unable to construct a self-narrative, they may live comfortably in their bubble but have problems overcoming new challenges. In short, a Chinese education does not prepare most students to study abroad.
And it's easy to figure this out in a 30-minute interview, which must become a mandatory part of the application process if American colleges and universities are to recruit Chinese students who will thrive on campus.
Here's how to conduct the interview. First, it ought to be focused, detailed, and deliberate. Here are some examples of good interview questions that look for empathy, imagination, and resilience:
Pick a novel or a movie, and discuss the characters. Which character did you identify with? Why? Which part of the book or movie made you sad? Made you angry? Why? What experiences have you had that remind you of events in the book or movie?
Pick a memorable experience, and explain why it was so memorable. Tell the story. Explain your feelings during the experience. Why did you have these feelings? Do you know anyone either real or fictional who has had a similar experience? Did they behave the same as you did? Do you think their feelings were the same as yours?
When was the last time you were angry or sad? What made you angry or sad? How did you get over your anger or sadness? What do you think will happen the next time you encounter the same situation?
Persist in asking "why?" Look for sincerity, for logic, and for clarity of thought.
In English class, my Chinese students and I read English novels together, and I use these lines of questioning in class. What's frustrating is that while I'm trying to get them to look into themselves, they're always trying to "read" me for the "right" answer. I persist because teaching these students to relate themselves to the text is crucial in the reconstruction of their lost selves, as well as a fundamental skill they'll need to thrive on the American campus.
As you may suspect, David is far more comfortable in my class than Michael.
In a 30-minute interview, David would talk about his experience editing the school's newspaper, how he was the last one out of the newsroom to make sure the papers got printed, how he had to prod his reporters to take on assignments, and how he had to think of ways to build team spirit among a group of high-achieving individuals.
Michael might talk fast and fluently about his business venture, but he wouldn't be clear and direct. Ask him which college he'd like to attend, and he couldn't give you a straight answer either. It'd be an uncomfortable interview because what he wants to say he can't: that he started his business to pad his résumé but that his real passions are increasing his GPA and SAT score; that he hasn't really thought about which college he'd like to attend because he plans to attend the most highly-ranked; that he's the one talking but it's really his parents who are pulling the strings.
An interview may not capture everything you want to know about these students. But it would be a start in the right direction, and that's exactly what American recruiting efforts in China need right now.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Chen Xianmei's Tragedy (The Diplomat)
Making headlines around the world is the heart-breaking story of two-year-old Wang Yue. On October 13, a truck and a van ran over Wang Yue in Foshan, Guangdong Province, while 18 people either walked or cycled past the toddler before a scrap peddler, Chen Xianmei, finally rescued her.
This case has an eerie resemblance to the murder of Kitty Genovese. Sociologists coined the phrase ‘Genovese Syndrome’ or ‘the by-stander effect’ after the New York Times published an article, ‘Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police,’ which claimed that Genovese’s neighbours refused to intervene after she repeatedly screamed for help as she was being stabbed to death by her assailant. Since its publication, that article has largely been discredited: Genovese’s neighbours did in fact call the police, and did attempt to come to her rescue.
Unfortunately, and tragically, the Wang Yue case has been factually reported, and will be forever seared into the global consciousness through a security camera video that captured in its entirety the horrifying apathy of those 18 bystanders.
There’s an easy explanation as to why Wang Yue was left to die, why Chinese children are stealing from their own parents, why Li Gang’s son feels he’s above the law and public opinion, and why Guo Meimei is proud of siphoning off charitable funds for personal use: China has become an ultra-utilitarian society that concerns itself only with GDP growth, with rich lists, and with test scores. Psychologists have long known that there are two motivational centres in the human brain: one that’s utilitarian, rationale, and self-interested, and another that is social, emotional, and altruistic. We appeal to the former by emphasizing material results and rewards, and to the latter by emphasizing lofty principles and social ideals. The problem is that they’re mutually exclusive: that’s why during the subprime boom, Wall Street traders were willing to cheat friends and bankrupt nations to earn higher individual bonuses, and why dedicated teachers may feel insulted when offered cash bonuses.
China seems to have become so utilitarian that it can’t understand or even tolerate people who do things for altruistic reasons. The penniless scrap peddler rescued Wang Yue not because she was internally doing a cost-benefit analysis in her head or anticipating the material rewards of doing so (as some Chinese have accused her of doing), but because it was the right thing to do. So what’s happening right now to Chen Xianmei – the unwanted media attention, the unsolicited cash rewards, and public accusations of her being opportunistic – is itself just as tragic and as depressing as what happened to Wang Yue.
According to the Shanghaiist, the public attention has traumatized Chen Xianmei, and has prompted her to flee her home of Foshan:
‘Now with all of the media attention focused on her, as well as government officials and journalists knocking on her door night and day, Chen says she doesn’t even dare to turn on the television anymore.
‘“A lot of people are now saying that I’m doing it to get famous, and to get money. Even my neighbours are now saying so!” she said. “That really wasn’t my intention, and I’m so afraid of hearing what people are saying that I don't dare to watch the news. I’m not out for fame or money.”’
When asked what she thought about the negative things that people were now saying about her, Chen said, “I didn’t steal or rob. All I did was to save a child,” as tears began to fill her eyes.’
Chen Xianmei’s tears aren’t just for herself (she’s clearly being exploited by media reporters and those individuals who are donating money to her). They’re also for Wang Yue, and for a society that has become so hopelessly utilitarian it believes it can just buy someone’s goodness to appear less utilitarian.
Chinese believe by rewarding Chen Xianmei they’re encouraging more people to be like her. But what will probably happen in the wake of Chen Xianmei’s story is a lot of Chinese complaining to the media how they weren’t immediately flooded with praise and money for selflessly helping others.
Her life now turned upside down, Chen Xianmei herself said that if she were to be put back in the same situation, she’d still choose to save Wang Yue’s life. And she probably would – after weighing the pros and cons of doing so.
This case has an eerie resemblance to the murder of Kitty Genovese. Sociologists coined the phrase ‘Genovese Syndrome’ or ‘the by-stander effect’ after the New York Times published an article, ‘Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police,’ which claimed that Genovese’s neighbours refused to intervene after she repeatedly screamed for help as she was being stabbed to death by her assailant. Since its publication, that article has largely been discredited: Genovese’s neighbours did in fact call the police, and did attempt to come to her rescue.
Unfortunately, and tragically, the Wang Yue case has been factually reported, and will be forever seared into the global consciousness through a security camera video that captured in its entirety the horrifying apathy of those 18 bystanders.
There’s an easy explanation as to why Wang Yue was left to die, why Chinese children are stealing from their own parents, why Li Gang’s son feels he’s above the law and public opinion, and why Guo Meimei is proud of siphoning off charitable funds for personal use: China has become an ultra-utilitarian society that concerns itself only with GDP growth, with rich lists, and with test scores. Psychologists have long known that there are two motivational centres in the human brain: one that’s utilitarian, rationale, and self-interested, and another that is social, emotional, and altruistic. We appeal to the former by emphasizing material results and rewards, and to the latter by emphasizing lofty principles and social ideals. The problem is that they’re mutually exclusive: that’s why during the subprime boom, Wall Street traders were willing to cheat friends and bankrupt nations to earn higher individual bonuses, and why dedicated teachers may feel insulted when offered cash bonuses.
China seems to have become so utilitarian that it can’t understand or even tolerate people who do things for altruistic reasons. The penniless scrap peddler rescued Wang Yue not because she was internally doing a cost-benefit analysis in her head or anticipating the material rewards of doing so (as some Chinese have accused her of doing), but because it was the right thing to do. So what’s happening right now to Chen Xianmei – the unwanted media attention, the unsolicited cash rewards, and public accusations of her being opportunistic – is itself just as tragic and as depressing as what happened to Wang Yue.
According to the Shanghaiist, the public attention has traumatized Chen Xianmei, and has prompted her to flee her home of Foshan:
‘Now with all of the media attention focused on her, as well as government officials and journalists knocking on her door night and day, Chen says she doesn’t even dare to turn on the television anymore.
‘“A lot of people are now saying that I’m doing it to get famous, and to get money. Even my neighbours are now saying so!” she said. “That really wasn’t my intention, and I’m so afraid of hearing what people are saying that I don't dare to watch the news. I’m not out for fame or money.”’
When asked what she thought about the negative things that people were now saying about her, Chen said, “I didn’t steal or rob. All I did was to save a child,” as tears began to fill her eyes.’
Chen Xianmei’s tears aren’t just for herself (she’s clearly being exploited by media reporters and those individuals who are donating money to her). They’re also for Wang Yue, and for a society that has become so hopelessly utilitarian it believes it can just buy someone’s goodness to appear less utilitarian.
Chinese believe by rewarding Chen Xianmei they’re encouraging more people to be like her. But what will probably happen in the wake of Chen Xianmei’s story is a lot of Chinese complaining to the media how they weren’t immediately flooded with praise and money for selflessly helping others.
Her life now turned upside down, Chen Xianmei herself said that if she were to be put back in the same situation, she’d still choose to save Wang Yue’s life. And she probably would – after weighing the pros and cons of doing so.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Is Shanghai's Education Best (The Diplomat)
When Shanghai placed first in the world in the OECD’s PISA student assessments last December, there was lots of talk about how the city now had ‘the world’s best schools.’ Nice headline, but it’s not the full story, as I learned from Andreas Schleicher, PISA’s architect, when he visited Beijing this past week.
After a breakfast meeting with our students, Schleicher shared some of his thoughts on Chinese education with Chinese reporters. He had just finished a week-long China trip, in which he spent most of his time in discussion with Shanghai’s education authorities.
During the press conference, a Chinese reporter asked Schleicher if Shanghai placing first on the PISA meant that Shanghai has the world’s best education system.
In response, Schleicher implied that Shanghai’s education system, while on the right track, needs more reforms.
Schleicher explained that, twenty years ago, the knowledge that students learned in schools would find them a good job and be applicable for the rest of his or her life but today, technology and the Internet have made knowledge readily available and thus cheap. What’s important then is the ability to sift through available knowledge, analyse it, and apply it to new situations. In this regard, Shanghai schools are doing well: according to Schleicher, 26 percent of Shanghai students demonstrated complex problem solving skills on the PISA, whereas the OECD average is 3 percent.
But to succeed in the constantly changing global economy today, Schleicher argued, students need to understand that learning is a life-long process, and thus they must possess a passion for learning as well as the ability to learn for themselves. And that’s where Shanghai falls down: 15 year-olds in OECD countries show more curiosity and initiative than Shanghai 15 year-olds, who from the first day of school have been made passive and stressed by too much homework and tests.
Chinese educators and parents may argue that childhood is a time to develop a strong foundation of knowledge. But Schleicher warned that OECD data suggest that if students haven’t yet developed self-learning skills and a passion for learning by age 15, then it’s unlikely they ever will.
A question here then is: Do Chinese schools make learning so unpleasant for students that they don’t want to learn anymore after they leave school? Anecdotal evidence suggests that’s the case: After they finish the national examination, Chinese students burn their textbooks, spend four years in college playing video games, and enter the workforce unprepared for the re-learning that their job requires.
What’s most important in today’s global economy is how innovation is transforming from an individual into a collaborative process. Writing in The Atlantic Monthly, urban theorist Richard Florida explains that innovation now occurs when individuals with different skills and knowledge come together to share them in a way that produces new ideas and products:
‘Highly developed social skills…include persuasion, social perceptiveness, the capacity to bring the right people together on a project, the ability to help develop other people, and a keen sense of empathy. These are quintessential leadership skills needed to innovate, mobilize resources, build effective organizations, and launch new firms…social skills seem to grow ever more essential as local economies grow larger and more complex.’
Unfortunately, because of China’s test-oriented education system’s focus on individual merit and achievement, it’s not producing the individuals with strong social skills that China’s economy needs to transform from a manufacturing-based economy into an innovation-based one.
The good news is that Schleicher’s understanding of the limitations of China’s education system seems to be coming directly from Chinese education officials. The Chinese government’s growing concern with its school is why, overall, Schleicher is optimistic about the prospects for education reform in China.
After a breakfast meeting with our students, Schleicher shared some of his thoughts on Chinese education with Chinese reporters. He had just finished a week-long China trip, in which he spent most of his time in discussion with Shanghai’s education authorities.
During the press conference, a Chinese reporter asked Schleicher if Shanghai placing first on the PISA meant that Shanghai has the world’s best education system.
In response, Schleicher implied that Shanghai’s education system, while on the right track, needs more reforms.
Schleicher explained that, twenty years ago, the knowledge that students learned in schools would find them a good job and be applicable for the rest of his or her life but today, technology and the Internet have made knowledge readily available and thus cheap. What’s important then is the ability to sift through available knowledge, analyse it, and apply it to new situations. In this regard, Shanghai schools are doing well: according to Schleicher, 26 percent of Shanghai students demonstrated complex problem solving skills on the PISA, whereas the OECD average is 3 percent.
But to succeed in the constantly changing global economy today, Schleicher argued, students need to understand that learning is a life-long process, and thus they must possess a passion for learning as well as the ability to learn for themselves. And that’s where Shanghai falls down: 15 year-olds in OECD countries show more curiosity and initiative than Shanghai 15 year-olds, who from the first day of school have been made passive and stressed by too much homework and tests.
Chinese educators and parents may argue that childhood is a time to develop a strong foundation of knowledge. But Schleicher warned that OECD data suggest that if students haven’t yet developed self-learning skills and a passion for learning by age 15, then it’s unlikely they ever will.
A question here then is: Do Chinese schools make learning so unpleasant for students that they don’t want to learn anymore after they leave school? Anecdotal evidence suggests that’s the case: After they finish the national examination, Chinese students burn their textbooks, spend four years in college playing video games, and enter the workforce unprepared for the re-learning that their job requires.
What’s most important in today’s global economy is how innovation is transforming from an individual into a collaborative process. Writing in The Atlantic Monthly, urban theorist Richard Florida explains that innovation now occurs when individuals with different skills and knowledge come together to share them in a way that produces new ideas and products:
‘Highly developed social skills…include persuasion, social perceptiveness, the capacity to bring the right people together on a project, the ability to help develop other people, and a keen sense of empathy. These are quintessential leadership skills needed to innovate, mobilize resources, build effective organizations, and launch new firms…social skills seem to grow ever more essential as local economies grow larger and more complex.’
Unfortunately, because of China’s test-oriented education system’s focus on individual merit and achievement, it’s not producing the individuals with strong social skills that China’s economy needs to transform from a manufacturing-based economy into an innovation-based one.
The good news is that Schleicher’s understanding of the limitations of China’s education system seems to be coming directly from Chinese education officials. The Chinese government’s growing concern with its school is why, overall, Schleicher is optimistic about the prospects for education reform in China.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Fast Food Education (The Diplomat)
I was recently invited to speak at an education conference in Kuala Lumpur, and while there I attended a panel on ‘world class’ education systems.
The first speaker was a Finnish diplomat, and in a brief presentation he explained what made Finland’s schools the envy of the world: The professional training and stature of Finnish teachers, the Lutheran culture of hard work, the pervasiveness of a reading culture, and a social commitment to leaving no child behind. The diplomat emphasized that Finland’s school system operated on the principles of flexibility and diversity: There was no one formula for successful schools, he said, and Finland trusts its teachers to know what’s best for their students.
Speaking next was a McKinsey consultant who, armed with data and graphs, insisted there was in fact one formula for successful schools: recruit top-performing students as teachers, improve instruction through collaboration among teachers, insist that every child succeeds, and bring in experienced visionaries with strong management skills to lead the schools.
The entire ballroom of Malaysian educators and policy makers sat entranced; the Finnish diplomat sank into his seat.
I was as concerned as the Finnish diplomat because I thought the idea of seeing schools as factories was wrong. Essentially, the theme of the two-day conference was how to create a top-down school system that would manufacture corporate drones to make Malaysia competitive in the global economy.
And such a mentality isn’t just taking shape in the authoritarian nation states of Southeast Asia, but also in the liberal enclaves of New York. In his New York Times magazine article ‘What if the Secret to Success is Failure?’ education writer Paul Tough looks at the movement in education to distil ‘character’ into its constituent parts, just like how scientists have been trying to locate, distil, and bottle the medicinal qualities of red wine and tomatoes.
Paul Tough looks at Dave Levin, co-founder of the Knowledge is Power Programme (KIPP) schools, who applies McKinsey scientific management to the problem of inner city schooling. KIPP’s focus on discipline and self-control has gotten its poor minority students college scholarships, but only a third of them have graduated with a college degree. Dave Levin has discovered that character – persistence and resilience – were even more important than academic preparedness for success in college. So, with encouragement from positive psychology guru Martin Seligman, Dave Levin has devised a Character Point Average (CPA), which measures things such as zest, grit, gratitude, optimism, curiosity, and other stuff that’s supposed to turn KIPP students into future Dave Levins and Martin Seligmans.
This movement to locate, distil, and bottle the characteristics of success would be funny and silly, if it weren’t for the mentality behind it: That schools could be turned into McDonald’s, that each and every student could be standardized and manufactured for success, that each and every student ought to pass through an assembly line in which highly-credentialed and well-meaning teachers could stamp labels on the child.
Also profiled in Paul Tough’s New York Times article is Dominic Randolph, the 49-year-old headmaster of the posh Brooklyn private school Riverdale:
‘(Dominic Randolph felt lost at Harvard and) out of step with the power-tie careerism of the Reagan ’80s…After college, he moved for a couple of years to Italy, where he worked odd jobs and studied opera. It was an uncertain and unsettled time in his life, filled with plenty of failed experiments and setbacks and struggles. Looking back on his life, though, Randolph says that the character strengths that enabled him to achieve the success that he has...came out of those years of trial and error, of taking chances and living without a safety net.’
Randolph’s life reminds me of my own. I did well at Yale, but was so disillusioned with the United States’ crass materialism that I decided to make a career in China (yes, how ironic is that). What followed was a decade of wandering around pointlessly and anxiously, but I am now wiser and stronger because of it; I agree with Randolph that the school of hard knocks provides a far better education than the Ivy League.
But, unlike Randolph, the experience has left me with a deep suspicion of success and the material world that we live in. Yes, I hope that my students become successful one day, but it’s more important to me that they discover themselves as individuals.
And that doesn’t mean devising a curriculum to teach individuality. It means you let your students make their own mistakes and suffer the consequences; let them discover their own values but, as teachers, set a strong moral example for them to emulate; and above all let them define for themselves what success is and how to best achieve it.
But, as the Finnish diplomat discovered in Kuala Lumpur, this is becoming an increasingly obsolete message in our world because McKinsey can’t design a PowerPoint presentation around it, and because we can’t bottle and sell it.
The first speaker was a Finnish diplomat, and in a brief presentation he explained what made Finland’s schools the envy of the world: The professional training and stature of Finnish teachers, the Lutheran culture of hard work, the pervasiveness of a reading culture, and a social commitment to leaving no child behind. The diplomat emphasized that Finland’s school system operated on the principles of flexibility and diversity: There was no one formula for successful schools, he said, and Finland trusts its teachers to know what’s best for their students.
Speaking next was a McKinsey consultant who, armed with data and graphs, insisted there was in fact one formula for successful schools: recruit top-performing students as teachers, improve instruction through collaboration among teachers, insist that every child succeeds, and bring in experienced visionaries with strong management skills to lead the schools.
The entire ballroom of Malaysian educators and policy makers sat entranced; the Finnish diplomat sank into his seat.
I was as concerned as the Finnish diplomat because I thought the idea of seeing schools as factories was wrong. Essentially, the theme of the two-day conference was how to create a top-down school system that would manufacture corporate drones to make Malaysia competitive in the global economy.
And such a mentality isn’t just taking shape in the authoritarian nation states of Southeast Asia, but also in the liberal enclaves of New York. In his New York Times magazine article ‘What if the Secret to Success is Failure?’ education writer Paul Tough looks at the movement in education to distil ‘character’ into its constituent parts, just like how scientists have been trying to locate, distil, and bottle the medicinal qualities of red wine and tomatoes.
Paul Tough looks at Dave Levin, co-founder of the Knowledge is Power Programme (KIPP) schools, who applies McKinsey scientific management to the problem of inner city schooling. KIPP’s focus on discipline and self-control has gotten its poor minority students college scholarships, but only a third of them have graduated with a college degree. Dave Levin has discovered that character – persistence and resilience – were even more important than academic preparedness for success in college. So, with encouragement from positive psychology guru Martin Seligman, Dave Levin has devised a Character Point Average (CPA), which measures things such as zest, grit, gratitude, optimism, curiosity, and other stuff that’s supposed to turn KIPP students into future Dave Levins and Martin Seligmans.
This movement to locate, distil, and bottle the characteristics of success would be funny and silly, if it weren’t for the mentality behind it: That schools could be turned into McDonald’s, that each and every student could be standardized and manufactured for success, that each and every student ought to pass through an assembly line in which highly-credentialed and well-meaning teachers could stamp labels on the child.
Also profiled in Paul Tough’s New York Times article is Dominic Randolph, the 49-year-old headmaster of the posh Brooklyn private school Riverdale:
‘(Dominic Randolph felt lost at Harvard and) out of step with the power-tie careerism of the Reagan ’80s…After college, he moved for a couple of years to Italy, where he worked odd jobs and studied opera. It was an uncertain and unsettled time in his life, filled with plenty of failed experiments and setbacks and struggles. Looking back on his life, though, Randolph says that the character strengths that enabled him to achieve the success that he has...came out of those years of trial and error, of taking chances and living without a safety net.’
Randolph’s life reminds me of my own. I did well at Yale, but was so disillusioned with the United States’ crass materialism that I decided to make a career in China (yes, how ironic is that). What followed was a decade of wandering around pointlessly and anxiously, but I am now wiser and stronger because of it; I agree with Randolph that the school of hard knocks provides a far better education than the Ivy League.
But, unlike Randolph, the experience has left me with a deep suspicion of success and the material world that we live in. Yes, I hope that my students become successful one day, but it’s more important to me that they discover themselves as individuals.
And that doesn’t mean devising a curriculum to teach individuality. It means you let your students make their own mistakes and suffer the consequences; let them discover their own values but, as teachers, set a strong moral example for them to emulate; and above all let them define for themselves what success is and how to best achieve it.
But, as the Finnish diplomat discovered in Kuala Lumpur, this is becoming an increasingly obsolete message in our world because McKinsey can’t design a PowerPoint presentation around it, and because we can’t bottle and sell it.
Monday, September 5, 2011
China's Black Swans (The Diplomat)
In Darren Aronofsky’s movie ‘Black Swan,’ Natalie Portman plays Nina, who has won the lead role in the New York Ballet Company’s new production of ‘Swan Lake.’ Nina dances the virginal white swan gracefully, but is clumsy when it comes to the passionate black swan. Sheltered by her failed ballerina mother and confined to their Manhattan apartment, Nina is encouraged by her director to discover her inner black swan. But in unearthing and unleashing her primal passions of jealousy and paranoia, contempt and hate, Nina ruptures her sanity. At the end of her perfect opening night performance, as the audience chants her name in rapture, Nina lies bleeding to death at the back of the stage.
Seeing that Nina has stabbed herself, her director asks ‘why?’ with a look of painful shock. ‘I wanted to be perfect,’ Nina whispers.
Nina was at the back of my mind as I sat in my office on the Sunday evening before the start of school. Seated with me around a conference table were a new student and her mother, as well as Rebecca, a student who has studied with us for a year now. Earlier that day, this new student’s mother had called me, anxiously telling me that her daughter wanted to drop out. Anxious myself over the start of school, I explained to the mother that her daughter was probably overcome with anxiety about enrolling in an unproven programme.
When we all convened that evening, this new student told us so herself. She’s never lived away from home, and she’s accustomed to strict competitive schools, where her classmates never even thought about dating, let alone discussing it in front of their roommates, which is what a couple of her new classmates did during the week of mandatory military training before the start of classes. For that one week, this new student was tormented by doubts and concerns: Will her new classmates be focused? Will her classmates’ bad habits infect her? Will teachers dumb down the material?
Rebecca was seated directly across from the new student, and explained to her that a year ago, she was sitting in exactly the same seat. A year later, she appreciates that the ability to remember someone’s name and befriend them is more important than the ability to memorize math equations and win math competitions. Before, Rebecca expected and demanded that all her classmates be just like her, but now understands that in a class with difference and diversity, she can learn as much from her classmates as from her teachers.
Perfection is a dangerous obsession, Rebecca explained to this new student. Rebecca mentioned a cousin who finished second on the gaokao in the province of Liaoning, and now that she’s out in the workforce she finds everything and everyone so revolting.
Empathy is central to a good English reading programme, and it’s important to help students as they struggle to understand the viewpoints of characters in books ranging from Michael Lewis’sMoneyball to John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids.
After a year, we’ve been surprised and inspired by how generous and compassionate the students have become. In junior high, Rebecca was in a class of over-achievers, and now and then she returns to see her classmates to find them still the same, while she’s transformed from fearing change and uncertainty to welcoming them. After a year, she’s a completely different person.
And that’s exactly what this new student is afraid of. That evening, she spoke passionately about her quest to be a brilliant painter, while showing utter contempt for her new classmates: ‘All the girls talk about is make-up and their boyfriends!’ she shouted at us. ‘And the boys – they want to hang out together on weekends. I can’t stand them!’
I sympathized with this new student’s artistic obsession, and so I patiently explained to her that being a brilliant artist is not just about devoting yourself single-mindedly to your art, as Nina had done in ‘Black Swan.’ It ultimately requires decades of open-ended inquiry and learning so that failure, change, and difference can mould you in a way that will permit you to import diverse modes of thinking into your art, and thus create something startling and striking.
Hearing these words, this new student’s face became less tense, and she slowly smiled.
I could have told her that we would introduce her to books and activities that would expand her comfort zone, and that we would teach her that empathy isn’t about losing your individuality. It is essentially about reaching out to others to import the lumber and the steel and the concrete from which to build the internal support for one’s mental architecture, from which individuality can stand and rise. Empathy constantly expands one’s mental framework, permitting the learning of new ideas, but also the marshalling of primal passions.
Nina went insane because she delved deeper and deeper into her innermost core of raging passions without the support that empathy could provide. Put simply, she fell off the edge because she had no friends to cling to.
But I didn’t say any of this because I could see she was smiling not because she was agreeing with me, but because I seemed to be begging her to stay. All her life, as a top student, she had been praised by her teachers and her parents, and this praise had only narrowed her mental framework to the point where it now risks implosion.
I had hoped that having Rebecca hold out her hand to this new student from across the table would bring her over. But it’s this new student’s choice whether to cross, and ultimately my responsibility is to those who have chosen to do so.
So I sent this new student and her mother away, knowing I’ll probably never see them again. And I began preparing my first lesson for the new semester.
Seeing that Nina has stabbed herself, her director asks ‘why?’ with a look of painful shock. ‘I wanted to be perfect,’ Nina whispers.
Nina was at the back of my mind as I sat in my office on the Sunday evening before the start of school. Seated with me around a conference table were a new student and her mother, as well as Rebecca, a student who has studied with us for a year now. Earlier that day, this new student’s mother had called me, anxiously telling me that her daughter wanted to drop out. Anxious myself over the start of school, I explained to the mother that her daughter was probably overcome with anxiety about enrolling in an unproven programme.
When we all convened that evening, this new student told us so herself. She’s never lived away from home, and she’s accustomed to strict competitive schools, where her classmates never even thought about dating, let alone discussing it in front of their roommates, which is what a couple of her new classmates did during the week of mandatory military training before the start of classes. For that one week, this new student was tormented by doubts and concerns: Will her new classmates be focused? Will her classmates’ bad habits infect her? Will teachers dumb down the material?
Rebecca was seated directly across from the new student, and explained to her that a year ago, she was sitting in exactly the same seat. A year later, she appreciates that the ability to remember someone’s name and befriend them is more important than the ability to memorize math equations and win math competitions. Before, Rebecca expected and demanded that all her classmates be just like her, but now understands that in a class with difference and diversity, she can learn as much from her classmates as from her teachers.
Perfection is a dangerous obsession, Rebecca explained to this new student. Rebecca mentioned a cousin who finished second on the gaokao in the province of Liaoning, and now that she’s out in the workforce she finds everything and everyone so revolting.
Empathy is central to a good English reading programme, and it’s important to help students as they struggle to understand the viewpoints of characters in books ranging from Michael Lewis’sMoneyball to John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids.
After a year, we’ve been surprised and inspired by how generous and compassionate the students have become. In junior high, Rebecca was in a class of over-achievers, and now and then she returns to see her classmates to find them still the same, while she’s transformed from fearing change and uncertainty to welcoming them. After a year, she’s a completely different person.
And that’s exactly what this new student is afraid of. That evening, she spoke passionately about her quest to be a brilliant painter, while showing utter contempt for her new classmates: ‘All the girls talk about is make-up and their boyfriends!’ she shouted at us. ‘And the boys – they want to hang out together on weekends. I can’t stand them!’
I sympathized with this new student’s artistic obsession, and so I patiently explained to her that being a brilliant artist is not just about devoting yourself single-mindedly to your art, as Nina had done in ‘Black Swan.’ It ultimately requires decades of open-ended inquiry and learning so that failure, change, and difference can mould you in a way that will permit you to import diverse modes of thinking into your art, and thus create something startling and striking.
Hearing these words, this new student’s face became less tense, and she slowly smiled.
I could have told her that we would introduce her to books and activities that would expand her comfort zone, and that we would teach her that empathy isn’t about losing your individuality. It is essentially about reaching out to others to import the lumber and the steel and the concrete from which to build the internal support for one’s mental architecture, from which individuality can stand and rise. Empathy constantly expands one’s mental framework, permitting the learning of new ideas, but also the marshalling of primal passions.
Nina went insane because she delved deeper and deeper into her innermost core of raging passions without the support that empathy could provide. Put simply, she fell off the edge because she had no friends to cling to.
But I didn’t say any of this because I could see she was smiling not because she was agreeing with me, but because I seemed to be begging her to stay. All her life, as a top student, she had been praised by her teachers and her parents, and this praise had only narrowed her mental framework to the point where it now risks implosion.
I had hoped that having Rebecca hold out her hand to this new student from across the table would bring her over. But it’s this new student’s choice whether to cross, and ultimately my responsibility is to those who have chosen to do so.
So I sent this new student and her mother away, knowing I’ll probably never see them again. And I began preparing my first lesson for the new semester.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The Sad Case of Wu Yongzhi (The Diplomat)
Shenzhen Daily has reported that a Shenzhen high school teacher has jumped out of the window of his 15th floor apartment after being accused of fraud.
According to Chinese media reports, on the afternoon August 22, a group of parents showed up at Shenzhen’s Xixiang Middle School, expecting to enrol their children. In late April, a teacher there named Wu Yongzhi had apparently promised places for 52 students in exchange for 1.18 million yuan ($185,000) in red envelopes. But on that hot August afternoon, Xixiang’s principal, Bao Qingping, said he knew nothing about this. Wu was reportedly called into the office, admitted fraud, and promised to make restitutions. The next morning, he jumped out the window.
The Chinese media is reporting it as a tragic case of individual greed gone awry, but on the school’s bulletin board, students defended Wu, saying he was the school’s most respected teacher and couldn’t have committed such fraud out of his own volition.
Others have pointed out the inconsistencies in media reports. How could he have convinced 52 parents on his own to turn over 1.18 million yuan? How was he able to present parents with contracts bearing official stamps and signatures from both the school and local education authority? Also, Wu didn’t need the money: he had an apartment, a car, and a 100,000 yuan annual salary. When Wu’s parents checked his bank account, they found it to be empty. Where had the 1.18 million yuan gone?
Some netizens argued that if Wu were a real criminal, he wouldn’t have been so contrite. He apologized profusely to parents, and emptied his bank account to pay back a portion of the money he had taken from them. He complained to his own parents that he was being hounded, and that his only way out was death. And then he killed himself.
So what really happened?
First, it’s important to understand how the Chinese high school admissions system works. Because of China’s compulsory education law, schooling up to grade nine is free and guaranteed, but students need to test into a senior high school. To fill revenue gaps, Chinese high schools are authorized to take a certain number of students whose test scores don’t meet the cut-off score, but who are willing to pay their way in. The quota is usually 5 to 10 percent of the student population, and the test scores can only be a few points lower than the cut-off score.
In theory, there’s heavy monitoring to ensure that schools don’t abuse this policy, but in practice this policy is so heavily abused that in many of China’s best high schools, one-third to one-half of all students pay their way in. This business is so lucrative that school authorities spend most of their work day secretly negotiating with parents.
But how did Wu, an admired and beloved teacher, get involved in this dirty game? He didn’t need the money, but he may well have wanted to advance his career, and thus had no choice but to play.
Rumours have spread on the Internet that Xixiang’s principal had taken a cut of teachers’ wages, appointed a relative to manage the school cafeteria, and secured jobs for unqualified cronies. If true, then Bao would be no different from many other Chinese high school principals, meaning that if Wu wanted to enter his inner circle, he would likely have had to prove his loyalty by volunteering for dirty assignments, such as getting 1.18 million yuan from parents.
Because selling high school places is so common in China, Wu probably would have thought it was a dirty but not risky job. But he was proved tragically wrong. We don’t know how the plan went awry, but there are reports that Bao angered a high-ranking official, who sent a team to investigate the school’s finances and admissions. If true, then Bao would have been under intense scrutiny, and thus would have had no choice but to turn away those 52 parents.
Now those parents would surely have known it was Bao and not Wu who had broken the agreement, but they wouldn’t risk offending a powerful principal. Wu could probably see that he would have to be the fall guy, because the local education authorities and the parents would line up behind the principal. And, given Wu’s social status and how much his students respected him, him going to jail was just not an option.
Reading Wu’s story I couldn’t help but think of Robert Wilkis, a Harvard graduate who dreamt of international development work, but ended up part of a Wall Street insider trading ring linked to junk bond king Michael Milken. As James Stewart recounts in Den of Thieves, the guilt-ridden Wilkis became trapped inside the ring out of loyalty and sympathy to the other participants, and when the police arrested everyone, he alone of all the culprits maintained his loyalty and sympathy, and was thus dealt with the most harshly even though he had benefited the least from the conspiracy.
Wu and Wilkis are both tragic characters. But the real tragedy is how the dens of thieves on Wall Street and in Chinese schools can and will continue to lure good people with a little ambition into destroying themselves.
Akira Kurosawa was right: The bad sleep well, indeed.
According to Chinese media reports, on the afternoon August 22, a group of parents showed up at Shenzhen’s Xixiang Middle School, expecting to enrol their children. In late April, a teacher there named Wu Yongzhi had apparently promised places for 52 students in exchange for 1.18 million yuan ($185,000) in red envelopes. But on that hot August afternoon, Xixiang’s principal, Bao Qingping, said he knew nothing about this. Wu was reportedly called into the office, admitted fraud, and promised to make restitutions. The next morning, he jumped out the window.
The Chinese media is reporting it as a tragic case of individual greed gone awry, but on the school’s bulletin board, students defended Wu, saying he was the school’s most respected teacher and couldn’t have committed such fraud out of his own volition.
Others have pointed out the inconsistencies in media reports. How could he have convinced 52 parents on his own to turn over 1.18 million yuan? How was he able to present parents with contracts bearing official stamps and signatures from both the school and local education authority? Also, Wu didn’t need the money: he had an apartment, a car, and a 100,000 yuan annual salary. When Wu’s parents checked his bank account, they found it to be empty. Where had the 1.18 million yuan gone?
Some netizens argued that if Wu were a real criminal, he wouldn’t have been so contrite. He apologized profusely to parents, and emptied his bank account to pay back a portion of the money he had taken from them. He complained to his own parents that he was being hounded, and that his only way out was death. And then he killed himself.
So what really happened?
First, it’s important to understand how the Chinese high school admissions system works. Because of China’s compulsory education law, schooling up to grade nine is free and guaranteed, but students need to test into a senior high school. To fill revenue gaps, Chinese high schools are authorized to take a certain number of students whose test scores don’t meet the cut-off score, but who are willing to pay their way in. The quota is usually 5 to 10 percent of the student population, and the test scores can only be a few points lower than the cut-off score.
In theory, there’s heavy monitoring to ensure that schools don’t abuse this policy, but in practice this policy is so heavily abused that in many of China’s best high schools, one-third to one-half of all students pay their way in. This business is so lucrative that school authorities spend most of their work day secretly negotiating with parents.
But how did Wu, an admired and beloved teacher, get involved in this dirty game? He didn’t need the money, but he may well have wanted to advance his career, and thus had no choice but to play.
Rumours have spread on the Internet that Xixiang’s principal had taken a cut of teachers’ wages, appointed a relative to manage the school cafeteria, and secured jobs for unqualified cronies. If true, then Bao would be no different from many other Chinese high school principals, meaning that if Wu wanted to enter his inner circle, he would likely have had to prove his loyalty by volunteering for dirty assignments, such as getting 1.18 million yuan from parents.
Because selling high school places is so common in China, Wu probably would have thought it was a dirty but not risky job. But he was proved tragically wrong. We don’t know how the plan went awry, but there are reports that Bao angered a high-ranking official, who sent a team to investigate the school’s finances and admissions. If true, then Bao would have been under intense scrutiny, and thus would have had no choice but to turn away those 52 parents.
Now those parents would surely have known it was Bao and not Wu who had broken the agreement, but they wouldn’t risk offending a powerful principal. Wu could probably see that he would have to be the fall guy, because the local education authorities and the parents would line up behind the principal. And, given Wu’s social status and how much his students respected him, him going to jail was just not an option.
Reading Wu’s story I couldn’t help but think of Robert Wilkis, a Harvard graduate who dreamt of international development work, but ended up part of a Wall Street insider trading ring linked to junk bond king Michael Milken. As James Stewart recounts in Den of Thieves, the guilt-ridden Wilkis became trapped inside the ring out of loyalty and sympathy to the other participants, and when the police arrested everyone, he alone of all the culprits maintained his loyalty and sympathy, and was thus dealt with the most harshly even though he had benefited the least from the conspiracy.
Wu and Wilkis are both tragic characters. But the real tragedy is how the dens of thieves on Wall Street and in Chinese schools can and will continue to lure good people with a little ambition into destroying themselves.
Akira Kurosawa was right: The bad sleep well, indeed.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
China's Incognito Parents (Diplomat)
After a long and hard year in Beijing, I'm back in Toronto reading and reflecting. Before I left Beijing in early July, I had finished student recruitment. At the end of our admissions camp, we admitted 40 students, but the top half turned us down to attend other international divisions. Hurt and angry, I became even more so when my staff told me that many of our programme’s parents, even though they had praised our English reading programme, wanted us to focus on standardized test preparation in year two.
All summer, I struggled to explain these two major setbacks. I thought I had made a compelling case that the best way to learn English is by reading, and in so doing our students would thrive on the US college campus, and develop a life-long habit of reading English newspapers and books so they could succeed in the global economy. Otherwise, our students would enter college allergic to books, a disability and fear that would trap them in a Chinese bubble in both college and in life.
So why do Chinese parents insist on their children taking test prep courses rather than reading books to prepare for the SAT? Why are they so obsessed with getting their child into college when so many American and Chinese college graduates can’t find work? Why are our parents unhappy with our programme even though their child has become more motivated and diligent?
Ultimately, I can’t reconcile our parents’ thinking and their actions. I honestly believe our parents want the best possible education for their child, but I also see them hampering our efforts. What’s going on?
A new book Incognito by the neuroscientist David Eagleman offers an intriguing possibility – that I can’t figure out Chinese parents because their thinking is controlled by their conscious self, while their actions are controlled by their subconscious self. The conscious self is how we want to appear in public, but the subconscious self is the repository of our experiences and our emotions, and ultimately that’s where our true self lies.
David Eagleman explains that the conscious self is the CEO, while the subconscious is the corporation. The CEO sets goals and direction, but it’s the subconscious that plans, organizes, and executes. To accomplish its mission, the subconscious has many parts that arrange themselves as a ‘team of rivals’ that struggle for primacy while always working towards the goals established by the CEO, explains Eagleman. Evolution has discovered this to be the most efficient relationship for two reasons: plausible deniability (to maintain our social position and reputation), and effectiveness (to be able to obtain what is in our best self-interest).
Two concrete examples to illustrate the interplay between the conscious and subconscious can be found in William Cohan’s new book Money and Power, which explains how Goldman Sachs survived the 2008 sub-prime crisis. As its CEO Lloyd Blankfein became wary of Goldman’s sub-prime positions, the book suggests Goldman Sachs bundled the riskiest mortgages to create securities, sold them to clients, and bet that they would fail. What made such subterfuge possible is said to be the fact that Goldman Sachs was a ‘team of rivals,’ with the clear-eyed traders cynically shorting the securities, while the silver-tongued investment bankers first convinced themselves that the securities were great investments before selling them to their clients. If Blankfein had coordinated everything, the various departments couldn’t have worked together by working against each other, and he couldn’t have denied fraud allegations with a straight face, which is what he subsequently did.
Then consider the case of Hank Paulson, who was number two at Goldman Sachs when he along with John Thornton and John Thain launched a palace coup to topple Jon Corzine. Once in power, Paulson was supposed to gradually relinquish power to Thornton and Thain, but he is said to have discovered he liked having power so much he pushed out the two Johns.
According to this view, Paulson rose to the top because he let his Machiavellian auto-pilot take control while his conscious self-maintained a trusting, naïve veneer: If Paulson ever let on he had a greater ambition than selflessly serving the best interests of Goldman Sachs, he could have never ousted Corzine.
So let’s return to Chinese parents, and figure out not who they think they are, but who they really are. After a year of dealing with our Chinese parents, here’s how I think they think: ‘I love and want what’s best for my child. College in America will prepare my child for the global economy, and he’s fortunate to be learning creativity and critical thinking skills at Peking High International. Yes, Mr. Jiang may be a bit too naïve and idealistic, but I trust him to have the best interest of my child at heart.’
But what does their subconscious believe? The trick to understanding their subconscious is not to peer inside their mental landscape because it’s a ‘team of rivals’ designed to mislead and beguile. The trick is to see the Chinese landscape they’ve witnessed these past 50 years, and the emotions they’ve absorbed as life lessons: the disillusionment brought on by the tyrannical chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the fear wrought by the uncertainty and inequality of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, the greed created by the corruption and moral bankruptcy of Jiang Zemin’s China, and now the angry pride unleashed by China’s dizzying and intoxicating economic rise.
At a subconscious level, here’s what our programme’s parents really believe: ‘I succeeded because of my ability to maintain and manage guanxi, not because of critical thinking skills and creativity. My child will succeed based on his ability to conform to Chinese society and to obey me. My child will study in the United States to meet other rich and powerful Chinese. That my child crams for the SAT rather than read books and that he lives in a Chinese bubble will prove to me and to Chinese society that he’s a loyal and obedient Chinese, and that will ensure his transition back to China after he’s bored with the bright lights of New York and the blackjack tables of Las Vegas. Why should my child learn English and American cultural values when China is superior to the West? Creativity and critical thinking skills are Western imports, and ought to be distrusted as dangerous influences.’
So while consciously our Chinese parents are supportive of our pedagogy (they have no choice), they will subconsciously do whatever they can to sabotage our efforts, including complaining about how much their child reads in English, arranging SAT prep classes on weekends, and questioning our pedagogy to other parents who are considering enrolling.
And this sabotage can only become more blatant and destructive, as our programme matures and strengthens. So what do I do now? Um, I don’t know – maybe my subconscious can figure something out.
P.S. In last week’s posting, two readers commented that the posting was intellectually lazy. In hindsight, I now see the posting was a rant, so thanks to my readers for keeping me intellectually honest.
All summer, I struggled to explain these two major setbacks. I thought I had made a compelling case that the best way to learn English is by reading, and in so doing our students would thrive on the US college campus, and develop a life-long habit of reading English newspapers and books so they could succeed in the global economy. Otherwise, our students would enter college allergic to books, a disability and fear that would trap them in a Chinese bubble in both college and in life.
So why do Chinese parents insist on their children taking test prep courses rather than reading books to prepare for the SAT? Why are they so obsessed with getting their child into college when so many American and Chinese college graduates can’t find work? Why are our parents unhappy with our programme even though their child has become more motivated and diligent?
Ultimately, I can’t reconcile our parents’ thinking and their actions. I honestly believe our parents want the best possible education for their child, but I also see them hampering our efforts. What’s going on?
A new book Incognito by the neuroscientist David Eagleman offers an intriguing possibility – that I can’t figure out Chinese parents because their thinking is controlled by their conscious self, while their actions are controlled by their subconscious self. The conscious self is how we want to appear in public, but the subconscious self is the repository of our experiences and our emotions, and ultimately that’s where our true self lies.
David Eagleman explains that the conscious self is the CEO, while the subconscious is the corporation. The CEO sets goals and direction, but it’s the subconscious that plans, organizes, and executes. To accomplish its mission, the subconscious has many parts that arrange themselves as a ‘team of rivals’ that struggle for primacy while always working towards the goals established by the CEO, explains Eagleman. Evolution has discovered this to be the most efficient relationship for two reasons: plausible deniability (to maintain our social position and reputation), and effectiveness (to be able to obtain what is in our best self-interest).
Two concrete examples to illustrate the interplay between the conscious and subconscious can be found in William Cohan’s new book Money and Power, which explains how Goldman Sachs survived the 2008 sub-prime crisis. As its CEO Lloyd Blankfein became wary of Goldman’s sub-prime positions, the book suggests Goldman Sachs bundled the riskiest mortgages to create securities, sold them to clients, and bet that they would fail. What made such subterfuge possible is said to be the fact that Goldman Sachs was a ‘team of rivals,’ with the clear-eyed traders cynically shorting the securities, while the silver-tongued investment bankers first convinced themselves that the securities were great investments before selling them to their clients. If Blankfein had coordinated everything, the various departments couldn’t have worked together by working against each other, and he couldn’t have denied fraud allegations with a straight face, which is what he subsequently did.
Then consider the case of Hank Paulson, who was number two at Goldman Sachs when he along with John Thornton and John Thain launched a palace coup to topple Jon Corzine. Once in power, Paulson was supposed to gradually relinquish power to Thornton and Thain, but he is said to have discovered he liked having power so much he pushed out the two Johns.
According to this view, Paulson rose to the top because he let his Machiavellian auto-pilot take control while his conscious self-maintained a trusting, naïve veneer: If Paulson ever let on he had a greater ambition than selflessly serving the best interests of Goldman Sachs, he could have never ousted Corzine.
So let’s return to Chinese parents, and figure out not who they think they are, but who they really are. After a year of dealing with our Chinese parents, here’s how I think they think: ‘I love and want what’s best for my child. College in America will prepare my child for the global economy, and he’s fortunate to be learning creativity and critical thinking skills at Peking High International. Yes, Mr. Jiang may be a bit too naïve and idealistic, but I trust him to have the best interest of my child at heart.’
But what does their subconscious believe? The trick to understanding their subconscious is not to peer inside their mental landscape because it’s a ‘team of rivals’ designed to mislead and beguile. The trick is to see the Chinese landscape they’ve witnessed these past 50 years, and the emotions they’ve absorbed as life lessons: the disillusionment brought on by the tyrannical chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the fear wrought by the uncertainty and inequality of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, the greed created by the corruption and moral bankruptcy of Jiang Zemin’s China, and now the angry pride unleashed by China’s dizzying and intoxicating economic rise.
At a subconscious level, here’s what our programme’s parents really believe: ‘I succeeded because of my ability to maintain and manage guanxi, not because of critical thinking skills and creativity. My child will succeed based on his ability to conform to Chinese society and to obey me. My child will study in the United States to meet other rich and powerful Chinese. That my child crams for the SAT rather than read books and that he lives in a Chinese bubble will prove to me and to Chinese society that he’s a loyal and obedient Chinese, and that will ensure his transition back to China after he’s bored with the bright lights of New York and the blackjack tables of Las Vegas. Why should my child learn English and American cultural values when China is superior to the West? Creativity and critical thinking skills are Western imports, and ought to be distrusted as dangerous influences.’
So while consciously our Chinese parents are supportive of our pedagogy (they have no choice), they will subconsciously do whatever they can to sabotage our efforts, including complaining about how much their child reads in English, arranging SAT prep classes on weekends, and questioning our pedagogy to other parents who are considering enrolling.
And this sabotage can only become more blatant and destructive, as our programme matures and strengthens. So what do I do now? Um, I don’t know – maybe my subconscious can figure something out.
P.S. In last week’s posting, two readers commented that the posting was intellectually lazy. In hindsight, I now see the posting was a rant, so thanks to my readers for keeping me intellectually honest.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Mind Triathlon vs Jersey Shore (Diplomat)
This summer, the staff and students of Peking University High School International Division travelled to the northeast of the United States for three weeks of language learning, two weeks of hiking and canoeing, and a week of touring American colleges and universities. I spent 10 days at an education conference in Africa and a week in Paris before joining everyone in Boston.
My staff and I had organized six weeks in the United States because we believed opening new vistas for our students would be transformational. What we didn’t expect when we sent our students to experience the US is for some of our students to start behaving like Americans, which is what happened.
My smile at seeing everyone dissipated once I saw the frowns of the faces of my three staff. One of the staff was a former student of mine now studying at the University of Wisconsin who had spent her summer organizing the college visits, and who was mortified when the students fell asleep at a college information session.
The remaining two had started with me at Shenzhen High School, and went with me to Peking University High School because of our shared ideals. Instead of spending the summer with their families in Shenzhen, the two were chaperoning our 28 students. Instead of saying ‘thank you,’ our students wouldn’t sleep at night, and were so rowdy that they kept my staff up. For the week-long canoeing trip, my staff, as per my instruction, divided the best friends and couples; in response, some students complained angrily. One of my teachers, the one closest to the students, broke down in tears.
I had forbidden the students from taking mobile phones and electronic devices to America so that they would be fully immersed in the experience. When I first arrived and saw one of my students listening to music on his iPhone, I sternly asked, ‘Did I not tell you not to bring your iPhone to America?’ He responded matter-of-factly, ‘I bought a new one here.’ And he was far from alone: many students view their college visits as a shopping expedition for the newest Apple products, my staff had told me.
Seeing how lazy, indifferent, and disrespectful our students had become in six weeks, my staff and I had to question why we would want to send them to the US for four years. Our programme’s purpose is to educate bicultural students who have the best qualities of East and West: a strong work ethic and a love of learning, as well as individuality and a passion for life. What we were seeing in Boston was the worst qualities of East and West festering in our students: group-think and materialism, as well as selfishness and callowness.
It was silly of me to place so much faith in US education because I really should know better. At Yale, I was upset by how seminar discussions were hijacked by classmates who didn’t do the reading (and who didn’t do much reading at all) but who insisted on expressing their uninformed opinion anyway. Yalies modestly asked questions to show how they knew it all, and thought they were at Yale to enlighten it.
Previously, I had thought it was just Yale that nurtured the solipsism and narcissism of its students, but six months ago I discovered that this ‘education’ is all too commonplace in the United States. When I was in Austin, Texas teaching a classroom of fifth-graders beginners’ Mandarin, the students peppered me with random questions, and seeing my frustration simmer, one of the fifth-graders blurted out, ‘We need to ask you questions because our teacher would fail us otherwise.’
At Peking University High School International Division, our students constantly challenge me because that’s what teenagers do. There’s always a cacophony of complaints: there’s not enough classes and homework, there’s too much; math class is too hard, it’s too easy; there isn’t enough vocabulary drilling, there’s not enough reading. And in response, we challenge our students to think beyond their entitled and selfish teenage selves, and consider our perspective and limitations as a new programme: that we must, with limited resources and experience, educate to the best of our ability students of varying competence and motivation, and that we aim to be open and transparent, but that we must also be strict and fair. We want our students to understand choice and consequence, yet we must walk a fine balance because neither their parents nor Chinese society has much tolerance for individuality and mistakes. Above all, we teach our students that to be free individuals they must appreciate and cherish the social bonds that make us all human.
So it was with great dismay and alarm that in Boston I discovered our students had left understanding and empathy back in Beijing with their mobile phones, and had refused to buy American versions. Our American partners had nothing but praise for our students, and I could see how this praise, mixed with American permissiveness, had made the students complacent while undermining the authority of my staff.
American teachers believe their mandate is two-fold: to educate creative thinkers, and to prepare their students to function in a liberal democracy. But learning to understand a different perspective is the intellectual equivalent of participating in a triathlon, whereas expressing your own is like watching ‘Jersey Shore.’ And, as the recent American political debate over the debt ceiling revealed, it’s exactly those who cling the most selfishly to their ideological purity (the Tea Party republicans) who are the greatest threat to the functioning of a liberal democracy.
Teaching teenagers to challenge authority and to think highly of themselves is to appeal to their basest instincts. American popular culture is so dangerously addictive because it appeals to the 16 year-old in all of us: Michael Bay movies, Tom Clancy novels, and Fox TV shows do nothing but confirm and make concrete our prejudice and paranoia that we are right, and it’s only by defying the entire world that can we save it. What’s murderously dangerous is when this juvenile thinking spills from the silver screen into the hallowed halls of the United States Congress.
Adult human beings are so because they fight against their worst instincts, and those of teenagers. Our student couples and best friends were angry about being broken up for the canoeing trip, but in the end they did see that we teachers had their best interest at heart, and that by doing so they could meet and bond with others. Yes, some students spent their time in the United States listening to their Chinese pop music, updating their account on renren.com (China’s Facebook), and calling their parents every night. But there were also some students who cherished every moment of their time in America, and told me how happy they were with the arrangements. It was something that they’ll remember forever, they told me.
Not quite a ‘thank you.’ But it’s a start.
My staff and I had organized six weeks in the United States because we believed opening new vistas for our students would be transformational. What we didn’t expect when we sent our students to experience the US is for some of our students to start behaving like Americans, which is what happened.
My smile at seeing everyone dissipated once I saw the frowns of the faces of my three staff. One of the staff was a former student of mine now studying at the University of Wisconsin who had spent her summer organizing the college visits, and who was mortified when the students fell asleep at a college information session.
The remaining two had started with me at Shenzhen High School, and went with me to Peking University High School because of our shared ideals. Instead of spending the summer with their families in Shenzhen, the two were chaperoning our 28 students. Instead of saying ‘thank you,’ our students wouldn’t sleep at night, and were so rowdy that they kept my staff up. For the week-long canoeing trip, my staff, as per my instruction, divided the best friends and couples; in response, some students complained angrily. One of my teachers, the one closest to the students, broke down in tears.
I had forbidden the students from taking mobile phones and electronic devices to America so that they would be fully immersed in the experience. When I first arrived and saw one of my students listening to music on his iPhone, I sternly asked, ‘Did I not tell you not to bring your iPhone to America?’ He responded matter-of-factly, ‘I bought a new one here.’ And he was far from alone: many students view their college visits as a shopping expedition for the newest Apple products, my staff had told me.
Seeing how lazy, indifferent, and disrespectful our students had become in six weeks, my staff and I had to question why we would want to send them to the US for four years. Our programme’s purpose is to educate bicultural students who have the best qualities of East and West: a strong work ethic and a love of learning, as well as individuality and a passion for life. What we were seeing in Boston was the worst qualities of East and West festering in our students: group-think and materialism, as well as selfishness and callowness.
It was silly of me to place so much faith in US education because I really should know better. At Yale, I was upset by how seminar discussions were hijacked by classmates who didn’t do the reading (and who didn’t do much reading at all) but who insisted on expressing their uninformed opinion anyway. Yalies modestly asked questions to show how they knew it all, and thought they were at Yale to enlighten it.
Previously, I had thought it was just Yale that nurtured the solipsism and narcissism of its students, but six months ago I discovered that this ‘education’ is all too commonplace in the United States. When I was in Austin, Texas teaching a classroom of fifth-graders beginners’ Mandarin, the students peppered me with random questions, and seeing my frustration simmer, one of the fifth-graders blurted out, ‘We need to ask you questions because our teacher would fail us otherwise.’
At Peking University High School International Division, our students constantly challenge me because that’s what teenagers do. There’s always a cacophony of complaints: there’s not enough classes and homework, there’s too much; math class is too hard, it’s too easy; there isn’t enough vocabulary drilling, there’s not enough reading. And in response, we challenge our students to think beyond their entitled and selfish teenage selves, and consider our perspective and limitations as a new programme: that we must, with limited resources and experience, educate to the best of our ability students of varying competence and motivation, and that we aim to be open and transparent, but that we must also be strict and fair. We want our students to understand choice and consequence, yet we must walk a fine balance because neither their parents nor Chinese society has much tolerance for individuality and mistakes. Above all, we teach our students that to be free individuals they must appreciate and cherish the social bonds that make us all human.
So it was with great dismay and alarm that in Boston I discovered our students had left understanding and empathy back in Beijing with their mobile phones, and had refused to buy American versions. Our American partners had nothing but praise for our students, and I could see how this praise, mixed with American permissiveness, had made the students complacent while undermining the authority of my staff.
American teachers believe their mandate is two-fold: to educate creative thinkers, and to prepare their students to function in a liberal democracy. But learning to understand a different perspective is the intellectual equivalent of participating in a triathlon, whereas expressing your own is like watching ‘Jersey Shore.’ And, as the recent American political debate over the debt ceiling revealed, it’s exactly those who cling the most selfishly to their ideological purity (the Tea Party republicans) who are the greatest threat to the functioning of a liberal democracy.
Teaching teenagers to challenge authority and to think highly of themselves is to appeal to their basest instincts. American popular culture is so dangerously addictive because it appeals to the 16 year-old in all of us: Michael Bay movies, Tom Clancy novels, and Fox TV shows do nothing but confirm and make concrete our prejudice and paranoia that we are right, and it’s only by defying the entire world that can we save it. What’s murderously dangerous is when this juvenile thinking spills from the silver screen into the hallowed halls of the United States Congress.
Adult human beings are so because they fight against their worst instincts, and those of teenagers. Our student couples and best friends were angry about being broken up for the canoeing trip, but in the end they did see that we teachers had their best interest at heart, and that by doing so they could meet and bond with others. Yes, some students spent their time in the United States listening to their Chinese pop music, updating their account on renren.com (China’s Facebook), and calling their parents every night. But there were also some students who cherished every moment of their time in America, and told me how happy they were with the arrangements. It was something that they’ll remember forever, they told me.
Not quite a ‘thank you.’ But it’s a start.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
How Shanghai Schools Beat Them All (Diplomat)
It appears that no one takes education quite as seriously as the Shanghainese.
Every three years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) administers its worldwide Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to measure how well a nation’s education system has been preparing its students for the global knowledge economy. Nations such as South Korea, Finland, and Singapore have traditionally topped the rankings, but, apparently, even they are no match for Shanghai, which shoved the others into lower positions in its very first year of participation in the programme, in 2009.
When I was in Paris last week, I decided to drop in on Andreas Schleicher, the programme’s architect, to get his views on PISA and Shanghai’s education system. Dr. Schleicher, who was recently profiled in the Atlantic Monthly, had some very interesting things to say about both.
According to Schleicher, Shanghai’s education system is distinctive and superior—and not just globally, but also nationally. Hong Kong, Beijing, and ten Chinese provinces participated in the 2009 PISA, but their results reflected education systems that were still the same-old knowledge acquisition models, whereas Shanghai had progressed to equipping students with the ability to interpret and extrapolate information from text and apply it to real world situations—what we would normally refer to as ‘creativity.’ Twenty-six percent of Shanghai 15 year-olds could demonstrate advanced problem-solving skills, whereas the OECD average is 3 percent.
So how did Shanghai create the world’s best education system?
First, the Shanghai municipal government believes that the most effective way to raise the human capital it needs for the global knowledge economy is by focusing on raising the overall quality of its education system rather than investing in elite schools. ‘Students of privilege will do well wherever they are, and more resources directed at them won’t improve them that much,’ Schleicher explained. ‘But more attention and investment will greatly improve disadvantaged students.’
Lacking adequate capital, Shanghai decided to rely on the expertise of its best principals and teachers to reform its failing schools. The Shanghai government promised career advancement opportunities and autonomy if educators could turn around such schools, and this policy has been stunningly successful. According to Schleicher, 70 percent of Shanghai students are ‘resilient,’ meaning that they have stronger math, reading, and science skills than their socio-economic background would suggest.
‘There’s real interest and engagement between teachers and students,’ Schleicher said. ‘Every Shanghai classroom has high demands yet offers extensive support.’ There’s an expectation and a demand that every student can succeed, and teachers regularly collaborate to improve student performance.
According to Schleicher, what’s truly impressive about Shanghai schools is how they focus on collaborative and creative learning. Instead of force-feeding knowledge and information to students, teachers motivate them to learn for themselves, and the curriculum emphasizes student-centred learning. For example, in one math class visited by Schleicher, the teacher threw out a complex problem that provoked classroom discussion as to how to best arrive at a possible solution.
Schleicher is quite upbeat about Shanghai’s global economic prospects. Today, the United States may be the leader in creativity and innovation, but that’s because it made university education universally available 40 years ago, Schleicher argued. Now that the United States is failing to invest properly in public education, its prospects are dim. Shanghai is in the reverse position. PISA reveals that Shanghai is creating for itself a skilled workforce, and that’s a ‘significant advantage,’ he told me.
Now might seem a good time to make my usual round of snide and sarcastic comments, but I actually agree with Schleicher about Shanghai’s economic prospects. Each time I visit Shanghai, I’m amazed by—especially compared with Beijing—how well-managed and orderly the city is, and by how industrious and honest the people are. Chinese like to joke that Shanghai is closer to the shores of Europe than it is to China, and Shanghai schools have set themselves apart from the rest of the country.
Shanghai has the world’s best education system because Shanghainese, more than anyone else in China, take education seriously—perhaps way too seriously. The Shanghai municipal government will invest 22.4 billion yuan annually on its schools, whereas the Chinese national government will invest 299.2 billion yuan for all of China. And then there’s the individual parental investment: During a child’s elementary school years, Shanghai parents will annually spend on average of 6,000 yuan on English and math tutors and 9,600 yuan on weekend activities, such as tennis and piano. During the high school years, annual tutoring costs shoot up to 30,000 yuan and the cost of activities doubles to 19,200 yuan.
This early investment is to prepare Shanghai students for study at US colleges and universities. In 2005, 110,000 Shanghai students participated in the national college entrance examination (the gaokao). By 2010, as more and more Shanghainese chose the United States for college, that number dwindled down to 67,000. This year, only 61,000 Shanghainese participated in the gaokao. (By comparison, in Yunnan Province, where most families cannot afford to study overseas, students participating in the gaokao increased from 170,000 in 2005 to 220,000 in 2010.) Shanghai parents are giving their children the best of both education worlds: a Shanghai kindergarten to grade 12 education and a US higher education.
And most Shanghainese students who’ve studied abroad will return to Shanghai. After all, Shanghai is the financial capital of the world’s second largest economy. But, more important, Shanghai is adopting Western standards and practices throughout its society and economy so that its overseas-returned students can put their new knowledge and experience to effective use immediately.
The Shanghainese obsession with education has guaranteed their bright city a brighter future. Shanghai is well-positioned to dominate globally as an innovation and knowledge economy, Schleicher told me.
Now, if Shanghainese could just care a little more about the quality of their food…
Every three years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) administers its worldwide Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to measure how well a nation’s education system has been preparing its students for the global knowledge economy. Nations such as South Korea, Finland, and Singapore have traditionally topped the rankings, but, apparently, even they are no match for Shanghai, which shoved the others into lower positions in its very first year of participation in the programme, in 2009.
When I was in Paris last week, I decided to drop in on Andreas Schleicher, the programme’s architect, to get his views on PISA and Shanghai’s education system. Dr. Schleicher, who was recently profiled in the Atlantic Monthly, had some very interesting things to say about both.
According to Schleicher, Shanghai’s education system is distinctive and superior—and not just globally, but also nationally. Hong Kong, Beijing, and ten Chinese provinces participated in the 2009 PISA, but their results reflected education systems that were still the same-old knowledge acquisition models, whereas Shanghai had progressed to equipping students with the ability to interpret and extrapolate information from text and apply it to real world situations—what we would normally refer to as ‘creativity.’ Twenty-six percent of Shanghai 15 year-olds could demonstrate advanced problem-solving skills, whereas the OECD average is 3 percent.
So how did Shanghai create the world’s best education system?
First, the Shanghai municipal government believes that the most effective way to raise the human capital it needs for the global knowledge economy is by focusing on raising the overall quality of its education system rather than investing in elite schools. ‘Students of privilege will do well wherever they are, and more resources directed at them won’t improve them that much,’ Schleicher explained. ‘But more attention and investment will greatly improve disadvantaged students.’
Lacking adequate capital, Shanghai decided to rely on the expertise of its best principals and teachers to reform its failing schools. The Shanghai government promised career advancement opportunities and autonomy if educators could turn around such schools, and this policy has been stunningly successful. According to Schleicher, 70 percent of Shanghai students are ‘resilient,’ meaning that they have stronger math, reading, and science skills than their socio-economic background would suggest.
‘There’s real interest and engagement between teachers and students,’ Schleicher said. ‘Every Shanghai classroom has high demands yet offers extensive support.’ There’s an expectation and a demand that every student can succeed, and teachers regularly collaborate to improve student performance.
According to Schleicher, what’s truly impressive about Shanghai schools is how they focus on collaborative and creative learning. Instead of force-feeding knowledge and information to students, teachers motivate them to learn for themselves, and the curriculum emphasizes student-centred learning. For example, in one math class visited by Schleicher, the teacher threw out a complex problem that provoked classroom discussion as to how to best arrive at a possible solution.
Schleicher is quite upbeat about Shanghai’s global economic prospects. Today, the United States may be the leader in creativity and innovation, but that’s because it made university education universally available 40 years ago, Schleicher argued. Now that the United States is failing to invest properly in public education, its prospects are dim. Shanghai is in the reverse position. PISA reveals that Shanghai is creating for itself a skilled workforce, and that’s a ‘significant advantage,’ he told me.
Now might seem a good time to make my usual round of snide and sarcastic comments, but I actually agree with Schleicher about Shanghai’s economic prospects. Each time I visit Shanghai, I’m amazed by—especially compared with Beijing—how well-managed and orderly the city is, and by how industrious and honest the people are. Chinese like to joke that Shanghai is closer to the shores of Europe than it is to China, and Shanghai schools have set themselves apart from the rest of the country.
Shanghai has the world’s best education system because Shanghainese, more than anyone else in China, take education seriously—perhaps way too seriously. The Shanghai municipal government will invest 22.4 billion yuan annually on its schools, whereas the Chinese national government will invest 299.2 billion yuan for all of China. And then there’s the individual parental investment: During a child’s elementary school years, Shanghai parents will annually spend on average of 6,000 yuan on English and math tutors and 9,600 yuan on weekend activities, such as tennis and piano. During the high school years, annual tutoring costs shoot up to 30,000 yuan and the cost of activities doubles to 19,200 yuan.
This early investment is to prepare Shanghai students for study at US colleges and universities. In 2005, 110,000 Shanghai students participated in the national college entrance examination (the gaokao). By 2010, as more and more Shanghainese chose the United States for college, that number dwindled down to 67,000. This year, only 61,000 Shanghainese participated in the gaokao. (By comparison, in Yunnan Province, where most families cannot afford to study overseas, students participating in the gaokao increased from 170,000 in 2005 to 220,000 in 2010.) Shanghai parents are giving their children the best of both education worlds: a Shanghai kindergarten to grade 12 education and a US higher education.
And most Shanghainese students who’ve studied abroad will return to Shanghai. After all, Shanghai is the financial capital of the world’s second largest economy. But, more important, Shanghai is adopting Western standards and practices throughout its society and economy so that its overseas-returned students can put their new knowledge and experience to effective use immediately.
The Shanghainese obsession with education has guaranteed their bright city a brighter future. Shanghai is well-positioned to dominate globally as an innovation and knowledge economy, Schleicher told me.
Now, if Shanghainese could just care a little more about the quality of their food…
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Thinking Right (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Last November, the Institute of International Education announced that there were now almost 130,000 Chinese students studying on American campuses, making them the largest international contingent. While this represents a significant cash flow out of China, Beijing supports this trend because the Chinese economy is in desperate need of globally educated Chinese.
The rapid increase in the number of Chinese students in America, however, is leading to significant changes in China's secondary-education system. With Beijing's official backing, and facing increasing demand from parents, public schools in China's largest cities are heading toward a two-track system—the traditional stream that prepares students for the national college-entrance examination (the gaokao), and a new one that prepares them for the SAT Reasoning Test and the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or Toefl. Some of China's very best public schools, where the smartest and wealthiest students congregate, will one day become international in focus. Get prepared: A wave of young Chinese students is about to wash across America.
But there's a problem. For most Chinese students, secondary education means lectures and memorization and cramming for exams. Other skills—like communication, critical thinking, and speaking English—get slighted. As a result, these students often show up in freshman classes unprepared for the challenge of an American college education.
English presents their biggest problem, and the problem is deceptive. Most colleges carefully screen Chinese applicants using test scores and essays, even interviews at times. They admit applicants qualified on paper who often struggle after enrollment. What has gone wrong? Colleges use criteria that are easily fudged—SAT cram schools and ghostwritten essays are fixtures throughout China—and at first glance, unreliable tests and essays are the prime suspects. And no doubt they deserve some of the blame: The file of many a Chinese applicant is a manufactured confection.
Yet the real language problem is a more subtle one, and one that's not really a language problem at all. It's a thinking problem. Because to read and write and analyze English like a native speaker, Chinese students first have to start thinking like a native speaker. This is difficult when they've long been trained to think in Chinese.
In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, the Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf writes that brain scans of native English and Chinese speakers show that each group relies on different mental processes to read. English is phonological, so English readers can sound out words when they read; written Chinese is not, so hundreds of mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects can use the same written script. English speakers access audio-sensory parts of their brain to "hear" a text, while Chinese speakers use visual-sensory parts to "see" a text, she explains. To teach a Chinese person to read well in English thus entails a significant rewiring of the brain, and while science says this is possible, there's nothing quick or easy or fun about it.
There's another complication. Westerners and Chinese have different mind-sets, and even fluent English-speaking Chinese can misinterpret English texts. In The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently ... and Why, the social psychologist Richard Nisbett explains that Western civilization emphasizes debate and logic, while Chinese civilization prefers harmony and groupthink. Good English builds a formal structure of Aristotelian logic, while good Chinese demonstrates a chaotic stream-of-consciousness beauty.
I've worked with Chinese students at Shenzhen High School and now at Peking University High School, in Beijing, who intend to head abroad. I've seen how our students have been trained to read a Chinese text like they're taking a walk in the woods, as a free, spontaneous, and emotional experience. They've been taught to admire the whole of the vision—the trees, the sky, the stream—then breathe the fresh autumn air and delight at suddenly seeing a jaybird. This is an appropriate technique for reading Chinese, but not for reading English, which demands a more structured approach. The traditional Chinese curriculum does not teach concepts such as thesis, logic, support, evidence, and structure.
Thus we teach our students that reading an English text is like heading out in a big city: The walk has to be planned, deliberate, and meticulous, or it will end in an alley of confusion. In our classes, students start by drawing a road map, representing the structure of the text, then identify the destination, representing the text's thesis, and finally check the soundness of the route by analyzing the text's logic, evidence, and support.
We teach our students to identify the thesis and then draw the road map so they can appreciate the tightness and coherence of the structure. We teach them that each paragraph represents one coherent idea and ask them to highlight the first sentence of the paragraph in yellow and the last sentence in red. We then ask them to draw boxes around pronouns so that they can identify the subject, underline synonyms to identify the theme, and circle new vocabulary to understand the meaning. We ask them to group related words and phrases into bubbles, which helps develop their vocabulary. Finally, we ask them to summarize each paragraph in one simple sentence. By using this technique, our students can see the structure of the text and understand the flow of the thesis.
Although our reading program is a work in progress, we have seen some dramatic improvements over the semester it has been in place. At the outset, our students wrote quickly and haphazardly, producing incomprehensible homework. Now that they've begun to change their approach to reading a text, they're turning in well-argued and well-structured five-paragraph essays. And just as important, they've become more observant and reflective.
There is a message here for colleges about to be flooded with Chinese undergraduates: Most of these students are going to need English-language assistance. And the traditional remedial-English curriculum is not going to help them much. They are going to need remedial courses tailored to the Chinese mind, courses that change the way they think and give them the opportunity to thrive in an American academic environment unfettered by a mind-set in Chinese.
The rapid increase in the number of Chinese students in America, however, is leading to significant changes in China's secondary-education system. With Beijing's official backing, and facing increasing demand from parents, public schools in China's largest cities are heading toward a two-track system—the traditional stream that prepares students for the national college-entrance examination (the gaokao), and a new one that prepares them for the SAT Reasoning Test and the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or Toefl. Some of China's very best public schools, where the smartest and wealthiest students congregate, will one day become international in focus. Get prepared: A wave of young Chinese students is about to wash across America.
But there's a problem. For most Chinese students, secondary education means lectures and memorization and cramming for exams. Other skills—like communication, critical thinking, and speaking English—get slighted. As a result, these students often show up in freshman classes unprepared for the challenge of an American college education.
English presents their biggest problem, and the problem is deceptive. Most colleges carefully screen Chinese applicants using test scores and essays, even interviews at times. They admit applicants qualified on paper who often struggle after enrollment. What has gone wrong? Colleges use criteria that are easily fudged—SAT cram schools and ghostwritten essays are fixtures throughout China—and at first glance, unreliable tests and essays are the prime suspects. And no doubt they deserve some of the blame: The file of many a Chinese applicant is a manufactured confection.
Yet the real language problem is a more subtle one, and one that's not really a language problem at all. It's a thinking problem. Because to read and write and analyze English like a native speaker, Chinese students first have to start thinking like a native speaker. This is difficult when they've long been trained to think in Chinese.
In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, the Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf writes that brain scans of native English and Chinese speakers show that each group relies on different mental processes to read. English is phonological, so English readers can sound out words when they read; written Chinese is not, so hundreds of mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects can use the same written script. English speakers access audio-sensory parts of their brain to "hear" a text, while Chinese speakers use visual-sensory parts to "see" a text, she explains. To teach a Chinese person to read well in English thus entails a significant rewiring of the brain, and while science says this is possible, there's nothing quick or easy or fun about it.
There's another complication. Westerners and Chinese have different mind-sets, and even fluent English-speaking Chinese can misinterpret English texts. In The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently ... and Why, the social psychologist Richard Nisbett explains that Western civilization emphasizes debate and logic, while Chinese civilization prefers harmony and groupthink. Good English builds a formal structure of Aristotelian logic, while good Chinese demonstrates a chaotic stream-of-consciousness beauty.
I've worked with Chinese students at Shenzhen High School and now at Peking University High School, in Beijing, who intend to head abroad. I've seen how our students have been trained to read a Chinese text like they're taking a walk in the woods, as a free, spontaneous, and emotional experience. They've been taught to admire the whole of the vision—the trees, the sky, the stream—then breathe the fresh autumn air and delight at suddenly seeing a jaybird. This is an appropriate technique for reading Chinese, but not for reading English, which demands a more structured approach. The traditional Chinese curriculum does not teach concepts such as thesis, logic, support, evidence, and structure.
Thus we teach our students that reading an English text is like heading out in a big city: The walk has to be planned, deliberate, and meticulous, or it will end in an alley of confusion. In our classes, students start by drawing a road map, representing the structure of the text, then identify the destination, representing the text's thesis, and finally check the soundness of the route by analyzing the text's logic, evidence, and support.
We teach our students to identify the thesis and then draw the road map so they can appreciate the tightness and coherence of the structure. We teach them that each paragraph represents one coherent idea and ask them to highlight the first sentence of the paragraph in yellow and the last sentence in red. We then ask them to draw boxes around pronouns so that they can identify the subject, underline synonyms to identify the theme, and circle new vocabulary to understand the meaning. We ask them to group related words and phrases into bubbles, which helps develop their vocabulary. Finally, we ask them to summarize each paragraph in one simple sentence. By using this technique, our students can see the structure of the text and understand the flow of the thesis.
Although our reading program is a work in progress, we have seen some dramatic improvements over the semester it has been in place. At the outset, our students wrote quickly and haphazardly, producing incomprehensible homework. Now that they've begun to change their approach to reading a text, they're turning in well-argued and well-structured five-paragraph essays. And just as important, they've become more observant and reflective.
There is a message here for colleges about to be flooded with Chinese undergraduates: Most of these students are going to need English-language assistance. And the traditional remedial-English curriculum is not going to help them much. They are going to need remedial courses tailored to the Chinese mind, courses that change the way they think and give them the opportunity to thrive in an American academic environment unfettered by a mind-set in Chinese.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Little Emperor Syndrome (Diplomat)
There’s no consensus on the best parenting style, but, thanks to Amy Chua, at least we know that Chinese and American parents are different. But is that really the case?
In her book Factory Girls, with a picture from her family album, Leslie T. Chang illustrates the traditional Chinese model of parenting:
‘My grandfather returned to China in the summer of 1927 (after seven years in the United States). On his first day home, his father organized a celebration in the village for his favourite son, who had brought honour to the family by going all the way to America. On the second day, the patriarch took out a wooden rod called a jiafa – used in traditional households to discipline children and servants – and beat him with it. In America, his son had switched from studying literature to mining engineering without parental approval, never mind that his father was 7,000 miles away and understood nothing of the American university system. In a Chinese family, a father’s word was law. The beating was so severe that my grandfather could not sit down for several days.’
For Chinese, children are merely an extension of the father, and a child’s main virtue is his obedience. In contrast, American parents will usually nurture their child’s individual ambition and talent. Or at least that’s according to David Halberstam’s book The Amateurs, which profiles the US 1984 Olympic rowing team, and thus offers a snapshot of American aristocratic values and culture. The book’s protagonist is Tiff Wood, a Boston Beacon Hill Brahmin whose striving for individual excellence and distinction is incubated by family privilege and status:
‘(The 11-year-old Tiff Wood and his father Richard Wood) had gone mountain climbing in New Hampshire, and very high up they had come to a tiny pool of water that was at most 20 feet in diameter. The water was absolutely ice cold. Above it stood a very steep mountain cliff, perhaps 30 feet high. Anyone diving from it to the pool would have to make an almost perfect dive or be splattered on the rocks. Richard Wood had taken one look at the cliff and known exactly what was going to happen. Tiff was going to want to dive in, but the pool was so small that he could easily miss it. “It’d really be something to dive in from there,” Tiff had said. “I think I’ll pass,” Richard Wood had said. He had watched as Tiff had measured the distance and he thought, Do I tell him not to do it? He had decided, no, he could not forbid him, and Tiff had made one dive and done it cleanly, a dive into water that no one in his right mind would want to swim in in the first place.’
Richard Wood’s parenting could not be more different from Leslie Chang’s great-grandfather’s parenting, and these two examples seem to confirm the Chinese and American parenting stereotypes. But, in her Atlantic Monthly article ‘How to Land Your Kid in Therapy,’ the therapist and mother Lori Gottlieb implies that Richard Wood’s parenting is now a thing of the past. American parents are obsessed with their kids’ happiness and success, Gottlieb writes, and ‘parental overinvestment is contributing to a burgeoning generational narcissism that’s hurting our kids.’
Living in a self-reinforcing bubble of constant praise and achievement, Gottlieb argues, upper class American children are unprepared for the real world where they will no longer be the centre of the universe: they can’t deal with those who are negative and demanding (their boss), those who can’t appreciate their uniqueness (their colleagues), and those who don’t share their belief that the world will stop revolving without them (everyone except their parents). They’ll drift from job to job, but it’ll be okay because mommy and daddy will be there to write checks for everything: the Manhattan East Village apartment, yoga classes, car insurance, the independent documentary project, and eventually the therapy sessions.
Reading Gottlieb’s article, I couldn’t help but take a red pen, underline sentence after sentence, and write in the margins, ‘OMG – these are my students’ parents!’
You would think that as director of the Peking University High School International Division in the tiger den of Beijing, I’d be fighting ferociously for my life against Tiger Parents. I wish! The upper class Chinese parents we deal with are like those described in Gottlieb’s article: over-protective, refusing to even consider the possibility of failure or adversity for their child.
Our students’ marks hover on average around 60 percent, and in response their parents don’t harangue their child to do better but rather call us to complain that our curriculum is too difficult. ‘You need to encourage students by giving higher marks,’ remarked one parent. When we organized a one-week canoeing trip in the United States, one parent complained that canoeing would be too dangerous. And then when he realized that the trip would also involve mosquitoes, sunburn, crappy food, and physical exertion, he anxiously called us everyday. Even those parents who seemed hard and demanding would just melt at the thought of their child in tears over a failed test or a broken fingernail.
‘Little emperor syndrome’ is a pervasive social phenomenon in China attributed to the one-child policy and the abysmal poverty today’s parents experienced during the Cultural Revolution. But I think Gottlieb’s reason for why American parents spoil their child applies equally to Chinese parents: the spiritual emptiness in society today, and using one’s child to fill this void. Like American parents, Chinese parents hope their child succeeds, but what they really want is for their cute and dependent child to be always so.
And by seeking meaning in their child, as Lori Gottlieb warns in her article, Chinese and American parents doom their child to a life of meaninglessness.
In her book Factory Girls, with a picture from her family album, Leslie T. Chang illustrates the traditional Chinese model of parenting:
‘My grandfather returned to China in the summer of 1927 (after seven years in the United States). On his first day home, his father organized a celebration in the village for his favourite son, who had brought honour to the family by going all the way to America. On the second day, the patriarch took out a wooden rod called a jiafa – used in traditional households to discipline children and servants – and beat him with it. In America, his son had switched from studying literature to mining engineering without parental approval, never mind that his father was 7,000 miles away and understood nothing of the American university system. In a Chinese family, a father’s word was law. The beating was so severe that my grandfather could not sit down for several days.’
For Chinese, children are merely an extension of the father, and a child’s main virtue is his obedience. In contrast, American parents will usually nurture their child’s individual ambition and talent. Or at least that’s according to David Halberstam’s book The Amateurs, which profiles the US 1984 Olympic rowing team, and thus offers a snapshot of American aristocratic values and culture. The book’s protagonist is Tiff Wood, a Boston Beacon Hill Brahmin whose striving for individual excellence and distinction is incubated by family privilege and status:
‘(The 11-year-old Tiff Wood and his father Richard Wood) had gone mountain climbing in New Hampshire, and very high up they had come to a tiny pool of water that was at most 20 feet in diameter. The water was absolutely ice cold. Above it stood a very steep mountain cliff, perhaps 30 feet high. Anyone diving from it to the pool would have to make an almost perfect dive or be splattered on the rocks. Richard Wood had taken one look at the cliff and known exactly what was going to happen. Tiff was going to want to dive in, but the pool was so small that he could easily miss it. “It’d really be something to dive in from there,” Tiff had said. “I think I’ll pass,” Richard Wood had said. He had watched as Tiff had measured the distance and he thought, Do I tell him not to do it? He had decided, no, he could not forbid him, and Tiff had made one dive and done it cleanly, a dive into water that no one in his right mind would want to swim in in the first place.’
Richard Wood’s parenting could not be more different from Leslie Chang’s great-grandfather’s parenting, and these two examples seem to confirm the Chinese and American parenting stereotypes. But, in her Atlantic Monthly article ‘How to Land Your Kid in Therapy,’ the therapist and mother Lori Gottlieb implies that Richard Wood’s parenting is now a thing of the past. American parents are obsessed with their kids’ happiness and success, Gottlieb writes, and ‘parental overinvestment is contributing to a burgeoning generational narcissism that’s hurting our kids.’
Living in a self-reinforcing bubble of constant praise and achievement, Gottlieb argues, upper class American children are unprepared for the real world where they will no longer be the centre of the universe: they can’t deal with those who are negative and demanding (their boss), those who can’t appreciate their uniqueness (their colleagues), and those who don’t share their belief that the world will stop revolving without them (everyone except their parents). They’ll drift from job to job, but it’ll be okay because mommy and daddy will be there to write checks for everything: the Manhattan East Village apartment, yoga classes, car insurance, the independent documentary project, and eventually the therapy sessions.
Reading Gottlieb’s article, I couldn’t help but take a red pen, underline sentence after sentence, and write in the margins, ‘OMG – these are my students’ parents!’
You would think that as director of the Peking University High School International Division in the tiger den of Beijing, I’d be fighting ferociously for my life against Tiger Parents. I wish! The upper class Chinese parents we deal with are like those described in Gottlieb’s article: over-protective, refusing to even consider the possibility of failure or adversity for their child.
Our students’ marks hover on average around 60 percent, and in response their parents don’t harangue their child to do better but rather call us to complain that our curriculum is too difficult. ‘You need to encourage students by giving higher marks,’ remarked one parent. When we organized a one-week canoeing trip in the United States, one parent complained that canoeing would be too dangerous. And then when he realized that the trip would also involve mosquitoes, sunburn, crappy food, and physical exertion, he anxiously called us everyday. Even those parents who seemed hard and demanding would just melt at the thought of their child in tears over a failed test or a broken fingernail.
‘Little emperor syndrome’ is a pervasive social phenomenon in China attributed to the one-child policy and the abysmal poverty today’s parents experienced during the Cultural Revolution. But I think Gottlieb’s reason for why American parents spoil their child applies equally to Chinese parents: the spiritual emptiness in society today, and using one’s child to fill this void. Like American parents, Chinese parents hope their child succeeds, but what they really want is for their cute and dependent child to be always so.
And by seeking meaning in their child, as Lori Gottlieb warns in her article, Chinese and American parents doom their child to a life of meaninglessness.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
How China Kills Creativity (Diplomat)
Nowadays people may admire China’s economy, but not Chinese creativity. Chinese architecture and art, music and movies are derivative, and many a Chinese enterprise is merely a carbon copy of an American one. China’s best schools may produce the world’s best test-takers, but the United States’ best schools produce the world’s most creative talent.
In his book The Social Animal, David Brooks outlines the four-step learning process that teaches students to be creative: knowledge acquisition (research), internalization (familiarity with material), self-questioning and examination (review and discussion), and the ordering and mastery of this knowledge (thesis formulation and essay writing).
However, this isn’t a linear process, Brooks points out, which means that the learner ‘(surfs) in and out of his unconscious, getting the conscious and unconscious processes to work together – first mastering core knowledge, then letting that knowledge marinate playfully in his mind, then wilfully trying to impose order on it, then allowing the mind to consolidate and merge the data, then returning and returning until some magical insight popped into his consciousness, and then riding that insight to a finished product.’
‘The process was not easy, but each ounce of effort and each moment of frustration and struggle pushed the internal construction project another little step,’ David Brooks continues. ‘By the end, (the learner) was seeing the world around him in a new way.’
But what permits our brains to turn a chaotic sea of random facts and knowledge into an island of calm understanding? Believe it or not, it’s our emotions that permit us ultimately to become creative thinkers. In his book The Accidental Mind, the neuroscientist David J. Linden explains how emotions organize our memories:
‘In our lives, we have a lot of experiences and many of these we will remember until we die. We have many mechanisms for determining which experiences are stored (where were you on 9/11?) and which are discarded (what did you have for dinner exactly 1 month ago?). Some memories will fade with time and some will be distorted by generalization (can you distinctly remember your seventeenth haircut?). We need a signal to say, “This is an important memory. Write this down and underline it.” That signal is emotion. When you have feelings of fear or joy or love or anger or sadness, these mark your experiences as being particularly meaningful…These are the memories that confer your individuality. And that function, memory indexed by emotion, more than anything else, is what a brain is good for.’
What this means is that memories are ultimately emotional experiences, and that effectively learning must involve the learner emotionally. The very best US schools are seen as such because they inspire their students to be curious, interested, and excited; China’s very best schools gain their reputation by doing the opposite.
Thinking is the conscious effort of applying our memories to understand a new external stimulus, and creativity is asserting individual control over this process to create a synthesis between memory and stimuli. In other words, thinking is really about applying previous emotional experiences to understand a new emotional experience, whilst creativity is the mixing of old and new emotional experiences to a create an entirely new and original emotional experience.
The best US education institutions endow students with creativity by providing a relaxed and secure learning environment in which students share in the refined emotional experiences of humanity by reading books and developing the logic necessary to share in collective emotional experiences through debate and essay writing. A dynamic learning environment allows students at many US schools to feel joy and despair, frustration and triumph, and it’s these ups and downs that encode the creative learning process into our neural infrastructure and make it so transformative.
A Chinese school is both a stressful and stale place, forcing students to remember facts in order to excel in tests. Neuroscientists know that stress hampers the ability of the brain to convert experience into memory, and psychologists know that rewarding students solely for test performance leads to stress, cheating, and disinterest in learning. But ultimately, the most harmful thing that a Chinese school does, from a creativity perspective, is the way in which it separates emotion from memory by making learning an unemotional experience.
Whatever individual emotions Chinese students try to bring into the classroom, they are quickly stamped out. As I have previously written, from the first day of school, students who ask questions are silenced and those who try to exert any individuality are punished. What they learn is irrelevant and de-personalized, abstract and distant, further removing emotion from learning. If any emotion is involved, it’s pain. But the pain is so constant and monotonous (scolding teachers, demanding parents, mindless memorization, long hours of sitting in a cramped classroom) that it eventually ceases to be an emotion.
To understand the consequences of Chinese pedagogy, consider the example of ‘Solomon Shereshevskii, a Russian journalist born in 1886, who could remember everything,’ whom David Brooks writes about in The Social Animal:
‘In one experiment, researchers showed Shereshevskii a complex formula of thirty letters and numbers on a piece of paper. Then they put the paper in a box and sealed it for fifteen years. When they took the paper out, Shereshevskii could remember it exactly…Shereshevskii could remember, but he couldn’t distil. He lived in a random blizzard of facts, but could not organize them into repeating patterns. Eventually he couldn’t make sense of metaphors, similes, poems, or even complex sentences.’
Shereshevskii had a neural defect that prohibited his brain from prioritizing, synthesizing, and controlling his memories to permit him to formulate an understanding of self and the world. Like many a Chinese student today, he could experience, but he could not feel.
Chinese schools are producing a nation of Shereshevskiis, students with photographic memory and instant recall, but who can never be creative.
In his book The Social Animal, David Brooks outlines the four-step learning process that teaches students to be creative: knowledge acquisition (research), internalization (familiarity with material), self-questioning and examination (review and discussion), and the ordering and mastery of this knowledge (thesis formulation and essay writing).
However, this isn’t a linear process, Brooks points out, which means that the learner ‘(surfs) in and out of his unconscious, getting the conscious and unconscious processes to work together – first mastering core knowledge, then letting that knowledge marinate playfully in his mind, then wilfully trying to impose order on it, then allowing the mind to consolidate and merge the data, then returning and returning until some magical insight popped into his consciousness, and then riding that insight to a finished product.’
‘The process was not easy, but each ounce of effort and each moment of frustration and struggle pushed the internal construction project another little step,’ David Brooks continues. ‘By the end, (the learner) was seeing the world around him in a new way.’
But what permits our brains to turn a chaotic sea of random facts and knowledge into an island of calm understanding? Believe it or not, it’s our emotions that permit us ultimately to become creative thinkers. In his book The Accidental Mind, the neuroscientist David J. Linden explains how emotions organize our memories:
‘In our lives, we have a lot of experiences and many of these we will remember until we die. We have many mechanisms for determining which experiences are stored (where were you on 9/11?) and which are discarded (what did you have for dinner exactly 1 month ago?). Some memories will fade with time and some will be distorted by generalization (can you distinctly remember your seventeenth haircut?). We need a signal to say, “This is an important memory. Write this down and underline it.” That signal is emotion. When you have feelings of fear or joy or love or anger or sadness, these mark your experiences as being particularly meaningful…These are the memories that confer your individuality. And that function, memory indexed by emotion, more than anything else, is what a brain is good for.’
What this means is that memories are ultimately emotional experiences, and that effectively learning must involve the learner emotionally. The very best US schools are seen as such because they inspire their students to be curious, interested, and excited; China’s very best schools gain their reputation by doing the opposite.
Thinking is the conscious effort of applying our memories to understand a new external stimulus, and creativity is asserting individual control over this process to create a synthesis between memory and stimuli. In other words, thinking is really about applying previous emotional experiences to understand a new emotional experience, whilst creativity is the mixing of old and new emotional experiences to a create an entirely new and original emotional experience.
The best US education institutions endow students with creativity by providing a relaxed and secure learning environment in which students share in the refined emotional experiences of humanity by reading books and developing the logic necessary to share in collective emotional experiences through debate and essay writing. A dynamic learning environment allows students at many US schools to feel joy and despair, frustration and triumph, and it’s these ups and downs that encode the creative learning process into our neural infrastructure and make it so transformative.
A Chinese school is both a stressful and stale place, forcing students to remember facts in order to excel in tests. Neuroscientists know that stress hampers the ability of the brain to convert experience into memory, and psychologists know that rewarding students solely for test performance leads to stress, cheating, and disinterest in learning. But ultimately, the most harmful thing that a Chinese school does, from a creativity perspective, is the way in which it separates emotion from memory by making learning an unemotional experience.
Whatever individual emotions Chinese students try to bring into the classroom, they are quickly stamped out. As I have previously written, from the first day of school, students who ask questions are silenced and those who try to exert any individuality are punished. What they learn is irrelevant and de-personalized, abstract and distant, further removing emotion from learning. If any emotion is involved, it’s pain. But the pain is so constant and monotonous (scolding teachers, demanding parents, mindless memorization, long hours of sitting in a cramped classroom) that it eventually ceases to be an emotion.
To understand the consequences of Chinese pedagogy, consider the example of ‘Solomon Shereshevskii, a Russian journalist born in 1886, who could remember everything,’ whom David Brooks writes about in The Social Animal:
‘In one experiment, researchers showed Shereshevskii a complex formula of thirty letters and numbers on a piece of paper. Then they put the paper in a box and sealed it for fifteen years. When they took the paper out, Shereshevskii could remember it exactly…Shereshevskii could remember, but he couldn’t distil. He lived in a random blizzard of facts, but could not organize them into repeating patterns. Eventually he couldn’t make sense of metaphors, similes, poems, or even complex sentences.’
Shereshevskii had a neural defect that prohibited his brain from prioritizing, synthesizing, and controlling his memories to permit him to formulate an understanding of self and the world. Like many a Chinese student today, he could experience, but he could not feel.
Chinese schools are producing a nation of Shereshevskiis, students with photographic memory and instant recall, but who can never be creative.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Sending Chinese Students Abroad (Diplomat)
Recently, writers in both the United States and China have been critically exploring the growing trend of Chinese students studying in America.
In his Businessweek article ‘China Rush to US Colleges Reveals Predatory Fees for Recruits,’ Daniel Golden explores how unscrupulous Americans and Chinese make false promises to wealthy but ignorant Chinese students.
In The Daily Illini, Zhou Yeran exposes a study abroad programme that takes ill-prepared Chinese students and leaves them to fend for themselves on US campuses.
But there’s no American conspiracy to defraud rich Chinese. First, as Professor X tells us in the Atlantic Monthly, US higher education provides an equally unsatisfactory education to both unqualified Americans and Chinese. Moreover, it’s no secret among rich Chinese that they’re overpaying for an inferior education when they send their child to the United States.
Last week, the Chinese Communist Party’s English mouthpiece China Daily ran an article ‘More Chinese flock to US schools but at a steep price, a fierce criticism of the trend of Chinese students studying in the United States:
‘Dennis Wang and Herman Qiao, both 18, are absolutely sick of being in the United States. “We don’t want to spend a single day more than necessary in the US,” said Wang…Both, like many Chinese students who have come to the US for a high school education, feel a sense of being lost, isolation and of not being integrated into the social spheres at their high schools at a time when many students that age are finding out who they are.’
The question that arises in both articles by Daniel Golden and Zhou Yeran is why rich Chinese who became so by understanding risk would risk their child with complete strangers in a different culture. The China Daily article offers an explanation of the seeming irrationality driving the phenomenon of Chinese students studying in the United States:
‘On many weekends, Dennis Wang is out of the house partying with his Chinese friends at someone else’s house, free from adult supervision. That can be a bad formula for destruction, said George Zhao, who used to be a Chinese student host in Southern California. ‘These young people will run into trouble. It would be a surprise if they don’t.’
Zhao also said many lack a healthy relationship with their parents. ‘It’s not unusual that the parents worked hard to accumulate wealth but neglected their children. Now they hope the US school to fix their children.’
Bingo!
There are currently 128,000 Chinese students studying in US colleges and universities, and there are many reasons why they opt to do so. But a disturbing trend is how rich Chinese parents are paying US schools to take their troubled child off their hands.
Last year, when we at the Peking University High School International Division selected our students, we didn’t consider our students’ relationship with parents in our admissions decision: It was a naïve and costly mistake.
After a year, we realized there are no smart or stupid students: Whether our students choose to use the Internet to read the New York Times or play World of Warcraft is determined by the student’s relationship with his parents. Those students that come from supportive and loving, tolerant and progressive families thrive here, while those who don’t have turned out to be too much to handle. It seems some parents just dump their problem child on us, and run away.
Last semester, one particularly problematic student was caught stealing. We presented evidence of her crime to this student, but she denied her guilt. Her mother came, and stood by her daughter. So we felt we had no choice but to expel this student, and her mother subsequently spent six months suing our school for tarnishing her daughter’s reputation.
I believe this mother was driven by something more than money or revenge. She sought to prove her daughter’s innocence because her daughter’s guilt would force her to look in the mirror. If she could, this mother might have been tempted to sue us for fraud. After all, she paid the tuition money so that we would take the problem away from her, not throw it back at her.
Each time we face a troubled student we find ourselves in the middle of a family struggle; either the student is trying to win his parents’ attention, or break away from his parents’ strangling grasp.
That’s why we decided that with our new group of students we would emphasize students’ family relationship and psychological well-being in our admissions decision.
And, in doing so, what we now realize is that wealthy and healthy families who want to send their child abroad are the rare minority in China.
This is also a strong warning to all those US high schools and colleges looking to recruit Chinese students. Yes, $50,000 a year does sound a lot of money, but just wait until you meet these kids.
In his Businessweek article ‘China Rush to US Colleges Reveals Predatory Fees for Recruits,’ Daniel Golden explores how unscrupulous Americans and Chinese make false promises to wealthy but ignorant Chinese students.
In The Daily Illini, Zhou Yeran exposes a study abroad programme that takes ill-prepared Chinese students and leaves them to fend for themselves on US campuses.
But there’s no American conspiracy to defraud rich Chinese. First, as Professor X tells us in the Atlantic Monthly, US higher education provides an equally unsatisfactory education to both unqualified Americans and Chinese. Moreover, it’s no secret among rich Chinese that they’re overpaying for an inferior education when they send their child to the United States.
Last week, the Chinese Communist Party’s English mouthpiece China Daily ran an article ‘More Chinese flock to US schools but at a steep price, a fierce criticism of the trend of Chinese students studying in the United States:
‘Dennis Wang and Herman Qiao, both 18, are absolutely sick of being in the United States. “We don’t want to spend a single day more than necessary in the US,” said Wang…Both, like many Chinese students who have come to the US for a high school education, feel a sense of being lost, isolation and of not being integrated into the social spheres at their high schools at a time when many students that age are finding out who they are.’
The question that arises in both articles by Daniel Golden and Zhou Yeran is why rich Chinese who became so by understanding risk would risk their child with complete strangers in a different culture. The China Daily article offers an explanation of the seeming irrationality driving the phenomenon of Chinese students studying in the United States:
‘On many weekends, Dennis Wang is out of the house partying with his Chinese friends at someone else’s house, free from adult supervision. That can be a bad formula for destruction, said George Zhao, who used to be a Chinese student host in Southern California. ‘These young people will run into trouble. It would be a surprise if they don’t.’
Zhao also said many lack a healthy relationship with their parents. ‘It’s not unusual that the parents worked hard to accumulate wealth but neglected their children. Now they hope the US school to fix their children.’
Bingo!
There are currently 128,000 Chinese students studying in US colleges and universities, and there are many reasons why they opt to do so. But a disturbing trend is how rich Chinese parents are paying US schools to take their troubled child off their hands.
Last year, when we at the Peking University High School International Division selected our students, we didn’t consider our students’ relationship with parents in our admissions decision: It was a naïve and costly mistake.
After a year, we realized there are no smart or stupid students: Whether our students choose to use the Internet to read the New York Times or play World of Warcraft is determined by the student’s relationship with his parents. Those students that come from supportive and loving, tolerant and progressive families thrive here, while those who don’t have turned out to be too much to handle. It seems some parents just dump their problem child on us, and run away.
Last semester, one particularly problematic student was caught stealing. We presented evidence of her crime to this student, but she denied her guilt. Her mother came, and stood by her daughter. So we felt we had no choice but to expel this student, and her mother subsequently spent six months suing our school for tarnishing her daughter’s reputation.
I believe this mother was driven by something more than money or revenge. She sought to prove her daughter’s innocence because her daughter’s guilt would force her to look in the mirror. If she could, this mother might have been tempted to sue us for fraud. After all, she paid the tuition money so that we would take the problem away from her, not throw it back at her.
Each time we face a troubled student we find ourselves in the middle of a family struggle; either the student is trying to win his parents’ attention, or break away from his parents’ strangling grasp.
That’s why we decided that with our new group of students we would emphasize students’ family relationship and psychological well-being in our admissions decision.
And, in doing so, what we now realize is that wealthy and healthy families who want to send their child abroad are the rare minority in China.
This is also a strong warning to all those US high schools and colleges looking to recruit Chinese students. Yes, $50,000 a year does sound a lot of money, but just wait until you meet these kids.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Resistance Futile in Chinese Class (Diplomat)
Last week, I visited a Shenzhen elementary school in a haunting but revelatory experience.
I sat in on a grade one English class taught by the school’s best English teacher, an attractive twenty-something Chinese woman dressed in a white blouse and black skirt. This was a ‘show classroom,’ a class performed by the same teacher with the same 35 students for visiting ‘dignitaries.’ Within 40 minutes, the teacher, with control and precision, went from textbook reading to group work to audio-visual vocabulary drilling back to group work, and concluded with vocabulary testing.
In the dim cramped classroom, I noticed a student who yawned and stretched his arms and legs, and complained how simple and boring the class was.
While the class seemed like a frenzy of activity, very little learning actually occurred. First graders are sponges, and ought to be reading English children’s books; instead, they just did simple vocabulary drills.
Much more perturbing was that the teacher didn’t seem to notice the children’s presence. In another instance of form over substance in China, the teacher stood on her lectern, and performed her routine without engaging the students and offering them constructive feedback. And group work, in which the students splintered off to reinforce each other’s Chinglish, seemed like the herding of sheep. The disinterest of the teacher translated into apathy, laziness, and dullness among the students.
A good elementary school teacher appreciates and cherishes the curiosity, energy, and diversity of her first grade classroom. But Chinese elementary school teachers have been taught to ignore students who raise hands, silence students who ask questions, and punish any students who stand out. And this Chinese woman was doing her job rather too well.
By creating a stale, structured, and simplistic learning environment, she was crushing the natural enthusiasm and curiosity of her students. It was a disheartening sight: Siting in the back of the classroom, I could see the windows darken and the walls close in around the students as they sought eagerly and innocently to explore the world, challenge boundaries, and open their minds.
What I was witnessing in that Shenzhen first grade classroom was, in other words, nothing less than the methodical and mechanical dismantling of the human soul. As I walked around the campus, I noticed that the spark in the eyes of the first graders had died out in the older kids – a natural consequence of the ‘education’ they were receiving. Resistance is, indeed, futile.
In his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described the qualities of an ideal learning environment that could be applied to the family home, the school classroom, and the work office:
‘The family context promoting optimal experience could be described as having five characteristics. The first one is clarity: the teenagers feel that they know what their parents expect from them – goals and feedback in the family interaction are unambiguous. The second is centering, or the children’s perception that their parents are interested in what they are doing in the present, in their concrete feelings and experiences, rather than being preoccupied with whether they will be getting into a good college or obtaining a well-paying job. Next is the issue of choice: children feel that they have a variety of possibilities from which to choose, including that of breaking parental rules – as long as they are prepared to face the consequences. The fourth differentiating characteristic is commitment, or the trust that allows the child to feel comfortable enough to set aside the shield of his defences, and become unselfconsciously involved in whatever he is interested in. And finally there is challenge, or the parents’ dedication to provide increasingly complex opportunities for action to their children.’
The Shenzhen elementary school classroom fails on all five counts. The classroom suffered from hypocrisy (the teacher pretended to want the students to learn, while really wanting them to just sit still), from an emphasis on test performance, from rigidity, from teacher apathy and disengagement, and from a repetitive mundaneness.
At the end of my visit, I went into a sixth grade classroom where they were immersed in an English listening test. I walked around, as the students listened to an English audio recording; the recording would pronounce an English word, and the students had to circle the word on their multiple-choice answer sheet. I noticed a particularly serious student, and looked at her answer sheet. Her answers were all wrong. In fact, as I looked closer, I couldn’t find any of the correct answers on her page. When I looked over at her neighbour’s test sheet, I realized why: she was on the wrong page of the test book.
Here was this young Chinese girl who looked so serious, but really didn’t even care enough to find the right test page. Or maybe she just knew something the other kids didn’t.
I sat in on a grade one English class taught by the school’s best English teacher, an attractive twenty-something Chinese woman dressed in a white blouse and black skirt. This was a ‘show classroom,’ a class performed by the same teacher with the same 35 students for visiting ‘dignitaries.’ Within 40 minutes, the teacher, with control and precision, went from textbook reading to group work to audio-visual vocabulary drilling back to group work, and concluded with vocabulary testing.
In the dim cramped classroom, I noticed a student who yawned and stretched his arms and legs, and complained how simple and boring the class was.
While the class seemed like a frenzy of activity, very little learning actually occurred. First graders are sponges, and ought to be reading English children’s books; instead, they just did simple vocabulary drills.
Much more perturbing was that the teacher didn’t seem to notice the children’s presence. In another instance of form over substance in China, the teacher stood on her lectern, and performed her routine without engaging the students and offering them constructive feedback. And group work, in which the students splintered off to reinforce each other’s Chinglish, seemed like the herding of sheep. The disinterest of the teacher translated into apathy, laziness, and dullness among the students.
A good elementary school teacher appreciates and cherishes the curiosity, energy, and diversity of her first grade classroom. But Chinese elementary school teachers have been taught to ignore students who raise hands, silence students who ask questions, and punish any students who stand out. And this Chinese woman was doing her job rather too well.
By creating a stale, structured, and simplistic learning environment, she was crushing the natural enthusiasm and curiosity of her students. It was a disheartening sight: Siting in the back of the classroom, I could see the windows darken and the walls close in around the students as they sought eagerly and innocently to explore the world, challenge boundaries, and open their minds.
What I was witnessing in that Shenzhen first grade classroom was, in other words, nothing less than the methodical and mechanical dismantling of the human soul. As I walked around the campus, I noticed that the spark in the eyes of the first graders had died out in the older kids – a natural consequence of the ‘education’ they were receiving. Resistance is, indeed, futile.
In his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described the qualities of an ideal learning environment that could be applied to the family home, the school classroom, and the work office:
‘The family context promoting optimal experience could be described as having five characteristics. The first one is clarity: the teenagers feel that they know what their parents expect from them – goals and feedback in the family interaction are unambiguous. The second is centering, or the children’s perception that their parents are interested in what they are doing in the present, in their concrete feelings and experiences, rather than being preoccupied with whether they will be getting into a good college or obtaining a well-paying job. Next is the issue of choice: children feel that they have a variety of possibilities from which to choose, including that of breaking parental rules – as long as they are prepared to face the consequences. The fourth differentiating characteristic is commitment, or the trust that allows the child to feel comfortable enough to set aside the shield of his defences, and become unselfconsciously involved in whatever he is interested in. And finally there is challenge, or the parents’ dedication to provide increasingly complex opportunities for action to their children.’
The Shenzhen elementary school classroom fails on all five counts. The classroom suffered from hypocrisy (the teacher pretended to want the students to learn, while really wanting them to just sit still), from an emphasis on test performance, from rigidity, from teacher apathy and disengagement, and from a repetitive mundaneness.
At the end of my visit, I went into a sixth grade classroom where they were immersed in an English listening test. I walked around, as the students listened to an English audio recording; the recording would pronounce an English word, and the students had to circle the word on their multiple-choice answer sheet. I noticed a particularly serious student, and looked at her answer sheet. Her answers were all wrong. In fact, as I looked closer, I couldn’t find any of the correct answers on her page. When I looked over at her neighbour’s test sheet, I realized why: she was on the wrong page of the test book.
Here was this young Chinese girl who looked so serious, but really didn’t even care enough to find the right test page. Or maybe she just knew something the other kids didn’t.
Friday, June 3, 2011
The Sad Truth of China's Education (Diplomat)
June 7 and 8 are the two days that China’s senior three students (twelfth graders) have lived the first 18 years of their lives for, and whatever anxiety, neurosis, and insanity that has simmered beneath the surface among students, parents, and teachers this past year will now reach its climax.
Everyone’s in agreement: the national college entrance examination (gaokao) robs Chinese students of their curiosity, creativity, and childhood. So as gaokao students, with their thick textbooks and memory pills, sequester themselves in four-star hotels while their parents prowl the neighbourhood for construction noise and rambunctious restaurant patrons, now might be a good time to devise an alternative to the gaokao.
In his book A Theory of Justice, the political philosopher John Rawls conducted a thought experiment in which people, shrouded under a ‘veil of ignorance,’ were asked to devise a new social structure to live under. Unsure of their lot in this new society, people would be risk-averse, John Rawls assumed, and would agree to a society that ‘maximised the minimum,’ which is to say a society that aimed for equality, fairness, and social mobility.
So let us return to John Rawls’ ‘original position’ and ‘veil of ignorance,’ gather 1.3 billion Chinese into a nice conference room, and see if we can all work together to negotiate an alternative to the gaokao.
Because everyone in the room has Chinese cultural values and lives in the not too pleasant realities of modern China, there’ll be certain constraints that this new education system must consider. First, every Chinese can agree that this new education system ought to be a meritocracy and that the most diligent and brightest students ought to reach the top.
Second, every Chinese can agree that China has limited education resources for too many people; while it would be nice to educate everyone to the best ability of the state as is the case in Finland and Singapore, China is too poor to do so. Third, China is a guanxi-based society with little respect for institutions, processes, and laws; whatever new system that everyone agrees to must be able to resist the pull and power of the well-connected and wealthy. Fourth, Chinese can agree that education is first and foremost about social mobility (rather than about national economic development), about the opportunity for anyone who is willing to work hard to rise in society.
So, given all this, we can now begin constructing an alternative to the gaokao.
First, this alternative must be an objective indicator of a student’s academic performance. College admissions committees or admission interviews would be unacceptable because it would offer too much power to individuals and institutions that can’t be trusted. No one would agree to a college lottery whereby qualified students are just randomly assigned a college. And artificial intelligence technology hasn’t yet advanced to the point where computers can replace college admissions officers. Thus, the only alternative seems to be a series of tests.
But even with tests we need to consider what we want to test. If we were to test writing and thinking ability, then that would mean an automatic bias towards the children of well-educated parents who have from an early age discuss books, current affairs, and travel plans with their child over the dinner table. Moreover, to teach thinking and writing (or any soft skills such as creativity and collaboration) would require highly specialised and highly professional teachers who would naturally congregate in expensive private schools or prestigious public schools in Beijing and Shanghai. And if this were the case, China would just be like the United States, where education is monopolised by the self-perpetuating and self-interested educated elite, and social mobility through education becomes a distant dream for everyone else.
But China has 800 million peasants who depend on schooling as their child’s only chance out of the rice fields. Rural children don’t have access to the libraries, well-trained teachers, and intellectual spaces that wealthy cities can offer — all they have is their willingness to work hard to improve themselves. If Chinese believe in fairness and social mobility, then tests must be more about the student’s ability to memorise the textbooks he has access to, rather than about his ability to think critically, which is the result of making the most of a special set of resources available only to society’s elite.
So, if we were to start from scratch and try to build an alternative to the gaokao, we would end up with as the only viable alternative…the gaokao. That’s what a lot of people tend to forget: that given the complete lack of trust in each other and in institutions, given the stifling poverty that most Chinese find themselves in, and given China’s endemic corruption and inequality, the gaokao, for better or worse, is the fairest and most humane way to distribute China’s scare education resources.
Yes, the images of children memorising and regurgitating away for 18 years may be disheartening. The poor eyesight, bad posture, and crushing of imagination, independence, and initiative will haunt them for the rest of their lives. But we must remember that many of these children and their families find themselves fortunate just to be able to dream of a better life.
Everyone’s in agreement: the national college entrance examination (gaokao) robs Chinese students of their curiosity, creativity, and childhood. So as gaokao students, with their thick textbooks and memory pills, sequester themselves in four-star hotels while their parents prowl the neighbourhood for construction noise and rambunctious restaurant patrons, now might be a good time to devise an alternative to the gaokao.
In his book A Theory of Justice, the political philosopher John Rawls conducted a thought experiment in which people, shrouded under a ‘veil of ignorance,’ were asked to devise a new social structure to live under. Unsure of their lot in this new society, people would be risk-averse, John Rawls assumed, and would agree to a society that ‘maximised the minimum,’ which is to say a society that aimed for equality, fairness, and social mobility.
So let us return to John Rawls’ ‘original position’ and ‘veil of ignorance,’ gather 1.3 billion Chinese into a nice conference room, and see if we can all work together to negotiate an alternative to the gaokao.
Because everyone in the room has Chinese cultural values and lives in the not too pleasant realities of modern China, there’ll be certain constraints that this new education system must consider. First, every Chinese can agree that this new education system ought to be a meritocracy and that the most diligent and brightest students ought to reach the top.
Second, every Chinese can agree that China has limited education resources for too many people; while it would be nice to educate everyone to the best ability of the state as is the case in Finland and Singapore, China is too poor to do so. Third, China is a guanxi-based society with little respect for institutions, processes, and laws; whatever new system that everyone agrees to must be able to resist the pull and power of the well-connected and wealthy. Fourth, Chinese can agree that education is first and foremost about social mobility (rather than about national economic development), about the opportunity for anyone who is willing to work hard to rise in society.
So, given all this, we can now begin constructing an alternative to the gaokao.
First, this alternative must be an objective indicator of a student’s academic performance. College admissions committees or admission interviews would be unacceptable because it would offer too much power to individuals and institutions that can’t be trusted. No one would agree to a college lottery whereby qualified students are just randomly assigned a college. And artificial intelligence technology hasn’t yet advanced to the point where computers can replace college admissions officers. Thus, the only alternative seems to be a series of tests.
But even with tests we need to consider what we want to test. If we were to test writing and thinking ability, then that would mean an automatic bias towards the children of well-educated parents who have from an early age discuss books, current affairs, and travel plans with their child over the dinner table. Moreover, to teach thinking and writing (or any soft skills such as creativity and collaboration) would require highly specialised and highly professional teachers who would naturally congregate in expensive private schools or prestigious public schools in Beijing and Shanghai. And if this were the case, China would just be like the United States, where education is monopolised by the self-perpetuating and self-interested educated elite, and social mobility through education becomes a distant dream for everyone else.
But China has 800 million peasants who depend on schooling as their child’s only chance out of the rice fields. Rural children don’t have access to the libraries, well-trained teachers, and intellectual spaces that wealthy cities can offer — all they have is their willingness to work hard to improve themselves. If Chinese believe in fairness and social mobility, then tests must be more about the student’s ability to memorise the textbooks he has access to, rather than about his ability to think critically, which is the result of making the most of a special set of resources available only to society’s elite.
So, if we were to start from scratch and try to build an alternative to the gaokao, we would end up with as the only viable alternative…the gaokao. That’s what a lot of people tend to forget: that given the complete lack of trust in each other and in institutions, given the stifling poverty that most Chinese find themselves in, and given China’s endemic corruption and inequality, the gaokao, for better or worse, is the fairest and most humane way to distribute China’s scare education resources.
Yes, the images of children memorising and regurgitating away for 18 years may be disheartening. The poor eyesight, bad posture, and crushing of imagination, independence, and initiative will haunt them for the rest of their lives. But we must remember that many of these children and their families find themselves fortunate just to be able to dream of a better life.
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