During the winter vacation, we asked our students to study English on their own, and so they ran across the street to China’s top English teaching company to take vocabulary classes. After school started back we noticed a sharp deterioration in our student’s English ability, so we looked into why. And when our students reported to us how they learned English vocabulary at the English school, we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), a three-hour multiple-choice examination that Chinese students must take in order to apply to US colleges and universities, is essentially a vocabulary test, and that’s why Chinese students will spend three years memorizing English word lists. The school in question specializes in creating mnemonic systems to help Chinese students crack the SAT.
Many are well-known: identifying common suffixes and prefixes, locating Latin or Greek roots, employing rhyming schemes, and visualizing words. But some teachers there have created and are promoting a mnemonic system that shows what absurd lengths Chinese students will go to in order to avoid learning English to take English tests.
At this school, our students said they spent eight days learning to memorize English words using pinyin. For example, in the word ‘famine,’ there’s embedded in it the Chinese phrase ‘fa mi ne,’ which means ‘hand out rice.’ So a ‘famine’ is when people need to be handed out rice.
That’s so clever and disingenuous it’s almost a pity that it’s so silly and useless.
And here’s a trick for remembering the meaning of the words fawn, pawn, spawn, brawn, lawn, yawn, and dawn: Fei lai de xiao lu Pa dian dang, xiao She zai qian cai chan luan, Bu yao ji rou Lai cao ping, Da ge ha qi Dao li ming. (This translates as: “The fawn that is flying this way is afraid of pawn; Only when the snake is in front does it spawn; You don’t need brawn to come to the lawn; Yawn once, and it is dawn.’) The capitalized letter is that which should be combined with ‘-awn,’ and the adjacent italicized words are the Chinese meaning. This is perhaps the world’s most convoluted way to learn seven simple English words, and you’ll notice that it’s not perfect because in the phrase ‘Da ge ha qi’ the letter D ought to be the letter Y.
There’s a fine line between what’s stupid and what’s dangerous. Entertaining students with these silly tricks is harmless, but the teachers also encourage gullible and impressionable students to create their own mnemonic systems based on pinyin.
First, if students just love memorization and are making the effort to create mnemonic systems based on pinyin, wouldn’t it be more effective to just remember well-written New York Times articles? Or how about taking the same amount of time, and reading Anna Karenina?
Second, this methodology treats English as basically an oversized periodic table of elements: meaningless words to memorize for tests. That’s a short-sighted and counter-productive attitude to take, and by encouraging students to snuggle inside their small comfort zone, these teachers are also making it harder for students to challenge themselves, and to learn real English.
In fact, the teachers at the school have told our students that they’ve developed techniques for beating the SAT reading section without needing to read the passages on which the questions are based.
Ten years ago, the school reportedly found itself in a copyright infringement battle with Education Testing Services (ETS), which writes and administers the SAT. Beijing Television (BTV) interviewed me, and asked me if I sided with the school or ETS. My thinking back then is the same as my thinking now: the problem is society’s blind faith and heavy reliance on national standardized multiple-choice examinations to determine its winners and losers. This school is a multi-billion dollar that has taken traditional Chinese test-taking strategies (identifying common answers to common questions, doing statistical analysis of the occurrence of certain questions, etc.) and applied them to the Scholastic Aptitude Test with remarkable success. It has actually done humanity a favour by proving that ETS tests (the SAT and Graduate Record Examination) are simply a test of vocabulary that can be beaten without knowing much English.
That’s why our school doesn’t teach the SAT, instead emphasizing an ability to think in English through reading and discussing English books.
At first, there was fierce parental criticism and resistance—until our students went to the language school and reported to their parents that their English vocabulary was increasing much faster in our programme. Having experienced both our English curriculum and this vocabulary cram school, our students now appreciate how they’re learning to understand and use English in context through intense reading. A month back into our programme, with newfound conviction and motivation, our students’ English ability has improved dramatically.
Maybe we should make it mandatory to try out this other place after all…
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Chinese vs. American Mothers (Diplomat)
Writing in the Atlantic Monthly, Caitlin Flanagan explains why Amy Chua’s Wall Street Journal opinion piece ‘Why Chinese Mothers are Superior’ ignited such a firestorm of loathing among the United States’ professional class mothers.
Yes, Japan has been grappling with a nuclear crisis, and the Middle East is at war and undergoing revolution. But the day of reckoning for US upper middle class families will come in early April, when they receive notification of whether their child has been accepted into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford.
Never before has college admissions competition been so fierce: Harvard has 35,000 applicants for 1,600 freshmen spots. And, as Jerome Karabel tells us in his book The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, the majority of these spots will be occupied by legacies (children of alumni), athletes, and minorities with lacklustre GPAs and SAT scores. For the remaining 500-600 places, students need nearly perfect GPAs and SAT scores, and for better or worse that means those spots will go predominantly to the children of ‘tiger mothers.’ Thus, as Caitlin Flanagan argues, American ‘good mothers’ who want both a happy childhood and an Ivy League acceptance letter for their children are getting spanked by the likes of Amy Chua.
Caitlin Flanagan’s point explains why Amy Chua’s book received such public notoriety, but it doesn’t explain why ‘good mothers’ who are nothing but well-mannered and politically correct would heap such visceral scorn on an ‘aspiring immigrant’.
The problem is that Amy Chua is anything but an aspiring immigrant. She’s not even a ‘Chinese’ mother, and she knows it (the Chinese version of her book is called ‘Being an American Mom’).
Daughter of an MIT-educated University of Berkeley professor, Amy Chua went to Harvard College and Harvard Law. She’s a former lawyer, a best-selling author, and a Yale Law professor. Her pedigree, along with that of her husband (Princeton College, Harvard Law, Yale Law professor and best-selling author), guarantees her two daughters a place at Harvard even before their birth. If anything, Amy Chua ought to be a professional class ‘good mother’ who cultivates her child’s imagination and passion – but instead, according to her book, she’s a ‘tiger mother’ (otherwise known as a middle class social climber). In other words, Amy Chua is a heretic, but much worse is that she’s what in game theory could be called a cheater.
According to game theory, no one receives more social contempt than the cheater because the cheater benefits at the expense of everyone else, and makes the game unplayable.
And the game being played among upper middle class mothers is to produce US society’s geniuses: America’s Mozarts, Tolstoys, and Einsteins. It can be seen as a selfish activity (a rich and powerful family now seeks everlasting fame and bragging rights at Hampton parties), but it’s essentially an altruistic activity, the most expensive tax that the elite will pay to society.
Artistic, creative, and intellectual greatness benefits society because it elevates and edifies: in reading Jonathan Frazen’s Freedom or watching Darren Aronofsky ‘Black Swan’, there’s both pleasure and inspiration. The cost, though, is borne by the genius and his family alone. The genius will often sacrifice happiness and sanity in the pursuit of passion (think Natalie Portman in ‘Black Swan’), and the family must sacrifice an offspring as well as dedicate resources to cultivate genius. And the odds of success are incredibly low: For every Mozart, there are tens of thousands of lesser Mozarts who will never make it. But it’s only because there are so many lesser Mozarts out there helping to create the infrastructure (the knowledge, the social support, the audience, the culture, and the funding) that Mozart can be Mozart.
So why do rich American parents play this game? In part, that’s the game their friends and colleagues play. In part, while seemingly risky, there’s little risk involved: the worst case scenario for a child who strives to be Mozart is that he ends up a piano teacher to Amy Chua’s daughter. And, in part, because they see this as their noblesse oblige: to help produce geniuses to elevate and edify society, and to set a good parenting model to striving immigrants. And, in return, all they ask is that their children be admitted into Yale and Harvard.
So by this reckoning, mothers like Amy Chua ‘cheat’ on two counts. First, they refuse to pay the tax: instead of cultivating genius, their parenting model will probably end up producing that unique scourge of humanity called a corporate lawyer who publishes books. Second, without paying the tax, their daughters will still be admitted into Harvard.
And so while Amy Chua is no Chinese mother, she cheats like one. In China, mothers will seek the least risky path to ensure maximum success for their child. They’ll prevent their child from developing and pursuing a passion because the odds are it will only end up in heartbreak. Instead, they’ll have their child focus on collecting credentials, and hopefully have them installed in that ever safe, easy, and profitable mafia called the Chinese bureaucracy.
Why do upper middle class American mothers behave so differently from their Chinese peers? The difference is in their level of investment in society. The American elite generally see themselves fully invested and embedded in society, and thus have a vested interest in seeing the United States thrive and prosper both financially and culturally. But in China, no matter how rich China’s upper middle class become, they still see themselves as striving immigrants who could lose everything the next day: they’re too busy trying to get ahead to care about anyone else.
Yes, Japan has been grappling with a nuclear crisis, and the Middle East is at war and undergoing revolution. But the day of reckoning for US upper middle class families will come in early April, when they receive notification of whether their child has been accepted into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford.
Never before has college admissions competition been so fierce: Harvard has 35,000 applicants for 1,600 freshmen spots. And, as Jerome Karabel tells us in his book The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, the majority of these spots will be occupied by legacies (children of alumni), athletes, and minorities with lacklustre GPAs and SAT scores. For the remaining 500-600 places, students need nearly perfect GPAs and SAT scores, and for better or worse that means those spots will go predominantly to the children of ‘tiger mothers.’ Thus, as Caitlin Flanagan argues, American ‘good mothers’ who want both a happy childhood and an Ivy League acceptance letter for their children are getting spanked by the likes of Amy Chua.
Caitlin Flanagan’s point explains why Amy Chua’s book received such public notoriety, but it doesn’t explain why ‘good mothers’ who are nothing but well-mannered and politically correct would heap such visceral scorn on an ‘aspiring immigrant’.
The problem is that Amy Chua is anything but an aspiring immigrant. She’s not even a ‘Chinese’ mother, and she knows it (the Chinese version of her book is called ‘Being an American Mom’).
Daughter of an MIT-educated University of Berkeley professor, Amy Chua went to Harvard College and Harvard Law. She’s a former lawyer, a best-selling author, and a Yale Law professor. Her pedigree, along with that of her husband (Princeton College, Harvard Law, Yale Law professor and best-selling author), guarantees her two daughters a place at Harvard even before their birth. If anything, Amy Chua ought to be a professional class ‘good mother’ who cultivates her child’s imagination and passion – but instead, according to her book, she’s a ‘tiger mother’ (otherwise known as a middle class social climber). In other words, Amy Chua is a heretic, but much worse is that she’s what in game theory could be called a cheater.
According to game theory, no one receives more social contempt than the cheater because the cheater benefits at the expense of everyone else, and makes the game unplayable.
And the game being played among upper middle class mothers is to produce US society’s geniuses: America’s Mozarts, Tolstoys, and Einsteins. It can be seen as a selfish activity (a rich and powerful family now seeks everlasting fame and bragging rights at Hampton parties), but it’s essentially an altruistic activity, the most expensive tax that the elite will pay to society.
Artistic, creative, and intellectual greatness benefits society because it elevates and edifies: in reading Jonathan Frazen’s Freedom or watching Darren Aronofsky ‘Black Swan’, there’s both pleasure and inspiration. The cost, though, is borne by the genius and his family alone. The genius will often sacrifice happiness and sanity in the pursuit of passion (think Natalie Portman in ‘Black Swan’), and the family must sacrifice an offspring as well as dedicate resources to cultivate genius. And the odds of success are incredibly low: For every Mozart, there are tens of thousands of lesser Mozarts who will never make it. But it’s only because there are so many lesser Mozarts out there helping to create the infrastructure (the knowledge, the social support, the audience, the culture, and the funding) that Mozart can be Mozart.
So why do rich American parents play this game? In part, that’s the game their friends and colleagues play. In part, while seemingly risky, there’s little risk involved: the worst case scenario for a child who strives to be Mozart is that he ends up a piano teacher to Amy Chua’s daughter. And, in part, because they see this as their noblesse oblige: to help produce geniuses to elevate and edify society, and to set a good parenting model to striving immigrants. And, in return, all they ask is that their children be admitted into Yale and Harvard.
So by this reckoning, mothers like Amy Chua ‘cheat’ on two counts. First, they refuse to pay the tax: instead of cultivating genius, their parenting model will probably end up producing that unique scourge of humanity called a corporate lawyer who publishes books. Second, without paying the tax, their daughters will still be admitted into Harvard.
And so while Amy Chua is no Chinese mother, she cheats like one. In China, mothers will seek the least risky path to ensure maximum success for their child. They’ll prevent their child from developing and pursuing a passion because the odds are it will only end up in heartbreak. Instead, they’ll have their child focus on collecting credentials, and hopefully have them installed in that ever safe, easy, and profitable mafia called the Chinese bureaucracy.
Why do upper middle class American mothers behave so differently from their Chinese peers? The difference is in their level of investment in society. The American elite generally see themselves fully invested and embedded in society, and thus have a vested interest in seeing the United States thrive and prosper both financially and culturally. But in China, no matter how rich China’s upper middle class become, they still see themselves as striving immigrants who could lose everything the next day: they’re too busy trying to get ahead to care about anyone else.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Beijing's School Kingdoms (Diplomat)
Earlier this month, the Beijing education bureau called Beijing’s international divisions to a meeting. Beijing’s education authorities had, in the past two years, licensed five prestigious Beijing public schools to start international divisions. With study abroad now a fashion, many public schools plan to start international divisions, which creates a conundrum for Beijing’s education officials.
Granting licenses is the main way in which Beijing’s education officials can exercise power, and in theory they ought to be happy that so many more high school principals want to buy them dinner. But there’s always the risk that international divisions could fail, in which case they’d be held accountable – and the trick of bureaucratic survival is to avoid taking blame for mistakes and failures.
So Beijing’s education officials wanted to explore with the five schools how to best mitigate risk and failure. Specifically, they asked two questions: What criteria should be used in determine whether an application is approved? Under what conditions should a license be revoked?
The room fell silent, as the same stream of thought went through each school representative’s head: Since my license had already been approved and it would be politically embarrassing and impossible for Beijing’s education officials to revoke my license, what do I care? How do I get out of this meeting without saying anything that could embarrass me or implies that I’d like to get entangled in this dilemma, or suggests that I’d ever want to attend any of these meetings ever again?
All five schools made a speech, and each tried to outdo each other in avoiding the questions and saying nothing in as much time as possible.
I remembered when I was working as a journalist, I saw the Communist Party as a monolithic and top-down political system that controlled the direction and destiny of 1.3 billion people. Now, working as a Beijing public school administrator, I can see for myself how difficult it is for the government to control a Beijing school, let alone 1.3 billion people.
In theory, Beijing public schools report to Beijing’s education bureau, which then reports to the Ministry of Education. In practice, each public school is an independent kingdom that pays nominal deference to education authorities. To understand this relationship, think of Beijing’s education bureau as the United Nations: It has neither financial nor political control over schools, so it projects the illusion of authority by issuing meaningless proclamations and convening boring conferences.
It’s taken for granted that Peking University High School, because of its affiliation with China’s intellectual centre, does whatever it wants. But each of Beijing’s top 43 public schools is fiercely independent.
Take, for example, Number 101 High School, which our school’s administration toured last week. Founded in 1946, 101 is a sprawling campus of 200,000 square metres with the Old Summer Palace as its backyard. Their alumni include Zeng Qinghong and other powerful politicians, and they draw their students from Beijing military and political families. Their annual budget is more than that of most Chinese counties, and their school leadership has been in place for over a decade. The meeting room that hosted us had the year before hosted Kai-Fu Lee, the founder of Google China, and a visiting delegation of leading American journalists and writers.
The problem with Beijing is that there’s so much power – whether it be political, military, economic, financial, technological, education, or cultural – concentrated in the city, which in turns forces everyone to focus on cultivating and managing guanxi. The prevailing attitude in Beijing, from corporate honchos to the lowest government clerk, is that as long as you maintain well your network of relationships or guanxiwang you can do whatever you want.
That’s why Beijing high school principals concern themselves primarily with student recruitment and admission. Their power derives from their gatekeeper status, and they use admittance tickets to build up their guanxiwang and extract political favours – like getting an international division approved.
Which brings us back to Beijing’s education bureau’s conundrum. Now Beijing’s education officials could avoid offending powerful individuals if they were to delegate licensing power to a team of experts, but the idea of surrendering power to a bureaucrat is as palatable as Charlie Sheen is to everyone else.
There is a solution, which is to ask a different question: How can we, the Beijing education authorities, ensure to the best of our ability that all international divisions succeed?
And for all of Beijing’s international divisions to succeed, everyone needs to learn to co-operate and communicate with each other. They need to pool resources to recruit foreign staff instead of relying on middlemen, to counsel their students on how to apply abroad instead of relying on agencies, and to develop a new English curriculum catered to Chinese students instead of importing wholesale an Advanced Placement curriculum.
But because each is such a powerful independent kingdom, Beijing’s top public schools would find working together even less palatable than taking orders from Beijing’s education officials. And that is why Beijing as a city, when compared with Shanghai or Shenzhen, just will not work.
Granting licenses is the main way in which Beijing’s education officials can exercise power, and in theory they ought to be happy that so many more high school principals want to buy them dinner. But there’s always the risk that international divisions could fail, in which case they’d be held accountable – and the trick of bureaucratic survival is to avoid taking blame for mistakes and failures.
So Beijing’s education officials wanted to explore with the five schools how to best mitigate risk and failure. Specifically, they asked two questions: What criteria should be used in determine whether an application is approved? Under what conditions should a license be revoked?
The room fell silent, as the same stream of thought went through each school representative’s head: Since my license had already been approved and it would be politically embarrassing and impossible for Beijing’s education officials to revoke my license, what do I care? How do I get out of this meeting without saying anything that could embarrass me or implies that I’d like to get entangled in this dilemma, or suggests that I’d ever want to attend any of these meetings ever again?
All five schools made a speech, and each tried to outdo each other in avoiding the questions and saying nothing in as much time as possible.
I remembered when I was working as a journalist, I saw the Communist Party as a monolithic and top-down political system that controlled the direction and destiny of 1.3 billion people. Now, working as a Beijing public school administrator, I can see for myself how difficult it is for the government to control a Beijing school, let alone 1.3 billion people.
In theory, Beijing public schools report to Beijing’s education bureau, which then reports to the Ministry of Education. In practice, each public school is an independent kingdom that pays nominal deference to education authorities. To understand this relationship, think of Beijing’s education bureau as the United Nations: It has neither financial nor political control over schools, so it projects the illusion of authority by issuing meaningless proclamations and convening boring conferences.
It’s taken for granted that Peking University High School, because of its affiliation with China’s intellectual centre, does whatever it wants. But each of Beijing’s top 43 public schools is fiercely independent.
Take, for example, Number 101 High School, which our school’s administration toured last week. Founded in 1946, 101 is a sprawling campus of 200,000 square metres with the Old Summer Palace as its backyard. Their alumni include Zeng Qinghong and other powerful politicians, and they draw their students from Beijing military and political families. Their annual budget is more than that of most Chinese counties, and their school leadership has been in place for over a decade. The meeting room that hosted us had the year before hosted Kai-Fu Lee, the founder of Google China, and a visiting delegation of leading American journalists and writers.
The problem with Beijing is that there’s so much power – whether it be political, military, economic, financial, technological, education, or cultural – concentrated in the city, which in turns forces everyone to focus on cultivating and managing guanxi. The prevailing attitude in Beijing, from corporate honchos to the lowest government clerk, is that as long as you maintain well your network of relationships or guanxiwang you can do whatever you want.
That’s why Beijing high school principals concern themselves primarily with student recruitment and admission. Their power derives from their gatekeeper status, and they use admittance tickets to build up their guanxiwang and extract political favours – like getting an international division approved.
Which brings us back to Beijing’s education bureau’s conundrum. Now Beijing’s education officials could avoid offending powerful individuals if they were to delegate licensing power to a team of experts, but the idea of surrendering power to a bureaucrat is as palatable as Charlie Sheen is to everyone else.
There is a solution, which is to ask a different question: How can we, the Beijing education authorities, ensure to the best of our ability that all international divisions succeed?
And for all of Beijing’s international divisions to succeed, everyone needs to learn to co-operate and communicate with each other. They need to pool resources to recruit foreign staff instead of relying on middlemen, to counsel their students on how to apply abroad instead of relying on agencies, and to develop a new English curriculum catered to Chinese students instead of importing wholesale an Advanced Placement curriculum.
But because each is such a powerful independent kingdom, Beijing’s top public schools would find working together even less palatable than taking orders from Beijing’s education officials. And that is why Beijing as a city, when compared with Shanghai or Shenzhen, just will not work.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
How Much Does School Matter? (Diplomat)
Late last month, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said in an online conversation with the public that education now mattered more than the economy for China’s future, and that China ought to cultivate creative thinkers.
It would probably be self-serving and politically savvy of me to agree. But considering China’s significant domestic problems—bankrupt banks, runaway pollution, skyrocketing inflation, a state-owned enterprise-dominated economy, the wide disparity between rich and poor, ethnic conflict, corruption, amorality, gangsterism and the annual Central China TV Chinese New Year’s broadcast—I wouldn’t count China’s lack of a Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg as the most pressing challenge we face.
I know I regularly rant and rave about the problems in Chinese schools, but that’s because it’s in my nature to rant and rave about my work. The question I’m asking myself now, though, is whether schools—which are charged with teaching students how to read and how to count—can really cultivate creative thinkers?
Science and economics suggest the limitations of schooling. Americans and Chinese alike are debating the merits of Amy Chua’s strict model of parenting, but the authors of Freakonomics tell us that available economic data suggest that a child’s earning power as an adult is strongly correlated with a parent’s genes. Amy Chua may be widely viewed as a narcissistic mother, but because her two daughters have as parents two Yale Law professors who also happen to be best-selling authors, they’ll still probably make money in life no matter where they end up.
In The Accidental Mind, neuroscientist David Linden tells us that there’s no scientific evidence to suggest that math drills, Mandarin lessons, and violin practice will make a child smarter than his genes will permit. Still, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that you can make a child a lot stupider by denying him or her the external stimuli necessary for mental development.
And that’s always been my main problem with Chinese schools and Tiger Mothers. By locking up students all day in a sterile, dimly-lit, cramped room to memorize textbooks, Chinese schools are depriving their students of the social experiences and personal exploration necessary for their growth as citizens and individuals; in other words, Chinese schools are just feeding their students stale white rice when their bodies also need fruit, vegetables, and meat.
Too often schools here, schools teach students to see the world in a narrow-minded, academic manner—to judge people by their IQ and academic credentials. This mindset can be severely debilitating when they enter the workplace.
But while this can end up being bad for the economy, does it matter for a person’s long-term well-being? Time heals all, and eventually we all somehow manage to sort ourselves out. At least, that’s the eternal message packaged in best-selling books, operas and Hallmark cards. And this message sells because it’s largely true. There may be millions of unemployed twenty somethings in China, but how is this different from the situation in the United States? And because most professional skills can be learned in the workplace, when China’s university graduates lower their expectations they’ll eventually be able to contribute constructively to the Chinese economy.
The fact is that although Premier Wen may think highly of the US higher education system, if he wants to understand why the United States is such a creative and innovative culture he should try reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.
The United States was born with bountiful resources, and blessed to be protected by two oceans that made it immune to the shameless destruction in the rest of the world. (‘God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America,’ Otto von Bismarck once said). The country was founded by hardworking Puritans who made busy-ness the business of America, and who were obsessed with self-improvement and practical learning. And throughout most of its history, the United States was an immigrant nation with a virtually limitless frontier; it was an endlessly optimistic nation because the poor and disenfranchised could move westward to reinvent themselves, and make their fortune. A nation borne of self-learning and self-invention naturally worships these Gods before anything else.
All this isn’t to say that China should abandon education reform. But it should also be clear that schooling’s role in society—and the development of creative, free-thinking individuals—is much more limited than this current cohort of Chinese leaders believes.
It would probably be self-serving and politically savvy of me to agree. But considering China’s significant domestic problems—bankrupt banks, runaway pollution, skyrocketing inflation, a state-owned enterprise-dominated economy, the wide disparity between rich and poor, ethnic conflict, corruption, amorality, gangsterism and the annual Central China TV Chinese New Year’s broadcast—I wouldn’t count China’s lack of a Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg as the most pressing challenge we face.
I know I regularly rant and rave about the problems in Chinese schools, but that’s because it’s in my nature to rant and rave about my work. The question I’m asking myself now, though, is whether schools—which are charged with teaching students how to read and how to count—can really cultivate creative thinkers?
Science and economics suggest the limitations of schooling. Americans and Chinese alike are debating the merits of Amy Chua’s strict model of parenting, but the authors of Freakonomics tell us that available economic data suggest that a child’s earning power as an adult is strongly correlated with a parent’s genes. Amy Chua may be widely viewed as a narcissistic mother, but because her two daughters have as parents two Yale Law professors who also happen to be best-selling authors, they’ll still probably make money in life no matter where they end up.
In The Accidental Mind, neuroscientist David Linden tells us that there’s no scientific evidence to suggest that math drills, Mandarin lessons, and violin practice will make a child smarter than his genes will permit. Still, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that you can make a child a lot stupider by denying him or her the external stimuli necessary for mental development.
And that’s always been my main problem with Chinese schools and Tiger Mothers. By locking up students all day in a sterile, dimly-lit, cramped room to memorize textbooks, Chinese schools are depriving their students of the social experiences and personal exploration necessary for their growth as citizens and individuals; in other words, Chinese schools are just feeding their students stale white rice when their bodies also need fruit, vegetables, and meat.
Too often schools here, schools teach students to see the world in a narrow-minded, academic manner—to judge people by their IQ and academic credentials. This mindset can be severely debilitating when they enter the workplace.
But while this can end up being bad for the economy, does it matter for a person’s long-term well-being? Time heals all, and eventually we all somehow manage to sort ourselves out. At least, that’s the eternal message packaged in best-selling books, operas and Hallmark cards. And this message sells because it’s largely true. There may be millions of unemployed twenty somethings in China, but how is this different from the situation in the United States? And because most professional skills can be learned in the workplace, when China’s university graduates lower their expectations they’ll eventually be able to contribute constructively to the Chinese economy.
The fact is that although Premier Wen may think highly of the US higher education system, if he wants to understand why the United States is such a creative and innovative culture he should try reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.
The United States was born with bountiful resources, and blessed to be protected by two oceans that made it immune to the shameless destruction in the rest of the world. (‘God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America,’ Otto von Bismarck once said). The country was founded by hardworking Puritans who made busy-ness the business of America, and who were obsessed with self-improvement and practical learning. And throughout most of its history, the United States was an immigrant nation with a virtually limitless frontier; it was an endlessly optimistic nation because the poor and disenfranchised could move westward to reinvent themselves, and make their fortune. A nation borne of self-learning and self-invention naturally worships these Gods before anything else.
All this isn’t to say that China should abandon education reform. But it should also be clear that schooling’s role in society—and the development of creative, free-thinking individuals—is much more limited than this current cohort of Chinese leaders believes.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
What Makes a Successful Student? (Diplomat)
One semester in, and we’re going back to the drawing board.
In Shenzhen, our school had some of the city’s highest achieving students, and our goal was to make them more rounded, social, and creative. We tried things like creating a daily newspaper, an English magazine, and a coffeehouse to challenge students to work together. There were clearly defined goals (increase viewership, make money), an instant feedback loop (reader response, profit), and structure/boundaries (publish everyday, don’t go bankrupt). Shenzhen High Daily was a genuine success and was recognized and read nationally.
But we haven’t been able to repeat that success in Beijing. It’s important to help students learn to balance their newspaper roles with their heavy academic workload, but many Beijing students have continued to go to bed around two in the morning, while treating the daily as a chore. There has also too often been a lack of teamwork.
Getting this right will mean answering three key questions: What are the characteristics that define the best students? Which characteristics are the most important? How can we inculcate these characteristics in our students?
Through my experience as a student in Toronto public schools and at Yale, and as a teacher in Chinese public schools, I’d say there are certain characteristics that typically define the best students. They’re usually serious and meticulous, organized and plan ahead. They also have a balanced, diverse, and vibrant lifestyle: they study hard, but they also exercise, get fresh air, socialize with friends, converse with parents, and do what they love. And they get up early, eat three meals a day, and sleep well. In class, they listen carefully, and they ask questions.
This is all obviously good stuff, but I’d say the three most important characteristics are self-control/discipline, focus, and patience – the best students place long-term goals over instant gratification. These three characteristics don’t just define a successful student – they also define a successful person. Students in the world’s best law and medical schools are nothing but disciplined, focused, and patient. In Texas Hold’em poker, these three characteristics distinguish the 10 percent of players who win money. In his book Moneyball, Michael Lewis argues that these three characteristics are also important traits among good baseball players (those who contribute the most to a team’s wins). Shenzhen High Daily succeeded because the students there had the discipline, focus, and patience to do the job well.
So this semester, the daily newspaper has been suspended and three new policies have been introduced.
First, students will be required to write down a time chart of how they spend each day. With this, we’ll be able to monitor how they distribute their time, and chart their progress over the semester. By forcing them to write down what they did each hour in a notebook, we’re also forcing them to be ‘present,’ as the Zen master would say. Once they become aware of how inefficiently they spend their time, they should (hopefully) exert more self-control. (This is similar to the principle of how dieticians ask clients to record daily food consumption, or how financial planners ask clients to record daily expenditures.)
Second, we’ll be looking at the students’ class binders at the end of each week. We have a checklist of questions when we look at their binders. Are they taking notes for every class? Are their notes properly dated and titled? Are their notes legible?
Finally, we’ve asked each teacher to start class with a short quiz of previous material. This quiz will test if the students were paying attention and taking notes in the previous class. It’s also a convenient way to enforce punctuality and attendance.
These three policies should produce quantifiable data to identify students’ problems and to chart their progress. These instruments also reinforce and monitor each other. If a student is doing one of these things well, then he should be doing all of them well – with the upshot being improved academic performance.
The experiment could have profound implications for a traditional Chinese classroom, which relies on standardized tests to monitor and motivate students. Also, there’s the potential to apply our experiment to the Chinese office. Why not have employees write their daily schedules to evaluate productivity and efficiency? Why not check employees’ meeting notes for attentiveness?
I’ll keep you posted.
In Shenzhen, our school had some of the city’s highest achieving students, and our goal was to make them more rounded, social, and creative. We tried things like creating a daily newspaper, an English magazine, and a coffeehouse to challenge students to work together. There were clearly defined goals (increase viewership, make money), an instant feedback loop (reader response, profit), and structure/boundaries (publish everyday, don’t go bankrupt). Shenzhen High Daily was a genuine success and was recognized and read nationally.
But we haven’t been able to repeat that success in Beijing. It’s important to help students learn to balance their newspaper roles with their heavy academic workload, but many Beijing students have continued to go to bed around two in the morning, while treating the daily as a chore. There has also too often been a lack of teamwork.
Getting this right will mean answering three key questions: What are the characteristics that define the best students? Which characteristics are the most important? How can we inculcate these characteristics in our students?
Through my experience as a student in Toronto public schools and at Yale, and as a teacher in Chinese public schools, I’d say there are certain characteristics that typically define the best students. They’re usually serious and meticulous, organized and plan ahead. They also have a balanced, diverse, and vibrant lifestyle: they study hard, but they also exercise, get fresh air, socialize with friends, converse with parents, and do what they love. And they get up early, eat three meals a day, and sleep well. In class, they listen carefully, and they ask questions.
This is all obviously good stuff, but I’d say the three most important characteristics are self-control/discipline, focus, and patience – the best students place long-term goals over instant gratification. These three characteristics don’t just define a successful student – they also define a successful person. Students in the world’s best law and medical schools are nothing but disciplined, focused, and patient. In Texas Hold’em poker, these three characteristics distinguish the 10 percent of players who win money. In his book Moneyball, Michael Lewis argues that these three characteristics are also important traits among good baseball players (those who contribute the most to a team’s wins). Shenzhen High Daily succeeded because the students there had the discipline, focus, and patience to do the job well.
So this semester, the daily newspaper has been suspended and three new policies have been introduced.
First, students will be required to write down a time chart of how they spend each day. With this, we’ll be able to monitor how they distribute their time, and chart their progress over the semester. By forcing them to write down what they did each hour in a notebook, we’re also forcing them to be ‘present,’ as the Zen master would say. Once they become aware of how inefficiently they spend their time, they should (hopefully) exert more self-control. (This is similar to the principle of how dieticians ask clients to record daily food consumption, or how financial planners ask clients to record daily expenditures.)
Second, we’ll be looking at the students’ class binders at the end of each week. We have a checklist of questions when we look at their binders. Are they taking notes for every class? Are their notes properly dated and titled? Are their notes legible?
Finally, we’ve asked each teacher to start class with a short quiz of previous material. This quiz will test if the students were paying attention and taking notes in the previous class. It’s also a convenient way to enforce punctuality and attendance.
These three policies should produce quantifiable data to identify students’ problems and to chart their progress. These instruments also reinforce and monitor each other. If a student is doing one of these things well, then he should be doing all of them well – with the upshot being improved academic performance.
The experiment could have profound implications for a traditional Chinese classroom, which relies on standardized tests to monitor and motivate students. Also, there’s the potential to apply our experiment to the Chinese office. Why not have employees write their daily schedules to evaluate productivity and efficiency? Why not check employees’ meeting notes for attentiveness?
I’ll keep you posted.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)