Cultural differences, school edition part 2

In my last post I talked about some of the day to day differences between Chinese and US schools. I'm going to dive a bit deeper into that with this post. The comparative history of education in various countries is fascinating to me, although I know it's not that way for everyone. It's vital to understanding how modern systems work, but I'll try to keep it general enough for everyone. As a reward for slogging through it, I'll show you some fantastic cafeteria food at the end of the post.

The Chinese don't understand the resistance in the US to using high-stakes testing in education. They joke that they have 2000 years of experience with it and that it's worked out pretty well for them. They're not wrong. Civil service examinations for bureaucratic posts have been a feature of Chinese government since the Sui dynasty (AD 581-617), although it became much more systematized around the Song Dynasty (AD 960-1279). If you did well on these exams, you could get good jobs in the bureaucracy, guaranteeing a good living and high status in society. This was one of the few ways a Chinese citizen could have social and economic mobility in dynastic times, and competition for jobs in the imperial bureaucracy was fierce.

The exams were technically meritocratic, meaning that theoretically anyone could take them and rise to high places in government. In practice, they were restricted to primarily middle and upper class families. The exams covered the classics of Chinese history and philosophy; music, law, agriculture, rituals, and mathematics. You needed a thorough education and strong literacy skills to have a chance of doing well at them. There are stories of men of humble origins taking the exams and rising to places of high power in government, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

The bureaucratic exams stressed knowledge of the classics, most importantly but not limited to Confucius (the "great teacher") and his philosophical descendants. You gained marks by knowing what the Master said in response to various questions, and being able to quote him verbatim showed your fitness for bureaucratic service. There was very little room for creative interpretation of complex problems. There was a correct answer for every question, and you needed to know it.

The legacy of this system is alive today in the dominant philosophy of education in China. Knowing the right answers to questions is the goal. Memorizing the correct interpretations of various problems, and using them in the proper context, is how you show that you are educated and intelligent. Using a scholar's words to demonstrate your knowledge is accepted and expected. The US/European view of plagiarism is quite foreign to the Chinese student and you have to explicitly teach them that in your classroom.

In the primary/secondary school context, this means that students in China are very good at rote memorization of facts, figures, and quotations. You can give them a whole-class lecture and expect them to write down what you tell them, say the words you tell them, and repeat what you say in a dialogue or a vocabulary exercise. They'll excel at whole-class activities.

Give them pair work, or ask them to complete an open-ended task, and they will often struggle. There may not be a "right way" to do a thing, there may be multiple correct ways to do it, and this can confuse them. You have to model the problem-solving process clearly in order for them to attempt it on their own, and even then they don't look at it as "real learning" in the way that they are used to. A large part of my job as a language instructor is trying to break down this attitude or work with it in order to be an effective language instructor. Risk-taking, which is so crucial to language learning, is not part of the educational culture here.

This is sharply contrasted with the current educational model in the United States, which de-emphasizes skills mastery and rote memorization in favor of problem-solving ability and open-ended inquiry. Students in US schools are encouraged to construct meaning by experimentation, failure, and reflection on the experience. This is decidedly not the case here in China.

I've experienced both systems, and I see the strengths and weaknesses of both. The US system, at its best, creates inquisitive and motivated students who are resilient in the face of adversity and can approach problems in novel ways with or without collaborating with others. However, they often lack a base of skills and knowledge that is necessary for understanding more complicated concepts. This is more and more apparent at University, where an increasing number of students require remedial instruction in basic skills to succeed at that level.

By contrast, the Chinese system creates students who are capable of absorbing and memorizing remarkable quantities of facts and formula. They have a strong knowledge base that they can use to learn high-level skills and advanced knowledge. However, the system does not produce students who are independent, creative problem solvers that can thrive in a variety of collaborative environments.

There's a tendency in education to be dogmatic in your theories, and I think that's a mistake. No single educational theory or approach works as well for every student, and just because we teachers like something from a philosophical standpoint doesn't mean that it's the Truth.

One thing that Chinese schools do that is clearly superior to US schools is make good school lunches. I eat lunch at school every day, and I'm happy to do it. Here's just a small sample of the food we eat on a daily basis: