tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2586988941850907367.post1284162060367282198..comments2024-03-24T11:39:28.574-04:00Comments on NYC Public School Parents: Mr. Kristof, Please Stop Idealizing China's Education System!Patrick Sullivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10631038958645725010noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2586988941850907367.post-24014042010631929742012-01-28T22:48:04.870-05:002012-01-28T22:48:04.870-05:00I was born and raised in Shanghai until the age of...I was born and raised in Shanghai until the age of 10. In 1982, my family and I immigrated to New York City, where I attended public schools, including Stuyvesant High School. I went to a small private liberal arts college in Connecticut thanks to generous financial aid from the school. <br /><br />Since 2007 I've been living and working in Beijing with my daughter who is now 8. For the past two years she's been enrolled in a half-Montessori, half local-Chinese curriculum semi-international elementary school in Beijing. <br /><br />After the shock of having my daughter in a half-Chinese school for first grade, I sternly told her second-year Chinese grammar teacher that I will no longer tolerate my daughter closely following the brain-washing Chinese textbook that is core to the local Chinese curriculum. Surprisingly, the Chinese grammar teacher was sympathetic and did not require my daughter to recite the sometime extremely politically controversial texts (for example, Taiwan is part of China type of rhetoric - by the way most Chinese people think that's a fact, not political rhetoric) that all Chinese elementary school kids are required to know. <br /><br />I believe Steve Koss has a much more realistic assessment of the current Chinese education system than Mr. Kristof does. The Chinese education system is now a corrupt and dysfunctional system where many teachers ask for private gifts from parents to ensure their kids will not be psychologically abused. The poor parents have no choice but to acquiesce. The kids hate the fact that they have been made into "learning machines" before they can even walk. That's just the lucky kids in cities like Shanghai and Beijing who can go to school. The unlucky kids living in the countryside saw their schools shrink by more than half in the last ten years. Many fatal school bus accidents are claiming young lives due to lack of affordable safe transportation options, if you follow Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. <br /><br />The typical Chinese kids have no curiosity about the world. The internet is not used for learning information about the world but rather mostly for mindless gaming. Have you visited a smoky Chinese internet cafe recently to see the modern "opium dens" of China? The Chinese school system create kids who not only lack creativity, but also leadership and interpersonal skills. More importantly, integrity as a character trait, is no longer possible to be instilled in Chinese kids, in the corrupt Chinese society where the honest and righteous have no chance of survival.<br /><br />I was enrolled in P.S. 63 in New York City at the age of 10, after finishing fourth grade in a top public Shanghai elementary school in 1982, where I had just finished studying algebra and geometry. If I had continued to study in Shanghai for fifth grade, I would have been studying trigonometry. When I started at P.S.63 I was sent to fourth grade due to my complete lack of English language skills. I was shocked to find that fourth graders at P.S.63 were only studying multiple digit addition and subtraction. It would be in New York city high school before I saw trigonometry. <br /><br />I have only one comment for the American public school administrators - you are wasting American kids away by setting education achievement goals so low. China is the opposite extreme where academic goals are set inhumanely high so that the society can easily weed out the less "worthy" students due to an extreme lack of educational resources, as a result of a tightly controlled political system. So there is no need to envy China. But please do take a look at the Europeans. The British school system as higher academic levels that seem to produce very smart citizens. The Europeans in general produce smarter citizens than the American system does.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2586988941850907367.post-58181007115935928292011-01-17T13:12:59.760-05:002011-01-17T13:12:59.760-05:00I read a book about China written by Kristof and h...I read a book about China written by Kristof and his wife Wu-Dun more than a decoade ago, many of their predictions regarding different aspects of China came true. He was then WSJ reporter in Beijing and his wife was NYT reporter in China for several years. It should be safe to say that he knows more about China and Chinese than more Americans.<br />Clearly Chinese education system is far from perfect, but education system in US is in a crisis. No matter what you say about Chinese education system, the core value of its learning process is the respect for teachers, which seems to me to be the corner stone for the meaningful learning to build upon.<br /><br />When we have invested for $20,000 on each student every year and have very little to show for it, we have long lost any right to idolize the current system, to brag being the best, and to put down others.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com