Nov

29

I found this interesting post on Seth Robert's blog:

"The Emphasis on Education in China"

One of my students grew up and went to high school in Nanjing,
population 8 million. Her acceptance to Tsinghua was such a big deal
that when her acceptance letter reached the local post office they
called to tell her.  The post office also alerted journalists. When the
letter was delivered to her house, there were about 20 journalists on
hand. One of them, from a TV station, asked her to say something to
those who failed.

Russ Sears writes:

I found it a very sad piece of social commentary. At some point it becomes not about your ability to think, but only about what you know they want. It becomes less about answering the question than knowing what questions the test giver will ask and answering it strictly as they want. You begin by eliminating the questions that cannot be tested.

Where are the questions that take a lifetime to answer?

Where are the questions that do not have a standard knowable answer?

Leo Jia responds:

Well, it surely does not find an Einstein.

But society is not all about geniuses. It requires the performances of normal people on a much larger scale. In that regards, one shouldn't underestimate the advantage of someone's ability in passing intensive multi-disciplinary tests on high scores.

It takes tremendous discipline, dedication, and hard work. But it is not simply about memorizing answers. More importantly, the abilities to plan, to achieve, to think smart, to always be confident, to stay away from distractions, and to beat out stresses along the way are all crucial. It is about winning a game, a mimic to some of the games that are crucial at various stages in life.

Is it worthwhile for all the kids to spend all the efforts in order to pass the tests? Definitely not to those who lost — a high percentage of the people involved actually. They are clearly not good at the game (perhaps they have learned a lesson through the failure). So overall, the society has wasted quite substantial energy — the energy spent by those on the wrong game. But perhaps that energy can not be saved anyhow. It is just like the market where there are winners and losers, and the losers are required there to supply the liquidity and to make the winners winners.

I fully agree about the deficiencies of the education system, in the sense that it does not serve individual talents very well.

But unfortunately, the modern education system since its inception in the Industrial Revolution is more on social conditioning than anything else. We perhaps shouldn't expect more from it. The Chinese, finding that it fits well into its own tradition, have just pushed it more to the extremes. I don't know how to abolish it all together and what to put in its place. Would a system that only focuses on producing talents (we have to define the meaning here) work? It most likely would for the talented individuals. But overall? Certainly, a lot people have various kind of talents. But don't we agree that a high percentage of the population don't have much talent? If a system is only for talent, then what to do with these people? Moreover, talented people generally tend to be somewhat eccentric. Can a society endure too much eccentricity?


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