Winner or loser

Updated:28/07/11 09:50:03 AM CST

An international research reported last month studied how students in 65 countries performed in math, science and reading. The winner was: Confucianism! In all three fields and by a wide margin, at the very top of the charts was Shanghai. Three of the next top four performers were also societies with a Confucian legacy of reverence for education: Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea. The only non-Confucian country in the mix was Finland.

How about the United States? We came in 15th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math.

I’ve been visiting schools in China and Asia for more than 20 years, and I’ve spent much of that time either envious or dumbfounded. I’ll never forget pulling our 2-year-old son out of his Tokyo nursery school so we could visit the States and being handed a form in which we had to list: “reason for proposed vacation.”

Education thrives in China and the rest of Asia because it is a top priority — and we’ve plenty to learn from that. Granted, Shanghai’s rise to the top of the global charts is not representative of all China, for Shanghai has the country’s best schools. Yet it’s also true that China has made remarkable improvements in the once-awful schools in peasant areas.
Only 20 years ago, children often skipped classes in elementary school in rural areas. Teachers sometimes could barely speak standard Mandarin, which, in theory, is the language of instruction. These days, even in backward rural areas, most girls and boys alike attend high school. College isn’t unusual. And the teachers are vastly improved. In my Chinese-American wife’s ancestral village — a poor community in southern China — the peasant children are a grade ahead in math compared with my children at an excellent public school in the New York area. That seems broadly true of math around the country.

For a socialist theory that hesitates to fire people, China has also been surprisingly adept — more so than America — at dealing with ineffective teachers. Chinese principals can’t easily dismiss teachers, but they can get extra training for less effective teachers, or if that doesn’t work, push them into other jobs.

“Bad teachers can always be made gym teachers,” a principal in Xian explained to me as she showed me around her kindergarten. In China, school sports and gym just don’t matter. But this is the paradox: Chinese themselves are far less impressed by their school system. Almost every time I try to interview a Chinese about the system here, I hear complain rather than praise. Many Chinese grouse scathingly that their system kills independent thought and creativity, and they envy the American system for nurturing self-reliance — and for trying to make learning exciting and not just an errand.
I visited Gaoxin NO.1 High School in Xi'an, perhaps the city’s best high school, and the students and teachers spoke wistfully of the American emphasis on clubs, arts and independent thought. “We need to encourage more creativity,” explained Hua Guohong, a chemistry teacher, “We should learn from American schools.”

One friend of mine in Guangdong Province insists he will send his children to the United States to study because the local schools are a “creativity-killer.” Another sent his son to an international school to escape what he likens to “programs for trained seals.” Private schools are sprouting everywhere, and many boast of a focus on creativity.

As my view concerned, the self-criticisms are exactly right, but I also deeply admire the passion for education and the commitment to making the system better. And while William Butler Yeats was right that “education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire,” it’s also true that it’s easier to ignite a bonfire if there’s fuel in the bucket. The greatest strength of the Chinese system is the Confucian reverence for education which is steeped into the culture. In Chinese schools, teachers are much respected, and the most admired kid is often the brain rather than the jock or class clown.

Americans think of China’s planned challenge regarding as the new Chinese furtiveness fighter aircraft. But the real challenge is the rise of China’s education system and the passion for learning that motivate it. We’re not going to become Confucians, but we can raise education on our list of precedence without giving up creativity and independent ideas.

Tag: Confucianism