One thing important that many people ignored about China is its K-12 education system. It is
much better than the US in a number of ways, especially for the ordinary students, which accounts for the majority of the student body, myself included.
- For starters, teachers in China are responsible. They care about the subjects they teach, and spend countless hours finding challenging problems for students as well as grading students' solutions with detailed feedbacks. Parents could just leave the education of their kids to school. They didn't have to worry about tutoring at all, because they knew that their kids would be sufficiently challenged in school. This is true equality, isn't it, as financially challenged families did not have to worry about not being able to afford tutoring. In contrast, teachers in Cupertino, a town known for good schools, asked parents to grade students' homework.
- Second, they believe in their students. No no no, I'm not talking about this "every student is unique and therefore it's okay to not doing well in academically" crap. When I grew up, my teachers were tough, but they were tough by being honest, by telling me that I didn't do well in exams because I didn't try hard enough, because I didn't use the right techniques to study, or because I didn't focus on the right things. In other words, we truly believed that I could excel in school work. They didn't give up on me or other kids just because we did poorly in homework or in exams. They were truly happy if their students did well in school, and then they told the students that they could do even better by assigning more challenging problem sets. That is, they believed that their students could grow by keeping themselves in their discomfort zone. In contrast, Why did the US schools keep lowering their standards just to keep students happy?
The K-12 education systems in the US are great for two types of students: those who are really challenged academically, and those who know how to push themselves. For the former, they enjoyed the love from teachers or the policies like "no kids left behind". For the latter, they got excellent resources, such as taking advanced classes in universities, and participating in all kinds of competitions. It is the students in the middle, the majority of the students like me, who will lose, big time. The students in the middle will not be challenged enough, who will falsely believe that they are good at STEM and then get shocked or even defeated by not-really-so-hard courses like calculus or organic chemistry, those who could've had a wonderful career in STEM but bail out because they didn't get enough training in high school. How sad is that?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Chinese K-12 did everything right. I spent way too much time preparing for the national entrance exam. I spent way too much time mastering all kinds of problem-solving skills that are not needed in college. I didn't learn advanced subjects like calculus or stats until college. That said, my teachers truly prepared me, like they did millions of other ordinary students, for advanced STEM subjects. They injected passion and a sense of pride of studying STEMs. I wouldn't be able to do what I do today without my teachers' dedication and caring. That's what matters, isn't it?