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I was driven mad by the Chinese education system

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Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system

#21

Post by whacked_new »

iamelgringo wrote: post #7

What can I do now? Learn how to program, drop out of school and start your own startup. At least that's what the kids do here in America.

That's almost like saying, when a fish is suffocating because his pond has become deprived of oxygen, "stop eating plankton and start eating rodents; that's the way we lions roll here in the jungle."

In all seriousness, I can guarantee that this is far from an isolated case. If he is 10th or 12th in his class, just how many are there, between him and the 1st, who basically live with the same thing, but either don't write about it, or worse, write about it, but never get heard?

Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system

#22

Post by vicaya »

DenisM wrote: post #2

He seems to have more problems with his relatives than the education system. However if this sort of treatment is culturally prevalent I can see this easily holding back the whole country - humans are fragile and fine instruments and perform at peak only when maintaned with utmost care.

Fortunately, such treatment is less and less prevalent in China, especially in more developed areas (the student is from a poorer province, where a top-tier college education often means a rare ticket to the prosperity for the whole family.)

Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system

#23

Post by d0mine »

mattmaroon wrote: post #8
thinkcomp wrote: post #6

It's really depressing to read articles like this, partly because it does seem like there's no way out when you're in the middle of it, and partly because there are significant parts of the American educational system that are really little better. I did not have abusive parents or extended family members, and I did not have to endure the suffering that this author did in a far-away boarding school, but I certainly c…

Test scores are like democracy, they're the least bad option. There's simply not a better way to measure progress, or one more accurate to life.

There are better options. For example:

1. A conversation.

2. Real-world problems.

Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system

#24

Post by Retric »

gcheong wrote: post #13
fuzzmeister wrote: post #5

Parents should push their children to succeed through positive reinforcement and good example, not through fear.

A big problem is that the whole "spare the rod spoil the child" mindset has become so much a given that people have a hard time believing any "softer" approach for anything other than babies and infants might work, even in the face of evidence that the current approach is not working.

I don't think things are failing so blaming "the current approach" seems misguided. I can't think of a single area where things where better 100 years ago than they are today in the US. Most trends are fairly positive over the last 30 years.

EX: People talk about an increase in the dropout rate but it's slowly falling across the US. (http://nces.ed.gov/ssbr/pages/dropout.asp) Edit: more recent numbers http://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=16

Violent Crime is falling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

There might be an long term increase in the unemployment rate http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=248 but if so it's swamped by swings in the economy.

Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system

#25

Post by puffythefish »

fuzzmeister wrote: post #5

Parents should push their children to succeed through positive reinforcement and good example, not through fear.

Ugh. This is why I hate the grading system. The basic premise the entire system relies on is fear of failure, which, to me, seems to be completely counter-productive to learning. When I am actually learning something, for instance programming, I don't learn by marginally getting better and going to a slightly higher level before, still succeeding at every step — I learn immersing myself in something completely over my head that I don't understand, and absolutely, miserably failing. When I finally get it, not only is the experience extremely gratifying, but I actually learn it; it's very difficult to forget something you now understand that only moments ago looked nearly impossible. In school, doing this is not only discouraged but nearly impossible — fail a class for even a few weeks and it will be very difficult to get your grade up and be able to get in any more honors classes; essentially, through the grading system you're labeled satisfactory (A/B, depending on your standards), average (C) or a failure (F), even though the only way to learn is through your mistakes.

I think a good indicator of how well you're learning something is to ask yourself, "If I asked myself about this subject 6 months ago, would I think I was an idiot?". In school, I can think of maybe 3 subjects that's true in, but not by much. With something I'm teaching myself through failing, like programming, I would probably think I was an idiot less than one month ago.

Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system

#26

Post by vicaya »

carterschonwald wrote: post #17
DenisM wrote: post #2

He seems to have more problems with his relatives than the education system. However if this sort of treatment is culturally prevalent I can see this easily holding back the whole country - humans are fragile and fine instruments and perform at peak only when maintaned with utmost care.

miniature versions of this happen in american high schools (especially magnet high schoos), where the children of recent immigrants will have to deal with a parent being angry if they do not get A/A+'s in their coursework.

Again it usually happens when parents are not well educated. They only realize the importance of education, but they're not educated enough to evaluate their children's progress, so they often have to rely on the not always reliable association of good grades with good progress.

Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system

#27

Post by pg »

puffythefish wrote: post #25
fuzzmeister wrote: post #5

Parents should push their children to succeed through positive reinforcement and good example, not through fear.

Ugh. This is why I hate the grading system. The basic premise the entire system relies on is fear of failure, which, to me, seems to be completely counter-productive to learning. When I am actually learning something, for instance programming, I don't learn by marginally getting better and going to a slightly higher level before, still succeeding at every step — I learn immersing myself in something completely over m…

I wasn't motivated by fear. It was more like trying to be high scorer on a video game. Which is also somewhat of a stupid motivation, but probably not as stupid.

I think the problem is not grades per se but the difference between what they're supposed to measure and what they actually do. That difference can be small (I can remember college classes where it was), but it takes an effort.

Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system

#29

Post by bokonist »

Retric wrote: post #24
gcheong wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big problem is that the whole "spare the rod spoil the child" mindset has become so much a given that people have a hard time believing any "softer" approach for anything other than babies and infants might work, even in the face of evidence that the current approach is not working.

I don't think things are failing so blaming "the current approach" seems misguided. I can't think of a single area where things where better 100 years ago than they are today in the US. Most trends are fairly positive over the last 30 years. EX: People talk about an increase in the dropout rate but it's slowly falling across the US. ( http://nces.ed.gov/ssbr/pages/dropout.asp ) Edit: more recent numbers http://nces.e…

I can't think of a single area where things where better 100 years ago than they are today in the US.

1) architecture 2) divorce rates 3) illegitimacy rates 3) inner city crime rates 4) the strength of civic organizations 5) the entire education system 6) taxes 7) black male employment rates ( http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950CE1D81E3CF... ) 8) average firm size 9) the non-existence of several hundred nuclear weapons pointing at our cities 10) the financial/monetary system

There are of course many things that are better about 2009 than 1909. But it is foolish to see history as a unidirectional march towards progress ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history ). The reality is much more complicated.

Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system

#30

Post by pg »

bokonist wrote: post #4

My favorite theory about why the West and China diverged starting in the 16th century is that entrepreneurial capitalism thrived in the West. The ambitious acheived success by finding a competent master, learning a trade, and then making stuff people wanted, whether that be clocks or caravels. In China, the ambitious were sucked into the civil service exam system. They were judged by arbitrary tests rather than by pr…

The first sentence is probably true. But the causes for this divergence are so complicated that I don't feel like I understand the question well enough yet to explain why it happened. For example, there was the court squabble that caused long trading voyages to be banned just at the wrong moment. If long distance voyages were a sufficiently powerful driver of European economic growth, that alone could have been enough to screw China. Especially since this was something of a zero-sum game.
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