Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does a math test, or a history test, or an SAT reward mediocrity or parroting?
You parrot the practice tests.
That's not a good strategy since the questions are different.
I was driven mad by the Chinese education system
91–100 of 142 posts
Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system
#92Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system
#93This article is by a kid who is still in this situation. I can't speak or write Chinese, but if someone can reach him via the comments on the original article, please tell him to leave there and explore the world. It's much bigger than the silly schools he's in and there are plenty of opportunities for him to become successful.
You really have no clue. This poor kid probably doesn't have the money for a train trip to Shanghai much less to explore the world. He has no ability to work other places inside China and nobody would hire him where he'd make any money where he is. He is trapped and a Chinese university degree is the only way out.
Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system
#94I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the Chinese education system, coupled with discipline through fear works. I competed at last year's International Physics Olympiad (Viet Nam), who won? China, as usual. China starts preparation for the competition when their participants are just 8; they work ~16 hours a day on physics problems. The result? Winning with ease. You have, I all presume, read Gladwell's latest book…
I'm a westerner working in China for years and hiring computer science graduates from the top tier universities. The quality of their education is shockingly poor. The Chinese education system is destructive and collectivist, promoting conformity of thought and narrowness of vision. Students graduate in to a world where connections, wealth, accident of birth and not talent determine your success in life.
You should be glad you didn't grow up in such a system. Be happy you have a shot at participating in something of a meritocracy, be it academic or corporate.
Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system
#95I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the Chinese education system, coupled with discipline through fear works. I competed at last year's International Physics Olympiad (Viet Nam), who won? China, as usual. China starts preparation for the competition when their participants are just 8; they work ~16 hours a day on physics problems. The result? Winning with ease. You have, I all presume, read Gladwell's latest book…
>who won? China, as usual.
I'll need to hear more details than that; China is the largest country in the world.
Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system
#96I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the Chinese education system, coupled with discipline through fear works. I competed at last year's International Physics Olympiad (Viet Nam), who won? China, as usual. China starts preparation for the competition when their participants are just 8; they work ~16 hours a day on physics problems. The result? Winning with ease. You have, I all presume, read Gladwell's latest book…
In order to do that they have to stream very early on, far before the Olympiads. I'm not sure what they use to stream but the proxy used in the west, math tests, are more an indicator of how well you can follow instructions. Undoubtedly China is going to end up with a large number of very technically competent physicists I'm just wondering if they lost a few who could be Nobels along the way.
> I'm just wondering if they lost a few who could be Nobels along the way.
I don't think studying for an olympiad impedes this. Terrence Tao (Australian, to be clear), dominated math olympiads, went on to make fundamental contributions to math and won a Fields medal.
Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system
#97I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the Chinese education system, coupled with discipline through fear works. I competed at last year's International Physics Olympiad (Viet Nam), who won? China, as usual. China starts preparation for the competition when their participants are just 8; they work ~16 hours a day on physics problems. The result? Winning with ease. You have, I all presume, read Gladwell's latest book…
You can't generate passion and creativity by squeezing 10,000 hours of [forced] practice into someone (especially really young kids). It also leaves little time to explore ('find what you love'). Passion, creativity AND skills (in a lot of cases the first two lead to skills anyway) is what drives people to do amazing things. I'm glad you found your passion, I think most of us here did; but without it we couldn't do [so well] what we're doing now.
Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system
#98After reading this article, All I can say is Indian education is very much identical. Some kids here are pushed even more than this Chinese kid; a kid sister of my friend goes to private tuition so that she could pass the entrance test of another private tuition which takes in less students and trains them to write and pass the entrance exam of a reputed college in India (so in simple words, she is going through two…
With all due respect, your views and analysis are only relevant to the urban experience.
"anyone who is slightly not retarded" does NOT land up a job in non-metros.
Just visit a tier 2 city like Nashik (I am not even talking about proper rural areas) and see the employment opportunities there. At such places success stories abound of sons and daughters of lower middle class workers who cracked some competitive exam or another have landed, and naturally students are inspired to work harder.
Go little deeper and in the rural areas, the socio-economic conditions there are such that kids who can attend schools and colleges consider themselves privileged. And these people do uplift the economic situation of the entire family.
The point I am trying to drive here is that the parents are generally right to emphasize the importance of education to their children. Of course, obsessive behavior as demonstrated in this article is wrong.
The inherent problem which leads to this is two fold: lack of seats and unscientific content in education.
Lack of Seats There is an utter shortage of seats in all educational centers in India. This leads to higher "cut off" grades leading to obsessive competition. The very idea that grades are the blanket deciding factor to deem a student fit to attend a certain school is very poor and it needs scrutiny urgently.
Unscientific content The Indian education, in its current form, discourages creativity, emphasizes solely on memorization capabilities (I have some friends who are now managers at Big Four IT companies who memorized essays for English exam and sums for Math exams and got super grades) and is highly politicized. It is geared to train students to be doers and not thinkers, it does not light the burning curiosity that I feel is very important to really learn anything (be it math, sciences, even history, etc)
IMHO, there is an need to modernize the educational system which should solve many a problems.
It is a mammoth task; grading system, content, creativity, the "tuition problem" to name a few obstacles. We can start out by accepting the problems.
Again, all due respect to your views. I can relate with them and probably would have completely supported them had I not had the opportunity to visit what some call the "real India" :)
Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 enoug…
Here is a great article comparing the Chinese and the Portuguese approaches to exploration. The comparison between ship sizes is just stunning. It's the 15th century version of Lisp versus Blub :-) : http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-succeed-or-f... Decentralization was a major factor in Europe's success. The Chinese government could issue an edict and ban trading voyages for centuries. No European rule…
It wasn't so much that no European ruler could afford to be so foolish as Europe could afford to have foolish rulers. There were definitely bits of Europe that were screwed at various times in this period, but breakage tended to be contained by national borders.
Re: I was driven mad by the Chinese education system
#100My 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 result was centuries of stagnation. One of the factors, yes, but making such an attribution overlooks a lot: the Tang is often regarded as a renaissance in China. It follows the Sui, when the imperial exams started. General characteristics of each of the dynasties, and each of the rulers, have large effects on the policies and the culture of the era. Simple example: if Bush was an emperor, and held power for a…
"if Bush was an emperor, and held power for a few generations, it isn't far fetched to see a dark age of bio research."
The total federal research and development budget increased under Bush. The objection that some people have is his moratorium on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
This is a small part of all bio research that is morally contentious. I doubt your assertion of seeing a "dark age of bio research" is warranted.