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The Harm of Studying Abroad

readingthechinadream.com

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Re: The Harm of Studying Abroad

#21

Post by ourmandave »

vorpalhex wrote: post #3

From my reading of this, this is just someone who was very isolated due in part to cultural/language barriers. I would be curious if someone who had the same experiences but was less isolated and had social nets would have a very different take. > You sing the praises of whatever it is that your enemy opposes, and you oppose whatever your enemy praises. That screams like someone who feels pushed out and isolated from…

My daughter spent her freshman year in the International dorm and noticed that most foreign students tend to keep to their own nationality.

Maybe there was no other Chinese students to hang with?

(She's currently on the student committee whose purpose is to get intl' students to interact outside their cliques. But I wonder how many there will actually be this Fall term.)

Re: The Harm of Studying Abroad

#22

Post by aj7 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #18
elchin wrote: post #11

I honestly can't tell if this is sarcastic or not. Especially points 4 and 5 - this is when you learn to get out of comfort zone!

Could just be a resume building puff piece to help him rise in the party machinery.

Didn’t think of that. Well said.

Re: The Harm of Studying Abroad

#24

Post by aj7 »

What I was impressed with is the profundity to which he attaches to sitting around and bs’ing with his Chinese buddies. And when we westerners see this, out of the corner of our eye, we think...

Re: The Harm of Studying Abroad

#25

Post by ghostpepper »

powersnail wrote: post #9

The whole article rings false to me. Although I get that it's Zhang's personal experience, but the reasoning makes zero sense, and it feels like he just wanted to vent. Some of the points seemingly have nothing to do with studying abroad, but the nature of the university he attended, for example, > First, you have no time. You read a lot but there’s no time to think. This is has nothing to do with being a foreigner,…

> pretend to be a white person and be extremely amiable

Can you expand on this? Are you saying that foreigners at university need to be more amiable to be accepted than they would otherwise?

Re: The Harm of Studying Abroad

#26

Post by hootbootscoot »

nja4 wrote: post #8

To me, this reads as so much Chinese nationalism. Feels super consistent with Communist propaganda of an indolent West. Also, seems very suspect to criticize a lack of intellectual freedom by comparing it to a system without freedom of information. I also thought that Western education was widely considered much less about rote memorization and more about intellectual creativity and freedom, even to the detriment of…

I hear you, but I think that there is a significant portion of the "modern" university system (particularly larger schools or systems) that is merely paying lip-service to these values, particularly at the undergrad level.

I had the good fortune of small class sizes and being able to debate professors. (Appeal to authority didn't count lol) I think that some school even prioritize what you mention: St Johns school of the great books (not sure if this is the name) in Santa Fe, for example, makes you learn ancient Greek and Latin. When you learn Geometry, you read Euclid in Latin and argue about his books for weeks on end... It's the opposite of the superficiality the author mentions. There are costs to this, however, and they spend less focal time on the 20th century, when, arguably, many important events and works occurred.

Re: The Harm of Studying Abroad

#27

Post by hootbootscoot »

hootbootscoot wrote: post #16

Talk about someone projecting their own experiences as universal truths for everyone, LOL ...and then trying to use Heidegger as an excuse for intellectual laziness is pretty silly too. The more languages you know, the more you really understand the true meaning of words in your "own" language. (Certainly with Latinic languages and English, for example.) There's also a point to be crossed at which you can dream in an…

I wonder if the author would have enjoyed a different school or town/region instead. We might simply be addressing culture shock, jet-lag, and a lame school, lol

Re: The Harm of Studying Abroad

#28

Post by ghostpepper »

dawg- wrote: post #4
vorpalhex wrote: post #3

From my reading of this, this is just someone who was very isolated due in part to cultural/language barriers. I would be curious if someone who had the same experiences but was less isolated and had social nets would have a very different take. > You sing the praises of whatever it is that your enemy opposes, and you oppose whatever your enemy praises. That screams like someone who feels pushed out and isolated from…

>I would be curious if someone who had the same experiences but was less isolated and had social nets would have a very different take. That's me, and I totally have a different take. I studied abroad as a foreign language major - but only after three full years of studying the language and culture of the country I was visiting. It was an enriching experience and I felt pretty comfortable navigating the country socia…

How fluent were you in the language after three years? Three years of French or Spanish might put you much further ahead than three years of Mandarin or Russian, for example.

Re: The Harm of Studying Abroad

#29

Post by superhuzza »

Disclaimer: I am not Chinese.

I'm a bit dubious about a lot of the other reasons in the article, but one strikes me as very true, perhaps just because I directly observed it.

I'm just wrapping up an MSc in the UK. One thing I have noticed in my program is that language is a huge barrier for the Chinese students. Their questions often reveal they are struggling to follow in lectures, they struggle to make others understand their arguments, and they get tasked with less responsibility in group assignments. Furthermore, the extra time needed to read texts, write papers, and generally learn more English comes at the cost of time spent on their actual topic of interest.

I can't imagine how demotivating this must be, and generally how much more difficult the program must be as a result. I wouldn't be surprised at all if some of their counterparts in China have more academic/career success as a result of not having language as another burden.

Re: The Harm of Studying Abroad

#30

Post by L_Rahman »

powersnail wrote: post #9

The whole article rings false to me. Although I get that it's Zhang's personal experience, but the reasoning makes zero sense, and it feels like he just wanted to vent. Some of the points seemingly have nothing to do with studying abroad, but the nature of the university he attended, for example, > First, you have no time. You read a lot but there’s no time to think. This is has nothing to do with being a foreigner,…

The final claim is hyperbolic. There absolutely is another option which is to find people who aren't interested in performing amiability or socializing exclusively in the safety of their ethnicity.

I made friends because we loved talking about healthcare policy, from being on the debate team, from a shared love for Mad Men, from being interested in starting companies. I did all of this as someone who'd spent the decade preceding college growing up in Bangladesh, with a thick accent and somehow ended up with a group of friends from all around the world.

I'm not saying any of this was easy, but I do think there's a self-defeating element to believing what the parent does.

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