Schoolchildren in Chengdu, China.
Getty / Guang Niu
China has a reputation for having a rigorous education system, ranking first out of 65 countries in the latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test.
Around the world, 15-year-olds take PISA every three years, and it has become the gold standard of ranking nations in terms of educational strength.
Compared to China, the United States ranked 36th in math, 28th in science and 24th in reading in the latest PISA rankings.
China’s domination of international standardized tests, coupled with its relatively low public spending on education, could give the impression that the country is one whose schools should be emulated by the United States.
But Yong Zhao’s book, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?” takes a critical look at the main flaws of the Chinese education system. Zhao argues that the emphasis on testing can rob students of their creativity.
“Chinese education produces excellent test scores, a short-term outcome that can be achieved through rote memorization and hard work,” writes Zhao, who grew up in China and taught there. “But like the Chinese government itself, it is not producing a population of diverse, creative and innovative talent.”
China’s education system excels in imparting a limited amount of prescribed content and skills that its students must master, Zhao said.
Children line up to go to school in Beijing, China.
Getty / Cancan Chu
Chinese students spend a huge amount of time mastering these skills. They average 14 hours of homework a week, the most of any country measured in a study of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The United States, for comparison, had an average of six hours per week.
This hard work is not paying off in terms of innovation, according to Zhao.
A recent Harvard Business Review article expressed doubts that China could be a global leader in entrepreneurship due to the “limited” educational and political systems there.
And many think that Gaokao, China’s most important college entrance exam kills creativity and drive. Xu Xiaoping, a Chinese angel investor, thinks it is and also claims it will take at least 20 years for China to stop sending students abroad to learn how to innovate, according to Venture Beat.
Zhao turns to the words of another Chinese scholar on the matter to emphasize this point.
“Nobody, after 12 years of Chinese education, has the slightest chance of receiving a Nobel Prize, even if they go to Harvard, Yale, Oxford or Cambridge for college,” said Zheng Yefu, a professor at the University. Peking University in China. , according to Zhao’s blog.
Although this may be overstated, other scholars have noted the dearth of Chinese-educated Nobel Laureates. For China to produce more Nobel laureates, “Chinese academia will need to change its teaching styles to emphasize more creative problem solving, rather than the traditional approach that values… memorization,” statistician Howard Steven Friedman wrote in the Huffington Post.
The United States should not rush to adopt China’s rote education methods, Zhao argues. For him, this is already happening with America’s increased fixation on standardized testing. This focus on testing, he argues, reflects America’s embrace of authoritarianism.
Rushing to look like China, he argues, would lead to “the loss of values traditionally celebrated by American education — values that have helped make America the most prosperous and advanced nation in the world.” .
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