In response to an earlier post, a teacher in Connecticut writes:
My wife’s school here in CT has developed an international program in which they take on and board a large number of Chinese students, whose parents definitely think it is worthwhile to get them out of Chinese schools. One disturbing thing that the teachers have noticed is how bereft of critical thinking skills they are. When asked higher order thinking questions in class, they freeze up and ask “what do you want me to say?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Didn’t Texas just ban the teaching of critical thinking skills? Yep, that should help make our country better.
Well, something to that effect was in the Texas Republican Party’s platform, but, as a Texas teacher, I can assure you that most of us are still fighting the good fight for critical thinking down here.
Bill Gates is a genius. Michelle Rhee is a great teacher. Rupert Murdoch is a kind man. Mayor Bloomberg cares about all children. Won’t Back Down is a movie about great teachers. I am now ready to take a timed bubble test. Thank you for “teaching” me.
“what do you want me to say?”
Wasn’t that a line in Orwell’s “1984”?
It’s also a song by a group called Dismemberment Plan. For real.
Yes, it is. I am currently reading the section of “1984” where the character, Winston, is going through torturous “reprogramming” at the “Ministry of Love” and he asks the Big Brother Party official that question. The official is holding up 4 fingers and he expects Winston to say and BELIEVE that he is holding up 5 fingers. If Winston would just cooperate, he could be “cured” of his “insanity” which causes him to question the authority of Big Brother. How prophetic.
And now we see why the reformers are so enchanted with Chinese and other Asian models of education and so dismissive of Finnish and European schools.
The Chinese model fits the needs of the 1% to a T: It’s not inquisitorial, so it’s well suited to computer delivery and management by cheap “instructors” or “trainers” (read TFA) than to professional teachers; it produces very passive graduates who are not well disposed to exercise or demand political rights or social justice; because it emphasizes test taking, it provides a tremendous normative force that solidifies a hierarchy in which a the masses are at the beck and call of a few. Critical thinking is not the goal of this education; this is about breeding passivity.
And this is very much in the same vein as the original reform movement a century ago. Then, the business and educational elites wanted to mold the wave of immigrant children, blacks, and less fortunate into a passive mass of cheap labor for the factories.
This is why we need to define our education on the foundation of Western philosophy, which is built on the inquisitorial culture that rose in ancient Greece and lead to our current ideas of human rights, political democracy, science and mathematics, and the market economy. No other civilization produced these ideas and values in the form we have them today. To move the Asian model is to return to the very rigid patriarchal and hierarchical philosophies that are based on Confucianism.
I’m sure some will howl that my comments are chauvinistic. As I’ve written elsewhere on this blog, I do not argue that Western culture has any moral superiority over other cultures. My point is that if we want to keep our democracy and culture of open inquiry and human rights, then we have to understand the philosophical foundations of those ideas. Only then can we truly value other cultures. Only then can we decide how we want to live. Otherwise, others will prey on our ignorance to make those decisions for us.
“This is why we need to define our education on the foundation of Western philosophy, which is built on the inquisitorial culture that rose in ancient Greece and lead to our current ideas of human rights, political democracy, science and mathematics, and the market economy. No other civilization produced these ideas and values in the form we have them today.”
To paraphrase E. Christian Kopf, the civilization we have today is the result of the Classical curriculum (the trivium and quadrivium).
This Yang Zhao video is by a person educated in China
As an ESL teacher, I see this all the time. I saw this when I was overseas too. Other systems put value on cramming in as much information as possible and to do that it means rote learning. It takes longer to teach kids how to ask questions and analyze data which means rather than breadth we value depth.
And it takes maturity, experience and a strong education to do it well. College graduates need not apply (yet).
Oops! Forgot a key word or two:
And it takes maturity, experience and a strong education to do it well. Newly minted ollege graduates need not apply (yet).
What works for one country, one state, one school district, one classroom, one student does not work for the rest. Reformers keep treating human behavior as if it could be replicated into their theoretical, delusional world of manufacturing things on a production line. The divide between classes in the US widens for philosophical reasons where the upper class (those w/money) always dictate. Is that the result of captialism at work? (Should we not be mindful of the effects of free enterprise?) Also, are we truly practicing capitalism as we envy other countries whose practices have originated otherwise?
Yes, and the Chinese people know this too. That’s why they are studying our system so as to make improvements in their own.
I’ll always remember this conversation I had with a Japanese man about twenty years ago. He had moved to California with his two sons:
Me: I know our educational system is pretty bad compared to what you have in Japan.
Man: Your educational system is the best in the world. That’s mainly why we moved here.
Me: What!!! What do you mean?
Man: I have two sons. One is very academically inclined and the other is not. In Japan, only the academic son was recognized. My younger son was treated as a worthless failure. When they entered Fullerton High School, my older son continued his studies in their honors program, but my younger son also found his niche in the arts department. His talents were immediately recognized and cultivated. Today my older son is a physician and my younger son is a graphic artist in Beverly Hills. He makes more money than his brother!
Me: I never thought of it that way. We’re always told how bad our educational system is.
Man: Just look at the success of your adults and you’ll know.
Did he also mention suicide as a result of not being able to meet expectations.
No, but he implied it.
In fact, here in Maine there are Chinese students who pay to attend our public schools; this story lays out the issues nicely:
http://bangordailynews.com/2011/07/15/news/penobscot/chinese-students-seeking-opportunity-in-maine-schools/
The same is true in schools near me. I was surprised to find out that people from China send their high school age children to San Marino to attend school. Also, people move here from South Korea so their kids can attend Whitney High School in Cerritos, CA and Oxford Academy in Cypress. And of course “the world” sends their young to our colleges and universities.
I traveled to China before NCLB and spent time working with Chinese students. I was interviewed on a Chinese radio station as I was an American teacher. I told them our children are no different. We have well behaved ones and ones not so well behaved. I had a book stolen from me while there.
I said the biggest difference is when I asked the Chinese kids to discuss something. They couldn’t do it. I said our schools allow for conversation and debate. I was surprised at the interviewers respond. “We want to move in that direction.” He was so adament. Little did I know that when I came back to the good ole U.S. of A, we’d be implementing their system.
Reblogged this on CENTURY21SCHOOLS and commented:
As an American educator that has been to China I could not agree with this more.