This fascinating and informative comment was just posted in response to Tom Loveless’s earlier article about how Shanghai gets high scores by excluding the children of migrants from its schools and how OECD allows China to exclude the PISA scores from provinces with less than stellar results. As you will see, there is no coddling” in China. Instead, the pressure on students to study and compete for college entry is relentless.
The reader writes:
As a Chinese native living more than 50% of time in US during the last 20 years, I’m not at all surprised by the result.
Let me talk a little bit about China style. I’m not judging which is better, China or US – it’s just different ways of living, it’s just plain facts.
Two facts are unbelievable for normal US people in terms of the education of kids in China, and as I knew, somewhat similar in Japan and Korea.
First, you can never imagine how crazy the Chinese parents go for the next generation education. A statistic in Beijing two years ago showed that the average cost for each kid for before-college education is roughly 800K RMB – equal to 120K USD. Suppose the kid goes to college at the age of 18, so is about 7K USD every year. You know the average household income in Beijing? It’s about 16K USD. This is a simple math, people spend 45% of their income for their kid education. Bear in mind that not all families has only one child, in my daughter’s class, it’s about 1.4 per family. Well, this number might have been boosted up by some rich people, but it’s not unusual at all. My sister, who lives in a small town in a not-so-poor area, spends even up to 60% sometimes.
The parents just get insane to send their child to a better school. It cost about 15K~30K USD to get a kid into a good primary school if you are not living in the school district, just to bribe the school. Well, “bribe” might be a heavy word, you “voluntarily donate” that money to the school since the state policy forbid tuition overcharge. 15K is a huge number considering the average family income.
Second, it’s purely hardworking and fierce competitions. I still remember my high school days. The school did not have weekends. I got one half-day break each week and one weekend every four weeks. Every day, I got up 6:00 am, followed by a running of 3K meters, and then one hour so called “early reading”, then the breakfast. And after a whole day’s class, at around 5:00pm, there was another 3K meter running. After dinner, there was another two-hour “night reading”. The students were then forced to go to sleep at 9:15 sharp, by cutting off the home electricity.
Thank God, nowadays the education admonition forbids such hell-style training. No after-hour classes are allowed, and no more than half-hour homework are allowed for kids lower than 5th grade. Actually, three school heads were fired for doing so in my hometown last year. But that’s not a relief for the kids – the competition is still there. The teachers do not assign required homework now, but instead, leave the same amount of “optional” one which no parents take as optional. Many kids spend all their after school time on homework of all kinds–literature, math, English, running, sit-ups, craft, class projects, presentations, etc. When the sweet weekend finally arrive, they have to go to after-school classes, not offered by school now, but instead by commercial education companies – the most popular schools are advanced math, English, piano, Karate, dancing. You see, this is so called “the same herbal tea boiled by different water.” No policies could relieve one slight piece from the kids’ shoulders.
The competition arrives from the national college entry exam (so called “Gaokao”). You have to pass the line to go to a college. The good part is that this provides an equal opportunity to everyone, rich or poor. No matter which family you are born from, you have this chance to change your life. The bad part is that this is the only chance. In the remote poor rural area, “no college, no future” is what everyone believes, which now is becoming “no good college, no future”. And the fact is, China has so many kids, and not too many universities. The “Gaokao” is said to be like a huge troop trying to pass a river by a single-log bridge. You get on the bridge, you go to college, otherwise you just fall.
Gaokao is the ultimate goal of all students and the single most important thing before you graduate from high school. The kid’s future, the parents’ hope, the teacher’s performance and salary, the school’s reputation are all connected to this. In China, nobody knows about PISA, and nobody cares about PISA, Gaokao is everything.
I’m a little baffled. How does a family making 16K pay a 15-30K “bribe” to get their child into school?
I guess those parents can’t, their kids go to the not so good school in their district.
Either the extended family contributes money, or money is borrowed from friends.
Have you considered the possibility that parents are so concerned about their children’s education that they spend years saving up money? Have Americans forgotten how to save money?
Have you saved enough to cough up twice your annual income for a bribe?
Reblogged this on Conversations in Boulder County and commented:
Do we want to follow in China’s footsteps?
I agree. It looks like the US is inching towards the China Model.
Our version includes – School, child care/after school program until parents can pick kids up, tons of homework with dinner between sessions. Sports or other activities on weekends and/or during the week between homework time. Required reading before bed (not two hours, but twenty minutes or more). NO TIME TO PLAY. No time to be a kid. Unfortunately, lights out are rarely at 9:15 Kids have a few minutes of down time with parents (unless homework isn’t done) until 9:30 or later, then reading and bed.
The principal at the Middle School suggested that parents limited their child’s participation in sports, dance, gymnastic, because that would interfere with the homework and study schedule. He apologized for the necessity of his words. So, unlike China, physical activity is not part of the equation.
This is the model my grand daughter is following – and she’s failing. It’s too much. Her mom had her tested and she is very bright. What gives?
The important part of this statement is not how hard the parents push their kids to perform, but how much they are willing to spend on schools and prep materials/courses. Our ed reform corporations see this as their future profit and want to create the same system in the USA. It is not about learning, it is about money.
Isn’t it interesting that
the Business Roundtable,
the Chamber of Commerce,
the Heritage Foundation,
the Hoover Institution,
ALEC,
the American Enterprise Institute,
and other BASTIONS OF COMPETITIVE, CAPITALIST THINKING in the United States
are hellbent on our adopting, in the United States, the approach to education taken by the People’s Republic of China?
This is a system that is based on invariant, mandatory standards and tests created by a top-down, centralized, totalitarian regulatory authority, and these organizations that would be THE FIRST to scream BLOODY MURDER at any such proposals for centralized regulation in any other area of social, economic, and political life are the ones pushing EXACTLY THAT in the United States–the creation of a centralized Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth–a gateway system administered by the state that precludes
competing standards and tests and
free choices by an autonomous people.
It’s unbelievable that this should be so, but it is.
There are a FEW groups on the right that have not drunk the deform Kool-Aid, who see the contradiction. CATO is one, but CATO is dedicated to liberty, generally, and also supports other ideas that the right typically hates, such as limiting military expenditure to that which is necessary for defense and decriminalization of drugs.
A cynic would say that what this means is that these organizations only CLAIM to be interested in liberty but that that’s all JUST TALK masking the real interest–which is to promote the economic interests of a few oligarchs. But perhaps, instead, these folks are just confused and haven’t thought, carefully, about what they are doing.
Robert,
Way to go. Politicize the issue. Unfortunately this goes much deeper than conservative, competitive capitalism. Those of us who refer to ourselves as ‘conservative’ do so at the risk of being called filthy unmentionable names by liberals–believe me, they don’t hesitate to slander. While I abhor ‘big’ government, I also abhor big business, and war policies that put lots of dough in the pockets of some business people and lots and lots of politicians–would believe Democrats as well as Republicans.
As for competition, that, in my humble opinion, is the very spine of creativity and growth. With out it, stagnation ultimately morphs into regression.
+1
Tom Loveless forgot to mention that the top 5 in the rankings are of Chinese descendants, such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore (75% Chinese population), and Taiwan.
AND??
“First, you can never imagine how crazy the Chinese parents go for the next generation education. ”
“The parents just get insane to send their child to a better school.”
Do you guys think that these statements would equally well apply to parents in high poverty areas of the US?
One way of looking at it is that everyone shares one common belief that their children’s education is everything and they would “go broke” so that they are well educated in China. In the U.S., college is overrated as I overheard it from middle-class, 20-years-old students. Young students take it for granted because it easily accessible through student loans. Many kids who go to college in the U.S. don’t see it as “Gaokao is everything”. Could it be that is why many of our students dropout of HS/college?
China as well as other countries have deeply rooted traditions, philosophical beliefs, work ethic and discipline. Government plays an intereting role in each country as well, affecting the choices or limiting choices that people the way they act, think, and live.
should be… the way people act, think and live.
This explains why there is so little creativity coming from China considering the number of educated people. Creativity is mostly a function of playing and having fun, and with the kind of training the Chinese get, it is taken out of them before they mature…
Enough is enough with sour grapes!
Packed with elementary statistical disinformation and hersays, Mr Loveless’s article is not “fascinating”, at all, to any Chinese, because it is now a text-book laughing stock after being translated into several mainland Chinese-language forums, showcasing that Mr Loveless is absolutely clueless about China. One of the common responses in Chinese forum to Mr Loveness is that ” Has Mr Loveless been to China, ever?”
The newly disclosed scores of another Chinese province which participated in PISA 2012: Zhejiang Province by a local Chinese newspaper:
Maths: Shanghai 613; Zhejiang: 623
Reading: Shanghai 570; Zhejiang: 570
Science: Shanghai 580, Zhejiang: 582
Zhejiang Province: population 54 million. GDP about 10,000 USD per cap, a lot poorer than Shanghai.
On these Zhejiang’s scores:
A, Just like 2009, 80% of Zhejiang’s 2012 scores have been taken out of its poor rural areas (Zhejiang’s rural population rate is only 38% however).
B, All elite schools of Zhejiang province didn’t participate in the PISA tests.
Zhejiang Province is PISA 2012 No.1 now, not Shanghai any more.
Perhaps Mr Loveless would like to share with us some fascinating details on how those lot poorer and rural Zhejiang kids cheated PISA then? Surely it must be the home of Chinese elites, too? ROFL.