We have heard for years about the alleged superiority of Chinese education, based almost entirely on test scores on international assessments in which Shanghai comes out on top. Chinese-American scholar Yong Zhao warns in his books that Chinese education is not the paradigm that the Western media has fallen for. One scholar, Tom Loveless of Brookings, warned that Shanghai’s test-taking students were not representative of China. But they were ignored, and so we have been deluged with books and articles about why we should retool our education system so we could “surpass Shanghai” and why American mothers should get Tough and become “tiger moms.”
But wait!
Education in China, Christopher Balding writes, is so underdeveloped that it is a threat to the nation’s economic goals.
He writes:
“A widely held view in the West is that China’s schools are brimming with math and science whizzes, just the kind of students that companies of the future will need. But this is misleading: For years, headline-grabbing studies showing China’s prowess on standardized tests evaluated only kids in rich and unrepresentative areas. When its broader population was included, China’s ranking dropped across all subject areas.
“Official data bears out this dynamic. According to the 2010 census, less than 9 percent of Chinese had attended school beyond the secondary level. More than 65 percent had gone no further than junior high. From 2008 to 2016, China’s total number of graduate students actually decreased by 1 percent. Outside the richest areas, much of China’s population lacks even the basic skills required in a high-income economy.”
Outside of its prosperous urban centers, Chinese education is sharply restricted. Rote memorization continues to dominate even the classrooms in urban centers.
Time to stop mythologizing Chinese education and deal with our own realities.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s so funny to watch if you’re of a certain age because replace “China” with “Japan” and this was the exact same theme in the 1980’s.
I don’t know why they fall in and out of love with other countries. I suspect they don’t use Japan anymore because Japan has some of the same slow growth problems as the US.
It just seems so faddish and lemming-like. It’s hard to take them seriously. DeVos is bad but Arne Duncan was the worst. They just repeat whatever the last CEO they met with said. There doesn’t seem to be any thought process at all.
They’re still repeating the “skills gap” theory as if it’s fact. US House members were parroting it yesterday. These people have fancy educations and almost endless research assets to tap,yet they parrot whatever the theory of the year is in unison.
It’s alarming, really. These are the leaders- supposedly the Big Ideas people. it’s just faddish junk that one could pick watching a cable business channel
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So frighteningly said, due, mostly, to the words IN UNISON. “These people have fancy educations and almost endless research assets to tap,yet they parrot whatever the theory of the year is in unison.”
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“American management thinks they can just copy Japan. But they don’t know what to copy.” –W. Edwards Deming
https://blog.deming.org/2015/11/if-japan-can-why-cant-we-1980-nbc-special-report/
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Where I live there are 2 large communities of Asians….Chinese and Korean. I get an inside view because my children interact with the children and I have some asian friends. Both cultures are very competitive about their children’s “test scores” and schooling. This really drives the AP for all, dual enrollment, and the SAT madness in our area. I understand that they leave their home country to come here for more opportunity for their children (and themselves) and a public education for all. What I don’t understand is the need for their children to go to school all day and then to be taxied to after school tutoring EVERY day (with extra homework) and Chinese or Korean school on the weekends and the push for their kids to take 4 AP classes (per year) in HS? Some of these kids are taking the SAT NUMEROUS times! They are doing this to their children here in the USA yet that’s why they leave their own country? I’m baffled by it all.
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Tutoring and a dogged determination to be the best are status symbols in many Asian communities. Extra effort is almost like a representation that shows the world how much they love and invest in their children. It is a cultural value. I have taught many Asians as an ESL teacher. Some young people thrive under this system while others stress out as individual children vary in academic talent and social-emotional well being.
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Not baffled at all . The Chinese education system for those that had access to it, dates back to the dynastic period where civil service test were a key to advancement . So they have always educated to the test. Most migrations are not from the poorest of the poor but those with the means to leave. The Asians who came here in the last several decades were that paradigm on steroids . Many coming with degrees and advanced degrees . What worked for them at home, they have imported .
Like other immigrant groups they will eventually assimilate develop “All American ” ethos . At this point I am not sure how good a thing that will be.
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Some of these kids are 3rd and 4th generation and their parents were born in America, yet it still continues. Being “the best” is a lot for kids to live up to. I know there is a mental crisis issue that is NEVER discussed and many of these kids have social acclimation issues when they get to college due to their parents directing/dictating their whole childhood. There IS more to life than hard work and determination.
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Lisa M
Perhaps second and third generation Americans, which is not a hell of a long time in terms of assimilation . Don’t forget that for 60 years we banned Asians from coming to this country . So you were either here before 1882 or you came after the second World War. In which case the first generation are now boomers the second adults of child bearing age and the third the grand children we are talking about .
I suspect that many have roots even more recent than that . Where the parents came here as young children of educated immigrants.
As long as it works for them economically they will maintain those behaviors . If and when it no longer does . It will change . The fact that we are putting emphasis on standardized tests does not help .
I agree with you on the negative impacts .
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To Lisa M. There’s a reason to the ‘hard work’ and ‘determination’ attitude. Several of these guys wrestle with standardized tests & strict competition from early childhood till they are in their twenties.
The ‘successful ones’ are post-graduates that’s to say, still at school in mid-twenties, and PhDs, that’s to say, at school till late twenties.
Think about it. One gets only twenty-five years to tune your mental guitar.
You are with parents who have spent this twenty-five year period, struggling to succeed at high-stake standardized tests in a highly competitive setting. Leave for what they receive from family – who are mostly full-time workers – everything else is via the school atmosphere – and the base of that is ‘success at all costs.’
“Being the best” forms the core of this ‘educational’ ideology. Psychologically speaking, you are against people who ultimate-truth revolves around ‘competitive exams’ and ‘success at any cost’.
I’ve struggled with this (without success), and I feel [don’t forget, I am failure], it’s (nearly) impossible to affect any kind of behavioral change past twenty-five. Yes, individuals do change. However,…
The current system does delivers success – monitory, and by effect social success too. Highly specialized work force with nothing else on their mind but winning against the competition has it’s benefits.
Though short term, but the benefits are immediate and material. This reduces the incentives for change. And, as I said, twenty-five years is a long time; to change past twenty-five is a herculean task.
That’s the story of the parents. As US too heads for the same ‘Testing’ future, it’s impractical to presume the parents would change their attitude. ‘Determination’ and ‘hard work’ brought them success, and why won’t it for their kids!
I think, it’s become too long. 🙂
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China clearly never had a model education system, and the Tiger Mom nonsense that Duncan and Rhee jumped on was ridiculously wrong and downright foul. When I see Bloomberg L.P., however, writing about China being a nation at risk because of education, I wonder if it’s because China is such a big venture capital investment opportunity. Might privatization of the world’s most populous nation’s schools be the goal behind an article such as this? Bridge International China? Teach for China? Charter Scam Association of China?
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Educating only the wealthy or the “strivers” offends my sense of equity. A well functioning democracy depends on an educated populace. China has never done this, and we shouldn’t emulate bad, undemocratic practice. We have an obligation to all our young people to provide equity, access and opportunity. These are the reasons I became a teacher.
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I’m following the national charter/private school promotion event.
Jeb Bush is speaking about ed reform accomplishments.
Nothing so far for the 90% of families in the unfashionable public schools – they provide no value at all to the vast majority outside their ideological dogma.
We’re all paying the cost of the US Department of Education to attend this charter/voucher cheerleading event.
Another day where our publicly-paid federal employees do nothing for children in public schools.
I know very few ed reformers attended public schools or send their children and grandchildren to public schools, but they must be aware that the VAST majority of Americans use public schools.
What value do they add for 90% of people? Why are we all paying for these charter/voucher marketing junkets?
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I have thought for year that we should not even participate in the PISA. India started to but hey said that the test was biased so that India will get a new test.
China handpicks the students in some of its cites to take the test.
Usually small homogeneous countries do well in the PISA.
The US is the largest country that educates its population and does not cherry pick its test takers. China may be going to participate as a country instead of just a two or three cities.
The 4th largest population is Indonesia and they are at the bottom or near the bottom of test taking countries. It is large and homogeneous but it fails to do well.
Canada does well but it has only about 1/10th the population of the US, at 36 million.
Finland also does well but the PISA test was developed in Europe. Also, Finland does not use computers in classrooms and they do not start teaching their kids until they are 7 years old. Their population is less 6 million and is 95% Finns and about 5% Swedes.
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I’ve read that even China’s leaders have admitted that all of China’s public schools cannot be judged based on the scores of 15-year-olds in Shanghai. Shanghai is where China implemented all of its educational reforms (not to be compared to education reforms in the U.S.). Shanghai sent teams of teachers to the US back before NCLB to learn what America’s public schools were doing right and took what they learned back to Shanghai.
Years later, it was determined what was working and those methods were then adopted in Beijing and maybe a few other of China’s first-tier cities but China’s public education system has a very long way to go to develop a high-quality education system in rural China and most of its cities.
“Education in China. … All citizens must attend school for at least nine years, known as the nine-year compulsory education, which the government funds. It includes six years of primary education, starting at age six or seven, and three years of junior secondary education (junior middle school) for ages 12 to 15.”
But many rural parents defy this compulsory education law and pull their children out at the end of 6th grade.
Children who want to go to high school for ages 15 to 18, have to compete and the competition is brutal. Only the best test takers get into one of those high schools.
Primary schools in China enroll more than 120 million children.
But only about 78 million attend junior and senior high schools and out of that group, more than 11 million go to college. Many students do not continue on after the end of 9th grade so the numbers are lower for senior high school.
There is no way China’s public schools should be compared to the U.S. To do so is a crime … a misleading, fraudulent crime.
China also offers vocational and technical schools at the end of 9th grade for children that do not go onto attend academic senior high schools.
The “Law on Vocational Education” was issued in 1996. Vocational education embraces higher vocational schools, secondary skill schools, vestibule schools, vocational high schools, job-finding centers and other adult skill and social training institutes. To enable vocational education to better accommodate the demands of economic re-structuring and urbanization, in recent years the government has remodeled vocational education, oriented towards obtaining employment, and focusing on two major vocational education projects to meet society’s ever more acute demand for high quality, skilled workers. These are cultivating skilled workers urgently needed in modern manufacture and service industries; and training rural laborers moving to urban areas. To accelerate vocational education in western areas, the Central Government has used government bonds to build 186 vocational education centers in impoverished western area counties.
Maybe this will help fill in the picture:
There are 223,683 preschools in China; 11.202 secondary vocational schools.
But only 65,645 high schools.
https://www.statista.com/topics/2090/education-in-china/
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I taught for a term at one of China’s most prestigious universities in Beijing. I taught a course on American immigration history and literature. I was, on the whole, not impressed by the students, who were from all over China. Two illustrative stories:
Marking a mid-term exam, I found two almost identical papers. How did that come about? We used an on-line system for students to post their papers. One guy had simply copied a woman’s paper. But how did he imagine he could get away with that? Well, in most classes such papers were graded by a number of TAs. He figured that the odds of the same TA (forget the professor) grading his paper and the one he copied from were small. Poor reasoning, and even his confession didn’t clear him.
I gave them as a reading a piece of sociological writing on American Jews from the 1960s by a prominent academic, and a piece from the 1990s devastating the 1960s piece. I wanted them to see an example of totally inadequate social science writing and how a good analyst could tear it apart. Nevertheless, on the final exam, a number (at least 5 or 6) quoted the defective 1960s article approvingly. Why? I had given it to them, after all. Silly and stupid, but it illustrated a habit of mind gained in high school, where rote learning was the norm. An extreme case of the failure to develop critical thinking. It was hardly the only instance.
In my observation, Chinese schools do some things quite well, other things badly. And they are hardly resistant to the problems of class, poverty, and the conditions of local life.
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In Yong Zhao’s book about Chinese education—“Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?”— he writes that students frequently cheat, that buying and selling research papers is a big business.
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