“There’s a price for 12 years of prep for an exam....

and that’s to always think there’s a narrow, right answer. If you give precise instructions, they do well. If you define a task broadly, they get lost and ask for help.”*
Xu Ziwang--Co-founder of XiWai Foreign Language School

As I have stated in previous blogs, there are serious problems with Chinese education:

"The continued growth (of socialist modernization) since (the 1985 Decision on the Reform of the Education System) has been a success in many respects; educational attainments and college attendance have surged. Yet in the process, some prominent government officials have grown concerned that too many students have become the sort of stressed-out, test-acing drone who fails to acquire the skills — creativity, flexibility, initiative, leadership — said to be necessary in the global marketplace. “Students are buried in an endless flood of homework and sit for one mock entrance exam after another, leaving them with heads swimming and eyes blurred,” lamented former Vice Premier Li Lanqing in a book describing his efforts to address the problem. They arrive at college exhausted and emerge from it unenlightened — just when the country urgently needs a talented elite of innovators, the word of the hour. A recent report from the McKinsey consulting firm, “China’s Looming Talent Shortage,” pinpointed the alarming consequences of the country’s so-called “stuffed duck” tradition of dry and outdated knowledge transfer: graduates lacking “the cultural fit,” language skills and practical experience with teamwork and projects that multinational employers in a global era are looking for."*


Instead of creating innovative leaders and thinkers, China's current education system is producing mass quantities of narrow-minded, test-taking drones. The New York Times recently published an article titled, "Re-Education". It is a fantastic, must-read article for anyone interested in education, business, global economies, China, sociology, etc. Happy reading.......

*The quotation and excerpt were borrowed from Ann Hulbert's article, "Re-Education".