What makes Chinese students so successful by international standards?
There is a belief widely held across the Western world: Chinese students are schooled through rote, passive learning – and an educational system like this can only produce docile workers who lack innovation or creativity.
We argue this is far from true. In fact, the Chinese education system is producing highly successful students and an extremely skilled and creative workforce. We think the world can learn something from this.
In a viral video earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook highlighted the unique concentration of skilled labour that attracted his manufacturing operations to China:
To which Tesla CEO Elon Musk quickly responded on X: “True”.
When South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the Shenzhen headquarters of electric vehicle manufacturer BYD earlier this year, he was surprised to learn the company was planning to double its 100,000-strong engineering taskforce within the coming decade.
He might not have been so surprised had he known Chinese universities are producing more than ten million graduates every year – the foundation for a super-economy.
The ‘paradox of the Chinese learner’
Chinese learners achieve remarkable success levels compared to their Western – or non-Confucian-heritage – counterparts.
Since Shanghai first participated in the PISA educational evaluation in 2009, 15‑year-olds in China have topped the league table three out of four times in reading, mathematics and science.
How can a supposedly passive and rote Chinese system outperform its Western counterparts? A number of Australian scholars have been studying this “paradox of the Chinese learner” since the 1990s.
Their research shows those common perceptions of Chinese and other Asian learners are wrong. For example, repetition and meaningful learning are not mutually exclusive. As one Chinese saying goes:
An emphasis on education is a defining feature of Chinese culture. Since Confucianism became the state-sanctioned doctrine in the Han Dynasty (202BCE–220CE), education has entered every fabric of Chinese society.
This became especially true after the institutionalisation of the Keju system of civil service examinations during the Sui Dynasty (581CE–618CE).
Today, the Gaokao university entrance examination is the modern Keju equivalent. Millions of school leavers take the exam each year. For three days every July, Chinese society largely comes to a standstill for the Gaokao.
While the cultural drive for educational excellence is a major motivation for everyone involved in the system, it is not something that is easily learned and replicated in Western societies.
However, there are two principles we believe are central to Chinese educational success, at both the learner and system levels. We use two Chinese idioms to illustrate these.
The first we call “orderly and gradual progress” – 循序渐进. This principle stresses patient, step-by-step and sequenced learning, sustained by grit and delayed gratification.
The second we call “thick accumulation before thin production” – 厚积薄发. This principle stresses the importance of two things:
The epitome of orderly and gradual progress is the way calligraphy is learned. It goes from easy to difficult, simple to complex, imitating to free writing, technique to art. Since 2013, it has been a mandatory weekly lesson in all primary and middle schools in China.
The art of Chinese writing embodies patience, diligence, breathing, concentration and an appreciation of the natural beauty of rhythm. It teaches Chinese values of harmony and the aesthetic spirit.
“Thick accumulation” can be illustrated in the way students study extremely hard for the national Gaokao examination, and also during tertiary education. This way they accumulate the basic knowledge and skills required in a modern society.
“Thin production” refers to the ability to narrow or focus this accumulated knowledge and skill to find and implement creative solutions in the workplace or elsewhere.
Ways of learning
On the face of it, the emphasis on gradual and steady progress, and on accumulation of basic knowledge and skills, may look like a slow, monotonous and uninspiring process – the origin of those common myths about Chinese learning.
In reality, it boils down to a simple argument: without a critical mass of basic knowledge and skills, there is little to assimilate and integrate for productive creativity.
Of course, there are problems with Chinese learning and education, not least the fierce competitiveness and overemphasis on examinations. But our focus here is simply to show how two basic educational principles underpin Chinese advances in science and technology in a modern knowledge economy.
We believe these principles are transferable and potentially beneficial for policymakers, scholars and learners elsewhere.
Dr Peter Yongqi Gu, Associate Professor, School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
Stephen Dobson, Professor and Dean of Education and the Arts, CQ University Australia
In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China you could fill multiple football fields.
To which Tesla CEO Elon Musk quickly responded on X: “True”.
When South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the Shenzhen headquarters of electric vehicle manufacturer BYD earlier this year, he was surprised to learn the company was planning to double its 100,000-strong engineering taskforce within the coming decade.
He might not have been so surprised had he known Chinese universities are producing more than ten million graduates every year – the foundation for a super-economy.
The ‘paradox of the Chinese learner’
Chinese learners achieve remarkable success levels compared to their Western – or non-Confucian-heritage – counterparts.
Since Shanghai first participated in the PISA educational evaluation in 2009, 15‑year-olds in China have topped the league table three out of four times in reading, mathematics and science.
How can a supposedly passive and rote Chinese system outperform its Western counterparts? A number of Australian scholars have been studying this “paradox of the Chinese learner” since the 1990s.
Their research shows those common perceptions of Chinese and other Asian learners are wrong. For example, repetition and meaningful learning are not mutually exclusive. As one Chinese saying goes:
书读百遍其意自现 – meaning reveals itself when you read something many times.
What can Western education learn?
An emphasis on education is a defining feature of Chinese culture. Since Confucianism became the state-sanctioned doctrine in the Han Dynasty (202BCE–220CE), education has entered every fabric of Chinese society.
This became especially true after the institutionalisation of the Keju system of civil service examinations during the Sui Dynasty (581CE–618CE).
Today, the Gaokao university entrance examination is the modern Keju equivalent. Millions of school leavers take the exam each year. For three days every July, Chinese society largely comes to a standstill for the Gaokao.
While the cultural drive for educational excellence is a major motivation for everyone involved in the system, it is not something that is easily learned and replicated in Western societies.
However, there are two principles we believe are central to Chinese educational success, at both the learner and system levels. We use two Chinese idioms to illustrate these.
The first we call “orderly and gradual progress” – 循序渐进. This principle stresses patient, step-by-step and sequenced learning, sustained by grit and delayed gratification.
The second we call “thick accumulation before thin production” – 厚积薄发. This principle stresses the importance of two things:
- a comprehensive foundation through accumulation of basic knowledge and skills
- assimilation, integration and productive creativity only come after this firm foundation.
The epitome of orderly and gradual progress is the way calligraphy is learned. It goes from easy to difficult, simple to complex, imitating to free writing, technique to art. Since 2013, it has been a mandatory weekly lesson in all primary and middle schools in China.
The art of Chinese writing embodies patience, diligence, breathing, concentration and an appreciation of the natural beauty of rhythm. It teaches Chinese values of harmony and the aesthetic spirit.
“Thick accumulation” can be illustrated in the way students study extremely hard for the national Gaokao examination, and also during tertiary education. This way they accumulate the basic knowledge and skills required in a modern society.
“Thin production” refers to the ability to narrow or focus this accumulated knowledge and skill to find and implement creative solutions in the workplace or elsewhere.
Ways of learning
On the face of it, the emphasis on gradual and steady progress, and on accumulation of basic knowledge and skills, may look like a slow, monotonous and uninspiring process – the origin of those common myths about Chinese learning.
In reality, it boils down to a simple argument: without a critical mass of basic knowledge and skills, there is little to assimilate and integrate for productive creativity.
Of course, there are problems with Chinese learning and education, not least the fierce competitiveness and overemphasis on examinations. But our focus here is simply to show how two basic educational principles underpin Chinese advances in science and technology in a modern knowledge economy.
We believe these principles are transferable and potentially beneficial for policymakers, scholars and learners elsewhere.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article
7 comments:
Educational disparities are largely due to two factors: some people are smarter than others; some people work much harder than others. University schools of Education and government ministries of Education deny both those factors and rarely research either of those factors.
So if the Chinese education system is so brilliant why are there so many Chinese students at universities around the world. We even have them in NZ where we don't have a university in the top 100.
I spoke to Wellington Councilor Ray Chung about this a couple of weeks ago. He said, go inside a pub and look at how many Chinese people are there. Then go inside a library.
Not all of us have been sucked in by the psychobabble-bullshit that now rules the roost in Western educational circles.
We judge experts by their impressive stocks of memorised facts pertinent to their fields. Who would employ an industrial chemistry who had to look up the atomic weight of hydrogen every time s/he needed it? Or a surgeon who had to consult a manual every time before removing an appendix?
Once there is a stock of memorised material to work on, we can start mobilising higher thinking skills. Not before.
Until then, the best thing a student or trainee can do is knuckle under and learn the stuff by heart.
The way we typically do things in NZ seems like reverse engineering to produce the least possible learning . All current research affirms that we have counter-productive pedagogies in classrooms that keep children from learning whatever is allegedly being taught.
Current maths. virtually guarantees that children will not be good at at maths. at any level. Whole word and Whole Language virtually guaranteed that children would be poor readers. It would seem present teacher educators live in cloud cuckoo land promoting the latest ineffective harebrained schemes of upper echelons of academia .
The idea of passive learning is a myth, a fallacy as recently proved by neuroscience.
We can certainly learn from the Asian countries but what we should conclude is that their methods are also those used by our very own education system when it used to be world class. These were ditched by Progressive Education's ideology for no good or scientific reason. Revision, consolidation and reinforcement with a knowledge rich curriculum and rote learning and taught explicitly was how we achieved an excellent education standard in the past.
Some Chinese students come here having failed to gain entry to their own universities and can here obtain honours degrees. However , some also wish to escape to to the West , away from their own repressive regime.
The NZ education system in public schools has been a nightmare for parents over the last 35 years. It is impossible to get honest reports on your kids and parents are the last to be advised of learning problems. Will it continue under this new Govt? Probably.
The best educated across all ethnicities have parents that encourage, help, push. Valuing education is the key. We don't do this well in NZ.
Post a Comment