Why American Students Need Chinese Schools
By Lenora Chu
http://www.cetusnews.com/business/Why-American-Students-Need-Chinese-Schools.r1MgNBeWEe5-.html
After putting her son in an elite state-run school
in Shanghai, an American mother finds that the U.S. education system could
learn a few things from China—most of all that teacher knows best.
When my little boy was 3, his Chinese teacher
forced a bite of fried egg into his mouth. At school. Without permission.
“She put it there,” my firstborn told
me, lips forming an “O,” finger pointing past his teeth.
“Then what happened?” I prodded my
son, who despises eggs.
“I cried and spit it out,” he said.
“And?” I pressed.
“She did it again,” he said. In all,
Teacher Chen pushed egg into my son’s mouth four times, and the last time, he
swallowed.
We are Americans raising a family in
Shanghai—China’s megacity of 26 million people—and the Chinese are known to
pump out some of the world’s best students. When we realized that a few blocks
from our new home was one of the best state-run schools, as far as elite
urbanites are concerned, we decided to enroll our son. He would learn the
world’s most spoken language. What was not to like?
Plenty, as it turned out. And it was only the first
week of kindergarten.
The next day, I marched off to school to confront
Teacher Chen about the egg episode, brash in my conviction about individual
choice.
“We don’t use such methods of force
in America,” I blurted in Mandarin, my son clutching my hand. (I was born and
raised in America but grew up speaking Chinese at home.)
“Oh? How do you do it?” Teacher Chen
challenged.
“We explain that egg eating is good
for them, that the nutrients help build strong bones and teeth and helps with
eyesight,” I said, trying to sound authoritative. “We motivate them to
choose…we trust them with the decision.”
“Does it work?” Teacher Chen
challenged.
In truth, no. I’d never been able to get my son to
eat eggs. He’s a picky eater. Later, Teacher Chen pulled me aside for a
lecture. “In front of the children, you should say, ‘Teacher is right, and Mom
will do things the same way,’ OK?”
‘Many studies support the Chinese way
of education.’
I nodded, slightly stunned. It was the voice of
Confucius, who had staked his entire philosophy on the concept of top-down
authority and bottom-up obedience, giving direction to our lives.
Many studies support the Chinese way of education.
Researchers have found that 6-year-old Chinese children trounce their American
peers in early math skills, including geometry and logic. In the past decade,
Shanghai teens twice took No. 1 in the world on a test called PISA, which assesses
problem-solving skills, while American students landed in the middle of the
pack.
When young Chinese head abroad, the results are
impressive. They are earning more spots at the world’s top universities. The
Ivy League enrolls eight times more Chinese undergraduates than a decade ago,
according to the Institute of International Education, and the Chinese are
helping to launch Silicon Valley startups in disproportionate numbers.
Yet, from my perch in Shanghai, I started out with
some major objections to Chinese education. Force-feeding would get a teacher
dragged into court in the U.S., the land of infant choice, free-form play and
individualized everything. In China, children are also subjected to high-stakes
testing at every turn, which keeps them bent over books from toddlerhood on.
I began to wonder: What price do the Chinese pay to
produce their “smart” kids? And do we really have something to learn from this
rigid, authoritarian form of schooling?
Students at Jinqao Center Primary School in Shanghai.Photo:
JOHANNES EISELE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
For five years now, I’ve parented a child inside
China’s school system and interviewed Chinese teachers, parents and students at
all stages of education. I’ve discovered that there are indeed some Chinese
“secrets” that work and are worth emulating. Most have to do with attitudes
about education.
There are real upsides to a mentality of “teacher
knows best.” As I worked through my anxieties about submitting to this kind of
system, I began to observe that when parents fall in line with teachers, so do
their children. This deference gives the teacher near-absolute command of her
classroom. My son became so afraid of being late for class, missing school or
otherwise disappointing his teacher, that he once raised a stink when I
broached the possibility of missing a few school days for a family trip. He was
5.
Having the teacher as an unquestioned authority in
the classroom gives students a leg up in subjects such as geometry and computer
programming, which are more effectively taught through direct instruction
(versus student-led discovery), according to a 2004 study of 112 third- and
fourth-graders published in the journal Psychological Science. A 2014 study of
more than 13,000 students in the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy
Analysis found that math-challenged first-graders learned more effectively when
teachers demonstrated problem-solving procedures and followed up with repeated
practice.
By contrast, Western teachers spend lots of time
managing classroom behavior and crushing mini-revolts by students and parents
alike. A Chinese teacher who arrived in the U.S. two decades ago recalled to me
her surprise the first year she taught American kids. “I started out very
controlling, but it didn’t work at all. My students talked back!” says Sheen
Zhang, who teaches Mandarin at a Minnesota high school. Parents sometimes
complained when she assigned too much homework. A mother once asked her to
change the way she talked to her classwork-skipping daughter. “She wanted me to
say, ‘You can do better!’ instead of ‘You didn’t finish this!’ ” exclaimed Ms.
Zhang.
‘Chinese society grants teachers a
social status on par with doctors.’
The Chinese parent knows that her kid deserves
whatever the teacher metes out, no questions asked. In other words, let the
teacher do his or her job. As a result, educators in China enjoy an esteem
that’s tops in the world: Half of Chinese would encourage their kids to become
teachers, while less than a third of Americans and Brits would do the same,
according to a 2013 study by the Varkey Foundation. Chinese society grants
teachers a social status on par with doctors.
There are also educational advantages to the
Chinese insistence on elevating the group over the needs of any individual
child. The reason is simple: Classroom goals are better served if everyone
charges forward at the same pace. No exceptions, no diversions.
My son suffered from asthma during the winter, but
Teacher Chen denied my request to keep his rescue inhaler near the
classroom—its use might be a distraction to his classmates. When I loudly
protested, I was told I could transfer my son out of the school. In other
words, no kid gets special treatment, and if I didn’t like it, I could get out.
(Ultimately, I found a solution: a preventive steroid inhaler that I could
administer at home.)
The school’s attitude is draconian. But Americans
have arguably gone too far in the other direction, elevating the needs of
individual students to the detriment of the group. Some parents think nothing
of sending an unvaccinated child to school—ignoring community health—or
petitioning to move school start times to accommodate sports schedules.
Meanwhile, teacher friends tell me that they are spending more time dealing
with “problem” students, often through intervention programs that whittle away
teachers’ time with the rest of the class. Where should we draw the line?
Another bracing Chinese belief is that hard work
trumps innate talent when it comes to academics. Equipped with flashcards and
ready to practice, my son’s Chinese language teacher knows that he is capable
of learning the 3,500 characters required for literacy. His primary school math
teacher gives no child a free pass on triple-digit arithmetic and, in fact,
stays after school to help laggards. China’s school system breeds a
Chinese-style grit, which delivers the daily message that perseverance—not
intelligence or ability—is key to success.
Studies show that this attitude gets kids farther
in the classroom. Ethnic Asian youth are higher academic achievers in part
because they believe in the connection between effort and achievement, while
“white Americans tend to view cognitive abilities as…inborn,” according to a
longitudinal study of more than 5,000 students published in Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences in 2014. Chinese kids are used to struggling
through difficult content, and they believe that success is within reach of
anyone willing to work for it. This attitude gives policy makers in China great
latitude when it comes to setting out and enforcing higher standards.
In the U.S., parents have often revolted as policy
makers try to push through similar measures. In part, we are afraid that Johnny
will feel bad about himself if he can’t make the grade. What if, instead,
Johnny’s parents—and his teacher, too—believed that the boy could learn
challenging math with enough dedicated effort?
Americans aren’t afraid to push their children when
it comes to athletics. Here we believe that hard work and practice pay off, so
we accept scores and rankings. Eyes glued to scoreboards at a meet, we embrace
numbers as a way to measure progress. A ninth-place finish in the 100-meter
dash suggests to us that a plodding Johnny needs to train harder. It doesn’t
mean that he’s inferior, nor do we worry much about his self-esteem.
My son has been in the Chinese school system now
for five years. During that time, he has morphed into a proper little pupil who
faithfully greets his teacher each morning—“Laoshi Zao! Good morning,
teacher!”—and has developed an unbending respect for education. In primary
school, I watched, a bit dazed, as he prepared his own backpack for school at 6
years old, slotting his English, Chinese and math books into his bag each
morning along with six pencils that he sharpened himself.
When his homework books come home—parents in China
are required to sign them daily to prove involvement—he brings them to us
immediately. He began teaching his younger brother Mandarin, two small heads
huddled over a picture book, naming animals. A little older now, he expertly
performs timed drills in arithmetic, his pencil traveling down the page, and he
gains confidence from his success. He also eats eggs of his own free will.
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When I tell the story of my son’s Chinese
educational experience to American friends, they gasp. When they spend time
with him, they are surprised that he doesn’t cower in the corner or obey
commands like a Labrador retriever. My son is imaginative when he draws, and
has a great sense of humor and a mean forehand in tennis. None of these
qualities has slipped away, and I now share the Chinese belief that even very
young kids are capable of developing a range of demanding talents.
‘I have been paralyzed by anxiety at
times over the Chinese way.’
Still, I must confess that I have been paralyzed by
anxiety at times over the Chinese way, which demands fealty. Teacher Chen
wasn’t just authoritarian; she sometimes delivered very harsh punishments.
Once, she isolated my young son and several classmates in an empty classroom
and threatened to demote them after they failed to follow in “one-two” step
during a physical exercise.
Her power was even more worrisome when coupled with
the Communist Party’s political agenda. At 4, my son learned the lyrics to “The
East Is Red,” extolling Chairman Mao. The following year, his teachers began
running mock elections for class monitor, part of the grooming process to
identify star students for eventual Party membership.
At the same time, China’s education landscape is
littered with dropouts in a system that perpetuates an underclass: Children who
fail to test into regular high schools would populate a city the size of London
each year. Because of the high stakes, families sometimes take extreme
measures, including cheating and bribery.
And there is no denying that the traditional
Chinese classroom discourages the expression of new and original thought. I
observed an art class where 28 toddlers were instructed to sketch exactly the
same way, with errant drawings tacked to the wall to shame the deviants. “Rain
falls from the sky to the ground and comes in little dots,” bellowed the
teacher, as the children dutifully populated their pages. In this classroom,
rain did not blow sideways or hurtle to the ground in sheets. There was no
figurative rain, such as purple rain, nor did it rain tears or frogs, much less
cats and dogs.
There are clear downsides to China’s desire to
cultivate a nation of obedient patriots, and Americans naturally resist. We
harbor a healthy mistrust of authority, and our freedom to raise a fuss is a
right we should celebrate. It’s foundational to our national character.
But the skepticism we freely apply to our political
leaders can be destructive when transferred to the men and women who stand at
the front of our classrooms. Educational progress in the U.S. is hobbled by
parental entitlement and by attitudes that detract from learning: We demand
privileges for our children that have little to do with education and ask for
report-card mercy when they can’t make the grade. As a society, we’re expecting
more from our teachers while shouldering less responsibility at home.
From my years living in a very different country,
I’ve learned that wonderful things can happen when we give our educators the
respect and autonomy they deserve.
Sometimes, it is best when parents—and children—are
simply obliged to do as they’re told.
This essay is adapted from Ms. Chu’s “Little
Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve,”
to be published on Sept. 19 by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins (which, like
The Wall Street Journal, is owned by News Corp).
ABOUT LENORA
Lenora Chu is an American journalist and writer, and author of the upcoming book Little Soldiers, which tells the story of China’s education system through her perspective as a parent and journalist in Shanghai. It will be published by HarperCollins in September 2017 (Hachette in UK/Australia).
She began her journalism career in the United States as a political reporter at daily newspapers in Minnesota, covering the state Capitol and Jesse “The Body” Ventura’s single term as governor. She is a former contributing writer at CNNMoney.com and also wrote a weekly business and tech column for Asianweek. Since relocating to Shanghai in 2010, she has worked as a television correspondent for Thomson Reuters, and a media consultant to universities and the private sector. She also taught at a Chinese public kindergarten for a couple of years.
Her reporting on business, politics, science and culture has appeared in The New York Times, Dwell, CNNMoney, Christian Science Monitor, Science, Metropolis, and on APM’s Marketplace and PRI’s The World, along with other NPR shows. For a radio series on Asian American gambling addiction, she received an AAJA national award for issues reporting. Her experience spans print, radio and television, and she is also a former fill-in announcer for local NPR in Los Angeles.
Lenora is a graduate of Stanford University and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Texas, Lenora splits her time between California and Shanghai. She and her husband Rob Schmitz, NPR’s Shanghai correspondent, have two young sons.