When I was growing up, my father did his best to give me an education. And throughout this time, he repeatedly emphasized that my future depended on the type of job that I had, and the size of the company that employed me. Larger companies offered more opportunities than smaller companies, and the more education that I would have would provide two things for me. Firstly, they would increase the job pool that I could choose from, and secondly they would enable me to start off with a higher salary than others.
He meant well, and certainly that formula worked well for his generation, but my generation suddenly became the “disposable worker” generation and layoffs became more common than not, and no one ever ended up with a job for life. Couple that with my role in MAJestic, and it was really a dog-eat-dog survival life with more than enough highs and lows.
And what you want to do, as a parent, is to make sure that your children have it better than you. Maybe not necessarily easier, but certainly better; more opportunities, and a chance, a real honest-to-goodness chance that they will be able to make a life for themselves in a world that is subject to whims and changes beyond their control.
Well, I am in China. And the Chinese have seen dramatic changes in their lives over the last thirty years, and many generations of Chinese have sacrificed and existed in a situation where there just wasn’t much in the way of any opportunities. And so they remain cautious, but guarded, about their children.
And thus, knowing that the (proverbial) rug “could be pulled out from under their feet”, many middle-class Chinese do what ever they can to guarantee that their children are equipped with the kinds of skills to make it, and survive in a contentious and changing world. And while China (as a nation is secure and prosperous), things could change. And as such, no one is taking any chances.
The educational system in China is not only great, but absurdly so. Not only do elementary students learn Chinese languages, and history, but they learn English as well, and their entrance into university is predicated on their ability to speak and pass English qualification exams.
Which makes things very interesting, as I will often see children studying all the time, jut about everywhere. Couple that with secondary classes that their parents also provide for them. These other classes range from swimming to dancing, to archery, to martial arts and everything in between. Some go into robotics, while others study the arts. And with that in mind I would like to present some videos of Kindergarten to first grade Chinese students…
They are all zipped up in a small 30MB file. I think that you all will enjoy them.
You can get the file HERE.
Conclusion
These children are not the exception. They are the normal average. If America believes that it can compete against China then they will need to reconfigure the school curriculum towards STEM subjects, and less on the soft social and humanities. They will also need to be very serious about the environment hat they are raising the children within.
For a nation of “lone wolves” can never truly work together without fighting, squabbling, and performing uncharacteristically self-defeating behaviors.
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Attitudes about education are too different in the US to expect positive change. Blacks deride other blacks who try to do well in school as “acting white”, and pro athlete and rapper are seen as the careers to pursue. Even many white parents (especially fathers) are more interested in their sons becoming football players than in those sons becoming a successful scientist or engineer. The father’s attitude in the movie October Sky—attending one son’s sports games while ignoring the other’s rocketry work—is still reality.
As that movie set in the late 1950s shows, this isn’t new, but ingrained. Some old stories still circulate about the years just after the Soviet Union surprised the West with the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Questions arose about the educational systems in the US compared with the USSR.
Groups of educators from each toured the other’s schools in exchanges when Khrushchev was still in power. The Americans would see top students in secondary (high) schools in the Soviet Union doing serious, important work in science and technology. The visiting Russians here would ask to meet comparable elite students in American high schools—but there were few such students here doing STEM–type work. Instead, high school principals would introduce the Russian educators to the top football or basketball jocks. Those were the elite students here. Little has changed in 60 years.
Even with a bunch of hand-wringing about shortages of engineers and scientists in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s administration cut student aid, especially grants. Members of Reagan’s staff compared students seeking aid to welfare queens and said it was not the government’s duty to fund higher education. Subsidizing tuition, even for majors of critical importance to the country, was socialism, in their view. Reagan himself said the state “should not subsidize intellectual curiosity”. There was no room in those attitudes to address STEM shortages. That explains what we see today here. Compare that with China.
I’ve heard it said the English language is the only one with expressions such as “too clever by half”, “too smart for his own good”, “too much book learning”, etc.
When the Chinese clean our figurative clocks economically in the coming years, there’s no use crying about it. Anyone can see why it’ll happen.
Here’s a phrase that I’ve heard recently that reflects your last paragraph.
In America (or any Western European countries), you can hardly fill a room with qualified experienced engineers, but in China, you can fill a football stadium of the same.
And in our little corner of Puppetland, the big education debate this year is about getting mentally ill young ‘men’ access to the ladies’ bathroom in high school.
My wife and I would’ve loved a little girl, but God knows what I’d do now to one of these creeps entering her and her friends’ private space if we’d had. I’ve 2 younger sisters. So i know.
Then again, she’d probably have been brainwashed by now not to tell me. And just as well.
Good to know that schools are still schools elsewhere.
My parents didn’t teach me anything about anything. How the world worked, government, the economy or health. I learned nothing from them. The advice they did give was puerile, juvenile and utterly worthless. I was on my own in the every man for himself usa. If I were to heed my father’s advice I would be dead. In the usa most parents are brainwashed into destroying their children and their legacy through self destructive low intelligence advice. I learned right away to do the opposite of whatever they said while pretending to heed them. They are stuck in the past due to their low intelligence. They live worthless lives that I would never want to live.
The only thing they see is what the lying government propaganda news allows them to see. My parents are completely mind controlled. They do not think for themselves. I don’t know if they ever did.
Thanks for sharing this, Jack. It’s an unsettling realisation, to say the least, for many folks who realise this about their parents and wider family. A wise man once told me years ago: ‘seek advice and inspiration where- and whenever you can. But for God’s sake, be careful who you seek it from. Because that’s the hard part. And never seek life advice from those who live miserable lives.’ Sounds obvious, right? But a young and inexperienced soul often can’t recognise these kinds of people for what they are. Cynicism and sarcasm can often pass as ‘advice’ to the unaware, or to the uninitiated.
Do go easy on your parents, though, they haven’t been blessed with the incarnation you’ve been chosen for.
Best,
U.
It’s quite common for Asian / Chinese kids anywhere in the world to have extra tuition outside the school. Anything from non academic like music, sports to academic like maths, physics, biology. “Extra knowledge is always useful” being the philosophy.
But there is a growing minority group of (well to do) parents (in China) who are seeking a more balanced education for their children. Whereas the Chinese formal education system is rigidly all about book learning, these parents are enrolling their children into International School with the aim of giving the children a balanced education of formal and informal education. Time for the children after school is spend with the family and not on more extra tuition.
You forgot to mention
“The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” by Amy Chua.
and how she was demonised in American academic circles because of her book.
Writers that are or have been being demonised for their work are now magnets of research. People are questioning the system and the critics working for the system. Their vitriol is not as effective now as it once was. I see an awakening happening. The times they are a changin’.