Technocracy
January 2, 2015 8:48 AM   Subscribe

Maotanchang caters mostly to such students and prides itself on eliminating the distractions of modern life. Cellphones and laptops are forbidden; the dormitories, where roughly half the students live, were designed without electrical outlets. Romance is banned.

Inside the Chinese cram school, “there’s nothing to do but study.”
posted by four panels (65 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
This sounds awful.
posted by bird internet at 9:06 AM on January 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


For a town that turns test preparation into a mechanical act of memorization and regurgitation, Maotanchang remains a place of desperate faith and superstition. Most students have a talisman of some sort, whether it’s red underwear (red clothing is believed to be lucky), shoes from a company called Anta (their check-mark logo is reminiscent of a correct answer) or a pouch of “brain rejuvenating” tea bought from vendors outside the school gates. The town’s best-selling nutritional supplements are called Clear Mind and Six Walnuts (the nuts are considered mind-boosters in large part because they resemble brains). Yang’s parents did not seem especially superstitious, but they paid high rent to live close to the mystical tree and its three-foot-high pile of incense ash. “If you don’t pray to the tree, you can’t pass,” Yang says, repeating a local saying.
Rote memorization doesn't seem as useful an approach to learning as critical thinking.
posted by Librarypt at 9:34 AM on January 2, 2015 [11 favorites]


That is pretty much what I imagine hell to be like.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 9:34 AM on January 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's an interesting article, but yes the cramming sounds awful.

Yet even as American educators try to divine the secret of China’s test-taking prowess, the gaokao is coming under fire in China as an anachronism that stifles innovative thought and puts excessive pressure on students.

I can see this catching on here in the age of standardized testing and national standards.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:36 AM on January 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


How do the questions compare to that wacky British exam?
posted by Renoroc at 9:40 AM on January 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


which, OWLs or NEWTs?
posted by mrjohnmuller at 9:41 AM on January 2, 2015 [8 favorites]


Rote memorization doesn't seem as useful an approach to learning as critical thinking.

No matter what politicians claim, the last thing a government wants is citizens with critical thinking skills.

A cursory examination of the average high school grad's thinking process proves there is little to worry about.
posted by Enron Hubbard at 9:44 AM on January 2, 2015 [14 favorites]


What I want is an in-depth profile of the tea and walnut supplement sellers, the shovel and pick salesmen of this particular gold rush (of course, shovels and picks actually do something).
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 9:48 AM on January 2, 2015 [5 favorites]


stifles innovative thought

This was my experience when working in China, even our receptionist had a degree (they're just like us!), but they are so used to rote learning that it takes effort to get them to start being creative as they are scared of having the wrong answer. Often my Chinese colleagues would say nothing rather than be wrong in front of the boss.
posted by arcticseal at 10:00 AM on January 2, 2015 [5 favorites]


Renoroc: How do the questions compare to that wacky British exam?

I'd hope they involve known facts & right answers, not any of that "how many scousers in a tea cozy?" nonsense.
posted by dr_dank at 10:01 AM on January 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


This article purports to list some of the essay questions from last June's gaokao exam. All the cramming in the world doesn't seem like it would help much with brainteasers like these:

Tianjin: Suppose one day a smart chip could be placed inside a human brain. Even an old lady could know everything between the sky and the sea. No one will need to learn anything anymore. Please write your opinion of this.

Shanghai: You can choose your own road and how to travel on it through a desert, so you are free. However, you must go through the desert and so you are not free.

Fujian: "When mentioning an empty valley, some people think of cliffs and others think of plank bridges." Please write an article no fewer than 800 words according to this sentence.
posted by theodolite at 10:09 AM on January 2, 2015 [12 favorites]


You can choose your own road and how to travel on it through a desert, so you are free. However, you must go through the desert and so you are not free.

Whoa! Just give me a minute to get my head together, man.
posted by thelonius at 10:14 AM on January 2, 2015 [11 favorites]


theodolite: All the cramming in the world doesn't seem like it would help much with brainteasers like these.

If the gaokao is anything like the AP exams or GRE in the US, then the graders for those questions are looking for specific components of a "correct" answer. Maybe you need to include a literary reference, or reach a favored conclusion, or something like that. To have any semblance of objectivity in grading those questions, they need a rubric -- and that can be crammed for.
posted by Rangi at 10:17 AM on January 2, 2015 [8 favorites]


The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?
posted by indubitable at 10:19 AM on January 2, 2015 [42 favorites]


Because I want to make delicious 甲鱼汤 for my potential boss so I can escape a life of drudgery?
posted by lalochezia at 10:21 AM on January 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


theodolite: "This article purports to list some of the essay questions from last June's gaokao exam. All the cramming in the world doesn't seem like it would help much with brainteasers like these:

Tianjin: Suppose one day a smart chip could be placed inside a human brain. Even an old lady could know everything between the sky and the sea. No one will need to learn anything anymore. Please write your opinion of this.
"

These are questions of orthodoxy, surely. Even my professional certifications have questions that are, in a practical sense, answered best with "well, it depends". There's a definitive answer in the test that reflects the best practices of the technology, or the desires of the vendor.
posted by boo_radley at 10:23 AM on January 2, 2015


The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?

Because I am the tortoise and this test is the hot sun.
posted by jamjam at 10:27 AM on January 2, 2015 [13 favorites]


Shanghai: You can choose your own road and how to travel on it through a desert, so you are free. However, you must go through the desert and so you are not free.

This isn't even a question.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 10:34 AM on January 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


iirc, "This isn't even a question." is the Beijing prompt
posted by indubitable at 10:41 AM on January 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


the nuts are considered mind-boosters in large part because they resemble brains

Genius. Reminds me of when people were going around eating sharks because sharks don't get cancer, so if you eat one you might not get cancer either. Then someone pointed out that sharks do get cancer anyway. I don't know what happened next.
posted by colie at 10:42 AM on January 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


People kept eating sharks?
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 10:43 AM on January 2, 2015 [7 favorites]


I'd always heard that sharks ate humans to cure cancer. Now everyone's disappointed.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:47 AM on January 2, 2015 [11 favorites]


colie, it's called the Doctrine of Signatures, and is partly responsible for the endangered status of rhinos, tigers, and other organisms.

Quite rightly, it is called a "medieval" medical theory, even if millions believe in it today.
posted by IAmBroom at 11:00 AM on January 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


'Sharks Don't Get Cancer' by I. William Lane.

'Sharks Still Don't Get Cancer', by I. William Lane.

Honestly.
posted by colie at 11:01 AM on January 2, 2015 [5 favorites]


This was my experience when working in China, even our receptionist had a degree (they're just like us!), but they are so used to rote learning that it takes effort to get them to start being creative as they are scared of having the wrong answer. Often my Chinese colleagues would say nothing rather than be wrong in front of the boss.

It's possible that Americans overvalue critical thinking. Many types of jobs, maybe including receptionist, need conscientiousness, obedience, and ability to memorize many small details much more than they need critical thinking or creativity. How sure are we that critical thinking is really that important for most people, in real life, not rhetoric? Which economy is growing faster, again?
posted by officer_fred at 11:01 AM on January 2, 2015 [9 favorites]


I should point out, thousands of Americans believe in the Doctrine of Signatures, too. Folk medicine is filled with herbal "cures" that originated via the Doctrine of Signatures, such as using boneset for healing bones (because the leaves fuse together at the stem). In fact, since most folk medicine practitioners in the US don't understand the origins of these stupidly chosen "cures", it points a focused light on the problems of folk medicine: little to no careful, widely communicated verification of results.
posted by IAmBroom at 11:03 AM on January 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


Okay so maybe I should lay off the contrarian blogs for a few days what do you guys think
posted by officer_fred at 11:03 AM on January 2, 2015


Are you sure they aren't reactionary blogs?
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 11:05 AM on January 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


officer_fred: How sure are we that critical thinking is really that important for most people, in real life, not rhetoric?
Everyone who votes, or could vote in a free country.
officer_fred: Which economy is growing faster, again?
The one that started lower, and is destroying its environment faster - so fast that it is unhealthy to merely walk in its capital city on many days.

The fact that a baby is growing faster than a 20-year-old does not mean the baby is stronger, faster, or better equipped to do ... anything, really.
posted by IAmBroom at 11:06 AM on January 2, 2015 [23 favorites]


I should point out, thousands of Americans believe in the Doctrine of Signatures, too.

I only knew about the shark thing through classic US quacks, so I'd just like to clarify that I wasn't going for a 'LOL Chinese people' thing.
posted by colie at 11:08 AM on January 2, 2015


Exactly, colie - I was afraid people would think we were implying it's a racial problem. It's an ignorance problem, and ignorance is not bounded by race in any way.

I'd trade every folk doctor that prescribed rhino horns for a decent breeding population of rhinos, though. Grrr...
posted by IAmBroom at 11:16 AM on January 2, 2015


Rote memorization doesn't seem as useful an approach to learning as critical thinking.

Stifling creative thought in favour of parroting authority is a feature, not a bug. Public education has always had its roots in the elite's desire for good employees, not good citizens.
posted by Reyturner at 11:19 AM on January 2, 2015 [8 favorites]


There's something to be said, though, for learning things other than how your own voice sounds, in school.
posted by thelonius at 11:21 AM on January 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


If the gaokao is anything like the AP exams or GRE in the US, then the graders for those questions are looking for specific components of a "correct" answer. Maybe you need to include a literary reference, or reach a favored conclusion, or something like that. To have any semblance of objectivity in grading those questions, they need a rubric -- and that can be crammed for.

My worst performance ever (percentile-wise) on a standardised test was the writing section of the general GRE. There's a clear line connecting the advice I was given not to study for the general GRE (I didn't), that I didn't know there was a formula for it,* and my score.

*In my defense, I never memorised a formula for AP essays, so why would I think there was a formula for the GRE? The sample AP essays make it clear that being coherent was enough for a high score on the history exams.
posted by hoyland at 11:21 AM on January 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


Stifling creative thought in favour of parroting authority is a feature, not a bug.

This perspective is so desperately cynical I can't agree with it, even if it is true. Everyone has more to gain by having well-educated kids who can think for themselves.
posted by Librarypt at 11:28 AM on January 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's a volatile mixture of both. Capitalism on one hand would like a workforce of trained docile non-thinkers, but then again it also needs new technologies that require a workforce that can cope with its demands.
posted by colie at 11:32 AM on January 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


This perspective is so desperately cynical I can't agree with it, even if it is true. Everyone has more to gain by having well-educated kids who can think for themselves.

You're still poisoned by hope. Cleanse yourself.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:02 PM on January 2, 2015 [13 favorites]


Basically you want to instill just enough critical thinking that your employees can figure out how to implement a new Excel feature by googling it themselves, but not enough that they join together and seize the means of production
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:02 PM on January 2, 2015 [59 favorites]


If we had China's population here in the USA, would we have similar institutions for the SAT? I feel like the specifics of a person's educational background is not as important here.
posted by oceanjesse at 12:04 PM on January 2, 2015


The fact that a baby is growing faster than a 20-year-old does not mean the baby is stronger, faster, or better equipped to do ... anything, really.

China, which is one of the, if not THE oldest civilizations on the planet is hardly a baby. If anyone's the baby it's the about 240 (or 400 if we're being generous) year old United States of America.

China's more like the middle aged dude that joined the gym 2 years ago and now thinks he can play pick-up basketball games and go out all night drinking with all the 20-something year olds in the company.

In short, "China's still cool!"
posted by FJT at 12:14 PM on January 2, 2015 [6 favorites]


Librarypt: Everyone has more to gain by having well-educated kids who can think for themselves.
Not Kim Jong-un.

Possibly not the entrenched upper Party members of China, either.
posted by IAmBroom at 12:23 PM on January 2, 2015


This perspective is so desperately cynical I can't agree with it, even if it is true. Everyone has more to gain by having well-educated kids who can think for themselves.

Well, the roots of public education are over 100 years old and came about during industrialization. Transitioning people from farm work to factory work was difficult specifically because people were too used to being self reliant and free thinking, and that free thinking people were outright dangerous. There was a very real fear of a general workers uprising. There was also the assumption that you don't need every kid to be well educated (and really that assumption survives to this day) and that not every kid was suited to be well educated anyways (see racism, classism, etc).

You still see arguments that school should be "preparing kids for the world that's coming" and that is generally understood as "we should be teaching kids to get into STEM so we can drive down wages fill positions we can't fill now".

In my personal experience, the teachers who had the biggest positive impact on me were the ones who went far above and beyond the curriculum, not the ones who stuck too it the most.
posted by Reyturner at 12:24 PM on January 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


This trend is common in India as well, another country with large young population and huge competition for relatively limited resources.

There is an entire town (called Kota) which is famous just for preparing students for entrance exams to engineering/medical colleges.

Its kind of usual to see people packing off their kids (or the favored kid) to Kota for 2 or 3 years of preparations just after they finish their high and higher secondary school (equivalent to 12 yrs of education in US, i think).

Think about it. Indian parents are famous for trying to control their kids life but they will allow teenaged children to live in an unknown city for 2 years so that they can prepare for some entrance exams.

And most of organizations/companies/institutes which proclaim to get these kids in to good engineering/medical colleges depend on the same type of rote or narrow logical ability development programs as mentioned here.
posted by TheLittlePrince at 12:30 PM on January 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


FJT: China, which is one of the, if not THE oldest civilizations on the planet is hardly a baby.
Metaphors are inexact. I meant China was the baby on the modern world economy stage - which it is. In 1980, China's economy was not in the top 10 worldwide. Now, it rivals the US.
posted by IAmBroom at 12:32 PM on January 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


I meant China was the baby on the modern world economy stage - which it is. In 1980, China's economy was not in the top 10 worldwide. Now, it rivals the US.

Fair enough, but the "baby" is only following the path of growth laid out by other industrialized "adults". Even the US itself was also heavily damaging the environment during it's period of rapid industrialization during the 19th century and early 20th century. In some ways, the US is still acting like a "baby", particularly in regards to cutting carbon emissions.

Also, China being a modern economic "baby" in 1980 did not occur in a complete vacuum. Colonization/Imperialism by Western European powers in the 18th to early 20th century contributed significantly to the de-industrialization of China, India, and other colonized countries.
posted by FJT at 1:47 PM on January 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


You're still poisoned by hope. Cleanse yourself.

Hope clouds observation - Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam
posted by arcticseal at 2:13 PM on January 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


Am I the only one who wishes I'd lived somewhere like this when I was in school? I would have done so much better without as many opportunities to fuck off.
posted by Jacqueline at 2:53 PM on January 2, 2015


You can choose your own road and how to travel on it through a desert, so you are free. However, you must go through the desert and so you are not free.

That belongs on a fortune cookie.
posted by 445supermag at 3:02 PM on January 2, 2015


Sounds like Malaysia. Big Government exams that determine Your Future, expectations that you will devote your entire waking hours to studying, only allowed to study what the test tells you to study (even if it's wrong), the subjective questions have Only One Right Answer, mental health be damned. I was one of the few in my years to not go to after-school tuition centers (there were mandatory after-school classes my school hosted, but I stopped going to those too after some point) and I did pretty well in the 3 major national exams we had. I would have probably fully aced my final national exam (similar to the gaokao) if I hadn't spent half the year at home recovering from panic disorder and the zombie-like side effects of Xanax.

Jacqueline: Trust me, you would not want to be in a place like that. You would lose all sense of humanity. Your worth would entirely be measured in grades; you might as well be a robot. So many of my classmates and teachers were dealing with mental health issues but they were all dismissed as "hysteria"; I struck lucky by getting treatment and supportive parents. I wouldn't be surprised if the Malaysian suicide rate was higher than reported: when I ran my alternative education blog, I got quite a few messages from younger Malaysians pleading for help because the pressure was making them suicidal. When I went back to my secondary school a few years after finishing to give my juniors possibly the only Life After School talk they'd ever get (we never got one), they cheered because I was the only person who told them that they wouldn't be a failure in life even if they flunked out the exams.
posted by divabat at 3:03 PM on January 2, 2015 [9 favorites]


Hey wait a sec, you can't just interpose lived experience like that! It's getting in the way of our xeno-panic!
posted by aramaic at 3:59 PM on January 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


I get that you're kidding, but I don't quite get the joke.
posted by divabat at 4:31 PM on January 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


Many types of jobs, maybe including receptionist, need conscientiousness, obedience, and ability to memorize many small details much more than they need critical thinking or creativity. How sure are we that critical thinking is really that important for most people, in real life, not rhetoric?

Yes, but not only that. Factual knowledge is the raw material of creativity. You can be innovative and creative as hell, and still be hampered by not having much to work with. It's a lot harder to be a good jazz pianist without knowing your chords and scales cold, and the quickest way to get there is rote for lots of people. You need to know a lot of facts before you can be trained to see the patterns in the facts, and to select relevant facts from noise.

So it's not so much that critical thinking isn't valued, it's that it's stage 2, after getting a base of raw knowledge to work with.

I've seen the same thing working with the Japanese. You build it the way the leader tells you to, exactly. Over and over. Until you can do it with no mistakes. Maybe then you've earned the skill and experience to suggest or try a change. Too many people get creative before they can even do it the standard way correctly, before knowing that there are good reasons for the way it is. It's infuriating when you've grown up in US culture, but I can't argue that it doesn't work.
posted by ctmf at 10:13 PM on January 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


ctmf: and from my experience, the problem with our system is that we never really hit Stage 2. Indeed, we're dissuaded from it. Whoever said that part of the reason the education system is so regimented is because the Government doesn't want people to think freely enough to criticise them - BINGO. Because if they really unleashed critical thinking skills, students would be extra empowered to refute whatever's being taught them and speak up.

In Malaysia, at least, young people are already super savvy, but they don't have a lot of other examples or models to really do as much damage as they'd like. My blog was one of the first few times people in Malaysia even heard of alternative education or gap years, for example, and now I get interviewed for a gap year article every year. Our Gov hates youth culture because we're too unpredictable - so just make us study to the test, no deviations, and if you fail your entire life and your family's life is at stake so FEAR THE EXAM. Don't date spend any of that excess brain energy on really figuring out the holes in our system even if you suspect that they're already there.
posted by divabat at 10:47 PM on January 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm sure you're correct that that's part* of it. To use the jazz pianist analogy, say I'm the pro. I can only accept so many students, and so I use an exam to make sure I'm selecting ones who have the discipline and talent proven already. Besides, now I don't have to spend my time teaching them things any church pianist could have taught them.

But also, I'm going to use my discretion and select only students I think will use what I teach them for good, not evil. (However I define evil)

I'm imagining* that university in China (and Malaysia) is more like my hypothetical jazz pro. That's where the interesting thinking happens, now that the raw knowledge has been packed in as much as possible. It must be nice for the professors to talk about the really interesting stuff without having to hand-hold as much.

*You're the expert, I'm really not trying to "man-splain" your own thing to you, but I'm always deeply skeptical of evil-villains-twisting-their-moustaches theories. It seems to me it's not the government, but the families making such a big deal of the exams. Are you really doomed if you fail, or is it just that the families want the BEST options, the chance to move up a class or two? Can you really not make a reasonably comfortable living without a degree? Building houses, fixing cars, that kind of blue-collar work? I admit I don't know.
posted by ctmf at 11:12 PM on January 2, 2015


ctmf: Trust me, I've spent 11 years in the hellhole that is the Malaysian education system and 3 years blogging and writing and counseling depressed students about it, I've seen people get arrested for far less. It's much, much closer to moustache-twirling than you think.

Your jazz pro analogy falls apart because they're not looking for people with discipline or talent, necessarily. Personal learning interests were discouraged: I was an avid reader, but because so much of my reading was outside the (horrifically outdated) textbooks, I was dismissed with "that's not in the test".

And their definition of Good vs Evil is basically:

Good = What The Ruling Party Wants You To Do
Bad = Anything That Is Not The Ruling Party's Interests

God help you if you were not a Malay Muslim, because then you get the worst of it.

The professors don't care about the interesting stuff. They can't - they're either bound by the rules of the Government (if they are a public university) or they could be like my college and not give a shit about anything. My Malaysian college sucked at academics, the teachers were wrong half the time, but it was the only place where you could literally wear and do whatever you want, and that was notable.

As for careers without degrees: every year when the university placements are announced, there are always news reports of parents aghast that their straight-A-scoring kid did not get a place in Medicine. Always Medicine. Or maybe Law or Engineering or Accountancy, but that's it. I caused a riot because I opted out of the Hard Sciences to study Literature in secondary school, because the only class that offered Literature as a subject was 99% students who horribly failed the Form 3 National Exams and were already written off as failures by the entire school, and I had to leave the country to get any sort of tertiary creative education. Blue-collar jobs are seen as jobs for people who could not hack it academically, who were low scorers, failures in life, unwanted. You could earn a living, I suppose, but you would also earn a lot of shame.

Besides, blue-collar work often fell to migrant labor, and the migrant labor races got the worst of the racial discrimination in Malaysia. My family's Bangladeshi, and we were weird because we're upper-middle-class and my dad was the CEO of a State-run company, which was a huge controversy because how dare a dirty Bangla be the boss of the Malays. I got similar treatment: in Year 6 the teachers told the all-Malay-except-for-me-class, right in front of my face, "don't let the Bangla kid do better than you". I was the best English student my entire time at that school, but they took away awards from me deliberately. Because I was the same as the blue-collar class: dirty and foreign and how dare I do better than us normal locals go back to your country.

11 years of this kind of torment.

You are idealistic, but so very very wrong.
posted by divabat at 12:56 AM on January 3, 2015 [15 favorites]


divabat, thank you for adding your voice to this thread. I think it's incredibly valuable to have your insight.
posted by cooker girl at 8:28 AM on January 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


For the Chinese, failure to get into university pretty much condemns you to manual labour or low paying factory work. Given the working conditions on construction sites, with zero health and safety attention, that's a high chance to get hurt. What do they care? There's thousands of people coming in to the cities every year to take your place.

That's the incentive to get into university. Not all Blue collar jobs are equal.
posted by arcticseal at 11:09 AM on January 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


Stifling creative thought in favour of parroting authority is a feature, not a bug. Public education has always had its roots in the elite's desire for good employees, not good citizens.

Wasn't the modern approach to teaching history in schools (rote memorisation of date→event tuples, essentially, desperately avoiding any examination of causality or long-term trends) brought in by Andrew Carnegie largely to prevent Marxism from taking a foothold in the general population?
posted by acb at 3:30 PM on January 3, 2015


ctmf: [. . .] I'm always deeply skeptical of evil-villains-twisting-their-moustaches theories. It seems to me it's not the government, but the families making such a big deal of the exams.

In the Asian country that I am familiar with, it is all levels of society. Standardized exams are to India what high school Football is to small town Texas. Winning at exams gets your face in the news.* Imagine a kid from your town getting picked for the NFL/NCAA Div I/Whatever . (I don't sports, sorry!)

“He literally brought glory to us.”


*These are just the first examples that Google came up with for people from my home state. I have no connection to either.
posted by Seiten Taisei at 4:56 PM on January 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


FJT: I meant China was the baby on the modern world economy stage - which it is. In 1980, China's economy was not in the top 10 worldwide. Now, it rivals the US.

Fair enough, but the "baby" is only following the path of growth laid out by other industrialized "adults".
Yes, yes, yes... everything you say is true, and I implied it as well. None of your points are the least bit relevant, however, to what we were discussing. When I made that baby metaphor, I was repudiating officer_fred's suggestion that China's economy was growing faster than the USA's economy because "Americans overvalue critical thinking."
posted by IAmBroom at 10:05 PM on January 3, 2015


Personally, I think we drastically undervalue it. Even in this thread it's been suggested that the real reason STEM education is being promoted is to "drive down wages." That's... more paranoiac than rationally critical. As a STEM professional earning well above the national average, yet below the average in my profession, I'd have to say, "Yes, I'd like fries with that."
posted by IAmBroom at 10:05 PM on January 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


That's really interesting, I seem to have had the opposite experience to Divabat despite seemingly having the same life path... I was far closer to a nervous breakdown preparing for the "western style" education exam than I ever was in the "asian style" education system!

I too went through public schooling in Malaysia, and it was pretty badly funded and run. To put things in context, my classes were overcrowded (55 students to 1 teacher at once point) - so overcrowded, in fact, we had not enough physical room for desks in the class, so at least 8 students had to sit OUTSIDE the classroom, and listen to the lesson through the windows... and for our final high school exam at age 18, the syllabus was supposed to cover the final 2 years worth of studies, but we had no Biology teacher for one and half years because none of them could stand us (we had 3 teachers come in, realise what a craphole this school was, and promptly leave after a month, so we spent most of our Biology periods doing... nothing). And yes, endless after school tuition classes.

But school was "easy". The syllabus was laid out, and had clearly defined expectations, you just invested the hundreds of hours learning it by rote. I kinda liked it.

I eventually went on to do mathematics at a university in Australia and my god... I could not handle it. I was ahead of everyone else on syllabus, but I could not handle the critical thinking required. The examination style was crazy to me... there was no past year exam papers or sample papers to help you prepare (they were classified)... and the questions in the exam were guaranteed to be novel, new things you had never before covered in the year whether in lectures or tutorials, because they were meant to be "true" tests of abilities that you could not prepare for. In theory, if your fundamentals were strong enough, you should be able to figure out a solution. In practice... I don't know, maybe my fundamentals were never strong enough. No calculators allowed or needed, it was all "conceptual" math.

I was going insane not knowing how to prepare for the exam. I literally saw people break down in tears in the final exam. Legend has it (from a senior who gave me some coaching) was that someone had to be stretchered out of the exam hall in his year. I'm inclined to think, I was just bad at math... but really, I had no inkling of this, I easily got an A grade in standard and further math in the British A-Level system without much drama (sure, I did spend hundreds of hours doing practice questions... but everyone can do that) and in retrospect, the British system TOTALLY works by rote learning so it's a bit unfair to categorize only Asian systems as rote learning oriented.

I guess one conclusion is that my brain has been "broken" by the asian style education I got growing up, but hey, it doesn't seem to have hurt me in my chosen career... I'm always astounded just how little critical thinking or technical ability really matter, when most of it is really relational skills and politics... sure if I was in engineering or science it would matter, but for the majority of jobs in the world, I would be just fine coming from a rote learning background. And the other conclusion is that there are many types of people in the world and some work better in one system versus another, so maybe schools should cater to both somehow...
posted by xdvesper at 5:16 PM on January 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


Sorry, to put in context, that random derail about how poorly funded and run the schools are in Malaysia was meant to be there to say, we're barely holding it together as it is, doing rote learning is just about all we CAN achieve right now, never mind moving on to more advanced things like critical thinking. And I think that's a common lament everywhere else in the world - with overworked teachers and underfunded schools, the easiest path to gain a bare minimum of educational achievement is through rote learning.
posted by xdvesper at 5:25 PM on January 4, 2015


I'm imagining* that university in China (and Malaysia) is more like my hypothetical jazz pro. That's where the interesting thinking happens, now that the raw knowledge has been packed in as much as possible. It must be nice for the professors to talk about the really interesting stuff without having to hand-hold as much.

Korea is like China -- the model for this kind of thing in China† in the new China at least, I might venture -- and I'll say that that couldn't be further from the reality here, I don't think.

Once the all-important university entrance exam hurdle has been cleared (if it's cleared), you are locked as a young Korean into a limited choice of majors based on the results, even if you've managed to get in to one of the top 5 schools that everyone is aiming for. After the hellish competition of high school and middle school, university here tends to be a time to kick back by comparison. Academic standards are... well, let's just say they're different than the ones that I was accustomed to in Canada decades ago. Cheating on tests is epidemic and expected, and at least in the couple of years I spent as a university instructor here a decade ago, never punished or even acknowledged.

Things are loosening up a little -- a very little -- these days, particularly given broader societal changes including drastically reduced numbers of young people actually competing for jobs as the birth rate continues to idle at world-beating lows, and more and more Koreans emigrate or go overseas for education, often to get off the treadmill and early life-lock-in that happens here.

Although it's true that the massive amount of memorization that Korean students have to do stands them in good stead when they do go to study overseas, as is so often attested, I will say, anecdotally, that I regularly, even after a couple of decades here, find it almost shocking how poorly rounded in terms of general knowledge or basic science many Koreans tend to be (let alone how unable many folks, older ones in particular, are to find a way to just kick back and enjoy their lives, having been so accustomed to being driven all their young lives). That's not meant as an indictment, just an observation. Having lived so long here, I'm out of touch with what things are like back in North America -- it may well be that for different reasons, most people back there are similarly poorly informed. I don't know.

It's actually a 'known' and acknowledged thing here in Korea in recent years that the Korean education system leaves young Koreans ill-equipped for creative thinking. The Korean megacorp I've worked at for the last decade has actually created educational programs and management initiatives (with debatable success) to try and compensate for the shortcoming and inspire their new hires, who are top engineers but are mostly skilled academically rather than practically, and are both afraid to propose and not very good at coming up with new ideas. The inertia is massive, though.

I often wonder if the refrain that 'the Korean education system is a failure at promoting creative and critical thinking' is at least in part, as so often happens here, a result of modern Korean decision makers listening a little too closely to what people from other cultural traditions are saying about them, and then applying face-saving bandaids to systemic problems that are being misdiagnosed in the first place.

† but of course it must be understood that the memorization-and-regurgitation mode, and the idea that your route to upward social mobility is through taking tests, is something that has a 2000 year history. Starting in the Han Dynasty around the beginning of the common era all the way up into the early 20th century in China, and for most of that time in Korea as well, the government civil service exams and cramming for them that were the precursors of this phenomenon today were based nearly in their entirety on one's knowledge of and ability to interpret and apply the Confucian classics. So the historical antecedent path is not so much Korea->China as it is China->Korea->China.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:43 PM on January 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Yknow, I kinda wonder about the funding thing. I don't know how my school was funded, but it was a "premier" school, and it still sucked. (The thing you talk about with teachers giving up was pretty much how they treated my class - all the attention went to the Science people).

In the past year I've gotten to know a teacher who was part of Teach for Malaysia that started a tech club at his school, one that was severely underdeveloped. His intent was to teach students English in more unconventional ways. So in the club they learn how to code things with Arduino and other programming skills. The kids did AMAZINGLY and they've been part of a lot of competitions and such.

It wasn't like they had mastered rote learning and then moved on to Stage 2 of critical thinking - it wasn't that linear. Rather, they had teachers that gave a damn about the students, supported them through fun projects, and gave them some confidence that they could do something right, when the rest of the system gave up on them.
posted by divabat at 5:45 PM on January 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


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