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Q: Does the Chinese education system actively avoid the teaching of geography?
Been surprised many times at my older student's lack of knowledge about the world outside China. Is this deliberate?
No, the Chinese education simply actively seeks to avoid education (or education in any meaningful form).
Where is Geography? Is that in Foreigner Land?
I know it's a facetious answer but it explains a lot about the majority of Chinese. Most know nothing outsideChina. But then I've heard (stereotype coming up!) that a hell of a lot of Muricans know nothing outside their state. 
Because of the vastness of America, many people have barely an inkling of any geography outside their country. Europeans are almost forced to know much about their 'neighborhood' because everything is so close.
expatlife26:
yeah I agree I think people are too hard on americans for not knowing geography. I bet your average european knows europe about as well as your average american knows america.
Could your average rural frenchman find bulgaria on an unlabeled map on the first try? Could probably get the general area but I doubt they'd be anywhere near 100% accurate.
there's that running gag in Last Week Tonight where they highlight the wrong state/country and go: "A country you know so little about… that's not Kazakhstan, this is. Actually that's not Kazakhstan either…" and so on.
Perhaps it is as stated, because Europe has so much contact with the rest of the world, that schools just broadened the curriculum to increase public knowledge out of necessity.
expatlife26:
yeah I know what you're talking about. I saw they did that with paraguay too.
No, the Chinese education simply actively seeks to avoid education (or education in any meaningful form).
I understand not being able to find Malta on the map, but c'mon,,, at least name the seven continents and five oceans, and a few countries along the way!
More interesting to me though is when I bring up something about our solar system,,,,, wow! wow, wow,,, seems like where we are and what's going on out there has never even crossed their mind! I've even showed Space Shuttle launches and they look sooooo asleep! weird beyond weird to me. I suppose if it's not virtual now it's not real.
factoid: one SS launch releases energy equivalent to 760 tons of TNT
expatlife26:
I'm so sick of your anti-malta BS. Malta has a proud history and should be at least as easy to find as powerhouse nations like Burkino Faso, Uruguay and Kyrgyzstan
diverdude1:
haha,, well, I will give them one thing,,,, for such a small country area-wise (smaller than Philadelphia), it sure has had a big impact on historical events!
expatlife26:
Oh yeah malta had a pretty exciting role in ww2.
I remember reading they literally found boxes with parts to an obsolete fighter plane and just assembled them and through them into combat because they had no other choice.
They did OK too!
After getting some inkling of how bad their geography was, I decided to give my 16 A-level students - who are all intent on going overseas to study (mostly to UK, but a couple to Canada, Aus and US)...
Of the 16 students, IIRC 14 had mixed up Canada and USA! South America - forget! Europe.. ummmmm.
Capital cities? Guess....
mArtiAn:
I teach mostly kids, 7 - 12. Knocked up a huge load of flash cards of flags covering countries all over the world. Still makes me laugh seeing 9 year olds getting their tongues around The Democratic Republic of Congo.
I never understood how other places had trouble with Geography in US. My freshman year our school required you to pass Geography. The final test was 2 days. Day 1 was a map of US and Canada with each state and province with a number, on 2nd sheet was numbered for each number you had to write-in the state or province name and capital. Day 2 was all the rest of the world and their capitals. I still mix up the Central Asian countries(other than Kazakhstan). To learn we did a lot of other things other than just test test test like they are forcing kids to do now a days. We made a travel brochure about a different country, we made a video advertisement for our country we were given, and made a "traditional" food from each.
Shining_brow:
Lucky you! I wish I had that sort of teaching! Breadth- and depth-wise. Education has changed a lot since I went to school.
could it be, that since China plays rather loose with maritime borders, that it hopes the expanding claims will go unnoticed? Also, since many complaints from other countries will concern borders, citizens in China will reason: you is foreign equals biased; my country mistreated and misunderstood!
weather reports now have large swaths of the South China Sea coloured blood red, so citizens can memorize the new borders.
national boarders are a fluid concept in China given that they are constantly discovering through 'newly discovered' old maps that more and more of the world belongs to China.
So why waste time in teaching about the names of places outside current Chinese boarders?
'Foreignerland' is getting smaller every day.
Funny how they landed in the dark side of the moon instead of the side where the "never happened " moon landings where - I would think proving it all a hoax would be top of the list
I assume it has a lot to do with the country and population size.
I dare to say that majority of Europeans would not be able to name the provincial capitals of majority of US states and Chinese provinces despite of the fact that some of these are bigger than any European country (if not counting Russia).
Also the European colonialist history plays certain role why a lot of Europeans know certain geographically distant places
sorrel:
how would you explain the geographical knowledge of European countries who were never colonists then?
Janosik:
@sorrel; I did not mention collonialism is the reason, I wrote it plays certain role. Collonialism as such became part of many European countries history and is taught even in the countries having no colonies whatsoever.
Shining_brow:
Why should people bother knowing state or provincial capitals??? National capitals - perhaps. But for states???
Janosik:
@Shining; Because it's part of geography? But what I wanted to say is something else. I wanted to say that probably majority of Chinese and Americans will most probably have no trouble to name them (each for own country). Every Chinese knows Chengdu, Shenyang or Urumqi. But few foreigners even though Sichuan is bigger than majority of European countries and certainly bigger population than any. As China did not have really expansionistic history so the knowledge is concetrated on China, it's neigbourhood and couple of main places in the world. As per my experience many Americans shows exactly same tendency - quite OK with America geography but just a few main points in the rest.
A couple of months ago I asked a bunch of students aged around 14/15 to write down as many Chinese provinces as they could in 5 minutes and the most anyone could come up with was 18. The average was more like 10 or 12. I top scored with 26.
Another time it was countries of the world and hardly any could get more than 10.
Anyone heard of a 90 second video clip called 'Yakko's Countries of the World'? It's set to music and Yakko names and points to about 190 countries in that time while dancing about. It's a beauty. Included are Hong Kong, Taiwan and Tibet. Only 2 students out of several hundred have ever queried anything and I put this down to the fact the rest can't understand what Yakko is saying. Because it's in English.
I always get a kick out of it.
We went to uncles house for dinner last week. Their house is about 4 blocks away. The father in law has lived in this area 40 years. The wife has lived here all her life. The uncle has been here 30 years. That adds up to over 100 years of local knowledge.
They got the wrong block, and walked into the wrong house. No kidding. I was there. I said nothing. I left them to it. My wife always tells me I am wrong. So who am I to correct her and her dad as they try to find an uncles house ?
