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Q: Whats your favorite gaping hole in Chinese education?
My favorite is the one about white people arent from Europe, but ancient and native to places like the US and Australia.
Yea, but other countries have that sort of thing as well. There are schools in the US that teach ID along side evolution as if they were some how equally valid--they aren't--and if you go to a religious school you are, depending on the denomination, likely to get a creationist account of history (the world being only 5000 years old, and dinosaurs and people living side by side as if they were the Flintstones.
That isn't to say I don't have gripes about Chinese public school, but it took China's educational system a really long time to arrive where it is at present. Further, its been shaped by thousands of years of philosophical conjecture. For instance, they've been using testing as a means of determining competency for civil service jobs since the Tang dynasty, and the idea for doing so originates with Confucius, although I could be wrong on this point. Having worked in public school here I probably wouldn't have my children educated in China after primary school because I don't like exactly what that education based around testing results in, by which I mean the long hours, the excessive homework, and the way that poor students are encouraged to drop out. However, my problems with Chinese education have as much to with it being outside of the western tradition as whatever the results may be. In much the same way as you'd be tempted to appraise the two systems and declare one a winner and the other a loser because for you and I logical positivism is what water is to a fish, we simply cannot escape it. Still though, if you or I ever find ourselves saying "Hey, look at what those idiots are doing" we should probably take a minute to ask what exactly we are trying to accomplish.
I have 2.
1) Chinese schools teach that you always need to study. Everyday all day. There's a lack of social development in students due to that kind of thinking.
2) "China is good. Everyone else is bad." Considering it's the "everyone else" who has made China so successful, this education practice is ridiculous. But, the gov has to keep people's suspicion on foreigners or they'll wake up and start being suspicious of the gov.
