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Certainly it's in anyone's interest to check the accuracy of their own statements, if only to avoid looking like an ass.
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<p>Well, that's the best argument I've heard in this whole thread.</p>
<p>Sweetny,
the OP may have posted things they did not agree with just to get some feedback, what other people thought.. maybe rebuttal it a bit. .. i do it all the time.</p>
<p>Wow...sex education and the PRC's PR problems...it's turned out to be a very interesting thread. </p>
<p>Sweet Ambrosia:</p>
<p>Regardless of the huge human rights infractions on the part of the PRC (not defending them, they're really really bad), China, especially Shanghai, will be a HUGE player in the world economy in the future. Taiwanese businessmen are flooding the city with money, business deals, etc. and over 20 skyscrapers are built a year. I plan to solidify my grasp of the Chinese language in college and study abroad there (or intern or whatever) because that is where things in the economy are heading and a knowledge of Chinese will take you far - dare I say it'll be necessary - for anything business-related in the future. Heck, one private boarding school in the UK is now requiring their elementary students to learn Chinese as part of the normal curriculum. "The World is Flat" is a very good book in addressing this. I also heard that the USC business school is requiring a semester abroad in Shanghai for their MBA students, but am not sure if it's true.</p>
<p>I also think that this is how China will eventually democratize. As Deng Xiaoping said, "To get rich is glorious" and that has become the PRC's focus over the last 7 or so years, so much so that they are relaxing censorship and other laws in favor of business. For example, I was in China last summer (I was born near Shanghai) visiting family and we got into a taxi in Shanghai where the driver started complaining about how all the old homes are being torn down for skyscrapes and <em>gasp</em> how the government sucks. I was really surprised that he was actively saying something against the government...in my grandmother's days, when she accidentially broke a portrait of Mao, she was scared out of her mind that she's be arrested/etc. And apparently if both your parents were only children in Shanghai, you can now have more than one child (of course raising them is also really expensive because costs of education are rising so only upper/upper middle class do this) I did an NHD project on Tiananmen Square in 9th grade and I truly believe that ideas are what drive a revolution - the intelligensia - and that trade is not only the exchange of goods and services, but also ideas, esp. as more and more Chinese go abroad for their graduate studes and return to China. </p>
<p>stonecold23: </p>
<p>a country where you are free and can do anything you want? I'm starting to question this more and more with the whole PATRIOT ACT, wiretapping, and arresting Middle-Easterners for an indefinite amount of time without an official charge deal. Believe it or not, the USA is not perfect; we also have human rights abuses - see Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. We have nothing on China, but don't pretend like we're innocent. </p>
<p>pip-pip: And yes, Mexico City policy is atrocious. If I'd been able to vote, I would've voted for Kerry just for that (he said it'd be his "first executive order").</p>
<p>Err, isn't this thread about STUDENTS from two regions, not on economics. Stay on topic, guys.</p>
<p>As a chinese born in china and currently living in america, my opinion is that every aspect of the chinese government, including the education system spend most of their waking lives trying to beat into the heads of commoners the flaws they see in everything american. Why? Because every aspect of the American system is better than every aspect of the chinese system. How do you like them apples.</p>
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As a chinese born in china and currently living in america, my opinion is that every aspect of the chinese government, including the education system spend most of their waking lives trying to beat into the heads of commoners the flaws they see in everything american. Why? Because every aspect of the American system is better than every aspect of the chinese system. How do you like them apples.
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<p>Thank you. Your post just made my day. :D</p>
<p>Um, I don't know what you're talking about, but I've lived in America since I was 4 and immigrated here from China.</p>
<p>sabinscabin: Which is why America has one of the worst programs in math and science education in the world. (See: <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/02/25/MN54903.DTL&type=printable%5B/url%5D">http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/02/25/MN54903.DTL&type=printable</a>)
And why the US is running a massive trade deficit with China. And why China owns more than 20% of our currency and can sell it anytime to make our debt rocket even higher. And why US jobs are being outsourced to China, where people can do the same work for less.</p>
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Which is why America has one of the worst programs in math and science education in the world.
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<p>Only until the graduate level, in which case it's one of the best.</p>
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And why the US is running a massive trade deficit with China.
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<p>Actually, running a trade deficit benefits you as long as you can sustain it. </p>
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And why China owns more than 20% of our currency and can sell it anytime to make our debt rocket even higher.
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<p>No they can't. If they sell it, it'll destabilize the US economy, which in turns screws the PRC. </p>
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And why US jobs are being outsourced to China, where people can do the same work for less.
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<p>Yet another sign that the US economy is strong. This shows that US capital is best spent on more specialized areas. Why should we pay 1 American worker to do a job, when we can have 5 Chinese workers do the job cheaper and more efficiently? Simple macroecon, there.</p>
<p>Americans typically score lower on international standardized testing because we spend far less time memorizing facts, hence the rest of the world thinks we are "lazy." However, as someone else mentioned, American education focuses a lot more on critical thinking skills. This past year, my family has hosted a Chinese exchange student, who, when she first arrived, was terribly dissapointed to discover that American high school actually involved work :). It seems that the main difference is that education in China is more structured than it is in America. Some Chinese students are in school from 8 AM to 11 PM, with short breaks for meals, but once class is over, they are finished for the day. In America, most schools are out by three, but after school, students could be doing homework until 3 AM some days- it is much more variable. There are differences in what is learned as well. I remember that, at the beginning of this year, my exchange sister could list chemical equations off the top of her head, but couldn't explain the basic rules of electron configuration. She learned the "what" before the "how" whereas, for me, it was the other way around. I think that these differences even out after college, but the priorities in high school education are different.</p>
<p>damn, 8 AM to 11PM?
doing hw till 3 am? </p>
<p>ive never heard of either, and if both did happen with students, id be shocked if someone would rather have school 8 AM to 11 PM over the american system... (especially since doing hw till 3 am is an extreme rarity, and usually american HS's have 1-3 hours of work or none a night</p>
<p>American students think China is a state in US.</p>
<p>stonecold, which HS did you go to? During my senior year I considered 2 AM an early night. (Yes, even during my second semester.)</p>
<p>i go to a top 100 public school, take 10 AP classes, and am goin to a top 15 liberal arts college next year, and my max amount of HW was 3 or 4 hours (right now, its 0) , but the average night was around 2 hours</p>
<p>I wouldn't say that China's education system is better than America's system but, different. In China, you read, write, and listen. In America it's more of a listen, think about it, and argue a point. Perhaps that explains why China has a lot of scientist while America has a lot of business owners.</p>
<p>China=Go to school to learn and work hard.
America= Lets learn and at the same time have some fun.</p>
<p>Now I've actually written a paper on this topic debating America's education system and do feel there is obviously some areas the school system can improve, 'free enterprise'. But I do not feel that the system as a whole is a huge problem.</p>
<p>*Then again, America soars beyond China in the College system. Secondary is where the problems are.</p>
<p>If anyone is interested in my paper I wrote about this, just let me know.</p>
<p>stonecold, the fact that I took a lot of fine arts classes may have had alot to do with it. Also, I was a little bit anal about my work. (Not to say that you aren't, but it always took me ages to do it.)</p>
<p>Hmmm...top 100 public school in NYC...Not Stuyvesant or Bronx Sci?</p>
<p>I agree with the person above me. China puts a lot of emphasis on memorizations and the maths - which is a reason why so many asians are scientists or engineers. </p>
<p>America, on the other hand, focuses a lot on innovation and communication skills. This is why a lot of Americans own businesses and 'strike it rich.' Is one system particularily better than the other? Not really.</p>
<p>Before someone mentioned intellectual property rights and I just wanted to point out that China blantantly has disregards copyright laws ALL THE TIME</p>
<p>In case you guys haven't noticed, there are still American scientists. :p</p>
<p>I am Chinese
I have to point out a fact that few have noticed on this thread. The fact that this fellow Chinese student from central China posted on an American forum in a language that is foreign to him and asked to correct stereotypes he has heard in china is an accomplishment that few American students have achieved. Do you see or know any American high school or even college student who is learning Chinese and even attempts to make posts on a Chinese forum and debate with the native speakers? Or for that matter, on a Japanese forum, a French forum, a German forum...
Although it may be hard for you to admit, but the truth is that most Chinese students are much more open-minded, more eager to learn than their American counterparts. The average Chinese students know a lot more about America than the average American students know about China. True, the communist regime and the outdated educational system are not constructive at all for the Chinese kids to develop their self-confidence, their creativity or to gain an unbiased broad perspective of the world. But all these negative political influences can be changed eventually, although we may not see it in the near future. Many American kids, however, although blessed with a democracy and an environment that encourages creativity and freedom of thoughts, are blinded by their own complacency and the American-centric way of thinking at large. They surrender themselves to their arrogance and conceited ignorance which are a worse dictatorship than the Chinese government.</p>
<p>btw, i was wrong about the chinese kid coming from central China. It should be east China.</p>
<p>alwaysfaithful,</p>
<p>Blah blah blah, Americans are ignorant and stupid, blah blah blah.</p>
<p>Ever study econ? Ever hear of the concept of "rational ignorance?" There's a reason why the kid in Uzebekistan is learning English, but the American isn't studying !Kung languages: prevalence. Let's use a less extreme example, however, as our working model. In Europe, the vast majority of educated people speak English. Most English, however, don't speak every European language. In fact, most are probably as monolingual as Americans.</p>
<p>Is that because they're ignorant, ethnocentric jerks? Sometimes. But most of the time, it's rational ignorance. Yes, learning a language is fun, interesting, and in most cases worthwhile. But, for most native English speakers, the benefit of learning German is reduced considerably when they go to Germany and find that a good number of Germans speak English anyway. It becomes RATIONAL (as in economics) to be ignorant. Instead of learning German, the person can devote their time to something with a higher marginal value.</p>
<p>For most other people, however, English has an incredibly high marginal value. It's THE lingua franca of the world (much like the eponymous French was in the past.) </p>
<p>By the way, I tried posting on Japanese boards, but found that in most cases I was either quietly hushed out because my Japanese isn't perfect.</p>