<p>because they’re in China.</p>
<p>They’re the top schools in China, though. Somewhat like IIT in India, I think.</p>
<p>it’s VERY hard to get in. VERY VERY hard.</p>
<p>i thought it was tsinghua and peking?</p>
<p>oh my bad, ignore my post.</p>
<p>How did this thread turn into yet another discussion about Asians?</p>
<p>As for the original topic, being smart does not create force fields around people.</p>
<p>Normally I wouldn’t enter into a debate on CC, but when people are claiming that Asians do better in schools because of genetics, something has to be said.</p>
<p>In my psychology class we read a chapter of <em>The Learning Gap</em> by Harold W. Stevenson called “Effort and Ability”, which reported the author’s findings regarding why American schools are falling behind. Here’s a summary of what stuck with me:</p>
<p>In China, kids are taught that inherent ability has very little to do with success, so high marks are attributed to hard work and poor marks to a lack of diligence (often parents are berated by teachers for their kids’ failures). As a result, everyone works harder (instead of deciding that it’s futile or that hard work is unnecessary based on IQ scores or XYZ tracking) and kids are not ashamed when teachers read off the list of scores on tests and theirs are at the bottom. They aren’t given easier tasks, either, like in the US; rather, the whole class knows that they need to work harder and because they don’t believe in low-intelligence people are more willing to help.</p>
<p>All this was hard for me, someone who was often told that his success in school was because of genetics, to agree with at first. Maybe genes do play a role, but here’s what I believe: regardless of whether this is the case, it’s better for the school system if it’s believed that effort has more to do with success than does ability.</p>
<p>(As a side note, students in China are also far more concerned about preparation for their standardized tests. I’ve heard that their parents will rent hotel rooms for them in the weeks leading up to the tests so that they can stay there with their books without distraction. With this in mind, it’s no wonder that they’re harder than ours if the test makers want to have a normal distribution of scores.)</p>
<p>Finally, to do with the topic question, I think it might be helpful to use Richard Feynman as a case study. Although he was probably one of the most brilliant people born in the past 100 years, he never let his intelligence define who he was (in his memoirs he always said that he was lucky or that he learned some trick to make something easier, never that he was inherently a genius) and so he was able to live a relatively humble and fun life.</p>
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<p>What do you mean by “people are claiming that Asians do better in schools because of genetics”???</p>
<p>No one in this thread said that. No one.</p>
<p>Oh, and michael’s first post doesn’t count, because he didn’t say asians, only genetics in general.</p>
<p>I was joking about that, because the OP said “I don’t believe that it’s mostly genetics because that would be just too freaking unfair”</p>
<p>I see that perhaps my opening sentence implied too much. Still, I don’t think that that’s a viable reason to ignore the rest of my post! ;)</p>
<p>Why shouldn’t you have friends if you are smart?</p>
<p>Those people that think Chinese education system is somehow superior than the American education system is fundamentally flawed by their own country’s racist attitudes towards Asian Americans. Viewing Asian Americans as this model minority, Americans believe, and believe with an arrogance, that the Chinese, the Asians, are genetically, culturally, and academically “inhuman,” deviated from the norms, strayed away from the accepted path way in academic achievement. The erroneous logical inference made by Americans is stupendously stupid, considering that Asian Americans earn per person lower salary than a White American doing the same job, and considering that Asians only consist of 5 percent of U.S population, to make a hasty conclusion such as “all asians are smart” and that “gaokao is the ****” are not only erroneous statements but a racist one as well. </p>
<p>Now, let’s look at Chinese education.
Chinese education sucks, both higher and secondary. Test scores do not represent the intelligence of a people who have been drilled into taking tests for the entirety of high school and middle school years. It further fails to show any real progress on the uplifting of Chinese higher education system. Despite spending billions of dollars on education reform and national labs, China today still lacks behind the west, particularly America, in terms its Research and Development. All the scientists working for the academia sinica are trained in the WEST, with WESTERN colleagues, and mentored by WESTERN professors. </p>
<p>Let me just give you an example: In china, learning English is compulsive from elementary school to college, but despite the training, sometimes intensive english education before and after school, all of the Chinese students, even those who came here for Ph.D, can’t and are not willing to compose papers in readable standardized English. Whereas a Chinese major with only 4 years of CHINESE education under his belt easily outperforms his counterpart in language acquisition. </p>
<p>Now, let me talk more about higher education system in China. It is a bureaucratic system controlled by the communist party to spread party agendas instead of true scientific research. In the last 60 yrs of the Republic’s history, there is no Nobel laureate, no major scientific breakthrough, and worse, all the scientists are trained in the west. Today, going to a Chinese college will probably mean that you will skip all your lectures and plagiarize everything from internet. Chinese academia is notorious for its blatant plagiarism, and its academic journals read like newspaper clips. </p>
<p>Gaokao is a joke too. First of all, it is not a NATIONAL examination. All people take the test alright, but different province has DIFFERENT tests and DIFFERENT evaluation system. you can get into Peking University easily if you live in Beijing, whereas if you live in Guizhou, you are f-ed. Why? Because CHINESE government wants to CONTROL the population from MOVING around, so they give really difficult tests to fringe provinces like Yunnan and Guizhou while privilege Beijing and Shanghai, whose test rooms are filled with communist members’ kids. </p>
<p>If you don’t believe me, go to china and see yourself. The education system is a more or less a farcical fanfare.</p>