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??? That’s your — “personal observation”? And you teach? Good luck, America!</p>
<p>I really don’t understand why you are calling me an idiot and implying I am a rotten teacher, and “good luck America” if people like me teach. I teach at a college, so my students are adults. And many of my Chinese students, in their essays, write about their absent parents who sent them alone to the US to study (some of them as young as 14), their episodes with alchohol, eating disorders and self-mutilation (like cutting), and their DUIs. (Of course, I also have very bright students with great futures). In other words, they are just like everyone else, but with the added burden of having no one to turn to.
I don’t know why that makes me an idiot or a bad teacher; I refer them to counseling and try to help them as much as I can. I’m just trying to point out that some Chinese are struggling with personal issues that stem in part from a society that is super-high pressure and doesn’t generally acknowledge psychological problems. Maybe going to high school from 7am to midnight 6 days a week, and then not getting in to a university, isn’t such a great outcome, and there are millions of these kids in China.</p>
<p>how is america to keep up with countries like china? the answer is pretty obvious. we need to amend the proposed dream act as follows: kids of illegal immigrants who qualify are given a one-way ticket to shanghai and two years’ college education. after that they become eligible for chinese citizenship. otherwise they go home. first off china will have to start a ‘chinese as a second language’ program and teach bilingually. anyone there speak spanish?</p>
<p>“China is NOT a 3rd world country, FYI. And I know the Chinese educational culture close hand (having observed those schools closely and visited) and I would hate that kind of life style. In a school I visited last year, it was very competitive to attend and classes were going on even till 9pm! And the only get Sunday afternoons off!”</p>
<p>China is 100% a developing country; a 3rd one at that. These test scores aren’t normed properly and they represent the children of the most educated people out of a population of 1.3+ billion strivers. </p>
<p>That, coupled with unnatural Chinese work ethic, explains the superabundance of higher scoring students in these areas. Outside of the main cities, China is poor and uneducated.</p>
<p>What about all the rice farmers and people who live in villages? What would their scores be? Or the kids forced out of middle and high school?</p>
<p>I took a look at the PISA information, and I would just like to note that it ONLY collected data in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macau for China. As a result, there is no way to compare the United States to “China.” Also, they tested 5000 students at randomly chosen schools across the U.S. I find it hard to imagine how you could really create a truly random selection of U.S. students in this way. I couldn’t find a list of what schools they used, or how they were chosen, but it would be interesting to know. </p>
<p>Also, there does not seem to be anything accounting for what percentage of 15-year-olds are still in school, and it’s also not clear to what extent students in non-academic programs were tested. I note that in some of the countries, it’s reported that very high percentages of the students are in academically selective schools–something that is not true for the U.S. What does this mean?</p>
<p>I think this study may show something, but it certainly doesn’t show that education in China is, on average, better than education in the U.S. It may show that for some other countries, but understanding it is very complicated.</p>
<p>Am I the only person who remembers when we all talked about Japan, Inc, the Japanese work ethic, the Japanese corporate man, his long hours, the great teamwork and economic success balanced by stress and suicide? </p>
<p>Since then an entire generation of Japanese rebelled and went counter culture (though of course in a uniquely Japanese way, giving us Jpop, cosplay, etc, etc) </p>
<p>I really wouldn’t count on China continuing this indefinitely. </p>
<p>We should of course try to improve our educational system. I dont know that further focus on standardized tests is the way to do it though.</p>
<p>I visited a Chinese rural high school last year and like I said, it was brutal. Classes till 9pm and only Sunday afternoons off. But I agree, it’s inaccurate to compare Hong Kong, Shanghai and Macau to the entire US. It’s like comparing grapes to apple trees.</p>
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<p>This is something I’m trying to figure out. I’d like to know how Singapore’s Ministry of Education came up with a representative sample. In Singapore, the great majority of Singaporean students are in government-run or government-funded secondary schools at least until the end of the calendar year in which they turn 16. Students are tracked into different academic tracks, yes, but within the same schools (analogous to regular/honors/AP tracks). Therefore, if Singapore’s MOE did indeed choose a random or representative sample from schools under their authority - and I have no reason to believe otherwise - they should have a sample that spans the full range of academic abilities.</p>
<p>The only cases in which a student might not be in the Singaporean academic school system at age 15-16 are: 1. the student attends an international school outside the purview of the MOE, 2. the student failed the end-of-primary-education exam twice and was tracked to an alternative school (still under the MOE but perhaps not included in the sample?) or 3. the student dropped out of school completely (very, very rare in my limited experience).</p>
<p>Of course, Singapore has many circumstantial advantages over America in implementing educational policies - not least that it is effectively a city with a centralized educational authority and is thus much easier to administer, as well as that Singapore’s societal problems are nothing compared to America’s and rarely lead to students dropping out of school before graduating with some sort of qualification, whether academic or vocational. Nonetheless, I’m putting this out there because if you were to look at it purely from the perspective of the education system, then yes - almost everyone in Singapore who falls within the age limits for PISA will still be in the academic school system.</p>
<p>I think there are good reasons to expect the Shanghai test results might not be representative of China as a whole. Hong Kong results were also very strong but well below Shanghai; Taipei results were pretty much at the OECD average, and Macao results slightly below the OECD average. I suspect if you sampled China as a whole you’d get average scores well below Shanghai’s, closer to the OECD average; but how much closer is anyone’s guess.</p>
<p>That said, these figures should be chilling to anyone concerned with U.S. educational policy and our long-run economic competitiveness. It’s not just Shanghai that’s far outstripping the U.S. Korea, Finland, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and Australia all outperformed the U.S. by significant margins. The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Estonia and Switzerland also led the U.S., albeit by smaller margins. And in math, the U.S. was quite far behind, with average scores well below the OECD average. It’s not a racial or ethnic thing. Some countries have school systems that work. Ours are not doing a good job, on the whole and on average. Sure, some kids here get an excellent education, but lots of parents seem to think that as long as their own kids are doing well it’s not their concern if the system fails for others. That way lies ruin.</p>
<p>We have quite few friends living in China (Chinese nationals) with master’s degrees in engineering. They were very detailed in their descriptions of what it takes to get to college in China. Comparing students in Shanghai or Hong Kong with random students in the States would not be comparing apples with apples. Shanghai is a special zone requiring special permission to live there. The government is selective about who they will admit. And certain schools have reputations for getting kids to college. Even if a random sample were taken across China, it would leave out all the kids who do not attend school because of economic reasons. All those athletes that got gold medals at the Olympics do not attend a “regular school” either. They attend school attached to that gym, or workout facility. Families sacrifice everything for their children to attend college. Two of our friends were sent from home at early ages to attend better elementary schools than they could in the countryside. They were separated from their families for most of the year. Even how they do college selection is very different than we do it.</p>
<p>I hope that people that read that study also have an understanding of the Chinese way of schooling and can see that report for what it is, not what it isn’t.</p>
<p>Maybe China will produce the next winner of the Nobel Peace Prize?</p>
<p>China has more high school drop-outs than America has high school students. None of their test results were considered by the study.</p>
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<p>Source, please?</p>
<p>"China has over 200 million elementary and high school students, who, together with pre-school children, account for one sixth of the total population. In recent years, senior high school education has developed steadily. In 2004, high school enrollment was 8.215 million. " - wikipedia</p>
<p>It appears to be a VERY narrow funnel at the end of the educational pipeline. the majority of Chinese students finish their mandatory education and go to work or vocational school. </p>
<p>Still by sheer volume, (Chinese pop. 1.33 billion vs US pop. 330 million) there is no way for the US to compete on a student per student basis. Any percentage based comparison will include 4 times more Chinese than US students. (BTW India is the same in comparison to the US in population terms). That is why it is critical that the US continues to recruit top international (Particularly Chinese and Indian, but others as well) students and professionals to maintain/gain a competitive advantage.</p>
<p>^From that same Wikipedia article:</p>
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[quote]
Nine-year Program (6–15 years) (policy introduced in 1986)
95%, 2005 <a href=“In%20article’s%20sidebar,%20referring%20to%20attendance”>/quote</a></p>
<p>PISA tests 15-year-olds precisely because after that age, education is no longer compulsory in some countries. Nevertheless, they did try to get a better picture of the Shanghai results by sample testing in some rural areas:</p>
<p>In the 2009 test of the Programme for International Student Assessment(PISA), which is a worldwide evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils’ scholastic performance, Chinese students from Shanghai have achieved the best results in mathematics, science and reading.[5][6] The OECD also looked at some rural areas of China, and found they matched Shanghai’s quality[7] and that even in some of the very poor areas the performance is close to the OECD average.[8]</p>
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<p>So take that for what it’s worth. It is true that still only 44% of Chinese youth are currently enrolled in high school, but considering China’s demonstrated ability to set goals for itself and achieve them, no one should doubt that unless the U.S. can do the same, in another 10-20 years the educational level of its people as a whole will dwarf that of Americans and many other OECD countries.</p>
<p>If I’m reading the tables correctly, in the U.S. something over 95% of youth are enrolled in high school. [School</a> Enrollment: October 2008 - Detailed Tables](<a href=“http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2008.html]School”>http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2008.html)</p>
<p>According to Chinese Ministry of Education, in 2009, 79.2% of all Chinese high school age kids were enrolled in high schools (including vocational and professional school) nationwide. This number could be inflated a little bit. But the government has made huge investment in building and expanding high schools as well as colleges in recent years.</p>
<p>In China, the first 9 years of schools (elementary school: grade 1-6; junior high: grade 7-9) are free and mandatory, enrollment should be in the high 90 percentile. The high school (grade 10-12) can still cost the family a significant amount of money, depending on the locations and family circumstances.</p>