China: The World's Cleverest Country

[Rezolution]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business China: The world's cleverest country.
Just found this on the website. It certainly makes interesting reading.
Any comments?

Can't find the story from your link

mumzy Sorry. It's on the BBC News and then Click on the title.

Here's the link

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17585201

It's not necessarily cleverest, but I think there may be something in saying most diligent, which on the "Bounce" principle of work and repetition, leads to improvement and success.

It's an inevitable spin off from the need to learn to read and write by the "sight words" method. Every character is learned by rote, and so both the ability to learn and store information, and then to bring it out for use and application (ie any writing), is fostered in a way totally different to those who learn in an alphabetical system.

Thanks claig
Well Edith I hadn't even thought about the learning by rote point.
Now I consider it, I suppose even just learning to read must be a huge achievement when there are so many characters to learn.
Is there a "hard-working gene" do you think? Rather like certain breeds of dog are bred to cope with work while other breeds are lapdogs? Or am I being a bit too imaginative? Are certain ethnic groups pre-disposed to hard work?
Or is it learned behaviour instilled by Chairman Mao/whoever.?

I think we could learn a lot from the chinese. Their education system in particular. They simply wouldn't tolerate the kind of disruption that our teachers are forced to put up with on a daily basis.

China's confucious tradition has always placed education at the centre of its culture. The lack of a welfare state and the one child policy means its in parents' interest to invest their energies and effort into their child. The tiger mum is the norm in most traditional chinese homes hence their dc great school results.

The Chinese education system is nothing to shout about when it comes to encouraging independent thought. Due partly to the exigencies of the Chinese writing system and partly to the efforts of the Communist Party to keep the people under control, it is based on rote learning and zero questioning. It churns out the world's best engineers, but for innovation and creativity, it does not excel.

It also depends on how you define the world's "cleverest" country. Average IQ? Number of Nobel Prize winners per head of population?

It is a very different education system from the UK, and yes, also things like a culture which values education, one child (normally) per family, so higher expectations for that child and parental involvement etc. etc.

It's nothing to do with genes at all. It's all to do with culture and society.

"In China, the idea is so deeply rooted that education is the key to mobility and success."

This sentence pretty much sums it up. My family come from HK and I've had it drilled into me from an early age that if I want to succeed in life then getting an education is the way to do it. There's no "Ah well....he's not an academic, he's a sporty type" mentality. The default assumption is that myself and my siblings would go to University. It was like it's a natural extension of school. It's just what you do.

Both my kids are in the top set in class. Is this because genetically they are superior? I doubt it. Because when I lived with another woman for a few years, her kids (my step kids) were also consistently in top sets. My fiancee's son has just started school last Sept and he's also far ahead of his friends and has nearly finished the words/sounds they expect the kids to learn in their first year. None of them are genetically related.

My point is that much is to do with environment & expectations. I expect my kids to do well and create an environment where they can succeed. I bring them up to be well disciplined and to understand that studying is for their own good, not mine.

We have a saying in my house which I borrowed from a TV show. B- is an asian F. I expect my kids to be pushing A*'s and I settle for A. I'm disappointed if they get a B and I see it as a personal failure (my failure as a parent) if they get a C.

I'm sure many will think I'm overly harsh but in fact I think I'm laid back. Way more so than my parents were with me. Yet my DD is pretty much predicted A/A* grades at GCSE across the board. The only exception is P.E.

Number of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country Nobel prize winners broken down by country]]. I suspect that the Chinese education system might push people academically at the expense of the creativity and lateral thinking which foster inventiveness.

Damn, sorry.

Number of Nobel prize winners broken down by country. I suspect that the Chinese education system might push people academically at the expense of the creativity and lateral thinking which foster inventiveness.

And incidentally one of the half dozen Chinese ones is actually half French, half Austrian and went to the French school in Shanghai.

We can look down on them as much as we like, in the full knowledge that despite 'ruling' a large part of the globe for a little while, nobody but nobody is going to say we're the cleverest. Darn. Is that because our academic system is renown for creativity and lateral thinking and inventiveness? Darn.

I do not understand what you are trying to say thirdhill, sorry.

I've just skim-read the overall summary and the country-specific analysis about the UK and it seems that China is very good at flattening out socio-economic differences in attainment- Britain could learn a lot there. On the other hand Britain scored higher in science than many other countries. Also it looks as though it is better at integrating immigrant pupils than many other countries- the difference in attainment was lower despite Britain having significantly higher numbers of children from immigrant families than many other countries.

Chinese origin children in the UK are well known for achieving high academic results regardless of economic status. Unlike almost every other ethnic group in the UK a child from a very poor Chinese family has a high chance of being top of the class, just like a child from a rich Chinese family.

But the Chinese education system (or the Singaporean one) would not be culturally acceptable over here - too many things that we value would be thrown out with the bathwater.

niceguy Your post did make me laugh. Sorry, don't take it personally. You have brightened up a dull day for me.
What I have picked up from this thread is that we would be wise to copy the Chinese method in some ways but without losing the best elements of British education - our inventors, scientific researchers, individualism etc.
There just seems to be no happy medium, I feel. We cannot be content to sit back and see our future citizens become the "fourth division" in the world league.

Illiteracy is rife in China amongst those 750 million odd that still live as subsistence farmers. .

the much vaunted education system is crap. it teaches in a dry and uninspiring way, and if children fail to learn, they are sent to bushibans to bone up in their own time.

the higher results attained are limited only to the children of those those that can afford to have the additional lessons.

my brother worked in higher education. ripping essays from the internet was a common practice, and people talked about projects such as 'reverse engineer F-15' - they weren't creating much. He didn't have the heart to tell that kid the plans for the F-15 have been available on the internet for a while...

children learn to read by a phonic system called bupomofu. then they learn to read these in tandem with the characters, and even these characters may have phonic clues in them.

there is no need for this learning to not be done in a fun way, or one that discourages creativity.

incidentally, i am not sure wht official figures on illiteracy say, but i know that plenty of people i asked for directions couldn't read the chinese symbols in my guide book.

it is a dictatorship - you can't trust any official statistic.

CaoNiMa:

Due partly to the exigencies of the Chinese writing system and partly to the efforts of the Communist Party to keep the people under control, it is based on rote learning and zero questioning. It churns out the world's best engineers, but for innovation and creativity, it does not excel.

I don't agree with the second sentence - China certainly does not churn out the world's best engineers, for precisely the reason that innovation and creativity are absolutely key to engineering.

My experience of truly good Chinese engineers and scientists is that they rank their greatest achievement as getting the fuck out of China :)

Edless That's interesting stuff. We do tend to forget that you can work on components in a factory and be very good at assembling stuff without being able to read and write much.
I do sometimes think too much education can slow you down
Have they gained world supremacy in some areas just because they have such a big population?

"China is very good at flattening out socio-economic differences in attainment"

Well, officially it is a communist country so officially there isn't a class system. Though unofficially there is

well, given that there are plenty of children on the streets begging/ involved in prostitution and theft, i'd say the very poorest kids aren't in those classrooms in order to get tested...

i note they only looked at HK and Shanghai.

the two least representative cities you could choose!

they haven't gained supremacy - usually if you break down any stat on a per-capita basis you see China for what it is - a piss poor third world toilet. the government may be building cities of impressively high skyscrapers with astonishingly low occupancy rates....anyone looking closely won't be fooled.

interesting name 'CaoNiMa' ;)