June 27, 2006
Op-Ed
Columnist
Chinese Medicine for American Schools
By NICHOLAS D.
KRISTOF
Visitors to
skyscrapers,
and by the endless construction projects that make
But the investments in
of all are in human capital. The blunt
fact is that many young Chinese
in cities like
school education than Americans do. That's a reality that
should
embarrass us and stir us to seek lessons from
On this trip I brought
with me a specialist on American third-grade
education — my third-grade
daughter. Together we sat in on third-grade
classes in urban
In math, science and foreign languages, the
Chinese students were far
ahead.
My daughter was mortified when I
showed a group of
some of the homework she
had brought along. Their verdict: first-grade
level at a
Granted,
are mostly awful, and in rural areas it's normally
impossible to hold
even a primitive conversation in English with an English
teacher. But
kids in the good schools in Chinese cities are leaving our
children in
the dust.
Last month, the Asia Society published an excellent report, "Math and
Science Education in a Global Age: What the U.S. Can Learn
from
students with 2 percent of the world's education resources. And
the
report finds many potential lessons in
science programs.
Yet, there isn't any magic to it.
One reason Chinese students learn
more math and science than Americans is
that they work harder at it.
They spend twice as many hours studying, in
school and out, as
Americans.
Chinese students, for example, must do
several hours of homework each
day during their summer vacation, which lasts
just two months. In
contrast, American students have to spend each September
relearning
what they forgot over the summer.
nearly all high
school students study advanced biology and calculus.
In contrast, only 13
percent of American high school pupils study
calculus, and fewer than 18
percent take advanced biology.
Yet if the Chinese government takes math
and science seriously,
children and parents do so
even more. At Cao Guangbiao elementary
school in
schedule. She gets up at 6:30 a.m. and spends the rest of the
day
studying or practicing her two musical instruments.
So if she gets
her work done and has time in the evening, does she
watch TV or hang out with
friends? "No," she said, "then I review my
work and do extra
exercises."
A classmate, Jiang Xiuyuan, said
that during summer vacation, his
father allows him to watch television each
evening — for 10 minutes.
The Chinese students get even more driven in
high school, as they
prepare for the national college entrance exams. Yang
Luyi, a tenth
grader at the first-rate
weekends he avoided going to movies. "Going to the cinema
is
time-consuming," he noted, "so when all the other students are working
so diligently, how can you do something so irrelevant?"
And
romance?
Li Yafeng, a tenth-grade girl at the
same school, giggled at my
question. "I never planned to have a boyfriend in
high school," she
said, "because it's a waste of time."
Now, I don't
want such a pressured childhood for my children. But if
Chinese go overboard
in one direction, we Americans go overboard in
the other.
hours in front of a
television.
I don't think we could replicate the Chinese students' drive
even if
we wanted to. But there are lessons we can learn — like the need
to
shorten summer vacations and to put far more emphasis on math and
science. A central challenge for this century will be how to
regulate
genetic tinkering with the human species; educated Chinese
are
probably better equipped to make those kinds of decisions
than
educated Americans.
During the Qing Dynasty that ended in 1912,
lessons
from abroad and adjust its curriculum, and it paid the price
in its inability
to compete with Western powers. These days, the
tables are turned, and now we
need to learn from