"Why East Asian Students Are Superior"

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2012/02/17/worlds-best-primary-schools-theyre-in-east-asia-report-says/

It’s interesting to think about this, although I don’t agree with everything in this article. Having attended primary and secondary schooling in Asia, I do believe it when they say the average Asian student is a couple of years ahead of the average US student in science and math. However, we (Asian students) fall behind in creativity, writing, and social skills, which are equally important to economic development.

These differences are most likely due to greater flexibility in US schooling, not just lower standards. Asian students are held to a somewhat high, but highly standardized bar. While the bar forces weak students to work harder, it does not reward great students from pushing even higher and becoming Bill Gates or Zuckerberg. So if Asian educational policy raises average quality somewhat, there is a chance that it does so by sacrificing the “wingers”, i.e. kids whose brilliance exceeds the limits of normal education programs.

there needs to be more Jeremey Lins…

I think how far East Asian primary school students are in science doesn’t matter one tiny little bit. Most science you learn that age is completely useless anyway.

I think there is a wide variety of quality in U.S. schools. Where I went to school would probably have compared decently well to East Asian schools in terms of the math education, but many rich suburbs are even better.

I think Americans tend to pat themselves on the back about how well they teach “creativity, writing, and social skills.” Creativity can’t be taught that well, most student’s writing skills are atrocious at even a college level, and everybody socializes differently. What America tends to do well is a b/c of institutions, culture, and norms and these things largely go beyond what is taught in school.

jmh530, I disagree with the second part of your comment. American schools may not always succeed in teaching writing skills, but atleast they try unlike Asian schools which just ask you to memorize some sample essays and reproduce them on the exam. And it can be hard to teach creativity, but it can certainly be encouraged (or discouraged)

This glosses over the fact that western and liberal jurisdictions such as Finland and Canada also score very high on the OECD’s educational assessments. So it’s not just culture at play in these differences.

I think there is probably a bit of bias as the lower side of the Asian school systems doesn’t get factored into these tests. Every kid in the US goes to school pretty much no matter what. That aint the case in Asian countries. The real dregs of Asia are done with school at a really young age.

Whereas in Connecticut, where I am from, 7-8 kids are going to college. This means that a lot of people that really have no business getting a higher degree are getting those degrees. Nobody is allowed to fail in our public school systems. So little wonder that we graduate some real grade A retards. In Asia, you’ll be out on the streets selling stuff or working in your dads shop long before you are 14 if your family is poor.

Many Asian countries gear their entire education system towards taking standardized tests. In India it is the biggest event of the year after elections and cricket. If you practiced for tests like the gmat for 20 years you would probably be pretty good at it compared to American kids who might have to take the SAT once when they are 17. Many places don’t have any forms of standardized testing in the US.

Liberal Arts in Asia is a joke. It is just not valued at all. In America we spend a lot of time on that and it shows.

Edit: this is in response to “bodhi”'s comment.

I wasn’t trying to make this about Asian vs. Western culture. The difference between US and Asia education that I’m pointing out is standardization vs. flexibility. I’m not too familiar with education in Finland or Canada. However, as a different example, UK education is quite similar to education in many Asian countries. Your entire university admissions decision is based on A-Level scores. Naturally, the best strategy for UK students is to target 3 or 4 A-Level subjects to do well in. There is no incentive to improve beyond a high certainty of A grades in these 3 or 4 subjects. Hence, teenage Bill Gates of the UK would have settled for “good enough”, not “great”. There is no clear standard like this in the US.

But to expand the discussion a bit to Finland and Canada, it’s worth thinking about why Silicon Valley is in California, not Canada or Finland. For that matter, we might want to think about why US universities are the best in the world, despite seemingly mediocre high school students. Clearly, not everything is as horrible as studies might indicate.

Yeah… I lived through such a system and I agree with what you said. It’s natural to have mastered a small set of high school knowledge if you are preparing for a big test whose outcome will determine the course of your life. Unfortunately, such focus prevents you from exploring knowledge that is not covered by the test. You become naive about politics and socioeconomic issues, and become close minded towards untraditional things. I would argue that overcoming these mental obstacles is harder than doing well in some standardized test.

Asian schooling blows. Thank god we moved from India. No way in hell I could cut it there. Here college app process is cake.

Agreed. A standardized school system for every single person is no good. I think the American school system is a good balance. Here in high school, you have 3 layers of courses, so if you like the subject and are good at it, you pursue the AP courses, for a subject you hate, just take the general level.

Of course, to get to the top schools, you’re practically forced to take all the upper level courses…

If China adopted Finland’s schooling system… they’d have unstoppable students.

there are more crappy schools in India and China of which we never hear about.

We’re also only talking about very select parts of Asia, the PISA results outline Shanghai, HK, and Singapore as especially high achieving but those are simply municipalities/city states. I am sure that if you aggregate all of China’s schools they would preform quite poorly relative the the United States, China still is very much a developing country and the draw of the these city centres likely results in selection bias for these tests.

The last thing Asia invented was gunpowder. Asia can have all the math geniuses it wants but as long as all of the innovation comes out of the West, which can easily attract Asia’s math geniuses, then it doesn’t really matter which school kids are smarter.

When Asia actually starts to innovate then I’ll be worried.

I can definately say that in my undergrad commencement program, the number of asians to white kids was well over 1:1 (probably 65% asian? maybe more?). But when you look at who graduated with distinction, the asians all but disappeared. This is in Canada, and I doubt american schools are much different. Whats more, in those four years I saw probably a dozen people cheating on exams, and they were all asians and completely clueless. Lets just say that the situation, in my experience, is nothing like what they’d have us believe!

Did you go to UoT or UBC?

UAlberta actually, in Edmonton

at the end of day, asians are just like every other race of people with the added advantage that their unbringing had a higher focus on education leading them to excel at the rudimentary stages of education (you cannot teach Einstein intellect or creativity)…

As an American living in Asia I’ve got a few thoughts, just my limited observations/experiences…

EAST: Schools seem to be tougher. People here tell me high school in KR equals college difficulty in the US. The kids go *all day*, meaning the regular day plus additional private lessons (math, English, music) till midnight. Ouch.

But the education seems all about beating tests. I mean these kids are raging bad-boys of test beating. They are trained in the art from a young age. I’ve heard so many comments on CFA/CPA being not that hard, passed first try, bla bla. True understanding and application of that knowledge is something different. Here’s an example: kids here are experts at beating English tests yet can not hold a basic conversation with a Westerner.

Individualism, creativity, doing something different from the way others do it,absolutely NOT encouraged, particularly in KR. “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down” sort of thing.

Also one interesting statistic, IQs are higher in Asia. Korea charts #2 behind Hong Kong. Yeah I know not everyone agrees with these tests, but you do sorta feel it in the air, the average person is fairly sharp.

WEST: There are a lot of knuckleheads in the USA, I mean c’mon, we all know it!! Especially in certain geographic areas. High school is a joke, meh maybe 8hrs a day but I skipped most of my classes. Too easy. A 4-yr degree is not much harder.

*But* the big thing is individuality and creativity are encouraged. You probably don’t realize how much until you see parts of Asia which are basically “robot-land”. That’s a real big deal because nothing happens without an original idea. Thus in the West you see people doing well in areas like invention, film making, music/record production, writing, fashion, ideas for new types of businesses.

Actually even the average knucklehead in the US is taught that they can become someone special if they really believe (see GW Bush)…and so people have a rather gutsy can-do attitude. In Korea will people tell you “look why do you make a big ruckus, just conform and play the role you have been given dammit!”.

Anyhow two very different ways of going about things.