Barry Dahl

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  Barry commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  The Asians aren't Coming! The Asians aren't Coming!

  Hi Clay,

  
  

  I'll try again to post my thoughts. Of course, they won't be nearly as brilliant as they were the first time I wrote them. Hope they don't get swallowed this time.

  
  

  Every time I hear someone playing the numbers game with Chinese and Indian students as though they're going to clean our clock (such as the "Did You Know" video), I try to tell them about some of the things that I learned during my past few trips to China.

  
  

  Generally speaking, only about 10-11% of the college wannabes in China get a seat at the Chinese universities. Another 10-15% get an alternative educational opportunity similar to trade schools as well as online learning, which the Chinese consider to be vastly inferior to the seated universities. Therefore, only about 20-25% of the Chinese high school grads even have the opportunity for some form of higher education.

  
  

  If someone focuses on the top 10% of the population then yes, it's easy to get frightened by the number of really smart people that they have. However, let's not lose sight of the 80% who are not well educated at all. That is hardly a system to which we should aspire.

  
  

  One other interesting contrast that I saw while over there: the Chinese seem to have a genuine interest in copying the somewhat American style (in other words, some educators do this) of enhancing creativity in learning and abandoning the lecture-only style of teaching and learning. At the same time, thanks to NCLB and similar testing efforts, we seem to be moving toward their model of rote learning and test-taking. We really need to ensure that these two ships don't pass in the night.