It would be a book. There are of course extreme workloads from both the schools and the parents. But to me there is something worse - the public shaming culture.

I live in the UK now. Something very odd to me at the beginning is that I can never know how good my kids are doing compare to their classmates. The teachers would politely refuse to answer such questions. And the 'parents meeting' is private to one pupil's parent(s) and the teacher.

In China things do not work this way. Every test - and there are a lot of them - is publicly ranked. There will be a very large poster at the back of the classroom with the ranking on it. The parents' meeting is a meeting for all parents of that class together. A teacher will read the ranking aloud on the stage to all parents. The top pupils will be invited onto the stage and receive praise, which is alright. But the bottom pupils will also be invited onto the stage and receive criticism - in front of all peers and their parents. The idea here is to motivate them work harder to avoid the shaming - or to motivate their parents to push them harder to avoid the shaming. It may work for some. But I see more harm done than good here.

Yes. One can draw a direct line between shame-based cultures and an unwillingness to take risks for fear of failure. The most harmful outcome of this is lack of innovation.

Japan and Korea pretty much did the same thing, and they are not accused of lack innovation. And China is not actually lack of innovation nowadays, catch-up maybe but a strong player already.

There is nothing inherently in Chinese culture that prevents innovation. Innovated people gonna innovate, when they got the resources they need.

Poor country usually aren't very innovative, and China has become much richer at national level. To bet, there will be more innovations from China than not for the next several decades.

> The most harmful outcome of this is lack of innovation.

Maybe not Silicon-Valley-type innovation, but there have been plenty of innovations out of China's very long history.

Even in more recent times, I remember reading an article about Chinese research into floor tiles that can identify people as they walk via weight and shear. This was 6-10 years ago, I don't know whatever happened to that project.

Edit: I will posit that the people who take risks in the Valley do so not because of 'culture', but because they are well-off and/or well-connected and can afford to fail in terms of time and money.

"The idea here is to motivate them work harder to avoid the shaming - or to motivate their parents to push them harder to avoid the shaming. It may work for some. But I see more harm done than good here."

Yes, I think that this is very counterproductive.

Finnish kids don't even go to school until age of 7 - and they do as well as the top chinese students.

Are test scores calculated relative to the top performer - so that there will always be bottom performers - or is there a bar that everyone could clear so no student would be shamed?

That's the teacher's call. If consistently underperform pupil once underperformed less he/she may even get praised. On the other hand. If a top 3 pupil ranked 10 once, he/she may receive some shaming. Different teachers have different styles

And of course. Some teachers won't shame pupils at all. But the rankings are always public. No one can change that.

Doesn't matter which way they are calculated. Names are listed in order of performance. Additionally, at least some schools place students into classes based on previous years rank.

There are always bottom performers.

> cruel

def: willfully causing pain or suffering to others, feeling no concern about it.

Shaming is undesirable, but I wouldn't say publicly knowing how you rank compared to others would constitute "cruel". Its really how the world works - in sports you see exact stats of how your do, publicly traded companies/CEOs are meticulously analysed publicly on how they perform etc. etc.

There does need to be a balance btwn hypercompetiton, and "everyone gets a trophy" mentality. I feel like the US has swung far to one side and china the other. Best would be some where in the middle. Maybe have a live list of the top 10-15% of student scores.

I am a parent, and don't want to hurt my daughter, but at the same time a little pain and suffering makes you stronger.

> There does need to be a balance btwn hypercompetiton, and "everyone gets a trophy" mentality.

Yes. Praise can be more damaging than criticism in many cases.[1][2] Certain types of praise in the form of encouragement can be very good things. Certain types of constructive criticism can be empowering.

> a little pain and suffering makes you stronger

What is "stronger"? More emotionally resilient? In my opinion, suffering just results in risk aversion. There is not a lot of positive that emerges from it. Note that I'm not referring to establishing boundaries, which may be what you're referring to with your daughter.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/smart-moves/201411/the-...

[2] http://www.parentingscience.com/effects-of-praise.html

"but I wouldn't say publicly knowing how you rank compared to others would constitute "cruel". Its really how the world works "

This is not true.

A) It's ludicrous to wrap 'personhood' and 'identity' out of how well someone is able to study and write arbitrary tests. Completely wrong.

What if some kid learns better visually, than orally? And he's actually much smarter?

What about the kids that are smart, but poor at taking tests?

What about the kids who have massive advantage over others (i.e. tutors) - does that make the other kids dumb?

'In the real world' - there's no such thing as 'someone being better at taking a test' than others. It makes no difference in the 'real world'.

I agree with the thrust of what you're saying, but tech jobs are absolutely allocated on the basis of an extremely contrived test (the whiteboard interview).

"extremely contrived test (the whiteboard interview)"

A) That's only the tech world, which is not 'the world'

B) White board interviews are not 'contrived' - they are reasonable. They just are not perfect.

C) I'll bet that whiteboard interviews and academic success are only somewhat loosely correlated.

Sports are zero-sum games by construction.

Executive jobs wherein you can get fired for losing to your competitors compensate you for this risk by paying fuck-you money on a yearly, sometimes even daily basis. If the CEO of Exxon is fired for failing to overtake BP, he could never work again and still die with more in the bank than I will ever earn.

Ranking in academia does not reflect real-world conditions.

I agree with you here. I used the word cruel since I couldn't find a better word - as a none native speaker my vocabulary is limited :( .

I have the same feelings about the UK public education. Competition is basically non-existence. I wonder why people can't settle in a middle ground.

> def: willfully causing pain or suffering to others, feeling no concern about it. willfully: check; suffering: check (the shaming); no concern: check. Actor: state/school as a whole. So I think it applies.

I think this is sum of the parts different than the whole.

I was just pointing out that cruel has a very negative connotation ie - inhuman, barbaric, sadistic, evil, abominable etc. Applying it in the previous use case seemed excessive and implied a more radical tone than I believe the author (as he mentioned) wanted.

Really seen Ofsted's league tables which are published as are the rankings of the public (private) schools?

Are you saying that a 'cruel' winter is being deliberately cold?

In the US, it is the same. I had no idea how my son was doing other than his teacher was lying to me. At the beginning of the year, it is impossible to do better than the middle. Not sure if the reasoning was so the children can show improvement? I knew he was doing better than the middle but how well he was doing was a mystery.

Unfortunately you may be seeing the side effects of the recent rush to quantify teacher performance- in most states a teacher now must show a year's improvement for all of their students, no matter how high or low they are when they start the year. And since children tend to develop in fits and starts instead of a nice linear progression, you can imagine that the system may tend to be gamed.

As a Chinese, Chinese culture think taking the education is the best way to be success. Honestly, most think that's the only way to do it, no matter they are poor/rich, or even under educated. if they(including me) want their kids to live better in the future, the fundamental thing is education.

I attended a very competitive high school in China, and under pretty high peer pressure, books were stacking up on my desk. The final goal is getting high score in "SAT" like test(also much harder) and attending good university. Some of my classmates get medal from International Olympiad and have higher chance to get in to good universities.

I think the historical reason for putting education in such high level is this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination.

> books were stacking up on my desk

That's a common situation in Chinese high school. I'd say most Chinese high school are equally competitive. I am in a not so high-ranked school in Shanxi. And I literally have less than 1 day of rest each week. Each day it's from 6am to 9pm. Early self-study, day lecture, and night self-study, all in classroom...

Serious question from a concerned American..

How much are you learning and more importantly, are you retaining this information? What subjects / topics are you studying?

The reason that I ask, is that I work in IT. If you spent this amount of time devoted to learning a programming language, web design, etc... you would be in an excellent position to work remotely for a company like mine. If you spend 6-9 learning everything under the sun, I think it is kind of a waste.

Whatever it is they learn/how they learn/etc it seems to be grossly inefficient.

I noticed literally no difference between my Canadian students and Chinese/Korean students as a TA at a top university here, other than the international students being more likely to plagiarize/copy work. Also, the international students were way more likely to be smokers - not sure if that's a cultural thing, or if it's caused by being stressed the fuck out because of the ridiculous education system there.

While I agree with your observations, there is also some element of selection bias. Most Chinese students that are able to make it to the US come from rich families since most internationals don't get financial aid (so maybe they're more likely to be spoiled/entitled).

Also, depending on how "top" your university, it may have been easier for these students to get into your university than the top universities in China (e.g. they have lower test scores than their peers at the top unis in China).

The one and only goal of any and all pre-university education in China is NCEE[1].

NCEE is an exam, which means you get one shot, offline, off books.

Now imagine you need to write a website, with pen and paper, without internet or reference books.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Higher_Education_Entr...

By all accounts I've read, it is an incredibly intense amount of work. Far more than I would subject a child to. From a quick search [1].

1. http://hechingered.org/content/a-day-in-the-life-of-chinese-...

Just to add an alternative viewpoint here.

It was "cruel" retrospectively and perhaps from the point of American society. Yet it was not really "cruel" when I was "in it". It was not a burden entirely carried by individual students. The entire class was working hard. Everyone was more-or-less tired after class. Teachers and parents accommodated my needs and gave encouragement as long as I was striving to do well in school. Thus it might be ignoring the context to simply push one child in the US to Chinese level of school-work without considering the society around.

> Thus it might be ignoring the context ...

I agree to an extent, but ...

> it was not really "cruel" when I was "in it"

I can't speak about your particular experience, of course, but generally children tend to accept their experiences as the norm. They don't have other experiences, are naturally in a very subordinate position, and are powerless. They can't really deny or hate their parents: the child's actual survival, as well as their welfare and happiness, depends on their relationship with their parents. Consider how many adults won't challenge their bosses (the great majority); now imagine a child's powerlessness, lack of confidence, and even lack of understanding of their own situation matched up against the authority, capability, and power their parents. Even adults in such situations tend to accept their fate and deny the possibility of anything better.

I also disagree that cruelty is just a relative term. It is to some degree, but pain and suffering have absolute values. When you break your arm or your loved one dies, the suffering is essentially the same whether you are in New York or Shanghai.

I doubt you mean it this way, but claims that other cultures don't value life or suffering have been used as a justification of brutal treatment.