There's plenty of empirical research that suggests "low level" mastery is all you really need for creative "high level" stuff. And I think sumative exams can be fairer (and possibly even kinder) than ongoing assessment. Imagine the corruption that would set in if schools were running tests every week, or worse, giving students assignments (which their parents would no doubt do for them or farm out to professionals, if their parents were well-educated or rich). In many ways, the Chinese system is pretty good.

What's not good is that 10 years ago, a degree in China meant the difference between slave labor, and a good secure job. Degrees have been devalued, and are now much easier to get. And "low skilled" work no longer means 12 hour days in dangerous environments on starvation wages - a semi-skilled worker in China can make more than a middle-class white-collar worker (though the conditions they work in are not enviable); while hordes of degree-holders compete for a small number of desirable office jobs.

But, the attitudes of parents is still: "If you want to make anything of your life, you must get a degree. It's even more important than in my day - because now everyone is getting a degree".

>> There's plenty of empirical research that suggests "low level" mastery is all you really need for creative "high level" stuff.

Is there any chance you could you please provide a citation for this? I'm very curious how that research was done and in what contexts.

I'm of the belief that "low level" mastery can result in good creative outputs, but in a lot of cases it's a matter of luck as much as skill. The mastery in one area is supplemented by knowledge in other areas -- it's a sort of interdisciplinary approach to innovation that can have good outputs but I would think also come with a low level of guarantee of innovation and poorer repeatability (see young startup founders).

Looking for empirical research on education is difficult. Educationalists have decided that discovery learning is better, and they don't need to actually test it. Direct Instruction (the evil old-fashioned neo-colonial alternative) does tend to "win" in empirical studies, so they try to avoid doing anything remotely rigorous. Then they say that the studies weren't very good, because they didn't really test the higher level stuff - after all, you can't really test creativity.

Both approaches might have their place, but the education establishment would rather win the argument than be right. Typical arts wankers.

Here's one article. http://www.binder-riha.com/PT_DI.pdf

It took me ages to find much interesting - a google scholar search on "education" gets about 1.5 times the results as "education longitudinal", but if "direct instruction" gets about 10 times as many articles as "direct instruction longitudinal". Really, educationalists only pay lip service to empiricism. When they actually start comparing methodologies, they just use Sophistry as a methodology.

If you're really interested in this stuff, looking for some research that isn't 20 years old might be a good idea.

Try this as a starting point: http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/hmelo_ep07.pdf

I'm pretty sure "scaffolding" is just a euphemism for "guided instruction". But they don't want to say it.

Teachers doing a 1 year graduate diploma don't have time to learn 20 years of euphemisms crusted onto euphemisms, just so the professor doesn't have to admit that the best methodology is "a little of everything", not the radical fads they were advocating in the 70s.

"Guided instruction" and "direct instruction" aren't the same thing at all.

Guided instruction: "Have you thought about this? What would change if you did that?"

Direct instruction: 2+2 = 4. 2+2 = 4. 2+2=4. 2+2=4. (repeat until the student exhibits the desired response to the stimulus).

Direct instruction is indeed effective if what you're after is a set response to a given stimulus. Some would question, though, whether this is sufficient to produce an individual capable of autonomous thinking. Behaviorism is awesome if you want an animal to press a bar on cuee, less effective if what you're after is (e.g.) a person capable of evaluating the claims of politicians and making the most desirable choice (for that person) in the voting booth.

Your paper hit pretty hard on the applicability of direct instructions for simple, algorithmic tasks (e.g., the number of arithmetic problems solved per minute), precisely the type of task where memorization and regurgitation is a valid strategy.

And I don't believe that the methods which are intended to produce people "capable of evaluating the claims of politicians and making the most desirable choice (for that person) in the voting booth" are really effective at that.

You can't teach creativity. OK, maybe you can, but the approach of "throw the students in a group, and tell them to do something creative" is probably not exactly optimal.

Do teachers give any kind of useful guided instruction on high-level skills? Or do they just grade the assignments based on presentation?

"The gaokao rewards a special type of student: very strong memory; very strong logical and analytical ability; little imagination; little desire to question authority," says Jiang Xueqin, a Yale-educated school administrator in Beijing. "That person does well on the gaokao--as well as on the SAT, by the way."

Sounds like the old German "Abitur". Americans thought the system deadly, but some remarkable minds came out of it OK, along with of course hordes who were merely competent.

I saw that while staying in a Chinese university for one year. But my university was not a major, glorious, famous school, just a "good" one. I think these days it is not that extreme anymore. Chinese students actually have relationships, hobbies and friends. Just the ones who have to be the elite live in such an extreme environment. But that I think is the same for most countries. Especially the U.S. probably can't exclude themself from that (although it just what I think from watching US tv shows and movies, never went there).

China changes very fast these days. If I go there in 2 years again, I think I will again already meet another country. And now (meaning starting the last months!) the change starts to be public driven and not government driven.

A part of me can't help but think that people like this would make excellent employees -- and lousy founders.

Maybe we shouldn't fear China.

But the thing is, the brilliant founders that do emerge from China can readily tap into a much larger pool of capable employees than in the US, and they have over 4 times the population of the US.

Which brilliant founders (of tech companies) have emerged from China? They have a large number of businesses but you can study metallurgy and learn how to make steel but that doesn't make you the kind of person who can create something truely new.

They come to mind:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Li

Alibaba group

douban

Sina

qq

BYD

innovative games

payment systems

group buying

What brilliant founders has the US produced in the last 10 years? Bugger all, except for Mark Zuckerberg, and a bunch who are not yet household names. China has only had a few years in which the average 20-something-year-old hacker had the resources to start a tech business. Even in China, many of the new tech businesses will not be famous yet.

Also, China's capital tends to be directed to "made-in-China" manufacturing, where they have a huge advantage. That leaves high-tech startups choked for funds. How many New York startups can you name really fast?

Ten years is a little too short to see if somebody can build a company. Drew Huston springs to mind, though it might be too early to tell yet.

I know it is not tech, but serendipitously, I just watched a documentary on Shanghai last night. Ten years ago, number of billionaires was zero, today is 7,000. Just in Shanghai alone.

I know many of these students are just slackers outside of the classroom. They remind me of employees who put in a lot of face time, but don't produce extraordinary results. I wonder how it must feel to go through all that hard work, then get placed at a job for the rest of your life, where your freedom is limited even more. Some reward, huh?