

Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators - ghshephard
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html?hp

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jasonjei
People wonder if these test scores in China are beyond the norm. But the
bitter truth is that these scores are indicative of their Confucian training,
not any independent thinking that a "standardized" test could evaluate.

The Chinese education should be noted for a strong emphasis on rote
memorization and the regurgitation of lectures. Unlike most Western
philosophies of education (e.g, Plato), the Chinese education system does not
instill or encourage creativity. What you will find is that many students that
have undergone a Confucian education system are extremely capable within their
competent subjects, but they will have a difficult time coming up with
creative solutions other than textbook solutions.

Confucianism (as I have wrote before) was adopted aggressively during the Qing
dynasty, because it perpetuated the importance of respect to the state. It
taught that one should respect the state, the teacher, and the parents,
because if one did all three, they would naturally respect the power of the
king. In short it became a way to brainwash. And predictably, most Chinese
innovation during the Qing empire diminished.

You'll note that Asian countries have a difficult time creating software. A
lot of software in China are clones of American counterparts. It's because
Confucian thought has made it difficult for many in China to be creative.

I've personally tutored students from China, and many of them who excelled
through the Chinese education system found the American university system
extremely challenging. The greatest challenge for them was writing an essay.
Many of their essays would read like semi-plagiarized versions of the history
text, without a pervasive POV that stayed close to the middle without making a
single claim. These students would often blame the essay-writing to their
language abilities. I told them that even if these essays were written in
Chinese, you still don't have an essay because you don't have a thesis, and
the whole point of the essay was for you to take a side. And then they would
ask me which was the correct side...

The point is that, yes, these test scores are very impressive. But I don't
think other countries--in particular, America--are exactly boned. The one
redeeming attribute is that we can have any idiot in this country think he's a
genius, in some extreme cases, become a world leader, and that's the sort of
mentality that will save us. Until China has a Google or Apple that can
develop iOS or Android. But then again, China isn't known for having a college
dropout culture, so it's hard to see if they will have a Facebook, Microsoft,
or Oracle given that the cultural differences.

~~~
ovi256
The last paragraphs of the article directly refute your point:

“While that’s important, for me the real significance of these results is that
they refute the commonly held hypothesis that China just produces rote
learning.”

“Large fractions of these students demonstrate their ability to extrapolate
from what they know and apply their knowledge very creatively in novel
situations,” he said.

The Chinese generation that will create their Google, Facebook or whatever is
just growing up, it seems.

~~~
jasonjei
Mr. Schleicher says that while reviewing the test results. The LSATs, for
instance, is a test that requires knowledge applied creatively, too, but it
doesn't mean successful test-takers are able to produce Google or Facebook. In
fact, successful test-taking implies conformity with the graded standard, and
is intended to measure how students stack up against a defined standard.

Would you say the US-equivalent of Advanced Placement exams be a good measure
of creativity? It requires creativity in solutions too--but the real question
is, can you TEST creativity? Can you test the ability for people to see
problems? A test, by nature, has already presented a problem. It doesn't test
if they can see a problem and devise a solution.

With enough practice, you can answer every tested problem type on a
"standardized" test. A Chinese student told me that when he was studying for
the SATs he looked for every single problem type and that once he had
considered every problem type, it was just a matter of applying the same
strategy to the problem. The key is that since the test is "standardized," you
can look for the standard types of problems.

I'm questioning the culture, I suppose. Not the people. The culture in China
hasn't really changed.[1]

[1] An interesting tidbit: Mao observed the effects of Confucianism and how it
stilted innovation in China and launched the "Cultural Revolution" as a means
to deprecate Confucianism.

~~~
tygorius
> _it doesn't mean successful test-takers are able to produce Google or
> Facebook._

Seriously, how many Googles or Facebooks does China need to create internally
for its needs? Is there any reason to believe their internal markets are being
significantly held back by too much derivative software?

As to Mao and the stifling of innovation, my limited reading of history
doesn't paint him as a big champion of diversity during the Great Leap
Forward. How many millions died because of that bright idea of encouraging
farmers to kill the evil sparrows that were eating the people's grain?

------
johnohara
_About 5,100 15-year-olds in Shanghai were chosen as a representative cross-
section of students in that city._

Who did the "choosing" and what defines "representative."

We were all impressed with the Chinese Women's Gymnastics Team during the last
olympics. Then it turned out many were barely of age to compete. And they were
very careful about interacting with the cameras.

Were I the U.S. education chief, I'd be talking to the Fins and Hong Kong
Chinese instead.

~~~
jimboyoungblood
Why don't you read the entire article first?

 _The testing in Shanghai was carried out by an international contractor,
working with Chinese authorities, and overseen by the Australian Council for
Educational Research, a nonprofit testing group, said Andreas Schleicher, who
directs the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s
international educational testing program.

Mark Schneider, a commissioner of the Department of Education’s research arm
in the George W. Bush administration, who returned from an educational
research visit to China on Friday, said he had been skeptical about some PISA
results in the past. But Mr. Schneider said he considered the accuracy of
these results to be unassailable.

“The technical side of this was well regulated, the sampling was O.K., and
there was no evidence of cheating,” he said._

~~~
johnohara
I did.

 _Mr. Schneider, however, noted some factors that may have influenced the
outcome.

For one thing, Shanghai is a huge migration hub within China. Students are
supposed to return to their home provinces to attend high school, but the
Shanghai authorities could increase scores by allowing stellar students to
stay in the city, he said. And Shanghai students apparently were told the test
was important for China’s image and thus were more motivated to do well, he
said. _

Shanghai pop.: 19,000,000+ Finland pop.: 5,500,000+ Hong Kong pop.: 7,000,000+

The population of Shanghai exceeds the total population of NY, LA, CHI, HOU,
and PHX combined.

Which student sample would you say is more diverse?

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ernope
By the very nature of Shanghai there is tons more selection going on than in
any US state.

1\. Incredibly high land prices 2\. long history of smart/rich people moving
to the city - if you fail, you go back to your hometown 3\. legislation trying
to push people out of the city (only overcome by smart/rich people) 4\.
delayed puberty compared to average white or black american 5\. no cultural
value assigned to being rebellious

What percent of the US students tested were non-native speakers? What percent
had spent years of their education overseas?

Finally, I don't know why everyone always talks about average education
levels. I would much rather have the best top 10% or 1% in any field living in
my country than have the highest average. And that's why I still feel pretty
good about the US.

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geebee
One thing we should keep in mind when evaluating these scores is that there is
a different cost/benefit calculation in different countries, especially for
math scores.

For instance, take a look at the "best jobs sorted by high pay" (from cnn)

[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/2010/highpa...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/2010/highpay/index.html)

There are some techy jobs on there that do require substantial amounts of
math[1] (software engineering director, actuary, computer and information
scientist). However, the extremely well paid health fields listed generally
require only a single year of an easier track of college calculus, and lawyers
don't have to take any math at all. In China, most top government officials
are engineers or scientists, whereas in the US, they're more typically poly
sci majors who wen to law school.

I think that top US students have _rationally_ concluded that you need to get
_pretty_ good at math to have access to the top jobs and positions, but that
after a certain point, there's a diminishing return and an opportunity cost
(ie., time is better spent on other subjects, playing sports, developing
leadership skills, and so forth). Of course, this is true of all nations, but
I think that the rewards for going farther with math are higher in China (and
perhaps France) than they are in the US.

[1] by "substantial math", I mean educational paths that require you take the
full two years of math/hard science/engineering track calculus, rather than
the slower paced, one year track often offered to premed or economics
students.

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ghshephard
A nice description of the OECD PISA:
[http://www.oecd.org/about/0,3347,en_2649_35845621_1_1_1_1_1,...](http://www.oecd.org/about/0,3347,en_2649_35845621_1_1_1_1_1,00.html)

This is a pretty decent summary:

"PISA is a three-yearly survey of 15-year-olds in the 30 OECD member countries
and 35 partner countries . It assesses the extent to which students near the
end of compulsory education have acquired the knowledge and skills essential
in everyday life. They are tested in the domains of reading, mathematical and
scientific literacy and complete a background questionnaire. For each cycle
one domain is focused on more than the others. The first data collection took
place in 2000, the second in 2003 and the third in 2006. The fourth cycle is
in progress for 2009."

Like any statistical analysis, this study isn't perfect, but, it certainly is
an eye opener. If China is able to replicate their success in Shanghai in
other regions of China, the United States is going to start to fall behind in
5-10 years in terms of academic leadership of the world.

Time will tell - Shanghai might be an outlier. The United States may also get
its act together when it comes to education in general.

~~~
ars
This is not politically correct to say, but given the gap between white and
black scores, I wonder how the US would do if you ranked it based only on
white scores.

Also, when judging how well a country will do in science you should not look
at the average, but rather at the top. Only a small number of people will
choose a career in the sciences, so as long as you have those people, the ones
at the bottom don't matter for this purpose - they bring down the average, but
don't prevent a country from being a leader in research and development.

~~~
maxklein
How well would Germany do if it took away Turkish scores, and how well would
France do if it took away Arab scores?

Perhaps the U.S would do even better if only Asian-Americans were allowed to
participate.

~~~
samfoo
Not to be too much of a pedant, but: Turkish-Germans make up only 2.1% of the
German population and while France doesn't have hard numbers because it's
illegal to survey on the basis of race/ethnicity, estimates are around 7% of
the population.

American blacks make up nearly 13% of the population in the US. That's a
pretty significant difference and if you include all minority groups,
America's a significantly less homogeneous place than any country in Europe or
Asia that I'm aware of.

I agree with your (unstated) premise that this isn't the point, though.

~~~
maxklein
Actually, to be more precise, the difference in Pisa scores in Germany is not
exclusively turkish, it's between people with "Migrations-background" and
people without. I.e, ethnic Germans vs non-Ethnic Germans. According to this
article, the difference is 56 points now
([http://www.spiegel.de/schulspiegel/wissen/0,1518,733188,00.h...](http://www.spiegel.de/schulspiegel/wissen/0,1518,733188,00.html)).
It was 90+ points previously.

Non-ethnic germans make up 20% of the population, far greater than the 2.1%.
See here: <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland#Demografie>

Same goes with France, I just used 'arabs' for demonstration, but the actual
non-ethnic French percentage is higher than the ethnic blacks in the U.S.

~~~
bioh42_2
Well, clearly this means moving to Germany makes you stupid. Being born in
Germany clearly provides some kind of immunity.

Or am I drawing erroneous conclusions from the data?

~~~
rogulogu
1\. Some/many (?) Germans do not accept all children born in their country as
native Germans. So a person with 'migration-background' may be born in
Germany, but one of the parents has immigrated. 2\. I interpret the PISA data
as: If parents have a low education, then in Germany their children will
probably get a low education, too.

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zwieback
This was in the Atlantic recently, looks at only the "top" performers in
different countries since it's so hard to compare diverse populations and
school systems. Yay for MA.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/your-
chi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/your-child-left-
behind/8310/)

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NonEUCitizen
A fairer comparison (city to city, with education-obsessed parents), would be
between Shanghai and Cupertino.

~~~
jacobolus
Really? Shanghai has 19 million people. Cupertino has 50 thousand.

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tedesign
high probability of government organized cheating it's China and national
pride justifies everything

~~~
riobard
You know little about the Chinese education system.

All Chinese kids (I was one of them) are basically trained for these kinds of
standard tests. For the most part of their school life, they are _judged_ by
the scores they get. The whole point of the system is not to educate, but to
test, and based on scores, pick the few at the top for better schools to go
next year, and the process repeats. This pattern starts from primary schools
all up to graduate schools. That's all freaking 16 years!

It is no surprise they score high in this one. They do not need to cheat. Of
course if they want they can, but my point still holds: they are battle-tested
“exam machines”.

The problem, though, is that the approach kills creativity and innovation.

Threat? Hell no. As long as the States keeps recruiting the best minds with
scholarship and offers visa for them to stay working there, I don't see any
chance the States will fall behind in smartness.

~~~
shrikant
s/Chinese/Indian/g

Would still be true. Personal experience here.

 _edit_ : I mean, I'm not one of the 'smart' ones. Bog-average performer here,
going by my test scores.

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suhlash
These tests are not as meaningful because it is not country vs country. But
countries vs citiy states. Hong Kong, and Singapore are basically cities not
countries. If South Korea only tested Seoul instead of the whole country, they
would have also looked better.

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silverlake
Canada scores significantly higher than the US. Yet I don't see Canada beating
the US at anything anytime soon.

~~~
Hexstream
How about at humility?

~~~
Maascamp
And hockey of course.

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yantramanav
Am I the only one missing India from the rankings?

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kschua
From what it appears in the website. India didn't participate in this

