As a parent, you can't help feeling that studying in Europe and America is too easy, too easy and too simple. Parents who have waited in Europe and America for several years will mostly bring this impression back to China as an important talk with friends.
There are more than 2,600 four-year universities in the United States, of which 1 0,800 are all private, and almost all famous Asian universities are private, including all Ivy League schools. Private schools are run by private enterprises. Only by ensuring that their income exceeds their expenditure can they have enough financial resources to expand their school buildings, buy instruments, recruit professors and invest in companies.
In the United States, only public universities are required to publish enrollment data (such as standardized test scores of students' average scores). ), and private schools including Ivy League universities are not obliged to do so. Therefore, the admission process of private schools is extremely subjective and the transparency is very low. It is a well-known fact that American universities enroll students. Especially, these 1800 private universities have reserved a certain percentage of places for making huge donations to schools or for the children of celebrity alumni. As for the proportion, it depends on which school you apply for.
Recently, the BBC documentary "Teacher China in Britain" is becoming popular in the online world of China. The final exam scores of English students in the experimental class taught by China are 65,438+00% higher than those in the group taught by British teachers. The topic of educational comparison between China and foreign countries has once again attracted public attention.
Unlike China, where students are grouped by explicit examinations, western education actually completes social stratification through a relaxed process.
When I was working in a UN agency, I once had an American colleague who particularly disliked the local area. Every day, she is calculating the timetable for going home, almost struggling with the pace of life. I asked him curiously, why don't you go back to work? He told me that the most important reason for staying here is that the United Nations can reimburse two-thirds of the education expenses of employees' children, and he is only an ordinary professor when he returns to China, so it is difficult to afford the tuition fees for his children to attend private secondary schools. I asked again, "Then why not go to a free public school?" This colleague's smiling expression is very similar to that of parents who borrow money to buy school districts everywhere in China.
A few years later, I went to the United States and found that the local primary school finished school at 3 pm, and only the children of the black neighbors ran home. At this time, most white and China children carry schoolbags and take musical instruments to various remedial classes.
The primary and secondary schools in Europe and the United States are really very different from those in China, so students in China don't have to bear any pressure. Then, after a few years of happiness, most children are like this. They either go to the community college for a few more years, or go directly to find some low-level physical jobs to live, or directly start receiving unemployment benefits and wandering the streets.
In the United States, it is almost impossible for a child who does not attend remedial classes, spends a lot of money to learn talents and participate in social activities to enrich his resume. The situation in Europe is better, because the local social welfare is higher, and many students are more likely to enter good universities, but this does not mean that people who have not laid a good foundation in public middle schools can graduate smoothly. When I was in Leuven, I was surprised that college students reveled every day. A professor told me coldly: "most of them just come here to eat and drink for a few years and experience life." Two-thirds of students can't get a degree. "
Frankly speaking, in western society, children can indeed have a happy primary and secondary school, but "less reading, more games and less management" actually means that if you want to become a social elite, you need more self-discipline, more extracurricular tutoring and more social resources besides public education. Unlike China, where students are grouped by explicit examinations, western education actually completes social stratification through a relaxed process. Most children in ordinary families naturally settle down in the process of boiling frogs in warm water.
In the final analysis, the difference between China education and western education is not only the difference in methods, but also the difference in the orientation of educational functions. Education in China is a ladder to the bottom, and ordinary children have to endure hardships if they want to become elites. Western education is a hierarchical mechanism, and its mass education only provides basic and limited education. If you want to become an elite, you must buy education from the market, and those who can't afford it will naturally be eliminated.
In the BBC documentary, the stubbornness of British students seems to confirm the usual judgment that China students are better in the basic education stage. This judgment always leads to an old question, "Why do China students lack stamina and innovation in college?" . Finally, the discussion often revolves around the conclusion that "China's exam-oriented education does not encourage innovation".
Strangely, however, such "common sense" seems to completely ignore the situation of our close neighbors Japan and South Korea. As the two most striking innovation powers in the world in recent decades, the education systems of these two countries are characterized by "examination-oriented". If we carefully understand the phenomenon of suicide and repetition in Korean and Japanese middle schools, and look at all kinds of "spells" outside their examination rooms, we will find that their exams are even more cruel than those in China. Why didn't their exams hinder innovation?
In fact, the reason is very simple, that is, the relative advantage of China students in the basic education stage is the result of an inappropriate comparison.
In the BBC documentary, British students really can't keep up with the progress of Teacher China; However, it can't be ignored that although British public middle schools and China public middle schools are called "public", they are far from each other in essence. These teachers who come to teach in Britain are basically from excellent public middle schools in China. In most cities in China, junior and senior high schools are already very nervous. Children who can squeeze into key public schools often receive very good and strict education.
This means that the teaching methods and standards adopted by these teachers in British middle schools are actually formed according to the foundation and talents of elite students in China. However, unlike our country, public middle schools in Britain strictly implement the district system. At the age of 13- 14, its students are in a natural state of mixed fish and dragons, and it is normal for children with poor foundation to fail to keep up with Mr. China's teaching progress.
Although they are all called public schools, public education in the west is mass education, and the key public middle schools in China are elite education. The contrast between the two is actually to compare our horses with English horses. In fact, it is totally untrue to judge whose basic education is better. Different from the liberal public education with too much welfare, the elite private schools in the west have strict discipline and great academic pressure, so it is not easy to keep up with their teaching progress, and many places are even more cruel than key middle schools in China. Frankly speaking, if Mr. China meets such a student, it may show another effect.
In recent ten years, a series of profound changes have taken place in China's education, both in universities and primary and secondary schools. This change is not only the response of China education to the rapid changes in China society, but also the purpose of learning from the West. Some people often regard British and American public schools as the template of quality education, emphasizing happy learning and reducing the burden, which leads to the shrinkage of public education in content and the decline of quality.
This actually forces parents to invest more resources in extracurricular time, and it is increasingly difficult for children who can't afford educational resources to make up for this capital gap in class through their own diligence.
Some so-called modern public education abroad is actually only the lowest standard public products provided by the government. We can't take these standards as the direction of China's educational reform, nor can we take these standards as the truth of western education. Countries in the Confucian cultural circle, such as China, Japan and South Korea, are often more cruel than western societies in public education, but this just shows that public education in these countries can make the children of ordinary people flow upward.
Once the so-called quality education reform further widens the gap between the rich and the poor, it is bound to fill the gap with more cruel civilian education, which is precisely the fundamental reason for the emergence of super middle schools.
As we all know, with the economic improvement of many families in China, they have many opportunities to see the educational system and model of western countries. But after they came back, they didn't make a rational analysis and comparison, and they didn't really analyze each other's advantages and disadvantages from the perspective of China's national conditions. It's about how good western-style happiness is. China's public education, which has always been famous for its advantages, is increasingly influenced by these unknown voices, but once many traditional advantages are replaced, they are gradually abandoned. In many cities in China, many private schools have defeated the public schools of the century-old prestigious schools.
Whether the current educational model in China is useful depends on the facts:
1, General Technology in China has been banned for decades. High-end technology, especially the cutting-edge weapon technology and equipment to defend the country, is made by ourselves. Most of these scientists are "nerds" who were educated by exams in the past. There is nothing wrong with this;
2. At present, China has the only team of technicians and scientific research strength that can compete with the United States. These are even more advanced intellectuals who grew savagely under the examination-oriented education mode. This is also a fact.
3. Hundreds of thousands of China students who study in top western universities and get full scholarships every year should also be "nerds" and "wooden heads" of exam-oriented education;
The young man next door was a bookworm who studied all day when he was a child. However, he is now a senior engineer at Huawei, with an annual salary of 1 tens of thousands.