Less Worried about China

Last night I watched a show on China's education system, and I'm less concerned than I once was about China competing with America.

The focus of the program was on a top-level high school in Qhongching, in central China, and the senior high school students battling to get into China's top colleges.

The remark that stood out in the program, and that put my mind at ease, was the comment by one student that he "wanted to be the next Bill Gates". it was obvious he had no clue what that meant. Here he was pounding the books for 12-14 hours a day to memorize of a handful of subjects deemed important for passing China's college entrance exam. At the same age, Bill Gates was getting less-than-stellar grades and spending all his free time hacking computers.

China's wannabe Bill hones his talent for high scores on a multiple choice test to gain admission to a top university; the original Bill didn't even bother with finishing college. The lesson, in my mind, is that the children of China are being trained to compete in the wrong arena. Rote learning and multiple choice tests do not instill skills for generating wealth, great art, or solutions to staggeringly complex problems.

Undoubtedly many talented people will bull their way through China's educational system to get into college and to get the social advantages they need to succeed, but what about the late bloomers, or the people so outside of the box that they could never pass a multiple choice test, yet can provide brilliant solutions to real problems?

My bigger concern is the pressure on American school systems to move closer to the Chinese model with standardized tests and so on. If we continue down that path, we will lose our true competitive advantage. We'll be well past the tipping point when American schools require students to demonstrate their proficiency in Mandarin on multiple choice tests.