11 ms·

What's the Difference Between Children's Books in China and the U.S.?

124 points by shahocean 9y ago

wolfram74 9y ago
This article annoyed me the last time I ran into it because when they go into possible effects they point to test scores to try and quantify the effect of dedication oriented children's stories but go to no effort to try and quantify the effect of happiness oriented children's stories despite it would be quite easy to note suicide is almost twice as common in china vs the united states.
- whatshisface 9y ago
  There are so many differences between the US and China that statements like these ("children's books are raising test scores," "happiness-focused culture is lowering suicide rates") are completely silly. There are innumerable variables at play, and they're all adding to and canceling each other out in wild and unpredictable ways.
- fspeech 9y ago
  "it would be quite easy to note suicide is almost twice as common in china vs the united states" What is your source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_su... has US at 12.6 per 100000 and 8.5 for China, with the world average being 10.7. What stands out about China is the much higher ratio of female to male suicides.
- aluttik 9y ago
  Are you sure you're not mixing up China with other East Asian countries like Japan and Korea? As far as I can tell, China's suicide rate has sharply declined in the last decade or so and is now relatively low.
- DanBC 9y ago
  > suicide is almost twice as common in china vs the united states. It's very hard to compare suicide rates across different countries. That's because they don't have common definitions of what a suicide is (is it something a coronor has ruled on? Or is it something that's counted by statisticians from death certificate coding?); and because their definitions change over time.
GuiA 9y ago
I’m French, but spent a portion of my childhood living in the USA (South Carolina) due to my father’s work. The one thing that my extremely French parents couldn’t stop making fun of at the time, and still can’t stop making fun of now 20 years later, is the American habit of praising children repeatedly, putting stickers on homework, giving participation ribbons for every event, etc. It was actually an interesting dichotomy: I’d get my homework back from the teacher with it saying “Great job!” with a cute little star sticker, and then at home my mom would get mad at me because she thought I made dumb mistakes and would make me do it all over again. Definitely a strong contrast between French and American values in schooling, at least in the 90s. I’m left handed, and in the 2nd grade I had a teacher who would tear apart any piece of paper I gave her that had any ink smudge on it (fountain pens are mandatory in French grade school - which also confused my parents when we moved to the US and I was expected to write everything in pencil) and make me do it all over again. I do have really neat handwriting now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 15 years later, as a grad student in the US, teachers I TA’d for repeatedly told me I was too harsh in my grading and that I shouldn’t take off points for small mistakes, typos, etc. That’s another big difference between French and US schooling: in France, you’re graded out of 20; but at the high school/college level, if you have an average above 15/20, you’re most certainly in the top of your class. In fact, in some top tier universities the class average might be 8/20. In grad school in the US, I had a 90%+ average, and routinely got 100% on tests - something just completely foreign to me.
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  As someone from the UK your experience sounds similar to my perceptions of the US education system. It's... quite strange.
- GuB-42 9y ago
  Worth noting that in France, a perfect score (20/20) is extremely rare if the test has open questions. Not unheard of in maths, where precise answers are expected, but in literature, most teachers probably never gave a single 20/20 in their entire career. There is this idea that nothing is perfect and as a result, there should be no such thing as a perfect score.
sevenfive 9y ago
And the hunt for the "magic sauce" in education trundles on...
contingencies 9y ago
As someone with a kid in China, kids TV is far more formative than books. Why? Books in Chinese are not read by kids, they are read by parents since it is impossible to learn enough Chinese characters to achieve literacy while young! In my observation, most Chinese parents are very busy and do not spend much time reading with their kids.
- evolighting 9y ago
  And in fact, kids are busy too! I have seen it too often, while parents are busy working, their kid even at nursery school are busy having various kinds of classes.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > it is impossible to learn enough Chinese characters to achieve literacy while young Interesting ... at what age can children begin reading children's books? Adult books? How do schools teach children who can't read?
  - evolighting 9y ago
    There are books specially designed for different levels. Such as books with phonetic annotation，or book using only "easy Chinese characters" with pictures would be pretty easy to read by very young kids. As for Adult books, I belive a primary school student at about grade 3 maybe "can read" with a little struggle. As they have learned enough basic word to understand the sentences, even if there are few "hard word" remain unknown.
- baldfat 9y ago
  > In my observation, most Chinese parents are very busy and do not spend much time reading with their kids. Grandparents and Tiger Moms don't read to their kids? Grandparents lived with their grandchildren in China as a whole. My wife teaches English to Chinese children through the internet and the sessions cost them about $20 US dollars. There is always an adult close at hand and seems much more active in their children's lives. Now for your daily dose of Chinese Propaganda 88% of parents read 23 minutes everyday. Also there is no link to said "study." http://www.china.org.cn/china/2011-04/21/content_22412555.htm http://www.china.org.cn/china/2011-04/21/content_22412555.ht... One big take away. In the US we push all Kindergarten students to read (age 5 or 6). In this paper 77% read at age 8 grades 2 or grade 3 in the US.
girzel 9y ago
I work in publishing, and tangentially with children's books published inside and outside of China. My main observation is that the Chinese market for children's books (read: parents) is totally uninterested in books produced in China. 99% of children's books published in China are imported and translated from other countries, mostly the US. In other words, the (politically-influenced) Chinese publishing industry is producing didactic children's books, but Chinese consumers are not interested in those books at all.
- Animats 9y ago
  What's published in China is amusing. Current events are touchy politically, so there's a vast amount of wuxia. See any Chinese drama site. Novels about business success are popular. China has explicit political movie censorship. The golden dragon logo at the beginning is the "passed by censor" label. The Chinese army even produces an occasional feature film. "Sky Fighters", is a ripoff of "Top Gun", but worse. The USAF, especially the Strategic Air Command, used to do stuff like that in the 1950s. See "Strategic Air Command"[1], with Jimmie Stuart (considered good) or "Bombers B-52" (not so good). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGjyH2ulsCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGjyH2ulsCk
  - whooshee 9y ago
    There are always a tons of fans for Wuxia in China for probably hundreds years. Supply follows demand. And Internet-literature is a big thing in China. There are also a lot of Wuxia or quasi-wuxia published online. I wonder which country don't censor movies? China actually has quite a few political-metaphor movies up. Not to mention recently one filmed by Feng XiaoGang. I am not saying China bureau of movies production are doing a good job. In fact they have been complained quite a a lot. China still hasn't implement a good classification system. Quite a few films got cut because it has to suit majority(including children) which really annoys people. As your last film example, many Chinese viewers don't think that film is good.
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      That’s a literal Gish Gallop of propaganda, especially: I wonder which country don't censor movies? Tu Quoque is boring.
userbinator 9y ago
Ostensibly it's about a cat that has an appetite for sloppy letters — "written too large or too small, or if the letter is missing a stroke," But the underlying point is clear: "This is really instilling the idea of effort — that children have to learn to consistently practice in order to achieve a certain level," My take on the underlying point of that story is quite different: conform or be exterminated.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > conform or be exterminated You didn’t persevere to the end: “And lest you've been worrying about the fate of that cat — Cheung has reassuring news. Once the kids improve their handwriting, ‘the cat feels very hungry,’ says Cheung. But then the kids take pity on him — and write a few sloppy letters for him to eat.”
  - thesmallestcat 9y ago
    The story upsets me too. There's nothing fun or happy about it. At the end they pity the cat, big whoop.
  - musage 9y ago
    It's about the fate of the letters, not the cat. At the end, non-conforming letters get made just so they can get exterminated. Great.
    - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
      > At the end, non-conforming letters get made just so they can get exterminated You’re overprojecting. They’re inanimate letters. The children are learning penmanship. In the end, out of compassion for the cat that was previously plaguing them, they bend the rules to be nice. It’s certainly cuter than the German fairy tales I was raised on.
      - musage 9y ago
        > They’re inanimate letters. Cats don't actually starve when they don't get to eat those. And why only say that now? What does the "compassion for the cat" have to do with it it either way? What German fairy tales about non-conformist things being destroyed were you raised on? And did your learning of penmanship involve any of that? And they don't even bend the (part of the) rules (under discussion here), non-conforming letters still get eaten.
diyseguy 9y ago
I would like to read the paper but it is paywalled
- quantum_magpie 9y ago
  sci-hub.bz
  - vixen99 9y ago
    Doesn't work for me. Can you please suggest any others?
booleandilemma 9y ago
Cheung notes that children in China consistently score higher on academic tests compared to children in the U.S. and Mexico. If we’re going to play this game, which culture’s children’s books teach kids more about honesty, I wonder? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-fraud-scandals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-... https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/how-sophisticated-test-scams-from-china-are-making-their-way-into-the-us/474474/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/how-so...
- whooshee 9y ago
  Both of them are teaching children to be honest people. Chinese children scored higher just because they were trained earlier. That's it. And there are several minor reasons mentioned in book <Outliers: The Story of Success>. China has a lot of people, and there are cheaters to blame, it's not only about those cheaters' honesty, there are economic problems too. Try to generalize or portray all Chinese students as dishonest people are just not objective. If you wanted to play that game, who got more prisoner to citizen ratio? Given they read those cutie books taught them to be law-bide people.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    > Chinese children scored higher just because they were trained earlier. No, Chinese children scored higher because only a sample was taken from urban Shanghai and compared to the entire USA. Imagine comparing San Francisco to the whole of China, including its much poorer and less educated hinterlands. There are false generalizations all around.
    - whooshee 9y ago
      Are you talking about PISA? Alright, that test has sample problems due to Hukou system[0] and limited city participation, it may expand to more cities. In fact the U.S. didn't participate as a whole but 3 states. I will put my argument more widely, East-Asian countries tend to train their children at a very young age, and their pronunciation of numbers helped them to learn arithmetic(stated in the book <Outliers>). China has a basically working K-12 program, and there were a series of documentaries shoot in UK, not long later, UK imported elementary math books from Shanghai. But China still need to improve it's higher-ed system. Preferably learn from Russia, France and Germany. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_St...
analog31 9y ago
...generally viewing intelligence as a trait that can be acquired through hard work rather than a quality that you're born with. The first thing that came to mind when I read this was Lysenko-ism.
- yorwba 9y ago
  Why? Lysenkoism was an instance of a mistaken biological theory being elevated to political truth. That quote just seems to be garden-variety "growth mindset" vs. "fixed mindset" self-motivation.
  - wwweston 9y ago
    You could argue that the trait we call intelligence is about how quickly efforts to learn something new result in new capabilities, rather than whether effort to learn something results in new capabilities at all. And from my (admittedly shallow) familiarity with the field, that argument seems to be substantiated. Problem is, even if that's true, it's not a particularly useful truth to most individuals. A growth mindset is useful -- unless you're particularly unintelligent, it's probably true that your efforts to learn will have results that make you more capable, and effort can compound on effort. You should probably act as if you can become more capable than you are, even if there are degrees of inborn intelligence.
tobbe2064 9y ago
My experience being a father is that children aquire and consume vast amounts of books. They reread them until they understand them and then they either discard them and never touch them again or they like them and keep reading them. I haven't been able to see a simple thematic pattern for my daughter but what I did notice us that she really hates it when you try to read books she but in the discard pile. I am quite sure that she would loose her intrest in books if I kept taking books she didn't like. Instead I let her dicide what she wants and hope that this will let her develop and refine her taste. I guess what I'm trying to say is that i suspect top down government of children's books will backfire in diminished interest and cruder taste for culture.
- sifar 9y ago
  As a father of a 6 year old voracious reader, I agree. He is devouring books faster than I can find them. You expose them to lot of different books and then sit back and observe which one they pick up again and again to read. Talk to them about what they liked about the book, to discover what actually interests them. Initially I tried to influence the books he would read, but after a while he refused to read them (he would read them in his own time). So now I just let him be and just track what interests him and periodically introduce him to new stuff.
  - misev 9y ago
    Take him to the library and let him roam around and pick whatever he likes. I used to do this at the age of 9-10-11: I would go to the library once a week, pick about 5-6 books and read them all by the next week. Wish I had discovered the library when I was 6 :)
mkagenius 9y ago
> The Foolish Old Man Who Removed The Mountain This is a real story in India - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi There is also a good movie made on him - http://m.imdb.com/title/tt3449292/ http://m.imdb.com/title/tt3449292/
wolfgke 9y ago
I cannot talk about China, but in Germany the classic children's book "Der Struwwelpeter" is to my knowledge still quite popular and often read to children: German original: > http://sternchenland.com/downloads/unsortiertes/Der%20Struwwelpeter%20-%20Heinrich%20Hofmann.pdf http://sternchenland.com/downloads/unsortiertes/Der%20Struww... English translation > https://archive.org/details/englishstruwwelp00hoffrich https://archive.org/details/englishstruwwelp00hoffrich (note that you should prefer to read this in German if you can, since lots of subtleties are lost in the English adaption). Here is a movie adaption of this book (in German) - note that they added an epilogue at the end where all stories still come to a happy end: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpcPz-GvHYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpcPz-GvHYI In particular consider the third ("Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug"/"The dreadful story about Harriet and the matches"; 16:54 in the video) and the sixth ("Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher"/"The story of little thumb-a-suck"; 13:38 in the video) story to see why this might be somewhat different from what I consider as a typical US-American children's book from my non-US perspective. :-)
- projectramo 9y ago
  English children's stories were also quite dark before the industrial revolution. In fact, I have read, that there wasn't much of a distinction between the appropriate subject matter for children and adults. After the industrial revolution, with nuclear families moving to cities, and education suddenly becoming more important and children being moved out of the labor force, the idea of "childhood" as a uniquely innocent period was invented. A lot of the sanitized fairy tales we read have very dark origins.
  - wolfgke 9y ago
    > A lot of the sanitized fairy tales we read have very dark origins. I still consider lots of fairy tales that I was told as a child as very dark (I don't mean the idyllic world "Disney" versions). For example in the Grimm version of Cinderella the evil sisters cut cut away their heels and toes with a knife to fit in the shoe and at the end the pigeons peck the eyes of the evil sisters (see http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6248/16 http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6248/16). Or in "The red shoes" by Hans Christian Andersen the little girl protagonist prompts the headman to chop her feet (wearing the red shoes) to get rid of the shoes. Edit: or Snow White: At the end the evil stepmother has to dance in red-hot iron shoes at the daughjter's wedding until she dies (see http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6248/16 http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6248/16)
thriftwy 9y ago
> Cheung notes that children in China consistently score higher on academic tests compared to children in the U.S. and Mexico But I doubt this is because of books. After all, children of chinese descent consistently score higher on academic tests everywhere in the world, including the U.S. The elephant in the room is that ethnic chinese children have got more of what it takes, conditio sine qua non, to score high on academic tests.

124 points by shahocean 9y ago

This article annoyed me the last time I ran into it because when they go into possible effects they point to test scores to try and quantify the effect of dedication oriented children's stories but go to no effort to try and quantify the effect of happiness oriented children's stories despite it would be quite easy to note suicide is almost twice as common in china vs the united states.

whatshisface 9y ago
There are so many differences between the US and China that statements like these ("children's books are raising test scores," "happiness-focused culture is lowering suicide rates") are completely silly. There are innumerable variables at play, and they're all adding to and canceling each other out in wild and unpredictable ways.
fspeech 9y ago
"it would be quite easy to note suicide is almost twice as common in china vs the united states" What is your source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_su... has US at 12.6 per 100000 and 8.5 for China, with the world average being 10.7. What stands out about China is the much higher ratio of female to male suicides.
aluttik 9y ago
Are you sure you're not mixing up China with other East Asian countries like Japan and Korea? As far as I can tell, China's suicide rate has sharply declined in the last decade or so and is now relatively low.
DanBC 9y ago
> suicide is almost twice as common in china vs the united states. It's very hard to compare suicide rates across different countries. That's because they don't have common definitions of what a suicide is (is it something a coronor has ruled on? Or is it something that's counted by statisticians from death certificate coding?); and because their definitions change over time.

GuiA 9y ago

I’m French, but spent a portion of my childhood living in the USA (South Carolina) due to my father’s work. The one thing that my extremely French parents couldn’t stop making fun of at the time, and still can’t stop making fun of now 20 years later, is the American habit of praising children repeatedly, putting stickers on homework, giving participation ribbons for every event, etc. It was actually an interesting dichotomy: I’d get my homework back from the teacher with it saying “Great job!” with a cute little star sticker, and then at home my mom would get mad at me because she thought I made dumb mistakes and would make me do it all over again. Definitely a strong contrast between French and American values in schooling, at least in the 90s. I’m left handed, and in the 2nd grade I had a teacher who would tear apart any piece of paper I gave her that had any ink smudge on it (fountain pens are mandatory in French grade school - which also confused my parents when we moved to the US and I was expected to write everything in pencil) and make me do it all over again. I do have really neat handwriting now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 15 years later, as a grad student in the US, teachers I TA’d for repeatedly told me I was too harsh in my grading and that I shouldn’t take off points for small mistakes, typos, etc. That’s another big difference between French and US schooling: in France, you’re graded out of 20; but at the high school/college level, if you have an average above 15/20, you’re most certainly in the top of your class. In fact, in some top tier universities the class average might be 8/20. In grad school in the US, I had a 90%+ average, and routinely got 100% on tests - something just completely foreign to me.

abritinthebay 9y ago
As someone from the UK your experience sounds similar to my perceptions of the US education system. It's... quite strange.
GuB-42 9y ago
Worth noting that in France, a perfect score (20/20) is extremely rare if the test has open questions. Not unheard of in maths, where precise answers are expected, but in literature, most teachers probably never gave a single 20/20 in their entire career. There is this idea that nothing is perfect and as a result, there should be no such thing as a perfect score.

sevenfive 9y ago

And the hunt for the "magic sauce" in education trundles on...

contingencies 9y ago

As someone with a kid in China, kids TV is far more formative than books. Why? Books in Chinese are not read by kids, they are read by parents since it is impossible to learn enough Chinese characters to achieve literacy while young! In my observation, most Chinese parents are very busy and do not spend much time reading with their kids.

evolighting 9y ago
And in fact, kids are busy too! I have seen it too often, while parents are busy working, their kid even at nursery school are busy having various kinds of classes.
forapurpose 9y ago
> it is impossible to learn enough Chinese characters to achieve literacy while young Interesting ... at what age can children begin reading children's books? Adult books? How do schools teach children who can't read?
- evolighting 9y ago
  There are books specially designed for different levels. Such as books with phonetic annotation，or book using only "easy Chinese characters" with pictures would be pretty easy to read by very young kids. As for Adult books, I belive a primary school student at about grade 3 maybe "can read" with a little struggle. As they have learned enough basic word to understand the sentences, even if there are few "hard word" remain unknown.
baldfat 9y ago
> In my observation, most Chinese parents are very busy and do not spend much time reading with their kids. Grandparents and Tiger Moms don't read to their kids? Grandparents lived with their grandchildren in China as a whole. My wife teaches English to Chinese children through the internet and the sessions cost them about $20 US dollars. There is always an adult close at hand and seems much more active in their children's lives. Now for your daily dose of Chinese Propaganda 88% of parents read 23 minutes everyday. Also there is no link to said "study." http://www.china.org.cn/china/2011-04/21/content_22412555.htm http://www.china.org.cn/china/2011-04/21/content_22412555.ht... One big take away. In the US we push all Kindergarten students to read (age 5 or 6). In this paper 77% read at age 8 grades 2 or grade 3 in the US.

girzel 9y ago

I work in publishing, and tangentially with children's books published inside and outside of China. My main observation is that the Chinese market for children's books (read: parents) is totally uninterested in books produced in China. 99% of children's books published in China are imported and translated from other countries, mostly the US. In other words, the (politically-influenced) Chinese publishing industry is producing didactic children's books, but Chinese consumers are not interested in those books at all.

Animats 9y ago
What's published in China is amusing. Current events are touchy politically, so there's a vast amount of wuxia. See any Chinese drama site. Novels about business success are popular. China has explicit political movie censorship. The golden dragon logo at the beginning is the "passed by censor" label. The Chinese army even produces an occasional feature film. "Sky Fighters", is a ripoff of "Top Gun", but worse. The USAF, especially the Strategic Air Command, used to do stuff like that in the 1950s. See "Strategic Air Command"[1], with Jimmie Stuart (considered good) or "Bombers B-52" (not so good). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGjyH2ulsCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGjyH2ulsCk
- whooshee 9y ago
  There are always a tons of fans for Wuxia in China for probably hundreds years. Supply follows demand. And Internet-literature is a big thing in China. There are also a lot of Wuxia or quasi-wuxia published online. I wonder which country don't censor movies? China actually has quite a few political-metaphor movies up. Not to mention recently one filmed by Feng XiaoGang. I am not saying China bureau of movies production are doing a good job. In fact they have been complained quite a a lot. China still hasn't implement a good classification system. Quite a few films got cut because it has to suit majority(including children) which really annoys people. As your last film example, many Chinese viewers don't think that film is good.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    That’s a literal Gish Gallop of propaganda, especially: I wonder which country don't censor movies? Tu Quoque is boring.

userbinator 9y ago

Ostensibly it's about a cat that has an appetite for sloppy letters — "written too large or too small, or if the letter is missing a stroke," But the underlying point is clear: "This is really instilling the idea of effort — that children have to learn to consistently practice in order to achieve a certain level," My take on the underlying point of that story is quite different: conform or be exterminated.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> conform or be exterminated You didn’t persevere to the end: “And lest you've been worrying about the fate of that cat — Cheung has reassuring news. Once the kids improve their handwriting, ‘the cat feels very hungry,’ says Cheung. But then the kids take pity on him — and write a few sloppy letters for him to eat.”
- thesmallestcat 9y ago
  The story upsets me too. There's nothing fun or happy about it. At the end they pity the cat, big whoop.
- musage 9y ago
  It's about the fate of the letters, not the cat. At the end, non-conforming letters get made just so they can get exterminated. Great.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > At the end, non-conforming letters get made just so they can get exterminated You’re overprojecting. They’re inanimate letters. The children are learning penmanship. In the end, out of compassion for the cat that was previously plaguing them, they bend the rules to be nice. It’s certainly cuter than the German fairy tales I was raised on.
    - musage 9y ago
      > They’re inanimate letters. Cats don't actually starve when they don't get to eat those. And why only say that now? What does the "compassion for the cat" have to do with it it either way? What German fairy tales about non-conformist things being destroyed were you raised on? And did your learning of penmanship involve any of that? And they don't even bend the (part of the) rules (under discussion here), non-conforming letters still get eaten.

diyseguy 9y ago

I would like to read the paper but it is paywalled

quantum_magpie 9y ago
sci-hub.bz
- vixen99 9y ago
  Doesn't work for me. Can you please suggest any others?

booleandilemma 9y ago

Cheung notes that children in China consistently score higher on academic tests compared to children in the U.S. and Mexico. If we’re going to play this game, which culture’s children’s books teach kids more about honesty, I wonder? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-fraud-scandals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-... https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/how-sophisticated-test-scams-from-china-are-making-their-way-into-the-us/474474/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/how-so...

whooshee 9y ago
Both of them are teaching children to be honest people. Chinese children scored higher just because they were trained earlier. That's it. And there are several minor reasons mentioned in book <Outliers: The Story of Success>. China has a lot of people, and there are cheaters to blame, it's not only about those cheaters' honesty, there are economic problems too. Try to generalize or portray all Chinese students as dishonest people are just not objective. If you wanted to play that game, who got more prisoner to citizen ratio? Given they read those cutie books taught them to be law-bide people.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  > Chinese children scored higher just because they were trained earlier. No, Chinese children scored higher because only a sample was taken from urban Shanghai and compared to the entire USA. Imagine comparing San Francisco to the whole of China, including its much poorer and less educated hinterlands. There are false generalizations all around.
  - whooshee 9y ago
    Are you talking about PISA? Alright, that test has sample problems due to Hukou system[0] and limited city participation, it may expand to more cities. In fact the U.S. didn't participate as a whole but 3 states. I will put my argument more widely, East-Asian countries tend to train their children at a very young age, and their pronunciation of numbers helped them to learn arithmetic(stated in the book <Outliers>). China has a basically working K-12 program, and there were a series of documentaries shoot in UK, not long later, UK imported elementary math books from Shanghai. But China still need to improve it's higher-ed system. Preferably learn from Russia, France and Germany. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_St...

analog31 9y ago

...generally viewing intelligence as a trait that can be acquired through hard work rather than a quality that you're born with. The first thing that came to mind when I read this was Lysenko-ism.

yorwba 9y ago
Why? Lysenkoism was an instance of a mistaken biological theory being elevated to political truth. That quote just seems to be garden-variety "growth mindset" vs. "fixed mindset" self-motivation.
- wwweston 9y ago
  You could argue that the trait we call intelligence is about how quickly efforts to learn something new result in new capabilities, rather than whether effort to learn something results in new capabilities at all. And from my (admittedly shallow) familiarity with the field, that argument seems to be substantiated. Problem is, even if that's true, it's not a particularly useful truth to most individuals. A growth mindset is useful -- unless you're particularly unintelligent, it's probably true that your efforts to learn will have results that make you more capable, and effort can compound on effort. You should probably act as if you can become more capable than you are, even if there are degrees of inborn intelligence.

tobbe2064 9y ago

My experience being a father is that children aquire and consume vast amounts of books. They reread them until they understand them and then they either discard them and never touch them again or they like them and keep reading them. I haven't been able to see a simple thematic pattern for my daughter but what I did notice us that she really hates it when you try to read books she but in the discard pile. I am quite sure that she would loose her intrest in books if I kept taking books she didn't like. Instead I let her dicide what she wants and hope that this will let her develop and refine her taste. I guess what I'm trying to say is that i suspect top down government of children's books will backfire in diminished interest and cruder taste for culture.

sifar 9y ago
As a father of a 6 year old voracious reader, I agree. He is devouring books faster than I can find them. You expose them to lot of different books and then sit back and observe which one they pick up again and again to read. Talk to them about what they liked about the book, to discover what actually interests them. Initially I tried to influence the books he would read, but after a while he refused to read them (he would read them in his own time). So now I just let him be and just track what interests him and periodically introduce him to new stuff.
- misev 9y ago
  Take him to the library and let him roam around and pick whatever he likes. I used to do this at the age of 9-10-11: I would go to the library once a week, pick about 5-6 books and read them all by the next week. Wish I had discovered the library when I was 6 :)

mkagenius 9y ago

> The Foolish Old Man Who Removed The Mountain This is a real story in India - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi There is also a good movie made on him - http://m.imdb.com/title/tt3449292/ http://m.imdb.com/title/tt3449292/

wolfgke 9y ago

I cannot talk about China, but in Germany the classic children's book "Der Struwwelpeter" is to my knowledge still quite popular and often read to children: German original: > http://sternchenland.com/downloads/unsortiertes/Der%20Struwwelpeter%20-%20Heinrich%20Hofmann.pdf http://sternchenland.com/downloads/unsortiertes/Der%20Struww... English translation > https://archive.org/details/englishstruwwelp00hoffrich https://archive.org/details/englishstruwwelp00hoffrich (note that you should prefer to read this in German if you can, since lots of subtleties are lost in the English adaption). Here is a movie adaption of this book (in German) - note that they added an epilogue at the end where all stories still come to a happy end: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpcPz-GvHYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpcPz-GvHYI In particular consider the third ("Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug"/"The dreadful story about Harriet and the matches"; 16:54 in the video) and the sixth ("Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher"/"The story of little thumb-a-suck"; 13:38 in the video) story to see why this might be somewhat different from what I consider as a typical US-American children's book from my non-US perspective. :-)

projectramo 9y ago
English children's stories were also quite dark before the industrial revolution. In fact, I have read, that there wasn't much of a distinction between the appropriate subject matter for children and adults. After the industrial revolution, with nuclear families moving to cities, and education suddenly becoming more important and children being moved out of the labor force, the idea of "childhood" as a uniquely innocent period was invented. A lot of the sanitized fairy tales we read have very dark origins.
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > A lot of the sanitized fairy tales we read have very dark origins. I still consider lots of fairy tales that I was told as a child as very dark (I don't mean the idyllic world "Disney" versions). For example in the Grimm version of Cinderella the evil sisters cut cut away their heels and toes with a knife to fit in the shoe and at the end the pigeons peck the eyes of the evil sisters (see http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6248/16 http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6248/16). Or in "The red shoes" by Hans Christian Andersen the little girl protagonist prompts the headman to chop her feet (wearing the red shoes) to get rid of the shoes. Edit: or Snow White: At the end the evil stepmother has to dance in red-hot iron shoes at the daughjter's wedding until she dies (see http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6248/16 http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6248/16)

thriftwy 9y ago

> Cheung notes that children in China consistently score higher on academic tests compared to children in the U.S. and Mexico But I doubt this is because of books. After all, children of chinese descent consistently score higher on academic tests everywhere in the world, including the U.S. The elephant in the room is that ethnic chinese children have got more of what it takes, conditio sine qua non, to score high on academic tests.