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It completely depends on the location. I'll believe that overall, China's education produces better students than the USA, and that overall, the attitude toward
by chillee 9y ago
It completely depends on the location. I'll believe that overall, China's education produces better students than the USA, and that overall, the attitude towards academic excellence is more positive.
However, there's definitely pockets in the US from which a large part of the US academic elite come from for which it's not true that academic excellence isn't revered. A couple examples off the top of my head: The Palo Alto high school triangle, TJHSST, Exeter, the NY magnet school system, etc. A startling percentage of the US's top CS/math/physics talent comes from these schools.
In my personal opinion, top students at these schools will perform better than top students in China. Although the high level of academic rigor in high schools in China raises the average ability, it also dampens the amount of time that the top students have for extracurricular activities.
- cjalmeida 9y ago"There are more people with genius IQ in China than people in the US". It doesn't help that high level math teaching is restricted to pockets of excellence. We just had a Fields medallist in Brazil. Yet we're in the bottom of the barrel when it comes to math teaching. We also share this disregard for 'nerds' as a society like the US
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoMost schools in China are absolutely horrible compared to the average US school. China compares its best schools (Shanghai) to America's average schools to look good in comparison, but they aren't digging through third tier+ cities for that. Couple that with education only being compulsory to the 9th grade in China, you are only in high school there if you want to be and can pay the price. Top students from China vs. top students from American would be an interesting study. Comparing top students to average students never really makes sense.
- chillee 9y agoErr, more accurately what I mean is comparing the students of equivalent wealth in the US and China. eg: the cities in China compared to most of the urban/city in the US. Of course, there's still the several hundred million of impoverished in China that have much worse education.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoYep. If you want to go with china’s middle class, I’m ok with that, but we aren’t talking about such a huge student population anymore.