Schoolchildren and students in China study very well. But at the same time they live in fear and stress.
University of Oregon professor Zhao Yong was born and raised in China. He studied all the features of national education, compared it with Western education and made unexpected conclusions. In his opinion, the main evil is authoritarianism, which has long and firmly shackled the entire educational system.
“The spirit of education in today's China is born out of two thousand years of imperial examination history,” writes Zhao Yong in his book Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? Why China has the best (and worst) education system in the world." Chinese education produces excellent test scores, a short-term outcome that can be achieved through rote memorization and hard work, but, like Chinese rule itself, it does not produce distinctive and creative citizens with innovative talents.
This is also the answer to why Chinese students never blame teachers when they fail, but look for the reasons for failure in themselves.
Keju system: how to raise an obedient citizen
The Chinese are a very efficient nation. Zhao Yun believes that this quality is not just a pleasant characteristic, but a vital necessity. Twenty centuries ago, the only way to “get out among the people” in China was the imperial exam - a test for which you had to memorize the wording and a certain structure of the answers. In pursuit of form, Chinese students did not have the opportunity to focus on content. And this caused China, which was so proud of its discipline, to lag behind in other matters: “...The basis of the study natural phenomena only sporadic observations could lie and Chinese discoveries were not allowed to reach the level modern science, which is all built on mathematics and controlled experiments.”
The Keju system, which demanded complete obedience, completely deprived people of creativity. China was filled with obedient " statesmen”, who, in fact, did not know how to do anything except successfully pass exams to please the government. Moreover, Zhao Yong believes that it was “keju” that became the indirect reason why the industrial revolution never occurred in China.
Why America is dangerous for Chinese education
In 1872, Yun Wing, the first Chinese to be educated in the West, sent a shipload of three dozen Chinese teenagers to the United States. Under the Chinese Educational Mission program, more than a hundred Chinese young men were to be trained in America. Yun Wing conceived a trick: by sending children to America, he calculated 
He believed that they would be able to adopt Western technologies and strengthen China’s position in the world, especially during the war.
But everything didn’t go according to plan: the teenagers became interested (unheard of insolence!) in “American” sports: baseball, football and hockey, began courting girls, and some even cut off their “Confucian” braids. Chinese students eventually lost their national identity, which greatly angered the Qing court officials. American education turned students into independent and free-thinking people, which was unacceptable to China. In 1881, the students were returned to their homeland.
Too many scientific articles
By the end of the 20th century, China finally recognized science and innovation as the “driving force of production.” To turn the Celestial Empire into a country of innovators, in 2005 the government set itself the goal of becoming one of the top five countries in terms of the number of registered patents and cited articles. From that moment on, China put all its efforts into this race, and already in 2012 it ranked third in the number of registered patents. The number of scientific articles is also impressive: from 20 thousand in 1998 they grew to 116 thousand by 2012.
Despite the official global recognition, Yun Zhao doesn’t believe these statistics. The rapid growth of patents, publications and doctors of science is explained by the same race of China for the title of “smartest country”. In addition, university graduates are simply afraid of not getting the desired positions, for which scientific publications are one of the mandatory conditions. Therefore, there is also a lot of plagiarism in China.
Why are there no Nobel laureates in China?
“Among the billion people educated on the Chinese mainland, there has not been a single Nobel laureate since 1949,” writes Zheng Yefu, a professor at Peking University and author of The Pathology of Chinese Education, in his book. At the same time, the international educational testing PISA named China the world leader in terms of knowledge in mathematics, reading and natural sciences.
Zhao Yun thinks differently: the test results only indicate that Chinese students are brilliantly prepared for a specific form of examination, namely the test. The ability to answer questions correctly turns them into robots, ideal for working in state system. At the same time, originality of thinking and nonconformism, hated by the Chinese government, are destroyed - everything that is so necessary for the great scientific discoveries and project development.
Constant stress
There are more than two thousand universities in China, but there are very few listed by the state. Some Chinese companies do not even try to hide the fact that they only hire graduates of certain educational institutions. In addition, there is a ranking system for classes and students. The latter, by the way, are tested literally every month. After each test, students are given new characteristics.
Zhao Yong believes that the regular testing system is unfair and biased: due to poor performance, Chinese students are constantly under stress.
So what's wrong with education in China?
Trying to debunk the myths about the “best education system in the world,” Zhao Yong came to the conclusion that Chinese education rests on three main pillars: fear, lies and continuous cramming.
He makes the following arguments: 
– The system does not provide individual approach: Students are prepared to succeed in tests, but there is no time left to develop their creative abilities.
– Exams such as PISA assess only students’ cognitive skills, and success in life also depends on communication and other social skills.
– Preparing for tests teaches students to guess the correct answers and formulate them in such a way that the examiners are satisfied. This approach leaves no room for the development of creativity.
In his book, Zhao Yun describes in detail one of the best schools China - "test preparation factory" - high school Maotanchan. Tuition costs about $6,000 per year. In 2013, the school's annual fee was approximately equal to the annual income of a resident of Shanghai, China's richest city.
The academic load for students here is three times greater than in a regular school. It is prohibited to build entertainment establishments on the territory of the settlement, since schoolchildren should under no circumstances be distracted from their studies. There are video cameras everywhere, and teachers can enter the classroom and even the student’s room at any time. One of the students in his interview called the Maotangchan school “hell on the way to heaven.”
Per. from English under scientific ed. A. Yurkevich
Ed. House of the Higher School of Economics, 2017
Translation from English
Type of publication: Scientific
Number of pages: 304
ISBN: 978-5-7598-1521-1
The stunning performance of Chinese students in the international PISA assessment, year after year surpassing students from all other countries in mathematics, literature and natural sciences, has made China one of the world leaders in the field of education. American educators and experts believe that in order to maintain its leading position in education and its status as a global superpower, the country should take the Chinese education system as a model. Indeed, many of the reforms being implemented in American schools emulate the Chinese system. America is following China closely, but is it worth moving in this direction? Zhao Yong, who worked as a teacher in China for many years, offers a fascinating, somewhat counterintuitive, inside look at the Chinese school system and reveals the secrets of how it became both “the best and the worst” in the world. He explains how China is able to produce students who rank first in the world in many disciplines, and why Chinese teachers, parents and political leaders They hate their education system and strive to send their children to Western schools. Filled with fascinating stories and facts, this book is a detailed and sobering tour of Chinese education.
The stunning performance of Chinese students in the international PISA assessment, year after year surpassing students from all other countries in mathematics, literature and natural sciences, has made China one of the world leaders in the field of education. American educators and experts believe that in order to maintain its leading position in education and its status as a global superpower, the country should take the Chinese education system as a model. Indeed, many of the reforms being implemented in American schools emulate the Chinese system. America is following China closely, but is it worth moving in this direction? Zhao Yong, who worked as a teacher in China for many years, offers a fascinating, somewhat counterintuitive, inside look at the Chinese school system and reveals the secrets of how it became both “the best and the worst” in the world. He explains how China manages to produce students who rank among the world's best in many disciplines, and yet why Chinese teachers, parents and political leaders hate their education system and want to send their children to Western schools. Filled with fascinating stories and facts, this book is a detailed and sobering excursion into Chinese education.Additional information:
| Vendor code: 2936131 |
| ISBN: 978-5-7598-1521-1 |
| Binding type: in the lane |
| Circulation: 1000 |
| Name: Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? Why China has the best (and worst) education system in the world |
| Yu Zhao |
| Additional information: lane from English I. Polonskoy |
| Place of publication: Moscow |
| Publisher: State University Higher School of Economics |
| Publication date: 2017 |
| Number of pages: 304 |
| Height, cm: 21 |
| Width, cm: 14,5 |
| Thickness, cm: 2 |
| Weight in grams: 400 |