China's poorest beat our best pupils

[bodie]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10645090/Chinas-poorest-beat-our-best-pupils.html

Children of factory workers and cleaners in Far East achieve better exam results than offspring of British lawyers and doctors, says OECD

The report said: “In the United States and the United Kingdom, where professionals are among the highest-paid in the world, students whose parents work as professionals do not perform as well in mathematics as children of professionals in other countries — nor do they perform as well as the children in Shanghai-China and Singapore whose parents work in manual occupations.”

 British schoolchildren are lagging so far behind their peers in the Far East that even pupils from wealthy backgrounds are now performing worse in exams than the poorest students in China, an international study shows.

The children of factory workers and cleaners in parts of the Far East are more than a year ahead of the offspring of British doctors and lawyers, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Researchers said the study, which looked at the performance of 15-year-olds in mathematics, showed countries to could overcome traditional social class divides to raise education standards among relatively deprived pupils.

The report was published as a senior European Commission politician attacked the standards of British schools and warned that UK politicians must improve the education system before focusing on changing the country’s relationship with the EU.

Viviane Reding, the vice-president of the European Commission, warned that ministers should focus on raising school standards instead of blaming the country’s problems on foreigners. In a speech in Cambridge she suggested that the UK’s poor education system is the reason Britons cannot compete with foreigners for jobs. She said politicians needed to “work on the quality of education and welfare, so that people in this country can find employment and enjoy reasonable social standards”.

In China they have about 50 in a class!  The only thing I can think of is maybe they are put under more pressure.  I wonder if depression and anxiety in children is more common in China?

[Jack]

Never understood why articles like this are focused on finance of the student. The intellect of children and the quality of education presented in public school isn't directly tied to the personal wealth of the student's parents.

[Queen Victoria]

Are the same tests used throughout the world?  If not, how comparable are they? 

How much cheating/fudging is going on?

How much of the difference can be attributed to discipline instilled by parents and teachers?

[Parts]

Are the same tests used throughout the world?  If not, how comparable are they? 

How much cheating/fudging is going on?

How much of the difference can be attributed to discipline instilled by parents and teachers?

These stats on the tests always seem a little off to me for just these reasons.  A big question is do they test all the kids or just the ones that do well and if you don't do well or are too much trouble are you just kicked out.

[bodie]

Apparently the tests used are universal.

However,  I could not find much info on schools for special needs, disabled children or what they do with 'naughty' ones but the comparable figures (those in UK) did not contain them either.

I know that each couple in China is allowed only one child.  Maybe  that, and the fact that they know beforehand means parents in China give their kids a more 'academic' home life.

['andersom']

Maybe the huge classes make that the education ways are more structured than the ones in the west?
Don't know, but some of the subjects my kids get in school seem to be more about how to present things, and how things are presented, than about the subject itself. The whole individual how to present yourself thing will not be an option to focus on in classes that big.

The math books my kids have are pretty good though, better than the ones I had when I was their age.

Would not surprise me if the Chinese filtered the non achievers out. But, it is since the eighties of the former century at least that the Asians stood out more in math, if I remember correctly.

[bodie]

I always notice

we say Maths   "do the maths"
others say Math "do the math"

 

['andersom']

The Dutch say "wiskunde", the French have les Maths, or les Mathématiques, so, plural, just like you have.

[Icequeen]

Reporting from Shanghai -- Chinese adolescence is known as a time of scant whimsy: Students rise at dawn, disappear into school until dinnertime and toil into the late night over homework in preparation for university entrance exams that can make or break their future.


Study in China is very hard. For most high school, students must wake up about 6 o'clock and arrive school at 7 o'clock. There is no school buses in my small city (Hubei). So I have to ride my bike to school even in the winter (temperature below zero degrees C). And I spend 13 hours in school, 11 hours for class and 2 hours for lunch block. There are 40 mins per class but I have 10 class everyday. The last class is a long class started at 6 p.m. and end at 10 p.m. We had two types of class you can choose in high school, One is more scientific, like biology, chemical, and physical; One is more about literature -- history, government, and geography. But there are three subjects people must take, Chinese, math and ENGLISH. In my class, my friends all don't like English because all of them will never had chance to go aboard. And maybe they will stay in the small city rest of their life. So they didn't study at all. Same thing happened in all the subjects. So they hated school.

(From an essay by an exchange student)...The test in China is not very good. The teacher didn't care about do you learn in class or at home. The teachers just want to see your grades in the exam. So, as everyone know, some people cheat, and some people did very good job on cheating.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mercedes-schneider/chengs-views-on-chinese-a_b_4800192.html

Sounds like a fun childhood.

[bodie]

les Mathématiques

Oh that puts a secksy edge to it!  I like it 

[bodie]

Sounds like a fun childhood.

Yes when results matter that much that it takes all the fun out of childhood - they can keep it.

['andersom']

Sounds like a fun childhood.

Yes when results matter that much that it takes all the fun out of childhood - they can keep it.

Indeed.

How high are suicide percentages, amongst youth in Shanghai?

[Jack]

How much of the difference can be attributed to discipline instilled by parents and teachers?

Can't recall where at the moment but once encountered it said by a Chinese person, the stereotype of the Chinese being intellectually superior is a myth; they excelled in school because they would have been beaten at home otherwise. Probably really crummy for the ones who can't overachieve regardless of discipline.

[Semicolon]

The Dutch say "wiskunde", the French have les Maths, or les Mathématiques, so, plural, just like you have.

Americans have "math", no "the". Less sexy.

[El]

It's an unfair comparison.  In the US, we put ALL children into schools, regardless of aptitude or ability.  This isn't true across the world.  At fifteen, if you're failing in school, we generally won't LET kids drop out, even if they're clearly not able to deal with that kind of academic environment and we're probably just battering their egos for no particularly good reason.

These comparisons always annoy me.  They should be shown side-by-side with total population enrollment rates by age.

Not that I'd really trust anything that was reported by China.  Not so much for the allowance of dissenting opinions over there.  The US does sketchy-ass stuff with personal freedoms, but, for now, China's still got us pretty well beat on the oppression front.

Also re: SES having an effect:  Oh hells yes it does.  Poverty is a huge stressor, and stress tends to fuck with the way your mind works.  (And I say this very broadly.  Poverty also has a whole bunch of stuff that goes along with it, as precipitating factors and as consequences, which would be likely to disadvantage students.)  This isn't to argue that "poor people are stupid."  But, shit is just plain generally fucking HARDER when you're poor, and that includes school.