Posted by Dana Bennis on Jan 11, 2010 - 08:55 AM
Have you heard the calls from politicians and others to change education in the U.S. to match and compete with other countries, especially those in Asia? The argument is that those countries educate longer and better. But what if those countries are trying to bring in the very aspects of American education that those politicians seem to want to squash: creativity, innovation, and personalization in learning. That's what Yong Zhao, an educator born and raised in China and now a professor at Michigan State University, says in his new book, "Catching Up or Leading the Way". As NYC Public School Parents blogger Steve Koss writes, Zhao says that countries like China want more creativity and less conformity and standardization. Yet here in the U.S. instead of prizing such creativity, we seek to squash it out with ever increasing high-stakes testing and standardization. Something's wrong with this picture. But yes, let's look to China and other Asian countries - it seems they are on the right path after all!Yong Zhao occupies a unique position from which to reflect upon the current national direction of American education in his recent—and very readable—book, Catching Up or Leading the Way. Mr. Zahoa, a University Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at Michigan State, is also a product of the inquiry-suppressing, conformity-inducing, national-standardized-test-driven system that constitutes Chinese education. These two seemingly antipodal perspectives alone offer more than ample reason to listen to Mr. Zhao’s voice, all the more so when he argues that both systems are moving, each in their own way, toward becoming more alike.
The crux of Professor Zhao’s analysis appears in his preface. “...What China wants is what America is eager throw away—an education that respects individual talents, supports divergent thinking, tolerates deviation, and encourages creativity; a system in which government does not dictate what students learn or how teachers teach; and culture that does not rank or judge the success of a school, a teacher, or a child based on only test scores in a few subjects determined by the government…An innovation-driven society is driven by innovative people. Innovative people cannot come from schools that force students to memorize correct answers on standardized tests or reward students who excel at regurgitating dictated spoon-fed knowledge…why does America want to adopt practices that China and many other countries have been so eager to give up?”
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