by PETER YONGQI GU & STEPHEN DOBSON
There is a belief widely held across the Western world: Chinese students are schooled through rote, passive learning – and an educational system like this can only produce docile workers who lack innovation or creativity.
We argue this is far from true. In fact, the Chinese education system is producing highly successful students and an extremely skilled and creative workforce. We think the world can learn something from this.
In a viral video earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook highlighted the unique concentration of skilled labour that attracted his manufacturing operations to China:
In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China you could fill multiple football fields.
To which Tesla CEO Elon Musk quickly responded on X: “True”.
We bring the expertise of academics to the public.
When South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the Shenzhen headquarters of electric vehicle manufacturer BYD earlier this year, he was surprised to learn the company was planning to double its 100,000-strong engineering taskforce within the coming decade.
He might not have been so surprised had he known Chinese universities are producing more than ten million graduates every year – the foundation for a super-economy.
The ‘paradox of the Chinese learner’
Chinese learners achieve remarkable success levels compared to their Western – or non-Confucian-heritage – counterparts.
Since Shanghai first participated in the PISA educational evaluation in 2009, 15?year-olds in China have topped the league table three out of four times in reading, mathematics and science.
How can a supposedly passive and rote Chinese system outperform its Western counterparts? A number of Australian scholars have been studying this “paradox of the Chinese learner” since the 1990s.
Their research shows those common perceptions of Chinese and other Asian learners are wrong. For example, repetition and meaningful learning are not mutually exclusive. As one Chinese saying goes:
???????? – meaning reveals itself when you read something many times.
What can Western education learn?
An emphasis on education is a defining feature of Chinese culture. Since Confucianism became the state-sanctioned doctrine in the Han Dynasty (202BCE–220CE), education has entered every fabric of Chinese society.
This became especially true after the institutionalisation of the Keju system of civil service examinations during the Sui Dynasty (581CE–618CE).
Today, the Gaokao university entrance examination is the modern Keju equivalent. Millions of school leavers take the exam each year. For three days every July, Chinese society largely comes to a standstill for the Gaokao.
While the cultural drive for educational excellence is a major motivation for everyone involved in the system, it is not something that is easily learned and replicated in Western societies.
However, there are two principles we believe are central to Chinese educational success, at both the learner and system levels. We use two Chinese idioms to illustrate these.
The first we call “orderly and gradual progress” – ????. This principle stresses patient, step-by-step and sequenced learning, sustained by grit and delayed gratification.
The second we call “thick accumulation before thin production” – ????. This principle stresses the importance of two things:
- a comprehensive foundation through accumulation of basic knowledge and skills
- assimilation, integration and productive creativity only come after this firm foundation.
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