Opinion | What's wrong with Chinese education?

By Philip Yeung, university teacher

PKY480@gmail.com

Statistically speaking, China has made a great leap forward in education. Thirty years ago, only 3.4% of its high school leavers graduated to a university education. Today, that figure is nudging 60%. This is a stupendous achievement but it comes with a major flaw: an exam-driven education has left graduates mismatched with the real needs of the marketplace. A university degree used to be a ticket to a cushy job and a life of relative security, viewed by parents as a sound investment. Not anymore. These days, degree inflation has left many graduates, even those from elite universities, scrambling for jobs. Post-pandemic, the pickings are slim.

Employers are disillusioned. They complain that many degree-holders lack marketable skills. No doubt, the resurrection of the College Entrance Exams, or GaoKao, is a vital step in revitalizing education, levelling the playing field for students from diverse economic backgrounds. But rote learning is the curse, in which education becomes "the filling of a bucket, not the lighting of a fire". It produces high-scorers with low ability. It is the all-too-familiar continuation of China's Imperial Examinations which stifled the growth of the scientific mind for more than a millennium.

These darlings of the examination hall are mostly one-dimensional creatures. They are winners in the Hong Kong public service exams. Often, those who outscore their peers academically turn out to be ill-prepared officials. Their triumphs in examinations do not translate into wisdom in governance. This is a major flaw in Hong Kong civil service selection procedure. Academic top-scorers are typically low on humility, compassion and crisis management. Fresh out of college, they are not ready for the complexity of a fast-changing society. As civil servants, they live in a bubble, knowing little about how the other half lives. Out of touch and out of sight, some of these untested SAR officials simply don't cut it. Far better to have them go through the baptism of fire after exposure to the hardships of the underclass.

GaoKao may be an escape route from poverty. But the GaoKao mindset is deadly for China's development as a smart society. Take the teaching of English, a mandatory subject for university admission, its boring method is backward and low-level, essentially just rigid memorization of grammar rules and vocabulary words. That explains why even after 20 years of non-stop studying, few Chinese students have mastered this international language. Einstein famously said that the most precious human gift is imagination---the ability to imagine things or solutions that are not yet in existence. I imagine, therefore I am---a far cry from the way Chinese students robotically regurgitate the correct answers.

In America, things are somewhat different. Despite its dysfunctionality, the US society somehow provides a "creative space" for academic non-conformists such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs. In America, these school failures turn out to be era-defining, trail-blazing change-makers. In China, academic failures are inevitably social rejects.

Headlines splash that Elon Musk is investing US$100 million to establish a primary and a secondary school, and eventually a university, focused on teaching STEM subjects. Interestingly, it will do away with examinations entirely. Instead, it will use simulations, case studies, design labs and projects to incubate creative talents. This totally upends the conventional curriculum and pedagogy widely practiced in America as well as China.

Meanwhile, in Fujian, the Chinese glass tycoon Cao Dewang has launched his privately funded Fuyao University of Science and Technology. Its future trademark is an application-orientation plus a market-orientation.

On a grander scale, and making a much bigger splash is the publicly-funded Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's sister campus in Guangzhou, the world's first institution of higher learning to boldly experiment with a cross-disciplinary academic structure and learning mode aimed at the education of innovative thinkers and doers--people who can bridge the gap between research and application. HKUST-GZ breathes innovation, as much as innovation breathes HKUST-GZ.

Outside of STEM, creativity is also at the core of liberal arts education, of which the United International College is the nation's first joint-venture model. A nation that worships hard sciences cannot afford to neglect soft skills in cross-cultural communication, lest it puts all its innovation eggs in one technological basket. Yes, while China cannot live without examinations, it should use Generative AI to redesign tests to drive high-level and innovative learning and unleash the power of the creative individual. It's not how hard you study, but how smart you learn. Time to kick the habit of teaching dead knowledge, an utter absurdity in the age of innovation. I leave the rest to your imagination.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

Read more articles by Philip Yeung:

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