Why the Free Market Works
By taking a couple of courses in economic theory, we could immunize ourselves from nonsense spouted by politicians and pundits, but in the meantime check out Professor John R. Lott's "Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works."
His first chapter is "Are You Being Ripped Off?" It addresses myths about predation where it's sometimes alleged that corporations will charge below-cost prices to bankrupt their rivals and then charge unconscionable prices. There's little or no evidence that corporations would choose predation as strategy; there are too many pitfalls. A major one is that in order to recoup losses from charging low prices to bankrupt rivals, the predator would later have to charge higher-than-normal prices. That would attract new rivals who might have purchased the bankrupt assets of the predator's prey and be able to undercut the predator's prices.
A far more successful means to monopoly wealth is for businesses to enlist the aid of congressmen to form a collusion. Classic examples are the dairy industry, which uses the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Federal Milk Marketing Orders to set statutory minimum prices, or the Gasoline Retailers Association using state law to do the same or the sugar industry using Congress to establish quotas on foreign sugar imports.
Professor Lott's chapter "Government as Nirvana" highlights examples of government predation. When the U.S. Postal Service raised the price of first-class mail in 1999, it reduced its price for domestic overnight express mail from $15 to $13.70, even though it was losing money at $15. The Postal Service was facing stiff competition from FedEx and UPS overnight services and wanted to keep its market share.
During the 1980s, private meteorology firms saw a chance to make money by selling television stations specialized forecasts that weren't provided by the National Weather Service. The National Weather Service started providing television stations the same services for free, thus driving private forecasting companies out of business.
Predation is observed in higher education. UCLA is both Lott's and my alma mater. It spends $40,000 per student but charges $6,522 tuition for in-state students. Such below-cost pricing gives public universities a significant competitive advantage over private universities. State universities have acquired many formerly private universities after driving, or threatening to drive, them out of business. Lott gives examples of George Mason University School of Law, University of Buffalo, University of Houston and University of Pittsburgh. In the case of University of Buffalo, the State University of New York reportedly threatened to open a public university across the street unless the University of Buffalo joined the state system.
The U.S. Department of Justice would go after a private business using similar predatory practices of intimidating its rivals and selling goods and services below cost. The U.S. Department of Commerce sanctions foreign companies accused of selling goods in the U.S. below cost with anti-dumping duties. If selling goods below cost is seen as unfair in the international arena, why is it not when it's done by government entities?
Lott's "Crime and Punishment" chapter has a lot of interesting tidbits. It starts off stating a fundamental principle of economics: the higher the cost of something, the less people will do of it. To demonstrate the generality of this principle, Lott says that when the number of referees were increased from two to three in the Atlantic Coast Basketball Conference, fouls fell by 34 percent; fouling became more costly. The American League has more hit batsmen than the National League, but the difference only appeared after 1973 when the American League removed its pitchers from the batting lineup in favor of designated hitters. Not being afraid of being hit themselves, American League pitchers threw more bean balls; bean balls became cheaper. The same principle applies to the U.S. crime rate that fell after the death penalty was reinstated, more prisons were built and concealed-weapon carry laws were enacted. The higher the cost of a crime, the less people will do of it.
Random Thoughts: August 2008
Random thoughts on the passing scene:
If you took all the fraud out of politics, there might not be a lot left.
The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied. They want villains to hate and heroes to cheer-- and they don't want explanations that do not give them that.
Has anyone noticed Yankee pitcher Joba Chamberlain's facial resemblance to Babe Ruth? If he can be anywhere near as good a pitcher as Ruth was, he will have a great career. The Babe could have made the Hall of Fame if he had remained a pitcher and never hit a home run. He still holds a couple of pitching records.
Although you can block unwanted phone calls from commercial sources, you cannot block automated phone calls from politicians, which will be inundating us this election year. Apparently the courts think that the right of "free speech" includes the right to impose that speech on an unwilling audience. Maybe we need a new Constitutional Amendment, guaranteeing "freedom from speech."
One of the problems with successfully dealing with threats is that people start believing that there is no threat. That is where we are, seven years after 9/11, so that reminding people of terrorist dangers can be dismissed as "the politics of fear" by Barack Obama, who has a rhetorical answer for everything.
There are countries in Europe that would love to have their unemployment rate fall to the 5.7 percent unemployment rate to which ours has risen. Yet those who seem to want us to imitate European economic and social policies never seem to want to consider the actual consequences of those policies. "Unacceptable" is one of the big weasel words of our time-- almost always said when the person who says it has no intention of doing anything, and so is accepting what is called "unacceptable."
Republicans won big, running as Republicans, in 2004. But once they took control of Congress, they started acting like Democrats and lost big. There is a lesson in that somewhere but whether Republicans will learn it is another story entirely.
When we hear about rent control or gun control, we may think about rent or guns but the word that really matters is "control." That is what the political left is all about, as you can see by the incessant creation of new restrictions in places where they are strongly entrenched in power, such as San Francisco or New York.
Now that the Senator with the furthest left voting record in the Senate and the Senator with the third furthest left voting are the Democrats' nominees for President and Vice President, there will be great expressions of indignation over being "negative" if anyone dares call them "liberals." Actually, leftists would be more accurate.
G.K Chesterton said: "I defy anybody to say what are the rights of a citizen, if they do not include the control of his own diet in relation to his own health." But California citizens and citizens of New York City have tamely accepted their politicians' decisions to forbid restaurants to serve certain foods, even when citizens want those foods.
The recent death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn should make us recall what he said when he was awarded the Nobel Prize: "The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles." What would a Barack Obama presidency mean, other than more concessions and broader smiles, while Iran goes nuclear?
Right after liberal Democrats, the most dangerous politicians are country club Republicans.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says that what he admired about FDR was his willingness to experiment in order to help the economy. That experimentation helped prolong the Great Depression, since people tend to hang onto their money when the government creates uncertainty by constantly changing the rules.
At one time, it was said "The truth will make you free." Today, there seem to be those who think that rhetoric and hype will make you free. It might even be called the audacity of hype.
Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Democrats opened their four-day national convention in Denver with calls for unity and prime- time spotlights on Michelle Obama and an ailing elder of the party, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama and his aides worked to tamp down continuing questions about whether the wounds from his months-long fight with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton have healed.
``There are going to be some of Senator Clinton's supporters we are going to have to work hard to persuade to come on board,'' Obama told reporters in Moline, Illinois, after wrapping a campaign stop in neighboring Iowa. He said he is ``absolutely convinced'' that Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, ``understand the stakes.''
Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain kept up his attacks on Obama with advertisements focused on the Illinois senator's choice of Delaware Senator Joseph Biden as his running mate and lingering resentments among Clinton supporters.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who serves as the chairwoman of the convention, began her remarks to the convention this evening with a salute to Hillary Clinton. ``Our party and our country has been strengthened by her candidacy,'' she said.
Showcase for Michelle
Tonight is a showcase for Michelle Obama, the candidate's wife, who will give her first address to a broad audience of voters. The speech, which comes at the end of tonight's events, is intended to build the Obama family biography.
Michelle Obama tested the stage this morning in the Pepsi Center, the sports arena where the convention is taking place. The address will be a family affair. Marian Robinson, Michelle's mother, will narrate a video about the next potential first family, and Michelle will be introduced by her brother, Craig, head basketball coach at Oregon State University in Corvallis.
While the 15-minute speech will be peppered with anecdotes about the couple and their two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, it will mostly be a humanizing portrait of the candidate, who has endured criticism from Republicans, and even some Democrats, for appearing aloof and elitist.
`Extraordinary President'
``I come here tonight as a sister, blessed with a brother who is my mentor, my protector and my lifelong friend,'' she will say, according to excerpts of her remarks. ``I come here as a wife who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president.''
Obama, 47, planned to watch his wife speak at the home of a family in the Kansas City area. He told reporters that his primary goal for the convention is to ``make the choice between myself and John McCain as clear as possible.''
``I want people to come away saying, `whether I'm voting for the guy or against the guy, I know what he stands for,''' Obama said.
The early part of the evening highlighted longtime leaders of the party. Former President Jimmy Carter appeared on the stage, without speaking, after a video he filmed on the devastation Hurricane Katrina caused on the Gulf Coast in 2005.
Residents of New Orleans were stranded on rooftops and the federal government drew criticism for responding too slowly under Republican President George W. Bush. Obama wouldn't let that happen again, Carter said in the video.
Kennedy
The night also featured a tribute to Kennedy, the unofficial patriarch of the Democratic Party who is suffering from brain cancer. The Democrats paid homage to Kennedy's 45- year career, the third-longest in U.S. Senate history, and watched a videotape featuring the 76-year-old lawmaker filmed at his home in Hyannisport, Massachusetts.
His niece, Caroline Kennedy, introduced the video and linked Obama to ``Uncle Teddy's'' legacy as a standard-bearer of progressive ideals.
``Their stories are very different, but they share a commitment to the timeless American ideals of justice and fairness, service and sacrifice, faith and family,'' said Kennedy, the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy. ``Leaders like them come along rarely. But once or twice in a lifetime, they come along just when we need them the most.''
Following the video, Edward Kennedy took the stage. He told the audience that electing Obama was a chance to ``break the gridlock and guarantee that every American North, South, East and West, young and old, will have decent quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege.''
``The dream lives on,'' Kennedy said.
McCain, 71, an Arizona senator, spent his day raising money in California and getting ready to appear tonight on NBC's ``Tonight Show'' with Jay Leno.
His campaign released a new ad featuring a female Clinton supporter from Wisconsin pledging to support McCain in the November election. That followed another ad keyed on Clinton, entitled ``Passed Over,'' which suggested that Obama picked Biden over Clinton because he was stung by her criticism during the primary campaign. Clinton, who addresses the Democratic convention tomorrow night, decried both.
Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) -- The euro fell for a third day against the dollar on speculation a report today will show business confidence in Germany slumped to a three-year low.
The currency also declined for a second day versus the yen on concern credit-market losses and slowing exports will stop the European Central Bank from raising interest rates this year. The yen rose against the Australian and New Zealand dollars as a drop in Asian stocks prompted investors to pare holdings of higher-yielding assets funded in the Japanese currency.
``There's a good chance for the euro to go lower,'' said Tsutomu Soma, a bond and currency dealer at Okasan Securities Co. in Tokyo. ``People are giving up on bets for euro gains as the chance of an ECB rate hike fades away.''
The euro fell to $1.4722 at 11:34 a.m. in Tokyo from $1.4754 late yesterday in New York. It reached $1.4631 on Aug. 19, the lowest since Feb. 20. The euro weakened to 161.11 yen from 161.26, near the three-month low of 160.20 yen reached on Aug. 21. The dollar bought 109.43 yen from 109.30.
The pound declined to $1.8480 from $1.8532 yesterday, when it touched a two-year low of $1.8406. Data this week may show U.K. home prices fell by the most in almost two decades.
The yen climbed to 94.10 per Australian dollar from 95.34 late yesterday in Asia. It also advanced 1.8 percent to 76.37 versus the New Zealand dollar.
Investors reduced so-called carry trades after the MSCI Asia Pacific Index lost 1.4 percent on concern widening losses at financial firms will slow global growth. Topeka, Kansas-based Columbian Bank& Trust Co. became the ninth U.S. bank to collapse this year.
Carry Trades
In carry trades, investors get funds in a country with low borrowing costs and buy assets where returns are higher. Japan's target lending rate of 0.5 percent compares with 7.25 percent in Australia and 8 percent in New Zealand. The risk is that exchange rate moves erode those profits.
The Ifo institute's German business confidence index will decline to 97.2 in August, the lowest level since September 2005, from 97.5 the previous month, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
The euro has lost 8 percent versus the dollar since touching an all-time high of $1.6038 on July 15, sliding as a report showed the European economy shrank in the second quarter and crude oil dropped more than 20 percent from a record $147.27 a barrel set last month.
Rate Bets
Traders reduced bets the ECB will raise its 4.25 percent benchmark rate this year. The implied yield on the Euribor futures contract expiring in December was 5.045 percent, down from 5.065 percent at the start of the month.
`There's good reason why the dollar is rallying, particularly against the euro,'' Kathy Lien, director of research at GFT Forex, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. ``Once we get more speculation about the possibility of an ECB rate cut, that could push the euro-dollar a little lower.''
Gains in the dollar may be limited by speculation new U.S. home sales declined. Purchases of new houses dropped 0.9 percent to an annual rate of 525,000 in July from 530,000 in June, according to a Bloomberg News survey of economists. New home sales fell to a 17-year low of 513,000 in March. The Commerce Department releases the data at 10 a.m. today in Washington.
No Improvement
``There's not going to be any improvement in the data out of the U.S. and the hope is that it doesn't get any worse than it already is,'' said Mitul Kotecha, global head of currency strategy at Calyon in Hong Kong. ``We could see the dollar being restrained in the short term.''
The pound approached a two-year low against the dollar on speculation the housing market will slow the economy, increasing the likelihood the Bank of England will lower its 5 percent benchmark rate.
U.K. home prices slid by 9.6 percent in August from a year earlier, the most since at least 1991, according to a Bloomberg survey. Nationwide Building Society, Britain's fourth-biggest mortgage lender, will release the data on Aug. 28.
The implied yield on the March short-sterling futures contract fell to 5.265 percent yesterday from 5.5 percent at the start of the month.
``The pound comes under continued selling pressure,'' analysts led by Hans-Guenter Redeker, the London-based global head of currency strategy at BNP Paribas SA, France's biggest bank, wrote in a research note yesterday. ``The continued deterioration in the housing market is expected to keep the growth outlook gloomy. Speculation of an early BoE rate cut will continue to develop.''
Investors should sell the pound with a target of $1.82 and an automatic buy order at $1.88 to limit losses, according to the report.
Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Asian stocks fell, led by financial companies, as speculation American International Group Inc. will post a loss reignited concern widening credit writedowns will dent earnings growth.
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. declined 3 percent in Tokyo, leading banks lower, after Credit Suisse Group said AIG may lose $2.41 billion this quarter on mortgage-related writedowns. Suncorp-Metway Ltd., Australia's third-largest general insurer, slumped 3.9 percent following a drop in second- half net income. A profit decline also sent shares of Mirvac Group, an Australian property trust, lower by 3.5 percent.
``With more bad news emerging on U.S. financial shares, it's natural to see the market here take a hit as well,'' Mamoru Shimode, Tokyo-based chief equity strategist at Deutsche Bank AG, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index lost 1.3 percent to 122.07 as of 10:04 a.m. in Tokyo, set for its largest drop in a week and almost erasing yesterday's 1.7 percent advance. Financial companies accounted for a third of the measure's retreat.
Banks, securities companies and property firms have led a 23 percent decline in the Asian index this year as the world's largest financial companies posted writedowns and credit losses of more than $500 billion and inflation soared.
Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average slipped 1.3 percent to 12,710.82. IHI Corp., the nation's No. 3 maker of heavy machinery, fell after saying it won't pay a dividend in the first half because of a loss. Indexes retreated in other Asian markets.
AIG Plunges
U.S. stocks dropped yesterday, sending the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to its largest loss in a month. AIG tumbled to a 13- year low, while Washington Mutual Inc. led other financial companies lower after Columbian Bank & Trust Co. became the ninth U.S. bank to collapse this year.
Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan's biggest bank by market value, dropped 25 yen to 806. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., the second-largest, lost 3.5 percent to 641,000 yen. Macquarie Group Ltd., Australia's No. 1 securities firm, fell 3.3 percent to A$46.
A gauge of financial companies on MSCI's Asian index has dropped 28 percent this year, the worst performance among the broader measure's 10 industry groups.
AIG tumbled in New York trading after Credit Suisse analyst Thomas Gallagher predicted AIG will lose 86 cents a share in the third quarter, compared with an earlier forecast of a 13-cent profit. ``Recent deterioration'' in debt holdings may cause losses in the firm's credit-default swaps, Gallagher wrote yesterday in a research note.
Suncorp-Metway, Mirvac
Suncorp-Metway slumped 50 cents to A$12.30, on course for its largest drop since Aug. 1, after saying net income tumbled 68 percent in the six months ended June 30 as storms increased and falling financial markets cut investment income. Chief Executive Officer John Mulcahy forecast flat profit growth for its managed funds unit in 2009, and said bad debts may increase as the economy loses momentum.
Mirvac slipped 10 cents to A$2.73. The property trust, which stopped redemptions for three mortgage funds after investors sought to pull out of property assets amid the global credit crisis, said today full-year profit fell 69 percent. Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Group declined 2.4 percent to 62 Australian cents after the owner of ports and energy transmission lines in Australia posted a full-year loss.
IHI retreated 2 percent to 193 yen. The company, which had said it will pay a dividend of 4 yen for the full year, will forgo its dividend payment for the first half. It had forecast in May a loss of 4 billion yen ($36.4 million) in the first half.
SBI Holdings Inc., a venture capital company, plunged 10 percent to 19,280 yen, the biggest retreat on MSCI's Asian index. It has decided not to pay a dividend for the six months ending Sept. 30, SBI said. The company paid an interim dividend of 600 yen a year earlier.
| China Vs. America? Learning Strategies in the 21st Century | |
By Anna Greenspan | |
Western students enjoy a seemingly relaxed educational experience. This, however, is not the case for students in Asia, who face crushing workloads and are often very disciplined. In the first part of her Globalist Paper, Shanghai-based Anna Greenspan compares Western and Eastern education in light of the current educational reform debate in China.
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At four o’clock, the kids emerge — all neatly dressed in blue school uniforms with red neck scarves and book bags so heavy some use suitcase wheels to carry them. One day soon, my son will be among them.
Though the city’s expat suburbs are filled with international schools offering curricula from Britain, Germany, Singapore and the United States, an increasing number of foreigners — like us — are determined to send their children to local schools.
Adapting to Chinese diligence
The decision is partly based on an inability — or unwillingness — to spend thousands of dollars in tuition fees, especially given the suspicion that local schools are better anyway. After all, what more could one want from a basic education than a strong grounding in language, math and science, all subjects in which Asian schools famously excel.
Our main concern is the ability of our son — and indeed the whole family — to adapt to the strict diligence that is expected of the Chinese. Apprehension increases when talking to local friends.
A driven youngster
When Rousseau Chen, a Shanghainese father, wanted to take his 14-year-old daughter Shelly on holiday, for example, she refused.
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She told him that the vacation might disrupt her studies. Shelly Chen is at the top of the class at the Shanghai foreign language school, one of the city’s best middle schools. Already near fluent in English, she is studying German and ranks among the highest in her grade in physics.
Her goal is to get a full scholarship to Harvard to study biochemistry. It is not only Western expatriates that grow anxious when hearing about students like Shelly.
Trailing Behind
Throughout North America, politicians, parents and pundits worry that the industriousness and discipline of kids in the East are leaving relatively relaxed Westerners trailing behind.
Though there is some debate surrounding the statistics, it is widely believed that North America is failing to produce sufficient graduates in sciences and engineering.
Still less controversy attends the observation that math scores throughout the West rank well below those of most Asian countries.
Emphasis shift
As a result, there is a deepening consensus that, in order to maintain its competitive edge,
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Instead, it has to shift towards a more strict, disciplined teaching environment that math and science, in particular, seem to demand.
This shift can be discerned even in Canada, where there are no college entrance exams, and where, standardized testing, memorization and rote learning have long been frowned upon.
Increasing demand for reform
One of my own earliest memories from Canadian kindergarten is being reprimanded for copying my friend’s drawing of a house. Nevertheless, there is a mounting chorus complaining that the prominence given to creativity cheats students out of a proper education.
People like science teacher Sumitra Rajagopalan are entreating Canadian educators to adopt a more Asian pedagogical philosophy based on “constant repetition, recitation, grilling and drilling”. In the United States, the rise of China and India is putting even more emphasis on the demand for education reform.
Tougher standards
New policies — such as No Child Left Behind — have led to an increased stress on standardized testing.
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In the 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush mentioned the threat of Asia’s giants specifically when introducing his “Competitive Initiative”, a program that promises substantial funds for the teaching of basic math and science.
In North Carolina, a friend’s son who is in the [X] grade and learning his multiplication table must do 100 exercises in four minutes before the school’s principal before he can pass the grade — an exercise that seems positively Chinese.
More like the Americans
But in an ironic twist, there is an increasing desire to make education more American in China. Many now agree that the lack of creativity in China’s education system will soon prove a major stumbling block in the country’s continuing development.
Government and business leaders worry about a derivative, manufacturing-based economy, which is unable to innovate core technology, lacks major research and development projects — and lags far behind in creative sectors like marketing and design.
Lack of flexibility
A lack of flexibility and inability of individuals to take the initiative affects the entire service sector, paralyzing employees at every level.
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Arriving late for the set breakfast at a five-star hotel in Chengdu, for example, I, along with a group of other foreigners, found that the coffee had run out. Our request for more threw the staff into crisis.
It was not until a series of meetings had been held and permission sought from senior management that a fresh pot could be brewed.
Passing even trivial problems up the management hierarchy in this way is simply impossible in a sophisticated post-industrial society.
Quality education
Few doubt that for China to climb the value chain and evolve beyond its current position as factory to the world, it must start to inculcate types of creative thinking that cannot be taught through rote learning and memorization. In order to foster these missing capabilities, China has implemented a set of reforms known as “quality education”.
This policy, which aims to teach creativity and emphasize character development, has resulted in certain concrete shifts including changes to textbooks, an increased emphasis on oral skills in language learning — and various attempts to get teachers to encourage student participation.
Chinese skepticism
Most Chinese, however, are skeptical that anything other than surface transformation is taking place. As they are quick to point out, the underlying issue — an education system rooted in standardized tests — has yet to be altered.
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China has a long history of standardized tests, beginning with the ancient imperial exams initiated during the Sui Dynasty (581-618). Used for over 1,300 years as a method of selecting government officials, some suggest that official exams should be counted as one of China’s major ancient inventions alongside gunpowder, paper money, printing and the compass.
Today, national tests determine which elementary, high school and university a student will attend. They are still the single most important factor in deciding one’s general career path.
The testing period
The testing period — especially of the college entrance exams — is a major event throughout the Chinese mainland. In Shanghai, government regulation has established “green protection zones” around exam sites where construction projects are suspended and traffic is redirected.
Taxi companies offer thousands of cars to be reserved in advance. Oral test questions are played out over the radio — and there are even stories of late students receiving police escorts to get them to the exams on time.
However crucial in the cities, the nationalized tests are even more important in the countryside, where they are seen as the only way to escape an otherwise dismal social fate.
Concerns over the strenuous testing system
The weight given to testing is regularly criticized throughout Chinese society. Newspapers and magazines commonly report on the extreme pressure of the general exams.
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Stories range from concern over the suicide rate to bizarre anecdotes like the one about girls in Guangdong province who are said to have bought up mass quantities of contraceptive pills and then taken them during the test period — in the hope of warding off the ill effects of their menstrual cycle.
Despite these concerns, there is little real impetus for the testing system to change. In China, standardized tests are seen as the only way to guarantee meritocracy and ensure fairness. The Canadian method of granting university admission on the basis of interviews and grade point averages is seen as far too subjective.
In China, many believe that in a system like this the best schools, universities and jobs would go only to those with the right guanxii (connections).
Finding the best system
Like the Japanese — who experimented with and then abandoned a policy of “loose education” because of its negative effects on standardized exams — the Chinese say they value creative learning, but will not accept any educational reform which sacrifices test scores.
China’s emphasis on memorization and rote learning has significant consequences. Students are taught that all questions have but one right answer and there is little room for debate and original thought.
A shocking capacity for memorization
Subjects like history and politics are focused solely on dates and names. Even the Chinese language exam, which requires students to write essays, allocates grades according to how well one can quote classical texts and idioms.
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As a result, Chinese students develop what appears to many Westerners as a shocking capacity for memorization. Many are able to recite entire articles and there are stories of some who are capable of committing the entire dictionary to memory.
Even more terrifying for parents of young children like me, some preschoolers have already learned hundreds of Chinese characters and many are trained to reel off Tang poetry. Chinese students thus regularly achieve near-perfect scores on the standardized exams of Europe and America.
Ill-prepared for Western education
Yet, when they go abroad many of these students find they are ill-prepared for Western education. Chinese students with phenomenal TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores are often incapable of taking part in simple English conversation.
At least one graduate school in one of America’s most elite universities has now become wary of accepting students from China for this reason.
Difficulty going abroad
Assumed skills such as in-class participation, seminar presentations and individual research projects, common practice in elementary schools in North America, are largely unheard of in the Chinese classroom — even in most universities.
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Moreover, the stress on original thinking and strict rules regarding plagiarism often seem baffling to students from China. An American teacher working in Yunnan province tells of encountering this cultural divide when two students handed in the exact same essay for an in-class exam.
After questioning them, it became clear that both students had memorized the same passages in preparation for the test.
Reflections of cultural differences
When the teacher tried to explain that she wanted work that originated with the student they replied with incomprehension: If I memorize it, why isn’t it my own? This difference in attitude speaks to the more profound issues underlying the differences in Eastern and Western education.
If North Americans are to pick up the math and science skills common amongst Chinese or if Chinese are to develop the creativity of North Americans, it is not enough to implement change in the classroom. It is the culture at large that needs to be transformed.
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