The Reality of China’s Education

Excerpt from here: Students top global rankings – at a cost School students in Shanghai have proven themselves the top of the class in science, maths and reading, but that has not stopped parents from pouring scorn and ridicule on the Chinese education system. “What you learned in childhood has nothing to do with your work in the future,” says Gao Chunying, a primary school teacher with a 16-year-old son at high school. “Our kids can’t create, and they are turning into idiots.” Advertisement: Story continues below The deficiencies of China’s education system are possibly the No. 1 gripe among the country’s middle-class parents. That is why they are signing their children up for international schools and sending them abroad in their tens of thousands. Employers are complaining that China’s high-scoring children do not necessarily make for well-adjusted employees. “Proportionately, is there a lot of wasted and misdirected talent here? I’m afraid there is,” says David Kelly, who runs the China Policy consultancy and is also associate professor of politics at the University of Technology, Sydney.