China's Super Kids

nytimes ^ | November 22, 2002 | NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

[dennisw]

China's Super Kids

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

HANGHAI

Quick, what's 6 + 8 - 7 + 6 + 5?

If you knew instantaneously that the answer is 18, without having to pause even a second, then congratulations! You're as bright as a Shanghai kindergarten student — calculating in his or her third language.

I've met the future, and it is these kids. Americans who come to China tend to be most dazzled by glittering new skyscrapers like the 1,380-foot Jin Mao Tower, but the most awesome aspect of China's modernization is the education that children are getting in the big cities. And the long-run competitive challenge we Americans face from China will have less to do with its skylines, army or industry than with its Super Kids, like Tony Xu.

Tony's real name is Xu Jun, but all the children entering the New Century Kindergarten that he attends get English names as well. Six-year-old Tony's first languages are Mandarin Chinese and Shanghainese, but even in English he rattled off answers to equations faster than I could. It was embarrassing when I posed my own question to him, 10 + 5 - 1 - 4 + 5, and he answered 15 before I could tell if he was right. I want a refund on my college tuition.

Parents pay about $2,000, a huge sum here, to send a child to a year of such a private kindergarten. But since urban Chinese families now have only one child each, no expense is too great for one's "little emperor." Throughout China, first-rate private schools are popping up, as the Chinese saying goes, like bamboo shoots after a spring rain.

Of course Chinese education is still hobbled by rural mud-brick schools that are in a shambles, by peasants who pull their daughters out of school, by third-rate universities. But China's great strength is that in the cities, it increasingly is not a Communist country or a socialist country, but simply an education country.

When I lived in China I represented Harvard in interviewing high school students applying for admission, and it was a humbling experience. The SAT isn't offered in China, so instead the kids take the G.R.E. — meant for people applying to graduate school — and still score in the top percentiles. And while many of my Chinese friends worry that the system works children too hard and costs them their childhood, the brightest kids are not automatons; many are serious enthusiasts of art, music, poetry or, these days, the basketball plays of Yao Ming.

The other day I visited one of Shanghai's best high schools, the No. 2 Secondary School Attached to East China Normal University. American students who are proud to have earned a perfect score of twin 800's on the SAT should meet the 17-year-old student here who last year got a perfect score of three 800's on the G.R.E.

He Xiaowen, the principal, showed off 14 gold medals that students have earned in the international math and science Olympics. When I asked if she had any problems with students smoking or drinking, she looked so scandalized that I might have been sent to the principal's office, if I hadn't already been there.

One reason for Chinese educational success emerges from cross-cultural surveys. Americans say that good pupils do well because they're smarter. Chinese say that good students do well because they work harder.

A growing body of evidence suggests that Chinese students do well academically partly because their parents set very high benchmarks, which the children then absorb. Chinese parents demand a great deal, American parents somewhat less, and in each case the students meet expectations.

The result is apparent at No. 2 Secondary School. The students live in dormitories, going home only on weekends, and they're mostly studying from 6:30 a.m. until lights-out at 11 p.m. On Saturdays they attend tutoring classes from 9:40 to 5:10, and on Sundays they do what one girl, Gong Lan, described as six hours of "self-assigned homework."

She explained: "This is extra work to improve ourselves. I read outside books to improve my ability in any subject I feel weak in."

Chinese students may not have a lot of fun, and may lag in subjects in which some American students excel, such as sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. But these kids know their calculus and are driven by a work ethic and thirst for education that make them indomitable. With them in the pipeline and little kindergartners like Tony Xu behind them, China may eventually lead the world again.

[aruanan]

You mean I could have skipped all those perspective and rendering classes? NOW you tell me!

I should have said that I was speaking about art instruction in the primary grades. And, no, you shouldn't have skipped those classes or else you'd be producing crap like most of the art students at the University of Chicago.

[beckett]

Teaching by rote has it's good points...

I agree dennis. Nominative, genitive, dative, ablative, accusative, locative, vocative. Or how 'bout, alpha beta gamma delta epsilon zeta eta theta iota kappa lambda mu nu xi omicron pi rho sigma tau upsilon phi chi psi omega. All learned by rote and now permanently imbedded in my head, to come pouring out unbidden at times, along with multiplication tables up the kazoo and countless other items besides. Rote is an important way to learn. I hold dear much that I memorized.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

Aristotle

I don't want to set myself up to sound like I'm defending the NEA/ATF cabal or its methods. But I do think that we often overdetermine the effects of educational methods and underdetermine the motivation of the student. The point I want to make is that we have marvelously resourceful and industrious students in this country who will stand us in good stead in the future. They are easily the equal of the Chinese and our educational infrastructure gives them what they need to succeed, despite the sometimes exaggerated but nevertheless troubling depradations of the boomer faddists of the NEA/AFT.

[SandfleaCSC]

Yet our scores are sadly lacking at all levels and we are generally behind 5 to 15 other nations.

Why?

One reason is that we force ALL students to take tests such as the SAT and ACT, even if they have no plans to attend college or even graduate high school. Many just blow the tests on purpose or don't posses the mentality to make heads or tails of it. One thing that is a positive about our failing public school system is that EVERY child is given ample opportunity to go as far as they want to with their education.

[RLK]

And over here only 30% of 18-24 year olds can find New Jersey on a map. We are doomed.

[dennisw]

And that's why (repetitive) prayers said out loud are more effective.

[Jimmyclyde]

Quick, what's 6 + 8 - 7 + 6 + 5? If you knew instantaneously that the answer is 18, without having to pause even a second, then congratulations! You're as bright as a Shanghai kindergarten student — calculating in his or her third language.

Wow...he can do simple math in his head?

Genius,...pure Genius.

On the other hand, if I was going to get bamboo stuffed up my backside if I got the wrong answer....

Well I'd be a human supercomputer too.

[tortoise]

That was investigated in the Terman study. Turns out you are dead wrong. They accomplish more, have better health, stabler marriages.

I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing. The kids who grow up cramming endless quantities of regimented learning into their brains often don't come out right as adults. I'm talking about the kids who learn five languages, do calculus, etc at a young age. The ones that get off that treadmill by the time they are teenagers DO turn out okay; I'm talking the ones whose parents keep them on that trajectory all the way into college.

I know lots of both of those types. Kids who were strongly encouraged to learn by their parents but weren't part of a regimented program of "genius building" turn out just fine and perform well above average. Many people like these Chinese children that do nothing but learn by the book 24/7 that become basket cases.

I was one of these child prodigies, reading at an adult level and doing advanced mathematics before I was even in kindergarten. Fortunately for me, I "left the reservation" sometime around high school and pretty much dismissed the "genius fast track". In my experience, it has always been the child geniuses who DIDN'T stay with the program that have done very well in life. Virtually all the truly brilliant people I know who have accomplished great things were mediocre students in high school and college even though they were unquestionably brilliant when they were young.

A lot of parents of very smart children fail to see that it is hard to produce useful brilliance in the absence of freedom and free time. The brain becomes optimized for learning from books and little more.

[Hot Tabasco]

For what its worth, my nephew went to an exclusive private school in the Detroit area and was the valdictorian of his class. All of his classes in his junior and senior year were advanced classes and he excelled in all of them. On a national level he received awards in Chemistry, Latin and Spanish all this while playing hockey and his team won the class B state championship and he was named as an all state defenseman. His school played the state class A champions twice and beat them both times!

He then went on to Williams College in Mass. and graduated at the top of his class while playing hockey for them also.

Is this kid a genius? Nope! To his credit, he placed education above everything else while in high school. I remember him distinctly staying up till 2 and 3 in the morning studying. What drove him to do this? He wanted to be the best and by gosh he did.

After graduating from Williams in the top of his class, he applied to U. of M. Med school but was denied entry that year because all the openings were going to aliens and individuals who already had masters degrees.

So what did he do? He went to Germany and played semi-pro hockey for a year and then came back to U.of M. the following year to enter their medical program. He graduated 12th in his class! He is now in Pittsburgh training in Thorasic surgery. You don't know how proud I am of this humble kid! As a side note, he was good enough to play NHL......

[Bogey780]

Now watch the kids fac glaze over when you ask him what it means to be free....

[patton]

You know, raising kids with 150+ IQ's is tough. My solution - they are going to leave home with blackbelts, guns, straight teeth, and knowing how to ride a horse. After that, they have to fend for themselves.

[Leto]

A coupel of points, these kids may burn out, we'll wait and see. the bigger problem that will cause long term problems for the Chinese is demographics. The goverment limiting the # of children couples can have combined with abortion, the curtural bias towards male children is creating a demographic time bomb that is going to devastate the country.

I don't think China is the future unless central planning is thrown out.

[Fishing-guy]

Nothing to worry about. All these super kids are going to graduate schools in US, and then they will all want to become US citizens and contribute to this country. This has always being the secret to US's success. This country always attracts the brightest and most driven people from all over the world.

Seriously, you always worry about the burn-out factor for these children. If rote memory alone is the secret to building a super nation, then Japan should have become the sole superpower long ago. Instead they have a bunch of company men, and no leaders to lead them out of their current dire economic situation.

[hadnuf]

"Parents pay about $2,000, a huge sum here, to send a child to a year of such a private kindergarten. But since urban Chinese families now have only one child each, no expense is too great for one's "little emperor." Throughout China, first-rate private schools are popping up, as the Chinese saying goes, like bamboo shoots after a spring rain."

Can't imagine the gov telling me how many children I can have, but suspect the successes reported in this story might be in some part due to state forced, but focused parenting.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Quick, what's 6 + 8 - 7 + 6 + 5? If you knew instantaneously that the answer is 18,

[Moonman62]

Wow...he can do simple math in his head? Genius,...pure Genius.

Yep, my computer is faster than that kid, and noone had to give up their childhood to get a quick answer.

[Moonman62]

Doing simple things by rote in one's head is not education just because it can be measured by some arbitrary standard.

Einstein hated the rote methods used on him in Germany. Even when he was attending university, his professors thought he was lazy and would amount to nothing, though I've heard he turned out OK.

[Sonny M]

These children need to learn the beauty of progressive thinking, that its more important do develop self-esteem then to earn it, yes yes, there grades are good, but what if instead of learning to do equations exact, they learned to feel them out the right way, and if math was made fun by being politically incorrect, we could even give tests where everyone gets a hundred, the kids with the best grades could learn the beauty of grade redistribution, and we could take points from the top and give them to those at the bottom so everyone has the same grade, even better what if we just gave everyone good grades and then everyone would be happy. I hope Hitlery goes over there and explains this to them it would be great for us.

[mlmr]

But the IQ distribution is not the same. Asians score on average 15 point higher than Caucasians on standard IQ tests.

[mlmr]

YOur are right. Depending on the study. My memeory was focused on the 14 point spatial I Q difference found in one study. Other studies point to a 3 to 6 point overall difference.