Over-testing and inequality are problems for both the East and the West
Launching his new $8 million dollar education prize today, Chinese internet millionaire, Charles Yidan, claimed that "no matter whether people come from a rich or developing country, in the east or the west, they are talking about similar concerns," namely educational inequality and the pressure and focus on testing in core subjects.
It seems like a good time to reflect on a fascinating Battle of Ideas debate I chaired a couple of years ago which is now available on youtube. 'Lessons from Asia' raised concerns about 'educational tourism', the lack of specialist maths teachers in Britain and debated how useful international benchmark tests such as PISA really are?
Professor Lianghuo Fan of Southampton University, raised the point that in China almost all secondary maths teachers have degrees in mathematics and even primary school maths teachers are specialists. In the UK, only 40% of our secondary maths teachers hold degrees in maths and many primary teachers will qualify with just a C in GCSE mathematics.
Director of TES pro, Michael Shaw, warned against the dangers of education policy tourism, claiming that cutting and pasting educational techniques doesn't work because of the cultural differences in each country. Munira Mirza, however, argued that we should be looking at how an educational system can change a culture. She suggested that stereotypically 'Asian' cultural values of obedience and teacher authority come from the education system. Mirza also pointed out that the high performance of students whose material circumstances are far worse than disadvantaged pupils in Britain calls for us to re-examine explanations for the attainment gap in UK schools.
Maths teacher and blogger, Andrew Old, made the point that exaggerations of youth suicide rates in high-performing Asian countries are used to dismiss the promotion of traditional teaching methods based on obedience and teacher authority in the UK. He pointed out that Canada and New Zealand actually have higher rates of suicide amongst student populations.
The final speaker, Austin Williams, director of the Future Cities Project and Associate Professor of architecture at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University told us an anecdote of how architecture students submit primary school drawings in their application portfolio because they haven't had time to do anything creative since then whilst preparing for the Gao Kao exam. He suggested that Asian educational systems seem so alluring to us because of a collapse of our own moral and political values. He warned against politicians who hope that, in borrowing Chinese teaching methods, we can reclaim lost social values such as a youthful acceptance of hard work and a respect for teachers. Borrowing Asian educational methods might also mean accepting more interference from the state in areas such as parenting.
To see how the rest of the debate panned out, you can watch the full video below.
