A Comparison of Asian and American Education System

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Many educators, presented with the task of comparing the Asian education system with the American one, often realize that the available information on this subject lacks conceptual integrity. That is while pointing out the principles, upon which the studying process in America and Asia is based, as being often diametrically opposite, most authors fail at providing readers with the insight on why these principles would differ so much, in the first place. In this paper, we will aim at exposing the difference between Asian (Hong Kong) and American education systems as such that reflect the particularities of Asian and Euro-American mentalities, because we believe that it is namely people’s racially predetermined existential modes, which define how they proceed with their studies.

Even a brief analysis of literature, which discusses the Asian education system, reveals rigidity, formalism, and academic intolerance, as this system’s most characteristic features. In his article “Education Pressure Cooker: Social Darwinism and Status Ranking in Asia”, David Ho says: “The Hong Kong educational system functions as a huge machine, sorting students into institutions ranked hierarchically and warping their development in the process. Schools vie against one another in fierce competition, striving to rank among the top, or at least not at the bottom” (Ho 87). Even in Hong Kong’s elementary schools, the studying emphasis is being firmly placed on “hard sciences” – math and geometry. By the time children reach 12 years old, they are expected to know how to solve complex mathematical equations. Moreover, they are expected to act in a uniform manner, with even the slightest indications of misbehavior, on their part, being addressed in a rather severe manner. Throughout the course of their studies, students’ IQ rate is being continuously tested – once they score lower them expected of them, it results in “dumb” students being kicked out of school. At the same time, this does not cause schools and colleges to experience students shortage, given Hong Kong’s immense population of 8 million, concentrated in a comparatively small geographic area.

However, whatever elitist and intolerant Hong Kong’s system of education might be, it actually yields practical results that are best referred to as truly amazing.

According to Tatu Vanhanen and Richard Lynn’s book “IQ and the Wealth of Nations”, people’s average IQ rate (107) in Hong Kong is the highest in the whole world. This partially explains the reason why graduates of Hong Kong eight universities never experience problems while looking for a job in Western countries. In its turn, this can be thought of as indirect evidence of the fact that no matter how “intolerant” Hong Kong’s system of education might be, it is much more effective than the American one. The reason for this is very simple – Hong Kong’s system of education is being attuned to the racial mentality of Chinese students. While people in Western countries are being brainwashed to believe that citizens’ racial affiliation does not affect their chances of attaining social prominence, through education, Chinese people know that such a point of view is nothing but an intellectual by-product of White people’s existential decadence. Even though the particularities of the educational process in Hong Kong, appear as being unusually harsh, by Western standards, Chinese educators have a different perspective on this issue. What they do in Hong Kong’s academic curriculum is facilitating Chinese students’ natural studying inclinations. In his article “Cultures of Reason”, Bruce Bower provides us with insight on Chinese mentality as being inheritably different from the mentality of White people: “In a variety of reasoning tasks, East Asians take a “holistic” approach. They make little use of categories and formal logic and instead focus on relations among objects and the context in which they interact. These populations also tend to accept or even search for contradictory perspectives on the same issue. In short, they direct their attention into a complex, conflict-strewn environment… People in the United States, on the other hand, adopt an “analytic” perspective. They look for the traits of objects while largely ignoring their context” (Bower 57). Chinese educators are well aware of what represents Chinese students’ academic potential. They know that these students have a hard time while dealing with academic assignments that would require them to exploit their sense of creativeness, which is why they do not force these types of assignments upon them. Instead, Chinese students are being expected to simply memorize large amounts of factual information, without having to understand this information’s actual essence. And, as practice shows, such an educational approach is very effective, because, within a context of post-industrial living, it is the degree of individual’s intellectual conformity, which directly corresponds to his or her chances of achieving financial prosperity. This is the reason why graduates of Hong Kong colleges and universities are known as utterly effective professionals, who nevertheless, are quite incapable of setting up their professional goals on their own. In her article “China Vs. America? Learning Strategies in the 21st Century”, Anna Greenspan is making a good point when she refers to the lack of initiative, as an existential pitfall of all Asians in general: “A lack of flexibility and inability of individuals to take the initiative affects the entire service sector, paralyzing employees in China at every level… Passing even trivial problems up the management hierarchy is their way of dealing with life’s challenges” (Greenspan 2008). However, the author does not seem to understand that existential passivity, encouraged by the Asian educational system, is not necessarily a bad thing for Chinese and for other Asians. These people do not need to be very creative, because they are the supreme masters of copying and imitating – it is namely their talent at copying Western products (often without having obtained any licenses whatsoever), which had brought financial prosperity into China in the first place. Nowadays, it is estimated that 65% of all industrial products in the world are now being manufactured in China. However, only a fraction of these products features a genuine Chinese design. Therefore, we can say that the fundamental difference between America’s and Chinese (Hong Kong’s) systems of education is the fact that the latter takes full advantage of Asians’ natural studying inclinations, whereas the American educational system is based on the wishful thinking of promoters of neo-Liberal agenda, which explains its apparent ineffectiveness. In the next part of this paper, we will explore this thesis even further.

As we have mentioned earlier, it is namely the racial homogeneity of Hong Kong’s society, which allows Chinese educators to set their priorities straight. This, however, could not possibly be the case with American educators, simply because American society prides itself on being multicultural. In its turn, the concept of multiculturalism is based on assumption that citizens’ ethnic affiliation could not possibly affect their chances of succeeding in academia, even though that empirical evidence points out something entirely opposite. Therefore, unlike teachers in Hong Kong, their American counterparts are not interested in boosting students’ intellectual powers, but in concealing the apparent inability of representatives of certain ethnic minorities to study with the same degree of dedication as White or Asian students. For example, the dropout rate among Hispanic students in America’s high schools accounts for 45%. The environmental factors can hardly be blamed for such a state of affairs. Hispanic and Black students simply have a lower ability to operate with highly abstract categories (lower IQ). Such lower ability is genetically predetermined, as it has been proven in the previously mentioned book “IQ and the Wealth of Nations”. However, admitting this fact would undermine the most fundamental tenets of the doctrine of multiculturalism. This is why; the academic standards in America’s system of education continue to be lowered, simply to maintain an illusion of “intellectual equality” among students that belong to different ethnicities. In his article “Can Multicultural Education Change What Counts as Cultural Capital?”, Michael Olneck admits that the purpose of modern multicultural education in the U.S. is to discredit the very notion of intellectual finesse, by referring to it as “euro-centric”, and therefore “evil”: “Multicultural education aims to resist and to displace Euro-American cultural domination of schooling” (Olneck 317).

As it appears, the promoters of “multicultural education” in America have already been able to achieve their goal – America’s corporate employers now prefer hiring professionals from abroad, as opposed to graduates of American universities and colleges. For example, 60% of Microsoft software designers are naturalized citizens from Eastern European countries and Russia. The fact that many of them used to be hackers with extensive criminal records did not prevent them from being able to immigrate to America, because they possess highly technical knowledge that has an objective value, even though that it is very doubtful whether they understand what the concept of “celebration of diversity” stands for.

Many Asian teachers that had visited the U.S., end up referring to America’s educational system in terms of “institutionalized insanity” – only in America, high school graduates that have a hard time pointing out at the U.S. on the world’s map, can enter universities (affirmative action). Only in America, students in many public high schools are being searched on possession of guns and drugs, before they can be allowed to walk into a classroom. Only in America, teachers that give low grades to representatives of racial minorities can be accused of “racism” and consequentially fired. Therefore, the situation with America’s system of education, in its current state, is best described as a plain and simple disaster. For this, we have to thank our own “progressive” politicians, whose promotion of politically correct notions, in the field of education, had effectively reduced many American high schools into kindergartens, where students are being encouraged to do just about anything, except studying. Thus, we can conclude that, while being compared with Hong Kong’s educational system, the American system clearly falls behind, in terms of effectiveness, simply because it is based on the pseudo-scientific doctrine of people’s equality. As time goes by, more and more American students chose in favor of pursuing the careers of “fashion designers”, “actors”, “aestheticians”, “public relation managers”, “experts on racial relation” etc., as opposed to pursuing socially beneficial careers of engineers, mathematicians, doctors or architects. And, as a logical result, many of them have a hard time, while looking for employment, after obtaining university or college diplomas. The video “A Vision of Students Today”, which is available on YouTube, reveals American students’ existential concerns as having very little to do with their actual studies – “1 billion people make less than $1 a day”, “What can we do about addressing world’s inequality?”. This is because American students are being encouraged to discuss “how to make a world better place” as their educational priority, as opposed to Hong Kong’s student’s priority of gaining excellence in empirical sciences. In its turn, this can only result in lowering educational standards in America’s academic curriculum, which now can be observed on a nationwide scale.

It is important to understand that the current problems of America’s educational system derive out of the fact that the hawks of neo-Liberalism, have been enjoying almost a complete monopoly in the country’s academia, during the course of the last thirty years. Therefore, only very naïve people can believe that the key to increasing the effectiveness of the educational process in America should be sought within the educational system only. Ever since the concept of multiculturalism has gained official status in America, this country had been set on the path of turning into a Third World slum (in order to verify the validity of this statement, one only has to venture into ethnic ghettos, which now exist in every large American city). The fact that more and more American students continue to lose their taste for studies simply reflects it. Today’s America is simply following the footsteps of the corrupt Roman Empire, during the time of its decline – as recent sociological surveys indicate, the majority of Americans are simply incapable of paying attention to the news of social or political importance, unless they feel that this news somehow relates to entertainment. This can be explained by the fact that they have been deprived of spiritual qualities, which allowed their ancestors to built and maintain civilization in the New World. Therefore, before we even discuss what would represent the best way of encouraging students to pay close attention to studies, as their foremost priority, the very concept of education in this country must be adjusted to the notion of sanity. In its turn, this would require the disposal of America’s modern political establishment in its entirety, which of course, is quite impossible. Nevertheless, we can come up with a hypothetical outline for “Lesson on Drawing Historical Parallels”

Ancient History
The objective of this lesson is to provide students with insight on what caused Rome to be sacked by Gothic barbarians in the 5th century A.D. and to instill them with an understanding of racial mixing as counterproductive social practice.
In order for students to be able to relate to the lesson’s subject emotionally, the portraits of Roman Emperors Octavian, Caligula, Adrian, Constantine, and Romulus Augustus will be displayed on the classroom’s walls.
The materials to be used are as follows: Edward Gibbon’s “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, Otto Weininger’s “Sex and Character”, Stephen Benko’s “Pagan Rome and the Early Christians”. Also, the watching of slideshow “Changing Racial Characteristics of Ancient Romans” will be made available, upon students’ request.
The lesson will begin with 20 minutes long lecture on how practicing racial mixing had deprived Romans of their existential idealism. During the lecture’s course, students will be shown the portraits of mentioned Roman Emperors, so that they would be able to confirm the validity of the lecture’s thesis to themselves, by observing the varying degrees of anthropological degeneracy, found in these Emperors’ facial features. The lecture will be followed by 20 minutes long group discussion, during the course of which, students will be encouraged to express their opinion on the issue. After having participated in the discussion, students will be asked to define historical parallels between the history of the Roman Empire and the history of the U.S.
The only rule, to which students will be subjected, while in the classroom, is expressing their opinions in an orderly manner and substantiating their opinions logically.
The out-of-class exercises will include two field trips: one into a ghetto area and another one into the nearest mental institution so that students would be able to verify the link between people’s existential inadequacy and the particularities of their biological makeup.

References

Bower, Bruce “Cultures of Reason”. Science News, 157.4 (2000): 56-58.

Greenspan, Anna “China Vs. America? Learning Strategies in the 21st Century”. 2008. The Globalist. Web.

Ho, David “Education Pressure Cooker: Social Darwinism and Status Ranking in Asia”. 2001. Global Asia. East Asia Foundation. Web.

Olneck, Michael “Can Multicultural Education Change What Counts as Cultural Capital?” American Educational Research Journal. 37.2 (2000): 317-348.

Rubenstein, Edwin “Hispanic High School Disaster – The Evidence Mounts”. 2003. Vdare.Com. Web.

Vanhanen, Tatu and Lynn, Richard. IQ and the Wealth of Nations. London: Praeger Publishers, 2002.

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A Comparison of Asian and American Education System

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