Does China Need High Test Scores?

An international standardized test, known as PISA, was held recently in many countries in order to survey the education attainment of students in math, science and reading. The top scorers of the chart, which seems to surprise many western educators, are students from Shanghai, China. According to the results of the test, Shanghai's 15-year-old students score higher in math, science and reading than developed countries such as Japan, Germany and USA.

How do I interpret this test score? Am I proud of it that my home country once again leads the world in another area? I am not sure.

So let's first acknowledge that what these top scores say about chinese students and some more general points about education in China. The stellar scores very likely come directly from the hard-working of the students taken the exam. Data shows that a chinese student in high school on average spend much more time studying than their western counterparts. Chinese parents value the importance of education to the point of obsession. Education is also highly valued culturally in the general society in China as well. Teachers are rewarded with rising wages and more respected social status. All of the above reflect the vision shared by both parents and students that knowledge is the key to succeed in the future competition.

Fair enough. But just don't forget one thing. Chinese students are trained to score in test. That's their jobs as good students. Being the only objective and fair way to select students for meritocratic education, examination has been the central part of the life of chinese students ever since kindergartens. You take exams to enter good elementary schools, then middle schools, then high schools, then colleges and even for jobs. So they really shouldn't be surprised with the top scores those shanghai students achieve. Let alone that this kind of "international competition" is another good chance to demonstrate how "successful" education in China has become, just like everything else. Imagine how hard the Shanghai authority would work to make sure that will happen.

So what do the high test scores achieved by these Shanghai students say about their abilities? First of all, in order to score highly in a standardized test, one need to memorize a lot of knowledge, and being able to quickly come up with solution to problems that are routine to them. That means, a high scorer in China's education system performs very well in solving problems which already have established answers, and is able to faithfully repeat what other people tell them to do. This kind of education can generate workers with high conformity, such as clerks and factory workers, or even low level technical staffs who can perform some advanced but established tasks.

What this kind of education can not generate, at least in large quantity, are innovators, entrepreneurs or leaders (IEL), who are exactly what China needs for its future.

There are 5 reasons why this test-oriented education can not generate IEL:

1. IEL requires independent, critical thinking, where you need to provide arguments to justify your answers, rather than tailoring your thinking to fit others' answers;
2. IEL requires extrapolating existing knowledge to look into uncharted areas, where no established answers are provided;
3. Instead of geting the same answers as others, IEL rewards arriving at a unique answer, and somehow making it work;
4. IEL, or pretty much all real world problem solving involves project-oriented solution: first identify a problem, and then divide it into smaller, more solvable sub-problems. Solutions to all the sub-problems are eventually optimized and linked into the solution of the whole project. However, a project is too big to put into a standardized test;
5. Innovations, especially in science and technology, require more than memorizing textbook knowledge and mechanically plugging numbers into equations. To truly innovate, one needs to understand the "spirit" of an existing knowledge, i.e. what problem that the knowledge is trying to solve? What are the assumptions behind the knowledge? What are the limitations? Unfortunately, challenging knowledge is not what a standardized test can evaluate.

Therefore, there is still a big gap between what the current, test-oriented education system in China, and what the future China's economy needs. High test-scorers are still a long way from the future innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders. The gap is not new to educators in China. But the fundamental question is, as long as the education resource is still behind the growing population who needs it, there's still a need to select students based on some sort of figures of merits. How can we make innovations, creativity and critical thinking a priority in education, while still maintain a measurable and transparent way to select students?

Using iPod Touch as an Air Mouse

Ever since we've got our HDTV, it's been tempting to hook it up with a PC/Mac and turn it into a digital entertainment center. That's exactly what we did: a simple VGA cable outputs the video to the TV. Now all I need is an air mouse to remote-control the PC while sitting comfortably on the couch.

While an air mouse typically costs $60-80 bucks, there's a cheap or even free solution, if you have an iPod touch or iPhone. Mobile Mouse is an application allowing you to turn your iPod into an Air Mouse. There is a free version and a paid version. The free version does a good job in providing a touch pad, a scroll bar and a keyboard. You can control the PC very well with just the free version. The paid version, which I got, adds the accelerometer mode, with which you can move the mouse pointer by moving the iPod in the air like a Wii remote. The motion-sensing is not as smooth as Wii though. The paid version also has additional modes, such as web mode, music mode and the ability to switch apps. It's a great app to have. Now we can surf the web, watch PPStream from the couch with our iPod Touch!

Steven Chu Going Downhill

Asked by the radio host of Chicago Public Radio, "Steven, how do you see going from all science to all politics?". Steven Chu, the Secretary of Department of Energy replies: "Well, I grew up in an environment where, becoming a professor in a University like Stanford is as high as you can get. From there then becoming the Dean of the department, and running a national lab is all like going downhill to me."

The German Model

Germany is certainly an advanced economy that has strong high-tech export. And that's one of the reasons why it survived the global financial crisis while many other European countries didn't. Economist recently has a piece showing some of the traits shared by many mid-sized but successful German firms.

While we are all familiar with names like Adidas, Simens, BMW and etc., the corner stone of Germany's economy is a strong and healthy body of midsized companies, or mittelstand in German. 90% of these mittelstands operate in the business-to-business market, rather than selling directly to end customers. Most of them are also located in countryside, lowering the operation cost significantly. Their products mostly focus on market niches, where German's excellence in engineering, especially in mechanical engineering, could be well capitalized. Dorma makes doors and all things door-related. Tente specialises in castors for hospital beds. Rational makes ovens for professional kitchens. This strategy helps them avoid head-to-head competition with global giants (“Don’t dance where the elephants play” is a favourite Mittelstand slogan). It has also helped them excel at what they do.

I myself also happen to work for a German company in U.S., so I've learned a bit or two Germany's corporate culture as well. What strike me the most in German companies are three things:

1. German workers are incredibly focused on the jobs that they are given, and patiently become highly specialized at them. I've known some PhD-level colleagues in Germany do only one or two things in their field for years. This kind of stubborn persistence is hardly tolerable in U.S., but finds itself respectable in Germany.

2. German companies are among the top of the world in terms of respecting knowledge and experience at work. Technological expertise takes a long time to accumulate, just as a good engineer is hard to come by. Germany knows it well, so they treat knowledge-workers in a very respectful way. Science and technology are among the most secure, and respected jobs in German society. Doctors are proud to put their PhD titles even on their home doors.

3. Germany has a highly efficient and pragmatic apprenticeship system. Not everybody needs to go the universities for a successful career. In fact, if you have decided that solving abstract problems is not as interesting as building a beautiful automobile, you could opt for vocational schools in the earlier stage of the secondary education, and still find yourself very demanded in the job market. What's more striking is, students from those vocational schools see as broad a career avenue as those who graduate from a university, if not broader. Companies recruit them as apprentices. They learn from senior workers a certain technique until they perfect at it and become masters themselves. That's how a Zeiss lense is made, as I know.

Is China Overeducated?

As you all know, I pay a lot of attention to matters about education, especially about education in China. New York Times today has an opinion piece about the China's college education. The discussion revolves around a fact that while the average salary of the low-end, migrant workers is on the rise, the salary and employment perspective for highly educated college graduates are stagnated. Apparently, the shortage of low-skilled factory workers and the over-supply of knowledge workers are co-existing in China.

I've been noticing this issue for a while myself. The eye-catching, double-digit growth of China's economy does not seem to generate enough high-end job opportunities. There are many possible reasons behind the problem, as the commentators in the NYTimes put it. The fundamental reason behind this problem, in my opinion, lies in the lack of a sizable knowledge-based economy in China.

The magical rise of China's economy, however the nationalism folks beautify it, is due to the immense supply of low cost, low-skilled factory workers pressing a button, making low-tech, low-margin products for oversea markets. It just happens to be that the volume is so big that makes China's economy seems to be something. But if you calculate the productivity of an average Chinese worker (the value created per worker per hour), it's not much different from our other friends in the developing world. You might argue that, there are a lot of white-collar elites working in skyscrapers in Beijing, Shanghai and etc.. Doesn't it means that China has an advanced economy as well? Well, yes and no. The white-collar jobs in the major cities are mostly from multinationals, which are creating value for foreign companies. Secondly, the amount of white-collar jobs created, even counting multinationals, is still far behind the number of new college graduates each year. Sooner or later, China's job market will be filled with an over-educated and underemployed workforce.

Parents from China must be puzzled watching their only child, who was given the best possible resources affordable by the families, makes only a few hundred bucks more than a migrant worker after they graduate from colleges. It's simple supply and demand relationship. As the standard of living in China rises gradually, less young people are willing to work a factory job. But China is still the biggest factory of the world. So the demand for factory workers increases. Because China is still enjoying the low-cost, short-term profiting from low-end manufacturing, thanks to the still relatively large supply of cheap labors, little motivation is felt by the private sector to invest in more advanced, more knowledge-intensive products and services. Therefore, there aren't that many jobs in China that really require a college degree to accomplish.

In order to escalate, or unleash the productivity of China's workers, China needs to upgrade its economy to require more knowledge, and hence, more people with knowledge. The recent rise in factory salary, and the appreciation in RMB value, could be driving force towards that goal. Some might argue that, the Chinese government is investing heavily in research and development, and there are high-speed rail-ways being built. What are you talking about that China doesn't have a knowledge-based economy. Well, short answer is, not enough. The majority of the government investment went to academic institutions which don't hire many. Little went to the private sectors. In fact, there are not enough private companies that have research divisions in China that would form a critical mass of hiring force for college-educated people. The reasons why China's private sector under-investing in research and development are due to the lack of expertise and most importantly lack of an intellectual properties protection system. When it's easier and more rewarding to copy other people's products than inventing your own with little risk, the choice is obvious. In one of my past writings, I talked about how to improve the innovation environment for China's private sector. There's also argument that the lack of innovation in China is due to the stifling political climate, such as the lack of free press, free speech, and true academic freedom. I agree that they are all fundamental to innovation. But by putting a strong IP legal system in place, I believe that even a communist China can innovate as well, at least to some degree.

Finally, I don't agree with some arguments that China's education systems are generating useless college graduates with obsolete textbook knowledge, and therefore they are under-prepared for a creative and innovative economy. I've known that the Chinese people have been one of the most adaptive people on earth. If the economy needs them to innovate, trust me, they will.

Finally Giving In

I have been a long-time fighter against Apple's victimizing marketing campaign. Remember that when everyone around was flocking to get a Mac or an iPod, I was the one who expressed the aloft indifference, and I go, "I don't have one of those. My good old Creative MP3 player only costs $30 bucks, and it's got FM radio."

Life has its interesting twist. This Thanksgiving, I've got my first iPod from my dear wife, the iPod Touch 4th Generation. Yes, I betrayed my own anti-iPod ideology, and joined the billions of others in this beauty movement. 80% of why I fell for the iPod touch is purely for its aesthetic form factor. Yep, I am that superficial. I truly believe that there are still many other similar devices out there that are functionally just fine, if not better, but they just don't look right. It's kind of like, when you date a super-model, you don't care about her intellectual side. There are still things that I took for granted, like playing regular video files such as avi, mpeg and etc., that are rendered to be quite difficult on the iPod touch, and we all know why. Apple won't make it easy for you to live without the iTunes store.

So immediately I loaded my pod with a bunch of apps, all free of course. Here are just a short list of what I've downloaded so far.

News: NYTimes, Economist, BBC News, NPR News
Social: Skype, QQ, Facebook
Reference: Dictionary.com, Wikipedia Mobile
Media: Todou.com, Pandora Radio
E-readers: iBooks, Stanza
Utility: Free WiFi Locator, Unit Convertor
Productivity: Evernote
Entertainment: Urbanspoon, Showtimes

Haven't got any games yet, but already found the apps store addictive. The next question is, how long will this enthusiasm last? Sure I will get bored one day, or by that time comes, some other cooler devices come out. But before that happens, I might feel compulsive to post some silly tricks or tips that I tinker on the new toy. So bear with me.

Europe vs China

Agricultural food production is the critical step towards civilization and modernization. The huge social, technological and military differences between Euroasia and other continents, namely Africa, America and Asian Pacific Islands, has proven this point. There're still questions, however, remained unanswered solely with the differential development of agriculture. Why China, one of the first agriculture centers in the world, a country that had enjoyed enormous technological advantages up to at least 1500AD, has failed to ride on its momentum, and to lead the world in industrial revolution and modernization? Clearly, the answer to this question lies beyond simple geographical and climatory factors that differentiated Euroasia from the rest of the world. In fact, the great contrast between the rise of Europe and the fall of China, is a vivid example of how political and social structures influence the development of a society.

After the Qin dynamsty (220 BC), the Middle kingdom has been unified and integrated as one of the largest states in the world, not only politically but also culturally. The unification of China, which the Chinese people have been proud of, also brought negative side effects. The highly unified and centralized China have stifled diversity and innovations. One evidence is the fact that China did not develop ocean-borne ships, while Europe did, and later on used them to conquer the world. Around 14-15th century AD, China was at the peak of its economic development, producing almost a third of the world GDP. The then kings and queens in China did not see the need to explore outside their own country, therefore discouraging all the ship-building programs. If China was a fragmented, or decentralized political entity, what the kings and queens thought might not necessarily apply to local officials. Ships would have been built if someone saw the need of it. This is exactly what happened in Europe, which was an extremely fragmented political landscape. Columbus had lobbied Italy, England, France for supporting his plan of voyage, and eventually gained support from the queen of Spain. The beauty of a fragmented and decentralized political structure lies in the tolerance for diversity in the system. When one party demonizes an idea, another party might find it interesting.

The consequences of the unified, centralized political structure in China, vs the fragmented, decentralized Europe, go far beyond ship-building. One critical consequence is the origin and growth of capitalism. Both China and Europe have witnessed similar embryonic birth of capitalism around 14-15th century AD. The idea of being self-sustaining and even prospering by engaging in manufacturing or trading did not attract the political leaders in China. In fact, it's been viewed as a threat to the status quo. In the unified China, whatever the kings didn't like wouldn't survive. In contrast, capitalism found its niche in the fragmented Europe, and thrived. The successful development and spread of capitalism in Europe acted as an enormous force to push Europe for more resources and bigger markets. It also drove and encouraged the development of science and technology, which were stifled in the arrogant, ancient China. Technological development tends to be an auto-catalyzed progress. Advancement in one technology enables and facilitates many other technologies to be developed. As a consequence, once Europe took a head start in science and technology, the gap between Europe and China would only widen.

The unified and centralized political structure in China has helped stifled diversity and innovations in the country. In contrast, the fragmented, decentralized Europe had became the crescent for capitalism, which drives colonization, technological development and eventually, rapid industrial revolution. From this standpoint, it's not hard to understand why some Europeans don't like the idea of European Union. It's the political fragmentation that makes Europe the Europe.

Blackberry Tips

BlackBerry Tips and Tricks

In The Message List

(Some of these work in tasks, memos, and appointments also)

1. ALT-i: show only incoming mail
2. ALT-o: show only outgoing mail (messages you have sent - i.e. checkmark icon)
3. ALT-p: show phone log messages
4. ALT-s: show SMS messages
5. ALT-v: show VoiceMail messages

Navigating

1. t: go to top of message listing
2. b: go to end/bottom of message listing
3. backspace: close message listing and return to home screen (ribbon)
4. spacebar: pagedown
5. cap + spacebar: pageup

While In A Message

1. enter or spacebar: scroll down a page/screen at a time
2. ALT-enter or spacebar: scroll back a page/screen at a time
3. b: scroll to end of page
4. t: scroll to top of page
5. u: jump to closest unread message
6. n: jump to next message
7. p: jump to previous message

Hold down the half moon ALT key -AND- the CAP key at the same time, then the letter 'h'. This brings up the "Help Me!" screen that lists version, app version, pin, imei, uptime, signal strength, batterylevel, file free, and file total.

Guns, Germs and Steel - Or Why Europe Ended Dominating the World

Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel is a Pulitzer Price winning book on evolution of the human society, and it's a lot of fun to read. Jared attempted to answer one question, why and how Europe has achieved such predominant advantages on technological and military developments, and ended up conquering the rest of the world. I have always been curious of how the world becomes the way it is nowadays. So this is a summary of the main thesis in the book based on my reading.

The immediate factors that help Europe to dominate other continents, namely Africa, America and Asian-Pacific region, are their advanced weapons, the bacteria and diseases that Europeans carried to the New World, and the advanced industrial technologies, most notably metallurgy. There is no question that these three factors would put Europe in a great advantage over those who don't possess them. The real question, therefore, is why Europe, not Pacific Islanders, say, acquires the three factors? Many arguments come down to the difference between Europeans and the counter-parties that they conquered, such as intellectual ability, open-mindedness for innovations or risk-taking ability. Jared argued that the difference in the people play only a minimal role, if any. However, the environment in which the people inhabit, make the critical difference.

The origin and development of agriculture has play a major role in differentiating a society from it's hunter-gatherer counterpart. Being able to grow crops and raise cattle allows a steadier production of food than hunting-gathering. Surplus of food frees men up to do things other than food production, such as manufacturing, military, religions and politics. Agriculture also supports a larger population in a higher density. A higher population density has very important effects: first, more innovations would be possible because of the higher density of inventors; second, epidemic diseases occur and evolve more rampantly in a more crowded society, because they spread faster among people. Overall, the argument is very straight-forward that whoever has a head-start on agricultural food production, who will also lead in technological, social and even biological developments.

According to history, agriculture was developed in the Euroasia continent much earlier than Africa, America and Asian-Pacific islands. The primary reason is that, Euroasia happens to have the wild predecessors of some of the most popular crops and domesticated animals, while other continents are lack of these resources due to geographical and climatory conditions. In fact, the earliest food production centers were western Asia (known as the Fertile Crescent) and China.

Why Agriculture spread at a much faster rate across the Euroasia continent than the other continents? That's because of the geographical difference between these continents. If we open a world map, we can see that the Euroasia continent spans along an east-west axis, while Africa and America both span along north-south axes. An east-west orientation removes major climatory barriers which tend to retard the diffusion of food, animals and human. On the other hand, food production was confined to where it started by geographical and climatory barriers in America and Africa.

In a word, geographical and climatory conditions have given the Euroasia continent a head-start in agricultural food production, and hence accelerated their departure from the primitive, less-efficient hunter-gatherer life style. This lead has eventually equipped Euroasia with more complex social structure, more advanced technology and therefore significant military advantage, which help them conquering the rest of the world in the recent history. But why Europe, not other countries in the Euroasia, such as China, dominated the world, not vice verse? We will answer that question in my next blog entry.

Shell Script to Terminate Apps

I was learning unix commands and regular expression on the mac sitting on office desk, and did a little exercise: a shell script that terminates a running application given the name of the app.

The shell script goes like this:

#!/bin/sh

ps auxc | grep -i "$1" | awk "{print $2}" | xargs kill

That was it. Now let me explain.

The line is composed of four individual commands piped together with the piping operator "|".

The first command, "ps auxc" lists all the running processes. The output of this command is piped into the second command, "grep -i "$1"", which takes the first argument of the script, i.e. the name of the Application that you want to terminate, and returns the line that contains that name. The third command scans that line, and returns the second field in the line, which is the process ID of the application to be terminated. Finally, the last command, "xargs kill" takes the process ID generated above as an argument, and passes it to the termination program "kill", to terminate the application.

Back

Being a blog is kind of pathetic. Number one, nobody reads it; number two, the author himself neglects it. I decided to revitalize the blog after a long hibernation. There're some changes in my life. But mostly, Yali and I moved to Boston and we have a new member in our family: our dog Max! Welcome back to my blog.