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.