Learning styles in China and the US
Thought you might be interested in this Op-Ed piece that appeared in the New York Times today!
MJB
The Learning Virtues
·
Jin Li
grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. When the madness was over, the
Chinese awoke to discover that far from overleaping the West, they were
“economically destitute and culturally barren.” This inspired an arduous
catch-up campaign. Students were recruited to learn what the West had to offer.
Josh Haner/The New York Times
Li was one of the students. In university, she abandoned
Confucian values, which were then blamed for Chinese backwardness, and embraced
German culture. In her book, “Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West,”
she writes that Chinese students at that time were aflame — excited by the
sudden openness and the desire to catch up.
Li wound up marrying an American, moved to the States and
became a teacher. She was stunned. American high school students had great
facilities but didn’t seem much interested in learning. They giggled in class
and goofed around.
This contrast between the Chinese superstudent and the
American slacker could be described with the usual tired stereotypes. The
Chinese are robots who unimaginatively memorize facts to score well on tests.
The Americans are spoiled brats who love TV but don’t know how to work. But Li
wasn’t satisfied with those clichés. She has spent her career, first at Harvard
and now at Brown, trying to understand how Asians and Westerners think about
learning.
The simplest way to summarize her findings is that
Westerners tend to define learning cognitively while Asians tend to define it
morally. Westerners tend to see learning as something people do in order to
understand and master the external world. Asians tend to see learning as an
arduous process they undertake in order to cultivate virtues inside the self.
You can look at the slogans on university crests to get a
glimpse of the difference. Western mottos emphasize knowledge acquisition.
Harvard’s motto is “Truth.” Yale’s is “Light and truth.” The University of
Chicago’s is “Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life
enriched.”
Chinese universities usually take Confucian sayings that
emphasize personal elevation. Tsinghua’s motto is “Strengthen self ceaselessly
and cultivate virtue to nurture the world.” Nanjing’s motto is “Be sincere and
hold high aspirations, learn diligently and practice earnestly.”
When Li asked Americans to randomly talk about learning
they used words like: thinking, school, brain, discovery, understand and
information. Chinese, on the other hand, tended to use phrases common in their
culture: learn assiduously, study as if thirsting or hungering, be diligent in
one’s learning.
In the Western understanding, students come to school
with levels of innate intelligence and curiosity. Teachers try to further
arouse that curiosity in specific subjects. There’s a lot of active learning —
going on field trips, building things. There’s great emphasis on questioning
authority, critical inquiry and sharing ideas in classroom discussion.
In the Chinese understanding, there’s less emphasis on
innate curiosity or even on specific subject matter. Instead, the learning
process itself is the crucial thing. The idea is to perfect the learning
virtues in order to become, ultimately, a sage, which is equally a moral and
intellectual state. These virtues include: sincerity (an authentic commitment
to the task) as well as diligence, perseverance, concentration and respect for
teachers.
In Chinese culture, the heroic scholar may possess less
innate intelligence but triumphs over hardship. Li cites the story of the
scholar who tied his hair to a ceiling beam so he could study through the
night. Every time his head dropped from fatigue, the yank of his hair kept him
awake.
Li argues that Westerners emphasize the Aha moment of
sudden insight, while Chinese are more likely to emphasize the arduous
accumulation of understanding. American high school students tease nerds, while
there is no such concept in the Chinese vocabulary. Western schools want
students to be proud of their achievements, while the Chinese emphasize that
humility enables self-examination. Western students often work harder after you
praise them, while Asian students sometimes work harder after you criticize
them.
These cultures are surprisingly enduring, Li notes, even
with all the cross-pollination that goes on in the world today. Each has its
advantages. I’m mostly struck by the way the intellectual and moral impulses
are fused in the Chinese culture and separated in the West.
It’s easy to see historically why this came about.
Hellenic culture emphasized skeptical scientific inquiry. With us, religion and
science have often been at odds. We’re a diverse society, so it’s easier to
teach our common academic standards in the classroom and relegate our diverse
moralities to the privacy of the home.
I’d
just note that cultures that do fuse the academic and the moral, like
Confucianism or Jewish Torah study, produce these awesome motivation
explosions. It might be possible to champion other moral/academic codes to
boost motivation in places where it is absent.
Select Responses
o
Grant Wiggins
o
Hopewell nj
NYT Pick
Having spent time teaching teachers in China on how to teach for
understanding and critical thinking, I can say that Brooks has written a very
superficial piece here. Yes, the teachers (and their students) work extraordinarily
hard: I worked with teachers 10 hours a day, in a building with no heat in
winter in Beijing - and then when we went home, the teachers stayed to de-brief
for 2 hours. This went on for 2 weeks - during the teachers' vacation. Yet,
numerous times, in the middle of busy interactive workshops, clumps of teachers
were sound asleep - and we were told that this was very common in schools and
universities by other teachers. The core motives here are a funny mix of
diligence for diligence' sake and status, not 'learning'.
A revealing story about how far they have to go: I began my workshop by quoting
from Confucius on learning, and made some interpretive comments about what he
was saying. There was an audible buzz in the room. I asked my translator what
was up. He said: we never interpret Confucius. You just revealed in 1 minute
the difference between east and west. 2nd story: 2 people deeply thanked me at
the end for responding to their Qs - they were stunned that I had no script and
was responsive to their ideas and wanted to have us all discuss them - unheard
of in their schooling.
NYT Pick
While I am not an expert on Chinese education, I have been teaching Chinese
middle school (= high school) students here in Beijing for going on two years.
These are students who will head to the States for their post-secondary
education.
True, embedded deeply within Chinese educational culture are the ethical and
educational teachings of Confucius and Mencius, just like in the West we have
luminaries such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and notions of the unexamined
life not being worth living. However, with respect to both cultures I believe
it's safe to say that these educational ideals have been set aside for more
utilitarian ends.
Here in China there is a saying, "12 Years for One Test." In other
words, for those students fortunate enough to attend school for a full 12
years, their end goal is no longer the cultivation of some abstract virtue, but
rather success on the "gaokao" college entrance exam. Along the way,
as I see things, the primary pedagogical method here is drilling students in
statutory answers to statutory questions. To be sure, along the way real
knowledge and understanding can be acquired, but almost as a by-product. One of
my tasks here, and it is as challenging and rewarding as it is frustrating, is
in fact to get our students to engage a process of learning and, yes, the tired
cliche of "critical thinking," as opposed simply to arriving at a "right
answer." Do I enjoy this work? Immensely! Am I succeeding? I like to think
so.
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