#1
There are cultural reasons why China is at risk for a serious crash as well:
1. Education continues to depend on rote memorization, big tests, and little opportunity to explore. As my Chinese friend "Dawn" explains it, "Chinese people do not know how to create. They must memorize, memorize, memorize; they do not get to experiment."
2. The Chinese kids that are supposedly whupping American kids in math and science testing do great on tests--but only the best of the best are tested in the first place. If a child doesn't pass all the exams, he does not go on to the advanced schools. The competition is terrible.
3. The Chinese are working their children to death in school. Dawn's niece, for example, puts in 10 hours a day in the classroom. 7:30 to noon, 1:30 to 4, 6 to 8; then she does her homework til midnight. Weekends are enrichment lessons. So the girl only gets four hours to herself on Sunday afternoon.
4. Failure has always been "worse than death" in this culture. The cadres have made things a thousand times worse by punishing people for not achieving the impossible 5 year plans. How are you going to get a Thomas Edison in a culture that disgraces someone who tries something new that doesn't work out?
5. A child in the big city has no opportunity to explore nature. She lives on the umpteenth floor of a skyscraper in a city where the smog is so bad that she can't open the window. The nearest green space, if there is any at all, is a strip of grass for playing soccer; it's probably a mile away, and she doesn't have time to go out and use it anyway. So urban Chinese children are disconnected from the environment and from natural play.
6. Worst of all: the One Child policy produces a "skeletonized family tree." A child has no siblings, aunts, uncles, or cousins. Further, the child has the pressure of the expectations of both parents and all the grandparents, no other adults in the family who might be a safety valve or other emotional support. The parents also don't have other family members for support. Each family unit is uniquely alone.
7. Many of these only children are "Little Emperors", spoiled rotten because their parents are focused on achievement and do not know how to shape the child's character.
This is already a long rant; so I'll stop here. I'm teaching some of these kids, and I can see that the effect of this system on them is deadly.
#6
Gromky: I live near a medium sized city with a major university. China comes here. We have been hosting Chinese scholars in our home for years, and I am a volunteer tutor and teacher.
There are more than ten languages spoken in our suburban school district. We live in a neighborhood with some County Housing and a lot of rentals. Four of the ten languages other than English are spoken within three blocks of our home: Spanish, Hmong, and two West African languages. Other languages in our community are Chinese, Urdu, Indian languages, Thai, Russian, and Serbian.
Due to two nasty accidents in the last 18 months, I am limited in how much teaching I can do. But I have one weekly class of Chinese kids, and I am presently tutoring a West African Muslim woman.
The Chinese parents expected me to teach their kids school style on a Saturday. I refuse. I recruited other adults to lead small stations, where we use play activities to foster English skills; and I bring in a lot of natural objects for them to examine and make a mess with.
#7
One additional observation that Mom might have better perspective on. During my trip through China, it was explained to me that due to one child, their is a whole generation coming up where the males outnumber the females by 20,000,000. Chinese family culture is built around marrying a Chinese girl, and success is measured with that metric. A successful bachelor is not common and marrying foreigners is completely frowned upon, often by the grooms mother who is afraid "western girl will take him away". What will the outcome be for these 20,000,000 all of the same approximate age?
PS You know what BMW means in China?
Be My Wife!
#10
What will the outcome be for these 20,000,000 all of the same approximate age?
That's why the inscrutable West invited MMOs [think WoW] and allowed the export of cheap, easily accessible computer technology.
..and marrying foreigners is completely frowned upon,
..with the usual exception of 'war brides'. China has a long tradition of accepting brides as a display of subordination, legitimizing neighboring ruling classes, and tying claims to those territories.
The problem for the Chinese [as for the Japanese and to a certain extent to the Koreans] is that given the degree of rote learning and conformity that is culturally impressed upon them, they display a very linear cognitive outlook. They are not generally well verse at improvisation or 'leaps of logic' seen in the West. Seeing that they've been playing with (crony) capitalism for a couple decades and haven't had the opportunity that the West has had in numerous recessions/depressions, it will be 'interesting' to see the response from the Chinese leadership when the proverbial s**t hits the fan.
#12
Hellfish, I am not doing "nice things." I am making a careful and patient effort to open minds. Speaking of which, what do you do to improve your mind? I suspect yours can't be opened with a pry bar.
#13
I get to listen to a lot of teachers in this country bitch about No Child Left Behind. The things they say sound a bit like what mom describes. Their biggest beef is what they call "teaching to the test". They teach the kids to pass the standardized tests but they don't feel like the kids are getting truly educated. Dunno myself. It's just what I hear.
But I wonder how the little emperors are getting spoiled when they have to spend so much time in school.
#14
Biggest gay army since the Theban Sacred Band.
Well, the women won't have to worry about being raped.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
10/17/2011 14:12 Comments ||
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#15
How do the little emperors get spoiled when they're spending so much time in school? Because their parents, having grown up during the Mao era, now have access to material goods that were out of reach in Mao's day. So it's a little like the US after WWII: "I was deprived of stuff, so my kid is going to have stuff!"
The families who live in areas where the One Child Policy is strictly enforced have only one child for up to 6 adults (parents and grandparents) to fuss over.
Also, since their children's future depends on getting into the right school, and everything depends on passing the exams, the parents are losing sight of character development in their attempt to get their child into an advantageous position academically.
#18
Their biggest beef is what they call "teaching to the test".
Gee, seem to work for the US Army. The key is making the testable items pertain to the tasks. The problem for too many professional educators is that they can not properly define 'critical tasks', or don't want to. For all the crap about rote teaching, watch sometime when the computer cash register is on the fritz in a fast food joint to see who can actually do basic math and fractions (taxes) to keep the business running that day.
#20
The 2009 documentary "The Last Train Home" is about the human cost of China's economic ascendancy. Zerohedge has it serialized here.
The Russians have the most to fear from those unmarriageable Chinese men, their country is a relatively short walk away, and it's loaded with resources.
I am more concerned about the predictions of people like Kyle Bass. His most recent predictions for western economies are, at best, for an extremely painful economic contraction (and that's if the politicians and financial types ever get their acts together) or if business as usual continues, an 'apocalyptic' economic collapse. An unlisted YouTube video of a recent 1-hour interview with Bass is here, worth a listen. Bass's credentials are that he predicted the economic crisis & was able to make a lot of money these last 4 years while other investors lost more than everything. Recently he bought $5 million in nickels from the banking system when he learned the metal in each nickel is worth 6.8 cents.
#21
Very good discussion and comments, and thanks, mom, for your insights. I will have M'Lady read this thread tonight for insights. She is a school psychologist.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/17/2011 15:52 Comments ||
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#22
mom replied:
"How do the little emperors get spoiled when they're spending so much time in school? Because their parents, having grown up during the Mao era, now have access to material goods that were out of reach in Mao's day."
To add to that, their grandparents and Aunts and Uncles frequently were ying and yang oriented Taoists... so 3 generations ideas of what is proper and correct come from a spiritual bent, then essentially a government/party worker bent and now a modernized consumer bent... that who will be raising this next generation of Little Emperor's- who are essentially a large demographic of "only children". I come from a family of 5 children and have been close friends with both only children and "large rowdy" clans.
While neither is a predictor of success later in life, the differences (good and bad) between kids socialized with 12 siblings often have different group skills than the "only children" who never shared a toy, or a parents affection.
#23
Taking half a minute between chores and phys. therapy to answer Ebbang a little further re "teaching to the test":
Imagine that you're my friend "Julia", who is a teacher.
You have 20 kids in a second grade class. 8 need ESL. 8 more have behavioral issues because thanks to asinine social engineering and a tanking economy and plain old human failing, they do not have a stable home life. The kid with Aspergers is doing OK but you have to change the system a bit for him. Four helicopter parents are demanding you give their kid extra attention; they excuse their kids' bad behavior, and otherwise make pests of themselves.
Every politician of every political stripe has an opinion on what you should teach in your class. Some of these politicians have the clout to get their point of view into the curriculum, whether it's true or moral or not. Certain species of leftist have a disproportionate amount of power here.
The government is comparing your students' test scores to those of children in other countries. Many of these other countries don't bother to educate the kids with disabilities. Like Germany or China, if the kid doesn't test well, he doesn't even go to an academically oriented middle school. So these kids' scores don't appear in the dramatic test scores these countries trumpet. So the test score differences the politicians are crying about are based on a biased sample.
So you do your ever-lovin' best to inspire these kids, to encourage them, to listen to them when they're bawling their eyes out at recess time because Daddy just went to look for a job four states away. You come up with some really creative things that the kids love, you borrow a creaky old volunteer lady (mom) to help so you can teach hands-on science and still maintain order.
Meanwhile, your job rating depends on how well you teach to a set of standards set up by a central committee somewhere in the Dept of Education.
Gee, seem to work for the US Army
The US army isn't made up of 8 years olds required to be there by law. The US Army is not teaching young kids whose parents are either feckless or stuck in bad circumstances beyond their control. The US army doesn't take people with Aspergers, or any number of other disabilities. The US Army's goals are often very concrete; the standards that go into the tests are often not within shouting distance of being concrete. Do not compare apples to MREs.
#26
The US army isn't made up of 8 years olds required to be there by law.
Ever hear of Conscription? Ever hear of ? Ever had to deal with druggies because the courts said since they were drafted, its the Armies fault and they can't kick them out but had to 'reform' them first? I'll match your whine, if you want to play that game.
#28
It may coincide wid a Pert-alleged possible Oil-GLOBAL Gas = Energy crash circa 2020-2040 at the earliest.
China is aware of the risk, which is why in part it is so fickle about supporting + defending its claims of sovereignty throughout the "First Island Chain".
This article was in the NY Slimes today. I added the link for those interested. Basically, smaller to mid-size business who couldn't get a State loan from a State run bank had to turn to the loan sharks. Business is bad and the loan sharks are coming around. More wood on the pile for this thread's topic: The Coming Crash."
#31
Please allow this Troll to clarify
I knew Chinas One Child per edict would skew their population viability toward the extreme negative limits. That said, there were some very insightful comments made here; and that can be Food for a Trolls thought(s), doncha know
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