What can U.S. Educators Learn from China?

Ever since the Russians launched Sputnik in October 1957 the United States has embraced the teaching of science and math to an unprecedented degree. Reforms were everywhere. Graduation requirements inched up, colleges and universities touted their track record in the sciences and America began the space race. America played to our best and our brightest. Resources were poured into science and technology and the rest is history.

The Cold War is now a distant memory, the population of the United States has hit 300 million and the world has shrunk to a point where our neighbors across the sea are in our backyard, competing for the same goods and services that have been the mainstay of our economic engines. The biggest "surprise" is the emergence of China as a world power. It was not long ago, that China was thought of as essentially a country of farmers and factory workers with little thought given to their place in the economic scheme of things. Now, China is intensely studied, eyed with suspicion for their military prowess and envied for their emerging economic miracle.

Not surprising, analysts are looking to the Chinese system of education not so much to copy the system as to learn how this emerging economic powerhouse is feeding the fires of technological innovation and their economy. After all, excellence in science and mathematics is the key to all advanced nations' economic lifeblood. Period. The Chinese, unlike the United States, places greater emphasis on the teaching of these key subjects. And the glue that binds science and math teaching is national standards. The United States, on the other hand, largely allows the states and local communities and individual school districts to loosely determine the teaching of science and math with no required national standards. It is no wonder that much of the debate on academic achievement is difficult to assess intelligently because standards are not, well, standardized. One cannot compare apples to apples. Yet China is able to do this and do it reasonably well. What can we learn from the Chinese?

Furthermore, I do not mean to trivialize the intense ongoing debate regarding standards or even suggest a national curriculum. However, the United States must get serious about taking steps to aligning our curriculum (the subjects are children are taught in school) or standardizing what K-12 schools are teaching at each grade level, especially in science and math.

Instead of assuming that everyone needs review after the long summer, and hence repeating the first three months of the previous grade, teachers need to teach the subjects to mastery from the basics upward. Assume nothing. Also, teachers in key subject areas must be proficient and masters of their subject matter, even at the elementary level. It is no surprise that many teachers in our elementary schools spend the amount of time per subject commensurate with their level of knowledge in the subject. For example, if a particular teacher were stronger in math than, say English, that teacher most likely will give more attention to the area of strength. It's human nature. A more sensible approach would be to assign subject area specialists to the teaching of critical subject areas like science and math.

As a veteran educator who is knowledgeable in the current standards movement (but no expert), I am still amazed that our school report cards from school to school within the state and between states have varying amounts of time assigned to various subject matter. That is not standardization. To be certain, China has its problems. There is a great divide between the classes. There is also an unequal allocation of resources between the rural schools and the schools in the cities. China has the largest education system in the world. Yet the size of the system is not what drives standardization of subject matter. Call their system rigid if you will, but at some point starch has to be put into our academic system instead of debating local control vs. standards ad nausea. Other countries have aligned curriculum too.

If the United States is to continue to compete with the world we must pay closer attention to how other countries are preparing their students. We must also listen closely to our business leaders and other education reform groups who have been recommending standards based education for years. We still have a great and open system of education, but we are not perfect. Why reinvent the wheel, instead learn from others and apply the most successful aspects of their systems to ours? Change will not be easy; nothing worth doing is easy. However, a lot is at stake: the economic future of our children and their children.

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