Zifan Xu
Mrs. Jane L. Yingling
British & World Literature & Composition
3 March 2015
Difference between Chinese and American Education System
The number of Chinese students who study abroad has become larger over the years. I found that students from China come abroad for different reasons. Some of them study abroad for a different cultural experience. Some are to gain a better education while the rest go abroad because they want to get rid of their parents and have more freedom than they did in China. Not all of the students come abroad to study hard. I have studied at Bishop Guilfoyle High School for three years. During the past three years, hundreds of people have asked me the same question, why do you come to the U.S. to study and what are the differences between the two education systems? As response, I usually say “Well, there is too much pressure to study in China and I’d like to experience a different culture and something that I have never seen before.” But this is actually only a little part of the reasons why I came to the U.S. My goal for this research paper is to make everything clear for everyone who is curious about the difference between the Chinese and the U.S. education systems.
I have organized my research paper into eight sections to achieve my goal. In the first section, I have the introduction of what the Chinese education system is like. In the following sections, I will have Sino-US differences in teaching targets, classes, relationship between teachers and students, test systems, grades, and extracurricular activities. I will end my research paper with my personal thoughts and conclusion.
Introduction
Chinese education is called an exam-oriented education, which selects people based on the scores they get in the exams. Obviously, this type of education has its disadvantages. First of all, it has students pay more attention to studying and pay little attention to the practice and the purpose of application, so now Chinese students are generally regarded as untalented with high scores and little abilities. Secondly, luck plays an important role in this kind of education and it’s inefficient to select the right talented students. Moreover, regional unfairness also exists in this education system, which means students in some areas are easier to go to a good college while some others are much harder. It is very important for Chinese education to cultivate the idea of unifying the study and practice. (Baidu Wenku 1)
The U.S. education pays more attention to raising student's self-confidence, independence, and spirit of supporting oneself, while Chinese education emphasizes on training the students to be strict, rigorous, and spiritual.
It is pretty obvious that Chinese education may fruitfully develop and utilize the function of the cerebrum, but the U.S. higher education could expand the function of the cerebrum by utilizing and synthesizing the information outside. （Chinadmd）
TEACHING TARGET
The U.S. higher education was considered as the best education in the world. Comparing the elementary education between the U.S. and China, people's universal view will be: Chinese elementary education aims to build the foundation of education with more study and less thought; while The U.S. education aims to build such an education to raise the creativity with less study and more thought. (Chinadmd)
Chinese primary education focus on children's intellectual development that is about how to get a high score, but in the United States, the purpose of primary education is to foster the children's creativity. (Chinadmd)
Different attitudes resulted from the treatments are the second point. For Chinese children, a bad exam result will make him/her receive pressure from all sides, but in the United States, the term-end results of the students are their private items and parents will not impose too much pressure on the children. The parents think that grades are less important than the ability of children; Chinese parents are just the reverse. The purpose of the majority of students is getting the score as high as they can.
Chinese education focuses on instilling the accumulation of knowledge, training students to respect the knowledge and authorities, inheriting knowledge from older generation and reinforcing their knowledge system repeatedly. The United States education focuses more on training students to use knowledge and actual ability, training students to ask questions, having a critical spirit and developing the creativity. (Baidu Wenku 2, 13)
CLASSES
Chinese education is to teach and have students absorb what they learn and understand it; the U.S. education is letting student get knowledge by practicing or thinking. (Baidu Wenku 2, 13)
Teaching methods in both China and the U.S. have their own advantages and disadvantages. In China, a teacher’s duty is to give students a large amount of knowledge and to formalize their daily behavior. The content focuses on all kinds of theory, so students are able to develop a good basis. But under this kind of teaching, which students do what they are told to do, they lose the capability of self-study and querying authority. In the U.S., a teacher’s duty is to motivate and direct students. The students will have full freedom to interrupt and query their teachers. In this way, students will have more motivation to figure out what they do not understand and cultivate their innovation and capability of self-study very well. Although this is the advantage of American teaching, the content is too simple to build the student’s basic knowledge. (Baidu Wenku 3, 2)
In the U.S., teachers encourage students to do research to foster their research capacity, and to work out the problem by themselves to train their independent ability. In China, under the exam-oriented education and influence by traditional rules, the initial stage of education is to build up a good foundation, which means to work on a lot of different types of problems over and over.
In the aspect of learning foreign languages, Chinese students only have English as the second language in basic education (except for professional). In the U.S., students have much more choices than the Chinese students do, including Spanish, French, German, Latin, and so on. (Baidu Wenku 2, 14)
In the U.S., teaching students how to live and solve the problems with the knowledge outside the books is an important part, too.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEACHERS AND STUDENTS
In China, the paternalistic relationship between the elder and junior reported that lower levels must have absolute obedience from higher levels. When students see teachers, they are nervous and bow to say hello. It is totally the opposite way in the U.S. Teachers and students are more like friends, students will smile and say hello to teachers with pleasure.
These probably lead to the differences between Chinese and American students. In China, most of the students do not ask questions even if they do not know. They believe that sitting upright is out of the respect for the teachers. Teachers often stand on a platform and they have a great distance with students, which will make students feel teachers are in a prominent position and are afraid of them. American students ask questions actively no matter how clever they are and sit freely so that they can communicate with teachers more conveniently. Teachers often approach their students and causally chat with them at pleasure to make sure they understand. (Baidu Wenku 3, 1&3)
TEST SYSTEMS
When American school inspects students learned, they emphasize more on the ability to analyze and solve the question instead of the ability of memorizing or description. The American students do not have to do mechanical memorizing, but display creative thought as far as possible. This can cultivate students’ study interest, raise the ability of working alone and make the study be one kind of creative action. Many teachers still adopted old teaching ways in the Chinese universities, thus taking a test that needs mechanical memorization. (Chinadmd)
Chinese exam-oriented education has disadvantages, which is a certain answer to the question by inducing students to enable them to find "the only answer." Teachers in the United States guide the students to understand them and come up with correct answers. They give the students more space for imagination. Teachers and students will discuss and explore the unknown answers together as well. (Baidu Wenku 2, 14)
In China, few students can enter college without the score or with lower score of college entrance exam, known as Gao Kao in China. The rest of the high school students must take part in the entrance exam to the university, which is the only chance to get into the university and this is why I said luck play an important role. In the U.S., the students have more choices and chances to enter university.
GRADES
Chinese and American students, parents, and teachers have different views on grades. In the U.S., the school reports are regarded as privacy. Teachers will have a meeting with parents individually and only show parents their own children’s grades. Whole class results will not be published. In China, teachers will hold a meeting with parents after mid term, and they will make the grades public in front of all the parents. Sometimes, teachers will even criticize the students who have poor grades and behaviors. The assessment of teachers also depends on the student transition rate and excellent rate. Chinese students grow up under such a mechanism up to 12 years, so it is pretty obvious that their psychological pressure is extremely heavy. (Baidu Wenku 3, 5)
EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
Chinese parents usually do not allow their child to attend community service or after-school activities because they think studying is much more important than everything else. In the U.S., almost every student attends at least one club or after-school activity. Parents usually support their kids and the club or team as much as they can. This probably makes the differences in Chinese and American kids’ personalities.
THOUGHT
Nobel laureate Professor Yang, Zhenning thought: Chinese education attitude is entirely different from the United States. The biggest difference is that the Chinese focus on instilling education. Chinese students have a very solid foundation in study, which is our advantage, but there are also shortcomings: when Chinese students face new things, they are always fettered by old conventions. Compare with the United States, the students have poor awareness of innovation.(Renming-Edu)
Education is somewhat a reflection of a nation’s culture and traditions. Just like every coin has two sides, we should take an objective and rational look at the two kinds of education especially that of China. I believe that different education is suitable for different countries, and we shouldn’t totally repudiate our education system. We have to perceive that our country is trying to reform the education system towards a quality-oriented international and diversified direction. I do think that our education will be better in the future.
Work Cited
Baidu Wenku 1. Chinese Exam-Oriented Education. Web. 8 March 2015.
Baidu Wenku 2. The Comparison of Education in the United State and China. Nov. 2011. Print.
Baidu Wenku 3. Differences Between Chinese and the U.S. Education. Web. 8 Mar. 2015.
Chinadmd. Differences Between Chinese and American Education. Web. 8 Mar. 2015.
Renming-Edu. 18 Apr. 2004. Print.