This Just In... Chinese Students are Better at Math!

Mid Term
Originally uploaded by Eastenhuh.

Better than whom? Well, you* and me, obviously. Surprise!

Yes yes, it's only speculation until there's an actual study done, but still. The BBC News just posted this article (linked to me by Makal) about a question appearing on a pre-entrance exam for a college in China; it is juxtaposed by a question for first-year students at an English university. Hmm, notice any differences? How about the level of sheer complexity, never mind the obvious gaps in educational systems that can be inferred from the comparison.

Now, I don't think it's meerly the two extra years in math studies that puts Chinese students ahead. I'm more inclined to give the credit to Chinese students' entire learning career--it just seems more comprehensive, driven, etc. At least it does from the outside, though I've known and known of a fair few Chinese youth who hated their strict education or their expectancy to excel in math and sciences. But you know, being Asian and having people expect you to be good at math still seems like a better option than being American and having other countries expect you to be rude and ignorant...

To be fair I never had the best relationship with math when I was in school. The special programs I was placed in as a kid shot me a fair ways beyond where most students were, and once they were cancelled and I was back in with my peers, I ended up just sitting stagnant for a few years while other students played catch up to what I already knew. Ironically, another program I was in during middle school--it focused on alternative teaching methods via altering the classroom experience as well as topic discussion--put me a year behind where the school's top math students were.

Nonetheless I was in the top math class the next year... which I hated for its obscurity and focus on "creative" logic. I proclaimed to my algebra teacher in middle school that I didn't care about the class because I wasn't going to use math in my adult life anyway. He tried to argue that math is important to everyone; I argued that artists have little need for algebra. Geometry perhaps, which I have always loved, but not algebra.

I stopped taking math as soon as I had met my graduation requirements for it my sophomore year in high school. This isn't to say that I was never interested in math; I can see now that even as a artist and designer I still use the rules of mathematics, albeit subconsciously (fuck formulas, I say). But I'm sure that if I'd been in a stable educational environment--not bounced between programs, between this "correct" problem solving method and that "correct" one--if I'd had any sort of consistency in my education, I'd have far more knowledge in the subject.

*unless you're Chinese.