Lessons Learned

In preparation for my trip to China, I’ve been reading many books and articles about the Middle Kingdom.  China Wakes by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn and Chinese Lessons by John Pomfret have been excellent.  Reading about a place beforehand is a good way to make the most of a brief visit.

Preparatory reading is also valuable before long visits to new places.  I read a lot about Taiwan before I arrived, both to prepare for my Fulbright interview and to make sure I didn’t make a fool of myself when I landed.  Professor Vincent Wang, the chair of the political science department at the University of Richmond and a Kaohsiung native, gave me a lot of excellent reading material.

As I was cleaning my shelves yesterday, I found an essay by John Hawkins, a professor of comparative education policy at UCLA.  Writing in the Harvard International Review, Prof. Hawkins points out the key cultural and institutional factors that he believes explain Asian nation’s K-12 education success.  The essay made a favorable impression on me when I read it in June 2009, and it only seems more impressive to me now. 

Prof. Hawkins highlights these particulars about education in East Asia (and, by extension, Taiwan):

• Culture
  • Confucian values of self-denial, fortitude, patience, rote learning and delayed gratification make for better students.
  • Confucian values of family hierarchy make students more obedient to the demands of their parents, who in turn influenced by Confucian values demand high educational achievement from their children.
  • The nationwide civil service exam, which began hundreds of years ago in ancient China and which continues today, bred a meritocratic ethos in the education system.  Unlike poor communities in the West, children and parents in poor communities in East Asia believe that hard work at school pays off.
  • East Asians believe that “making errors is a natural part of learning and not to be mocked or considered failing” and that “effort trumps. . . innate ability.”
  • Structural differences
    • The national government exerts more control over standards, curriculum and finance than national governments in the West.
      • Easily understood standards for teachers to follow, and the government can make sure textbooks and teaching materials are designed specifically to meet the standards.
      • Nationally guided decisions about financing reduce the ability of wealthy individuals to sway school funding decisions.
• Longer school day, more school days in the school year
  • Students are given exercise breaks in the middle of the day, which especially helps young boys concentrate in the classroom.
• Less tracking by ability
  • Low and middle ability students are in the same classes as high ability students, which may help those students make valuable friendships with higher-income families as well as ensure that middle ability students receive challenging inputs
• Cram schools
  • 60-80% of students attend cram schools.  These schools provide additional instruction in core subjects.
• Teachers are much more respected and better paid than they are in the West
  • The average income in Taiwan is about USD$20,000 per year.  A senior teacher (teaching for 8+ years) makes almost twice that amount.
• Teachers are surrounded by a support staff of counselors and others who allow the teacher to focus solely on planning and delivering academic lessons. 

One can quibble with individual points, but Prof. Hawkins’ overall analysis is solid.  Contrary to popular belief, Taiwan’s K-12 successes aren’t entirely attributable to culture.  Structural differences play a major role, although they’re probably less important than the cultural differences .  Please don’t take the previous to mean that structural differences aren’t crucial: your car needs an engine more than the wheels if it’s to move, but you wouldn’t then say that the wheels don’t matter!

With the Obama administration pumping billions of dollars into adjusting the structural features of US K-12 education, it’s interesting to note how many similarities there are between Taiwanese and USA educational institutions.  Like US teachers, it’s very difficult for a Taiwanese public school teacher to get axed.  Like most US teachers, Taiwanese public school teachers have successfully resisted efforts to have their performance measured by student achievement on yearly standardized tests.  Perhaps even more interestingly, Taiwanese education administrators are also trying to pass measures loosening employment strictures and legalizing test score-based performance review.  There’s an emerging international consensus that accountability is a good thing.

Some of the Obama administration’s desired policies, like uniform national reading and math standards, are already part of the Taiwanese education structure.  Taiwan’s success is positive advertisement.  Consistent standards mean that schools in rich, urban Taipei teach the same lessons and use equally helpful textbooks as schools in rural, backwater Rueli.  Substitute “Upper West Wide Manhattan” and “Jackson, Mississippi” and you’ll realize how much consistent standards can mean.   

Yet consistent standards are idle, even pernicious, goals if there are vast funding disparities.  This was the major failing of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind act: it set tough standards for high-income and low-income schools and proceeded to do nothing to help the low-income school achieve those standards.  It’s like telling two racers they have thirty seconds to complete a lap while one racer sits in a Ferrari and the other has rollerblades.  To make matters worse, the Bush administration would then penalize the slow racer by taking away his rollerblades.

The much more equitable Taiwanese funding pattern is, in my opinion, the single most important structural difference between Taiwanese and USA schools.  A public school here receives funding based on the number of students it has, period.  The Obama administration, in a nod to futility, has not pressed for any serious changes to the US status quo. 

Funding matters a lot.  One lesson I’ve learned from my time here is that the old refrain “Gosh, we pour dollar after dollar into the school system and it’s done nothing!” is a poor argument against greater investment in schools.  Sure, government has misallocated funding in the past.  It will probably do so again in the future.  But finances are extremely important to establishing broadly accessible, high quality education. 

Kaohsiung neighborhoods aren’t quite as socioeconomically segregated as many neighborhoods in the US, but they’re not far off the mark.  Nevertheless, my working class school is filled with working class kids who can kick it with the upper middle class kids in my residential neighborhood.  No small part of this situation is the similar levels of funding afforded to each school. 

Cram school and private tutoring for the rich kids will put them at an advantage, but their advantage is much, much smaller than the advantage a Scarsdale kid has over a South Bronx kid (excuse the New York reference, non-New Yorkers).  To top it all off, the end result isn’t less achievement for the Scarsdale kid—it’s greater overall achievement for the country’s youth!

There’s so much to discuss in Professor Hawkins’ essay, but this is not be the forum.  As it is, I’ve only given you the Cliffnotes version of a far more complex argument about two of the topics he raises.  I hope my upcoming studies at York afford me the opportunity to study all of these issues more deeply and reach better informed conclusions. 

Whatever the case may be, I know for sure that the USA has a lot to learn from East Asian education systems.  The final test will be whether we choose to implement the solutions we can identify.  Future prosperity rests on our grade.