Expert analysis: Why China's basic innovation education is no worse than America's

This article is selected from the "Encounter of the United States," the blog of the domestic education sector basically agree that the Chinese students lack of innovative education. In the exam-oriented education environment, Chinese students learn how to teach the teacher's answer by learning, how to test, to enter high school and university, so with foreign (mostly with the United States) compared to students, almost no original spirit, and no creativity. A big reason for advocating "quality education" is to make Chinese students have the creative and innovative spirit of foreign students. I disagree with this view. In my view, basic education in China is not inferior to the United States in terms of the systematic provision of basic knowledge, and even some subjects are much better than the United States, and the foundation of innovative ability is a solid academic foundation. The reason why Chinese students lack the ability to innovate is not the lack of an education to teach them how to innovate, but the following two reasons: first, the lack of an environment and space to allow innovation to manifest, and secondly, the lack of formal training in how to express innovative abilities. To make a student have the ability to innovate, a solid academic foundation is the first place. It is hard to imagine how a person, even arithmetic, can have "inventions" and "creations" in the field of mathematical theory. American public primary and secondary schools [Weibo] have no curriculum standards for a long time, no exams, teachers like to teach what. In recent years, there has been a wave of standardization, there is a unified examination, and even the national curriculum standards. But is it probably not a common phenomenon in Chinese public schools that more than 50% of public schools are still in the midst of several students rebelling in class and teachers cannot teach? In providing a solid foundation for students, China's basic education is no worse than America's. Chinese students from junior high School began to study the system of physics and chemistry, but the United States students to the second or third year of high school chemistry This course, and is not a compulsory course; physics is the third or fourth year of high school qualification courses, many high schools do not have physics this class! The International Olympic Mathematics, Chemistry, or physics competition, where American students can attend, basically private secondary schools and several key public high school students pay their own money, and the school's teachers volunteer to train them to attend. Most public-school students don't even hear of such a contest, let alone attend. This is not the same as China's overwhelming number of "Olympiad" textbooks and training courses. The Intel Science Prize in the United States is a large award, called the "Little Nobel Prize", to encourage high school students to be creative in the humanities and Science Sciences. This year, more than 3,000 students in the United States sent their papers to the awards, recently, more than 1000 finalists have been announced, of whom more than 300 are Chinese, and more than 70% of these 300 Chinese students are new immigrants from mainland China [Weibo] (that is, immigrants come to the United States for less than three years). The Intel Science prize is the most important "Innovation ability" award, but the shortlisted ChinesePeople are the vast majority of new immigrants from mainland China, we can not say that the United States "innovative education" magic to this point, can be in a year to three years, the new immigrants to teach these Chinese to "innovative experts" it? If it is so magical, it is reasonable to be born in the United States of American-educated Chinese should accept "innovative education" longer, "quality" is better, how can not win this emphasis on innovative ability award? If we look carefully at the scope of the shortlisted winners ' papers, we will find an interesting phenomenon: none of the new arrivals from China have been shortlisted for the study of biological or humanities social Sciences (history, economics, political philosophy, psychology). This is consistent with China's basic education, where biology and social science lag behind the United States. In other words, the basic knowledge is strong, the innovation ability is also high. It is not surprising that high school students in China have not studied the theory of economics and have not studied any philosophy other than Marxist philosophy and have not studied psychology. Chinese High school students learn biological knowledge, far less than the American high school students, the experimental level is far lower than the U.S. high school students, naturally can not compete with others. From the above discussion, we have found that the basic education in China, which is better than the United States, the students are more innovative than the American students. So why do we find that Chinese students in general are still less creative than American students? For example, the International Student Engineering Awards, China has dozens of students shortlisted, is already the best in Asia, but the United States has more than 1000 students shortlisted. Does this not prove that China lacks innovative education? This conclusion is one-sided. What China lacks is not the form of "innovative education". First, what China lacks is an environment and space to allow innovation to manifest itself. China's society is advocating collectivism, any "special" things will be social exclusion. This is different from advocating individualism in the United States, not out of character, can not win the respect of others. As a result, American high school students can get 80 points from the phenomenon of more and more women in society to explain the theory of evolution, in China, the student will certainly fail. Chinese students to write compositions, no matter what the topic, the basic requirements must be "clear theme, mental health." Therefore, even if the teachers how to earnestly hope that students "I handwritten my heart", the students write things are false big empty. Because "the subject does not make sense", "the Thought is not advanced" The thing, absolutely cannot let the teacher accept, let alone lets the mid-term examination [micro-blog], the college entrance examination [Weibo] accepts. "With body writing", "Q version of Chinese" Things like that, can win so many readers, and Chinese language education for a long time do not allow students "out of line" is inseparable. The Intel Science Prize, a senior high school student from Guangzhou, who immigrated to the United States for more than a year, was shortlisted. His paper is an international unit recommending the modification of electromagnetics. He only read High school physics this year, the family parents culture is not high, simply can not tutor him, he put his ideas and physicalThe teacher said that the teacher immediately encouraged him to study, and tell him what books to refer to, where to find information, to what university audit. What if in China? The student told the physics teacher that he found there was something wrong with the international unit of Electromagnetics in the textbook, and think about what would be answered? "Good boy, who do you think you are?" With Pronk, Maxwell, Einstein, the scientists? Please give me a few more questions about the college entrance examination. "Which library will let him find information that only senior staff can contact?" Which university is going to put him on the sidelines? Also not to mention the students, a teacher found that the teaching society of primary school math textbooks have problems, it took 20 years to let the publishers pay attention to this problem! Therefore, if China does not give an environment to all the spirit of innovation, there is a formal "innovative education" is useless. Second, there is a lack of speech-form training for students to express their innovative abilities correctly and efficiently. When it comes to "quality education" in the United States, many people talk about how American teachers make the second-year elementary students write "The cause of the two World War", "the Revelation of human civilization" something that even Chinese professors have headaches, like American innovation education, is to get students to do papers, do experiments, do social research, and so on. If China also "innovation", also let elementary students do experiments, group cooperation, write paper not just? In fact, this understanding of "innovative education" is very one-sided. All praise for American teachers ' assignment of how to play the student's imagination and creativity no one has discovered that the purpose of these assignments is not really to make a landmark discovery for students, but rather to practice the form of verbal expression-how to use the right format to express what you want to say Express it efficiently. In American primary and secondary education, all creative products except literary and artistic creation must be expressed in a strict and normative form. What is the format of the study report, the format of the research paper, the definition of argumentative text, the contrastive argumentation, the analytic argumentative text, the argumentative argumentation, the evaluative argumentative text ... Each has its own format, the format is wrong, the content of how, will not get high score. However, most of the teachers in China are still unable to accept the idea that students need speech form training, which will limit students ' creativity, and forget that literary creations such as poetry and prose novels occupy only a small part of education, and forget the opportunity for students to write papers or write a feasibility report after graduation, Would be much more likely to be published in the press than when they wrote a poem. The most strange thing is that Chinese teachers still believe that the students ' creativity can be realized through "perception", and the "enlightenment" will be expressed naturally. "Sentiment" The result of education, I do not know. But if you look at what is called a "paper" published in Chinese academic journals, most of them simply cannot be called "papers". To sum up, China's basic education, in fact, there is no shortage of so-called "innovative education", the lack of opportunities to allow innovation in the environment and space, the lack ofEffective and local expression of innovative ideas in the form of language training. As long as there is a solid foundation of knowledge, and appropriate training in verbal expression, in a relaxed, encouraging innovation in the environment, can become an innovative talent, and there is no need to hard in China's education system to cram in some of the surface of the fancy, in fact, there is no intrinsic things.