Reviews on Lenora Chu's Book on Chinese and American Educational Systems

choi

book reviews on Lenora Chu, Little Soldiers; An American boy, a Chinese school, and the global race to achieve . Harper, Sept 19, 2017.

(1) Alan Paul, 小战士》：中国学校里的美国男孩. 纽约时报, Aug 25, 2017
https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20170825/little-soldiers-lenora-chu/

, which was translated from

Alan Paul, A Parent Confronts Conformity in the Classrooms of China. New York Times, Aug 24, 2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/ ... ers-lenora-chu.html

Quote:

"the heart of which is Chu’s experience of enrolling her 3-year-old son in an elite Shanghai preschool. She and her husband, the NPR correspondent Rob Schmitz, work hard to get Rainey admitted, but from his first day they start to have second thoughts.  * * * In China, there is almost always a 'work-around' to strict rules, and Rainey starts wordlessly figuring this out, much to Chu's delight.

"After immersing herself in the Chinese education structure, she visits American schools and quickly recognizes that while the Chinese system is designed to weed out and filter students, in America the express goal is 'No child left behind.' The American schools feel impossibly soft, with an overemphasis on individual desires that allows weaker areas to wither. This is especially so in the teaching of math

My comment: There is no need to read the rest of a short review.

choi

(2) Lenora Chu, Why American Students Need Chinese Schools; After putting her son in an elite state-run school in Shanghai, an American mother finds that the U.S. education system could learn a few things from China—most of all that teacher knows best. Wall Street Journal, Sept 9, 2017.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why ... -schools-1504882481
http://www.cetusnews.com/busines ... s.r1MgNBeWEe5-.html

Educational progress in the US is hobbled by parental entitlement.

(a) Excerpts in the window of print:

They believe that hard work trump innate talent when it comes to school.

When my little boy was 3, his Chinese teacher forced a bite of fried egg into his...

(b) Quote:

"We are Americans raising a family in Shanghai

"The Ivy League enrolls eight times more Chinese undergraduates than a decade ago, according to the Institute of International Education [This sentence does not say whether Chinese students are American- or Chinese born or both; I fail to locate the report]

"the US, the land of infant choice, free-form play and individualized everything.

"he [Chu's son in the book; presently the oldest son] once raised a stink when I broached the possibility of missing a few school days for a family trip. He was 5.

"Having the teacher as an unquestioned authority in the classroom gives students a leg up in subjects such as geometry and computer programming, which are more effectively taught through direct instruction (versus student-led discovery), according to a 2004 study of 112 third- and fourth-graders published in the journal Psychological Science.

"A Chinese teacher who arrived in the U.S. two decades ago recalled to me her surprise the first year she taught American kids. 'I started out very controlling, but it didn’t work at all. My students talked back!' says Sheen Zhang, who teaches Mandarin at a Minnesota high school. Parents sometimes complained when she assigned too much homework. A mother once asked her to change the way she talked to her classwork-skipping daughter. 'She wanted me to say, "You can do better!" instead of "You didn't finish this!" ' exclaimed Ms. Zhang.

Note:
(a) free–form (adj): "FREE <free–form dancing>"https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/free-form
(b) stink (n): "a public outcry against something : FUSS  <made a big stink when asked to leave>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stink
(c) About quotation 5. See Klahr D and Nigam M, The Equivalence of Learning Paths in Early Science Instruction: Effect of Direct Instruction and Discovery Learning. Psychol Sci, 15: 661-667 (2004).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15447636
(d) "China's school system breeds a Chinese-style grit, which delivers the daily message that perseverance—not intelligence or ability—is key to success."

grit (n): "firmness of mind or spirit : unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grit
(e) " 'white Americans tend to view cognitive abilities as * * * inborn,' according to a longitudinal study of more than 5,000 students published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014.  * * * Americans aren't afraid to push their children when it comes to athletics. Here we believe that hard work and practice pay off, so we accept scores and rankings."

Hsin A and Xie Y, Explaining Asian Americans' Academic Advantage over Whites. Proc Nat Acad Sci, 111; 8416-8421 (2014).
www.pnas.org/content/111/23/8416.full
(f) photo caption: "Students at Jinqao Center Primary School in Shanghai"

It should be spelled Jinqiao. 上海浦东新区 金桥中心小学