In December last year, the General Office of the State Council issued a notice on carrying out pilot projects for the reform of the national education system, marking the full launch of the pilot work for the reform of the national education system. Today, as the drawbacks of the traditional education system and talent cultivation model become increasingly apparent, there are increasing calls from the public to the government for educational innovation and reform.
On February 8, one day before heading back to the United States, Professor Tian Xu, a tenured professor at Yale University and Director of the Institute of Developmental Biology at Fudan University, gave an exclusive interview to the reporter of China Youth Daily. He expressed his concerns about the ongoing education reform in China: "There is more thought at the government level, but fewer reflections from the grassroots. Overall, it is very pessimistic." At the same time, he also put forward his own suggestions on innovative education in China: "China's innovative education should first learn from our ancestors, secondly gather the strength of the masses to run schools, and thirdly achieve popularization of education."
The current education system has lost the innovative tradition passed down by our ancestors.
Not long ago, Meiyi Cai, a Chinese-American professor who teaches at Yale University with Tian Xu, published a book called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Chinese name: My Experience as a Mother in the U.S.: The Child-Rearing Philosophy of a Yale Law School Professor), which sparked intense discussions in the United States. The book describes how she disciplined her two daughters using Chinese-style educational methods - calling her daughters garbage, demanding A's in every subject, not allowing them to watch TV, not letting them eat until they practiced the piano well, etc.
Tiger Mom's educational method shocked the American educational community and triggered a major discussion in the U.S. about Chinese and American educational methods. Tiger Mom's story even made the cover of Time magazine, and The Wall Street Journal also published an excerpt from Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The "Chinese family education" advocated by Tiger Mom - cultivating talented children through strict and harsh education - has sparked various controversies. Meiying Cai defended herself by saying that the book Tiger Mother was merely a personal experience and not an educational guidebook. Later, some media pointed out that "Tiger Mom-style education" represents one aspect of elite education among American-Chinese communities, and if it truly can "bear fruit," it would only be possible within the American educational system.
It seems that students with imagination, independent thinking ability, and creative thinking have never existed in Chinese education.
Professor Tian Xu, however, does not think so. He told the reporter of China Youth Daily that the reason why the American educational community is vigorously discussing the phenomenon of Tiger Mom is to arouse the public's attention to education, rather than endorsing Tiger Mom's educational method. On the contrary, he believes that the ancestors of the Chinese nation were highly innovative. He gave a simple example - Go (Weiqi). "All nations have their own board games. If we compare these games, we can see different levels of civilization. The rules of Go seem very simple, but now it is the only game that computers cannot beat humans at. Chess, on the other hand, has been beaten by computers long ago. Go has a simple form, but its principles are profound, and its complexity is something that even computers cannot overcome."
"Without innovative education, how could the ancient Chinese inventions, innovations, and achievements in thought be so brilliant?" Tian Xu believes that the Spring and Autumn-Warring States period was the most innovative historical period in China. He cited a series of innovative achievements from the Spring and Autumn-Warring States period, such as differential gears, cast iron, the Qisi陂 irrigation project, the decimal system and abacus, the compass, the rudder, etc. In contrast, looking at modern scientific history, China has had almost no innovative results. "Our ancestors passed us excellent genes; innovative education must first learn from our ancestors. But our current education system has lost the innovative tradition passed down by our ancestors." Tian Xu joked that now the only thing Chinese people invent themselves is chopsticks, from the moment they open their eyes in the morning to the moment they close them at night.
Few education administrators and school founders are truly interested in education; they just want to be responsible to their superiors.
Tian Xu believes that China's current education system is completely westernized, but it hasn't really learned the Western education system well, while also losing the fine traditions of Chinese education. "This is because few education administrators and school founders are truly interested in education; they just want to be responsible to their superiors and avoid trouble." Tian Xu said that some university presidents in China still have their own laboratories, compete for research topics, and apply for funds. "Are they fully committed to being presidents?" He pointed out that this is related to the term system for university presidents in China. "They can serve at most 8 years, so of course they need to find an exit."
"In the United States, both the public and the government are involved in education, and the best schools are mostly private. China also has a tradition of private education." Tian Xu said that from Confucius' teaching in the Spring and Autumn period, academies in the Song and Ming dynasties, to private tutoring schools widely spread in rural areas before the founding of New China, all are examples of private education. "The best education is always in the private sector. Private education has many advantages. First, it creates healthy competition and vitality, which is hard to achieve with purely government-run education. Second, it can establish a supervision mechanism to ensure the efficient use of every penny spent on education." Tian Xu said that it is now difficult to carry out reforms at Peking University and Tsinghua University, but if there were competition from the private sector, the situation would improve significantly.
Since the implementation of the "Promotion Law of Private Education of the People's Republic of China" in 2003, the situation for most private schools in their initial development stage has not been optimistic. Statistics show that between 2007 and 2009, the number of private schools in Shanghai decreased from 202 to 134. Some private schools in Shanghai have experienced a nearly 50% loss of key teachers. During the Shanghai Two Sessions this year, Zhou Xingzeng, a representative of the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, spoke up for teachers at private universities: Although the "Promotion Law of Private Education of the People's Republic of China" stipulates that private teachers enjoy the same legal status and rights as public teachers, this is not the case in reality. "Public teachers have institutional positions, while private teachers are enterprise employees. Not only do they receive different retirement benefits compared to public teachers, but they also easily suffer psychological blows, feeling that they are not real teachers."
Regarding this issue, Professor Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, believes that in China's education field, private and public schools differ greatly due to their origins, resulting in different treatment and status. Even though the "Promotion Law of Private Education of the People's Republic of China" clearly states the importance of developing private education and encourages social funds to invest in educational resources, in reality, private schools always feel inferior. Neither teachers nor students can enjoy the same rights as those in public schools.
"American university endowments are so large they rival countries, while since China's reform and opening-up, the civilian sector has gradually gathered a force focused on education, which needs better utilization. The government also needs to change its mindset and make efforts to guide." Professor Tian Xu said.
In the long journey of exam-oriented education, children from poor families have been effectively deprived of their right to education.
As for the popularization of education, Tian Xu quoted Confucius' idea of "education without discrimination": "Everyone is equal before education; everyone has the right to receive education. Education has no distinction of high or low, noble or humble. The state should select talents on a large scale, instead of only allowing children of elites to receive elite education." Tian Xu worriedly said that in terms of the popularization of education, we are not doing as well as in the 1980s. He gave an example: Among his college classmates, some were truly cowherds, "still herding cows when they received their admission notices," but now it's rare to see children from poor families in universities. "There are too many hidden costs in today's education, and I often hear stories about children from financially disadvantaged families unable to afford university."
In fact, from elementary school to university, the enormous hidden expenses of education have already put immense pressure on most ordinary families in China. In this long journey of exam-oriented education, children from poor families have been effectively deprived of their right to education.
In recent years, although the expenses required for compulsory education have somewhat decreased, with the intensification of social competition, parents are paying more attention to educational projects outside of traditional school education. Education has become one of the largest sources of household consumption pressure.
However, since 1993, when the country set the goal of having educational investment account for 4% of GDP, this target has yet to be achieved. Hu Ruiwen, a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Educational Sciences, proposed in a research project that according to calculations, by 2020, China's total education investment will need to account for 7% of GDP to ensure the completion of three major tasks in China's education sector by 2020: expanding scale, improving popularization levels, and promoting balanced development.
Hu Ruiwen pointed out that over the past 30 years, although China's education funding has grown rapidly, compared to middle- and upper-income countries worldwide, both the absolute value of per capita education funding and the relative value of total education investment as a percentage of GDP remain relatively low. Insufficient education funding remains the main "bottleneck" for the development of the education sector.
Under the traditional concept of "no matter how poor we are, we cannot neglect education," on one side, parents struggle to bear high education costs, while on the other side, the goal of national education investment accounting for 4% of GDP has not been realized, making the popularization of education a difficult task.
"Education is the field with the least reform in the past 30 years; now is the good time for education reform." Professor Tian Xu said, "In the 30 years of China's reform and opening-up, the greatest achievement is still in the economic field. If we talk about resistance, there were more people opposing reform and opening-up 30 years ago than there are now, but then the determination was made to proceed. And now, the country is strong, the people have capital, it is a great opportunity for reform, and innovative education reform can take the lead."