Thursday, November 17, 2016

The Shanghai education may be onto something

After reading someone's essay who discusses the Shanghai complex, it made me start to wonder to what effects are tests beneficial to students' learning. The high competitive nature academically in such places really means that the education system is teaching towards the test. I believe this competitive nature can be good and bad. On the positive side, there are students who have memorized and analyzed to the best of their abilities. Their "left brain" abilities are probably much better than mine and I give them the respect for that. On the other hand, their creative skills or "right brain" abilities are most likely hindered from an early age. For innovation, this is definitely a drawback for innovation, design, and engineering hinder on the wonder and creativity in these people. So in terms as growth in technology, this type of learning does not benefit these areas. What is not realized is that there are many jobs that do depend on creativeness, there are also many jobs that are very much "busy work" jobs. Those typical office jobs we see in movies are very much so very uncreative. Filling out escrow papers? Filling out sales forms? These jobs do not require much creative. So in this sense, I do not think that the type of teaching and education in Shanghai is not that corrosive as it seems. What do you guys think?

1 comment:

  1. I think that by applying standardized tests to students who wish to enter an occupation that requires more intellectual thinking, schools would have a better performance rate. The school system bombards students with test after test but it does nothing beneficial if many students are reluctant to learn the material. By only testing students who enter occupations that require the knowledge necessary for the job, performance rates would change for the better. Students would then be taking the test because they want to succeed in that area and so to take it willingly seems like a better idea than imposing the test. Obviously there are flaws to a system like that but I believe that would work better.

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