【赫芬顿邮报20121128】中美教育体系中关于精英教育的不同假象

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【中文标题】中美教育体系中关于精英教育的不同假象

【原文标题】different illusions of meritocracy in chinese and us schooling

【登载媒体】赫芬顿邮报

【原文链接】http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-d-blum/china-education-system_b_2187719.html

Can you believe that Chinese parents bribe teachers to grade their children's homework?

Why not? American parents also give their children every advantage they can afford, from donations to private schools to test preparation and college counselors. It just goes beyond our imagination in China.

Claims have been made recently that Dan Levin reported in the New York Times on November 22, "the going bribery rate for admission to a high school linked to the renowned Renmin University in Beijing is $80,000 to $130,000."

Lest readers feel too smug, reflect on the fact that tuition at the University of Chicago Laboratory School is $26,520 for high school during 2012-2013. This extraordinary educational institution prepares its students for a lifetime of success. So when those students succeed, is it because of merit?

I have many reservations about what schools teach and the inadvertent lessons learned (about competition, zero-sum games, passivity, a divided self, and more) but if years of schooling may lead to improved life chances for individuals (albeit credential inflation for the society as a whole), then one positive aspect of the US educational system is its offering of second chances, in the form of community colleges and their "developmental" courses, remediating what was not learned at earlier levels of schooling.

In the United States we have vacillated between believing that some individuals are more "gifted" than others and that everyone should have equal chances. We alternate between tracking and mainstreaming, between testing of "intelligence" and testing of "value-added." We have had academic versus vocational schooling, and then to ensure equal chances all around, have made all schooling academic, just in case every student wants to go to college.

Currently in the United States we are reinstating a kind of vocational ("work") preparation. China has that too, and students who finish with vocational degrees often earn higher salaries than students attending academic programs, but the prestige is much lower, so many parents invest life savings in academic educations.

But what of the parents who can't?

Like in the U.S., China now has student loans, so, like us, college graduates can have enormous debt burdens.

The children of the privileged can sail off into lives made smooth by their families, always scoring highest, getting into the best programs, and ultimately finding their way to the top leadership of the nation.

Sound familiar?

The days of Abraham Lincoln have passed. Instead we have Romneys with their generations of wealth. But at least we comfort ourselves with stories about equal opportunity. And we have an ideology of equality. As long as we don't fool ourselves into confusing ideals and reality, such ideals can be the standard to which we hold ourselves.

At least we can look at China and see how bad this system of educational corruption could become.