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【中文标题】世界上最好的公立学校
【原文标题】Lessons From the World's Best Public School
【登载媒体】新闻周刊
【原文作者】Grant Burningham
【原文链接】http://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/09/shanghai-high-confidential-249224.html
刘晶晶，上海市中心梅陇中学——世界上人口最多的国家的最优秀教育机构——15岁的九年级学生，正在抱怨她的课程表：“物理、化学、数学、语文、英语、文学、地理……一成不变的东西。”她的英文水平无可挑剔。
这并不是晶晶平常日的课程表，而是每个星期日的课程表。上帝或许在第七天就已经休息了，但晶晶还要学习，从早8点到晚5点。在星期日的午餐时，她承认这是“她唯一可以放松一下的时间。”别以为她是像《生活大爆炸》中一样奔向中国的麻省理工学院——清华大学——的书呆子，她说，班里“几乎每个人”都在周日有这样的安排。
在过去几年里，上海的公立学校引起了全世界的羡慕，同时也引发了一些争论，因为它参加了巴黎的经济合作发展组织每隔几年举办的一次测试，用以衡量全球各地教育体系的质量。在2009年（上海第一次参加测试）和2012年，上海在参与PISA（国际学生评测项目）的66个地区中均排名第一。这个测试分为三个部分，分别是阅读、自然科学和数学。与此同时，美国在这项测试中的排名一路下滑，数学尤其明显。
可以想象，在当今这个教育至关重要的年代，这样的结果引起了美国的恐慌。据比尔和梅林达盖茨基金会提供的数据，只有25％的高中毕业生在专业上可以胜任大学的课程。在很多人看来，中国的经济崛起显然来自于它的学术崛起，所以难怪经合组织的排名让美国人产生那么多的异常反应——狡辩、拒绝承认事实。《Slate》杂志发表了一篇文章，名为《为什么我们要阻止中国在国际教育测试中作弊》。伦敦《卫报》的一位专栏作家在一篇名为“这就是上海学校的真相：糟糕透顶”的文章中，信誓旦旦地要揭开经合组织教育测试中的黑幕。
有关上海的学校，及其在测试中优异成绩的争论，来源于中国几个世纪以来形成的教育传统。教师是仅次于学生父母的尊长；老师说、学生听，不但要听，还要记住并且能够重复教师传达的所有内容。几乎没有讨论和辩论，决不能挑战教师，独立解决问题的能力只在最近几年才成为上海高中教育的重点之一。评论人士认为，对晦涩原理的死记硬背不会培养出可以适应迅速变化的现代经济形势的学生。
在美国最好的公立学校里，有很多课程以外的活动——体育运动、乐队、棋类俱乐部等，高校录取办公室把孩子们在课外活动的表现作为录取标准之一。在上海，以及在中国很多地方，学业之外的活动可以决定学生上哪所大学这种概念，才刚刚开始形成。高中的课程没什么特别：数学、自然科学、语言、文学，但是一份有关中国教育的报告提到，在亚洲国家，“考试漏斗”让那些不需要考试的学科重要性降低了很多。（通常只有4门学科需要考试：中国文学和语言、数学、一门外语，再加上学生自选的一门课程，通常是他们计划在大学深造的专业。）
上海位育中学的男孩子在打篮球。
至高无上的考试
认为上海的学校“糟糕透顶”的观点，说的客气点，是愚蠢的。参加经合组织测验的5000名学生不会篡改系统，也不会作弊，他们也没有什么神气的考试基因。之所以成绩出色，是因为一些客观的原因。父母全面参与孩子的教育，大部分人确保孩子在学校和家里完成功课，我说的是数个小时的家庭作业。像晶晶这样的很多九年级学生，他们甚至在周日还要花10个小时学习，而他们的美国同学们都在睡懒觉、玩电脑游戏、在Vines网站上传视频。
上海的教师管理制度极为严格，他们被毫不留情地按照学生的考试成绩排名。张民选是名校上海师范大学的校长，也是教育局政策委员会的重要成员，他说：“教师培养是贯穿整个职业周期的艰苦过程。如果学生表现得不好，帮助教师改进是学校管理体制中最重要的任务。”
这并不意味着要淘汰表现不好的教师——美国有些教育改革人士主张这么做。实际上，在上海的学校解聘一名表现不好的教师，要比美国大城市中的学校这样做难很多。一位上海学校的校长说，“基本上，只有他们犯了罪”才会被开除。
另外一个重要的问题是，上海不能代表中国整体公立学校的教育水平。这个国家的商业和金融中心是最富有的一座城市，大部分中国儿童依然生活在贫穷的农村地区。上海最好的公立学校与农民孩子们接受的教育有天壤之别。而且，上海还有数百万农民工，由于没有居住证，他们的孩子被排除在公立学校教育体制之外。PISA测验的批评者认为由于这个原因，这项测试没有准确地反应这座城市整体的教育质量，因为还有很多孩子没有参加测试。（政府为农民工子女设置了一些特殊的学校，但教育质量无法与公立学校相提并论。）
所以，上海在类似PISA这样的测试中取得的好成绩，并不能说明中国的整体教育水平超过了美国。最好的比较方法是大城市之间做比较，上海与纽约或者洛杉矶相比。但是无论如何上海做对了一些事——即使不是所有的事和所有的人。
晶晶每天早上6点起床，7点半到达学校，直到晚上6点。学校中共有1200名学生，平均班级的规模是40人。学校的设施一流，但并不奢侈：有计算机房、体育馆、室外篮球场和跑道。她大约在6点半回到家吃晚饭，然后做作业，一直到晚上11点——她说有时候会更晚。她的父母都是全职政府公务员，但至少有一个人——有时候是两个人——陪伴她做作业。尽可能地检查、纠错、回答问题。
当问到晶晶她是否觉得这太“过分”了，她耸耸肩，说“事情就是这样”。她母亲晓梅说：“孩子的教育几乎是我们家庭的一切。在这里，如果你小学成绩好，就可以进入一个好中学。如果中学成绩好，就可以进入一个好大学，找到一份好工作。”她还说，学习好最终决定你周围的人群和你的配偶——对她女儿来说就是找到一个好丈夫。这个人必然也是成功人士，有一份好工作，让她女儿未来的生活有保证。中国和美国的区别，“就是在美国，一个卡车司机也能维持体面的生活，但这里不是这样。”
她说的是事实，这样的体制竞争残酷、优中选优。在这个旅程中，九年级至关重要，或者用批评这个体制的人的话来说，具有荒唐的重要性。中国高中学生们所面临的最重要考试是“高考”，在最高年级期末进行，它决定了一名学生能进入多好的一所大学。你可以想象成它比SAT重要一百倍。（其它东亚国家——日本、韩国——也有类似的考试。）
在九年级期末，学生们要进行一次同样压力巨大的考试，叫做“中考”，这次考试决定他们是否可以进入优秀的高中。上海的父母通常认为这次考试比高考更重要。九年级考试取得好成绩，孩子就有可能在高考中胜出。他们可以进入更好的高中，接触更好的教师，与更聪明的孩子竞争，优胜劣汰的程序已经开始了。
晶晶离她的中考只有一个多月的时间，在面对巨大的压力时，她表现出的安之若素似乎超越了她的年龄。学校里的教师压缩了体育课，让学生们有更多是时间准备考试，主要原因是教师自己的绩效取决于他们的学生的成绩。有时候，他们甚至会到食堂里催学生快点吃午餐，这样可以早点回到教室。
中国的教育界人士承认一考定终身的制度给学生们带来了太大的压力。上海师范大学校长张承认，用一次考试决定孩子的一生的确不大合理。他说：“我们正在试图降低考试的重要性，并引入其它指标来衡量学生。”
尽管如此，他指出考试制度不会消失：“考试制度在中国教育界存在了几个世纪，它是公平的。”中国的父母担心腐败行为可以决定学生的入学情况，因此考试有存在的必要。每个人都参与同样的考试，无论你来自哪里，出身富裕还是贫穷，只要考试取得好成绩，就可以进入好大学。
晶晶也觉得家庭作业“太多了”，但她还是尽量完成。她给自己设定了很高的目标。当问到如果让她选择复旦大学（上海最好的高校）、斯坦福大学还是牛津大学，她毫不犹豫地说：“牛津。”
为什么，她笑着说，部分原因是在星期六——她一周中唯一相对轻松的一天（一般情况下她还是会做一点作业）——她观看电视剧《唐顿庄园》。“我非常喜欢这部电视剧。”
上海淞江区西外国际学校的学生们。
脱离苦海
晶晶并未参加过PISA测试——要到2015年才会有下一次针对九年级学生的测试，但是她代表了上海最好的学校。她自律、坚决，她的父母全面参与她的学习。（相比之下，25％的美国儿童生活在单亲家庭，非裔美国人中，单亲家庭的比率是67％。）
上海以及中国教育制度中存在的一些问题，在附近一家中学的另外一位九年级女学生和她的父母身上体现出来。这三个人觉得受够了，他们要脱离苦海。
陈莉的父母每天晚上陪她写作业到11点，甚至12点，他们变得越来越苦恼。她告诉父母，班里有的学生每天6点回家吃晚饭，之后睡觉到12点，然后起床一直学习到第二天早晨上学。他们彻底被激怒了，她的母亲于家怡说：“这简直是疯了。”
母女两个人开始批判上海和中国的教育制度。陈说，他们只知道强调死记硬背和现实中不存在的东西。让她愤怒的不仅仅是需要背诵长篇大论的中国古诗，而且还要用教师的话一字不差地解释古诗的含义。陈说：“你不但需要背诵古诗，还需要背诵它的含义，而且不是你自己的理解，而是记住别人的答案。这究竟有什么意义？”
她是一名好学生，但是她厌烦了中考带来的巨大压力。她母亲说：“这个考试决定了太多的事情。”
陈的母亲创建并经营一家业绩不错的广告公司，她的父亲是一所大学的信息技术教授。他们在上海有一些房产，在过去十年中大幅增值。她有一个姨妈在几年前移民到加拿大温哥华。中国春节假期的几个月之后，她的父母进行了一次长谈。他们决定卖掉一些房产，申请加拿大的投资绿卡项目。这个项目规定外国人只要投资80万加元（72.5万美元），就可以到加拿大生活和工作。几个月之前，他们购买了一家位于哥伦比亚维多利亚的咖啡厅和一家服装店。很快他们会买一所房子，于笑着说：“那里的房地产比这里便宜很多。”她的女儿在一个月之前辍学，正在全力学习英语。她很高兴下个月不需要参加中考了。
他们说，是上海的学校逼他们走到这一步。陈说“空气质量和食品安全问题”也让他的父母最终下定决心。
上海与陈的家庭类似的父母并不多，但其它的一些选择的确在慢慢浮现。具有代表性的是上海郊区的西外国际学校。这所私立学校创办于2005年，提供从亲子班到12年级的教育，主要市场是中产阶级家庭。与上海的许多私立学校相比，这里的学费比较合理。校长林敏说，他希望这所学校的课程可以混合中国公立学校中的标准课程，和一些西对解决问题、创造性思维的内容。
这所学校还会采取一些大部分公立学校都不会触及的教学方式。例如，这个学期末，高年级的学生将去中国西部的新疆旅行，去了解维吾尔族居民——与中国汉族人关系紧密的穆斯林——的生活方式和文化。林校长说，观察并参与这些“与上海中产阶级学生完全不同的生活方式——与他们同吃、同住、同学——是非常重要的。我们试图给传统的课本和家庭作业增加一些新的内容，这是现实生活中的经验，可以开阔学生的眼界。”
学校中学生数量在过去十年中迅速增加，证明中国有很多父母渴望一种不同的、不那么强烈关注课本的教育方式。上海和北京的市政府也了解这一点。两年前，张在教育局的一次改革回会议中，提出地方教育体系的所谓“绿色”教育行动。他说，这其中包括一些具体的目标，比如要求教师布置更少的家庭作业，确保孩子每天可以多睡一个小时。
他们还已经开始与大学接触，在招生过程中考虑课外活动的优秀表现——体育、喜剧、音乐——就像美国一样。张说：“这是一个过程，需要一些时间。相信我，我们知道有很多问题需要解决。”
但是中国恐怕不会全部照搬西方的做法，上海的公立学校更像是美国城镇高中的一个平行宇宙。陈说，她听说美国和加拿大一些地方，学习刻苦的孩子被叫做书呆子，经常遭到嘲弄。
她说，在上海，“事情正好相反。如果你不刻苦学习，如果你不是一个书呆子，同学们会取笑你。”
不学习就被看不起，或许这才是全世界都可以从上海身上吸取的经验。
原文：
Lessons From the World's Best Public School
Jinjing Liu, a 15-year-old ninth-grader at Meilong Intermediate in central Shanghai—and part of the best education system in the world’s most populous country—is ticking off her normal class schedule: “Physics, chemistry, math, Chinese, English, Chinese literature, geography…the usual stuff,” she says in impeccable English.
That’s not Jinjing’s school day schedule; that’s her workload each and every Sunday. The Lord may have rested on the seventh day, but Jinjing studies, from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. She relates this over lunch on a Saturday afternoon, “the only day,” she acknowledges, that she has “any free time to relax.” And lest you think she is some whiz-bang academic geek on the fast track to Tsinghua, China’s M.I.T., think again. Ask who else in her high school has that Sunday routine and she says, “Pretty much everyone.”
Over the past several years, the Shanghai public school system has drawn global envy—and stirred controversy—by acing an international test given every few years by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that seeks to measure the quality of school systems globally. In 2009 (the first time the city participated in the test) and again in 2012, Shanghai finished first out of 66 locations surveyed in the so-called PISA exams (Program for International Student Assessment) in the three key disciplines: reading, science and mathematics. At the same time, the test showed the United States dropping lower in the global standings in all three disciplines, most precipitously in math.
Predictably, at a time of increasing public concern about public education, the results prompted consternation in the U.S., where, according to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, only 25 percent of high school graduates are academically prepared to succeed in college. In the minds of many, China’s economic rise is clearly linked to its academic success, so it is perhaps not surprising that the OECD ranking elicited another reaction among America’s chattering class: defensiveness, and some denial. The digital magazine Slate headlined an article “Why We Need to Stop Letting China Cheat on International Education Rankings.” (Now that’ll make your kids smarter!) And a columnist for London’s Guardian purported to reveal the deep, dark secret that somehow eludes the OECD test-givers in a piece titled “Here’s the Truth About Shanghai Schools: They’re Terrible.”
The controversy surrounding Shanghai’s schools—and their success on the exam—has its roots in the centuries-old traditions of education in China. A teacher is the most exalted figure of respect outside of a student’s parents. The teacher speaks, the student listens. More than listen, the student memorizes and needs to be able to spit back virtually everything he or she is taught. Discussion and debate are rare—never challenge the teacher—and the notion of independent problem solving as a goal of high school education is only now starting to be a priority for Shanghai’s educators. The emphasis on speed and memorization of obscure facts, critics have long said, does not necessarily produce the kind of students who are able to flourish in a rapidly changing modern economy.
In the best U.S. public high schools there is usually a wide variety of extracurricular activities—sports, band or the chess club—and university admission officers give kids credit for excelling outside the classroom. In Shanghai, and in China more broadly, the notion that anything other than academic excellence should determine where a student goes to college has only recently been given any credence. The high school curriculum isn’t innovative: math, sciences, language, literature. But what the Asia Society, in a comprehensive report on Chinese education, called “the examination funnel” diminishes the importance of subjects not tested (typically, four are on the test: Chinese literature and language, mathematics, a foreign language and one subject of a student’s choice, which is usually the presumed focus of his or her major in college).
A group of boys plays basketball at Wei Yu Middle School in central Shanghai.
Preposterously Important Exam
The notion that Shanghai’s schools are “terrible” is, to put it mildly, silly. The 5,000 students who took the OECD exam don’t game the system, or cheat or possess some magical test-taking gene. They did well for a handful of reasons. Parents are intimately involved in their children’s education; the vast majority make sure their children do their work in school, and at home—hours and hours of homework. And in the case of Jinjing and many of her ninth-grade classmates, they even put in 10-hour days on Sunday, when, it’s safe to say, most of their peers in the United States are sleeping late, playing computer games and uploading Vines.
Shanghai’s teachers are monitored relentlessly—and ranked ruthlessly by how well their students do on exams. “Teacher training is a career-long endeavor,” says Zhang Minxuan, president of Shanghai Normal University, one of the city’s elite colleges, and until recently a key policymaker in the city’s education bureau. “Helping teachers improve if their students aren’t doing well is a vital part of any school administration’s mission.”
That does not mean getting rid of poor teachers—something some education reformers in the U.S. argue is critical. In Shanghai, in fact, it’s even more difficult to get rid of a bad teacher than it is in most urban systems in the U.S. “Basically,” one Shanghai principal says, “they have to commit some sort of crime” to be dismissed.
It’s also important to note that Shanghai is not representative of all Chinese public education. The country’s business and finance capital is one of its richest cities, and the majority of China’s children still live in poor rural areas. There is a profound difference between the best public high schools in Shanghai and the education a peasant kid gets. It is also true that there are millions of migrant workers in Shanghai who lack the required residence permit and are thus excluded from the city’s public school system. Critics of the PISA exam say that’s one reason the test doesn’t accurately reflect the overall quality of the city’s education system, since those kids aren’t tested. (The government has set up special schools for the children of migrants that are nowhere near the quality of the regular public schools.)
So Shanghai’s success on an international exam like the PISA does not mean China’s entire educational system is better than the U.S.’s. The better comparison is big city to big city: Shanghai versus New York or Los Angeles. But the results show that Shanghai is doing something right—if not necessarily everything, or for everyone.
Jinjing gets up at 6 every morning, is in school by 7:30 and stays until 6 every evening. There are 1,200 students at her school, and the average class size is about 40 students. The school’s facilities are first-rate but not lavish: There are computer rooms and decent athletic facilities, outdoor basketball courts and a running track. She gets home and eats dinner at around 6:30, then does homework every weeknight until 11 p.m.—“and sometimes later,” she says. Both her parents are government attorneys and work full time, but at least one—and sometimes both—is by her side as she does her homework. Checking it, correcting it, answering questions when possible.
Ask Jinjing if this seems “obsessive” and she shrugs, replying with the Chinese version of “it is what it is.” Her mother, Xiaomei, explains, “Education is pretty much everything. Here, if you succeed in primary school, you will go to a good high school. If you succeed in high school, you will go to a good college and get a good job.” Academic success will also, she notes, determine who you will meet and eventually marry—a husband, in her daughter’s case, who will have also succeeded and thus has a good job and is able to provide a good life for her daughter’s future family. The difference between China and the U.S., Xiaomei offers, “is that in the U.S. a truck driver can make a decent living, have a good life. That’s not really so here.”
She says this matter-of-factly, describing a system that is relentlessly competitive, that aims to cull the best from the rest. And on this journey, the ninth grade is vitally—or, say the system’s critics, preposterously—important. The most famous high-pressure exam Chinese high school students take is called the gaokao; it’s taken at the end of their senior year and is all-important in determining how good the university a student attends is. Think of it as the SAT times about 100. (Other East Asian countries—Japan, South Korea—have a similar test.)
At the end of ninth grade, students take a similarly pressure-packed exam, known as the zhongkao, that determines whether they get into an elite public high school. Parents in Shanghai often treat this exam as more important than the college-entry exam. Do well on the ninth-grade exam, the thinking goes, and a child is likely to succeed on the college exam. He or she will go to a better high school, with better teachers, and compete with brighter kids. This is where the culling begins.
Jinjing is just over one month away from taking the zhongkao, and she bears the looming pressure with an equanimity that seems beyond her years. Teachers at her school limit things like physical education classes to give students more time to prepare, in large part because their own evaluations are so dependent on how well their students do on this test. Occasionally they’ll even hurry students along at the cafeteria, telling them to eat their lunches more quickly so they can get back to the classroom.
China’s educational administrators have come to acknowledge that the exam system puts too much stress on students. Zhang, the Shanghai Normal University president, concedes that it’s a bit much to have a single test determine a child’s path in life. “We’re in the process of trying to reduce somewhat the importance of the exams,” he says. “Other things should be considered in evaluating a student.”
Still, he notes that the exam system isn’t going away: “Examinations have been part of Chinese education for centuries, and they are fair.” At a time in China when parents worry about corruption playing a role in which child gets into what school, this matters. Everyone takes the same test, and no matter where you’re from, rich or poor, if you do well, you will be able to attend a quality university.
Jinjing agrees that the homework assigned is “too much. It’s excessive.” But she does it. And she has her academic sights set high. Asked her choice if she could go to Fudan University (Shanghai’s best college), Stanford University or Oxford, she doesn’t hesitate: “Oxford.”
Why? In part, she says with a smile, because on Saturdays—her one day of relative rest (she always does at least a bit of homework)—she’s been watching the TV series Downton Abbey. “I really like it.”
Students in class at Xi Wai International School in the Songjiand District of suburban Shanghai.
Bailing Out
Jinjing has not taken the PISA exam—it will next be given to ninth-graders in 2015—but she exemplifies the best of Shanghai’s schools. She is disciplined and determined, and her parents are very involved. (By contrast, 25 percent of American children are now raised in one-parent households, and that jumps to 67 percent for African-American.)
The problem for Shanghai’s educational establishment—and more broadly, China’s—is illustrated by another ninth-grade girl at a nearby intermediate school, and her parents. All three have had enough. They are bailing out.
As Chen Li’s parents watched her labor over her homework until 11 or midnight every night, they grew frustrated. They were exasperated when she told them of classmates who come home at 6, eat dinner, take a nap until midnight and then wake up and study for the rest of the night before going to school in the morning. “Crazy,” her mother, Yu Jaiyi, says.
Mother and daughter deliver the standard critique of Shanghai’s system—and by extension China’s. The emphasis on rote learning, on memorization, borders on the surreal, Chen says. She was exasperated not just by the fact that she had to learn to recite long Chinese poems but also because she had to explain the meaning of the poem using the precise words the teacher had used. “You not only had to memorize the poem, you then had to memorize what the meaning of the poem is, not by thinking about it yourself, and expressing it yourself, but by memorizing the answer,” Chen says. “What is the point of that?”
She is a good student, but she became bored by the emphasis on the looming zhongkao exam. “Too much rests on that,” her mother says.
Chen’s mother founded and runs a moderately successful advertising agency; her father is a professor of information technology at a good university. They own some real estate in Shanghai that has gone up in value over the past decade, and she has an aunt who moved to Vancouver, Canada, a few years ago. Just a few months ago, over the Chinese New Year holiday, her parents had a long talk. They decided to sell some of their real estate and take advantage of the investment green card program in Canada, in which an immigrant can move and work there by investing a minimum of $800,000 Canadian, or about $725,000. A month ago, they bought a coffee shop and a clothes store in Victoria, British Columbia. Soon they will buy a house—“Real estate there is so much cheaper than here,” says Yu with a smile. Her daughter dropped out of school a month ago and is now studying English full time. She is very happy that she won’t be taking the zhongkao next month.
Shanghai’s schools drove them out, they say, although Chen adds that the “air quality and [concerns] about food safety” also helped her parents decide.
Not many parents in Shanghai have the means to make the kind of move Chen’s family did. But other options are emerging. They are exemplified by a school like Xiwai International in suburban Shanghai. Started in 2005, the private school offers a pre-K through 12th-grade education and is squarely aimed at middle-class parents. The tuition, unlike that at many private schools in Shanghai, is reasonable. And the curriculum, says principal Lin Min, is a blend of standard Chinese public school fare with, he hopes, a slightly more Western emphasis on problem solving and creative thinking.
The school also takes risks most public schools in this city will not: Later this semester, for example, senior students will make a trip to the Xinjiang region in western China, where they will learn about the lifestyle and culture of the resident Uighurs, Muslims who have tense relations with the local Han Chinese population and with the government. The chance to see and interact with people whose lifestyles are “vastly different from the average Shanghai middle-class student—to live with them, eat with them, study with them—is very important,” says Lin, the principal. “We’re trying to add to traditional book learning and homework. This will be real-world life experience. It will broaden [the students’] horizons.”
The school’s enrollment has jumped sharply over the past decade, proving there is a thirst among a fair number of Chinese parents for a different, slightly less intense style of primary education. The Chinese authorities, in both Shanghai and Beijing, know this. Two years ago, in one of his last acts in the education bureau, Zhang helped put together what’s called the “Green” education initiative for the local school system. The effort includes specific goals; among them, he says, is to get teachers to assign less homework and to try to make sure kids get at least one more hour of sleep each night.
They’ve also begun to try to work with universities to credit students in the admissions process for excellence in extracurricular activities—sports, drama, music—as is standard in the U.S. “It’s a process,” Zhang says. “It’ll take some time. Believe me, we know we have issues to address.”
But adopting the Western style wholesale isn’t going to happen. Shanghai’s public schools can often seem like an alternative universe compared with a lot of high schools in urban America. Chen says she heard that in some places in the U.S. and Canada, kids who study really hard are called geeks or nerds, and are mocked.
In Shanghai, she notes, “it’s the opposite. If you’re not studious, if you’re not a nerd, kids make fun of you.”
If you don’t study, you’re not cool. That may be the most useful lesson the rest of the world can glean from what Shanghai is doing right.
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狗仔卡
发表于 2014-5-9 09:35
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发表于 2014-5-9 10:49
