Chinese Education - Is It An Oxymoron?

This, from Elliot Bougis, pretty much sums up the frustrations I had when I was studying in Beijing.

"I can tell you firsthand the amount of time kids -- little kids, middle kids, big kids -- spend poring over books is mind-boggling. Trust me, if you thought the USA dumbed kids down by "teaching to the test," the Taiwanse education system makes us look like a bunch of Greek-speaking, beard-stroking, finger-raising peripatetic philosophers in the Stoa.

Myopia is a fitting metaphor for the Taiwanese, and presumably larger Asian, theory of education. Students perpetually miss the forest for the trees because education has been reduced, by and large, to the calculus of academic performance. Creativity is, at best, a diversion among my students and, at worst, a distraction. Know the questions you'll be asked; don't waste time thinking about what questions need to be asked. Know what the right answer is; don't consider why the right answers matter.

There is no more awkward and stultifying a moment for me as a teacher than just after I've asked a class to "come up with" their "own ideas" and to "be creative" only to hear a uniform reply: utter silence. But hey, maybe the Taiwanese know some secret I don't; maybe the sheer brute effort put into scanning books and trudging through drills really does produce brilliance. But considering Chinese Mandarin had to *borrow* the word "logic" from European languages, I'm skeptical."