Ethnic Minority Education in China: Finding a Path between Tradition and Development

Gary Becker’s and Kevin Murphy’s “The Upside of Income Inequality” analyzes the correlation between overall economic development, the importance of education and the effects it has on increasing income inequality. Becker’s and Murphy’s article presents a study taken in China that shows the increase in income inequality raising at similar rates as economic growth. This ultimately leads to a decrease in the amount of people facing poverty and better living conditions for the poor. During China’s rapid rate of economic development “inequality rose, [but] the number of Chinese who live in poverty fell from 260 million in 1978 to 42 million in 1998. Despite the widening gap in incomes, rapid economic development dramatically improved the lives of China’s poor” (Becker and Murphy 581). The authors also state that income inequality is in fact a natural result of economic development because it “raised the standard of living for both the rich and the poor” (Becker and Murphy 582). Education also effects the average earnings of Americans. The importance of receiving an education has

Over a period of year’s education has grown to be very important to many cultures all over the world. At one time in many cultures children were only taught what was necessary to get along and sometimes only children of the wealthy would be taught. China’s government

A country’s economic system decides its education system. Since China and Canada have different economic systems, China is developing on a diversified ownership economy, while Canada is running its economy by pure capitalism. It is obvious two different education systems run in those two countries respectively. And from my personal experience and some hearing from my friends, I found five main disadvantages of China’s education comparing with Canada’s education.

Although I have lived in America, I still feel infinitely grateful for my birth country, China. As Malcolm, Gladwell writes in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Chinese is innate born with diligence since the thousands of their ancestors have been working on the rice paddies days and nights to cultivate the corps, in the hope of earnning the fortune to the whole family. They believed that work hard, and the reward they will attain will respectively increase. This iron rule could also efficiently apply to Chinese education. Since China is a developed country, a large part of its population struggle to make a living under the average line of poverty, therefore it has a high demand on elite, with which to progress the whole society in all

In the book, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? : Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World, published by John Wiley & Sons on August 14, 2014, the author, Yong Zhao, states that while China gets the highest test scores on the PISA exam, parents in China often send their children to western schools. In short Yong Zhao, a Chinese native who was born in Sichuan, claims that Western countries, Britain and America, should not try and adopt China’s education system for many reasons. I my opinion this book did not seem important to pre-service teachers, but after further thought and reading, I conclude that this book is valuable to not only pre-service teachers, but to anyone that is involved in education because it provides reasons why we should not try to adopt China’s education system.

We have all been in a situation where we have immigrated to a new country for different reasons regarding, better future, or education. In the book Jade of Peony, Wayson Choy describes a struggle of a Chinese immigrant family as they settle in Canada, through the perspective of three young children; Liang, Jung, and Sekky. Each child describes his or her struggle, while settling in a new country. The family struggles to keep their children tied to their Chinese customs and traditions as they fit in this new country. The Chinese culture needs to be more open minded as it limits the future generation’s potential. Chinese culture limitations are seen through the relationship expectations, education, gender roles and jobs.

In “Investing in Education”, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn illustrate how having the power of education can help overcome poverty, inequality and economic development. It’s begins with the story of a young girl the met when they were newly married, Dai Manju, in China. The family lived in a one room wooden shack, with no running water or electricity, plus they share the space with a large pig. Dai Manju is an excellent student, but she was forced to drop out of sixth grade, because her parents didn’t see any reason for girls to get an education if they going to spend their time “hoeing fields and darning socks” (Kristof and WuDunn, 167). However, Dai Manju life changed drastically when Kristof wrote an article for the New York Times about her story.

The Chinese government set up a wide system of primary schools. For the first time in all of China’s history the majority of the population received a complete basic education. Even though the government’s “Great Leap Forward” program didn’t put

In Brooke Ross’s article, “China’s Left-behind Children” from Junior Scholastic, she informs readers about how China’s parents have to leave behind their children for employment opportunities and how this negatively impacts their children.

Each country has its own kind of education, and education always plays an important role in affecting students’ life and study on many aspects. Having received ten years of education in China and two years of education in the U.S. I would like to compare and contrast a few significant aspects of these two different kinds of educations. Knowing that no two education systems are the same, the differences between American education and Chinese education allow countries to take the essence and discard the dross through learning from each other so as to improve their own current education systems.

I believe that this individualistic ideal is indeed a consideration in why such a great emphasis is placed on study and academic success both in ancient and modern China. But whilst looking into the topic, I discovered that there was an underlying model of communitarianism with their ethos on study. Chinese people believe that a sound education does not only ensure the future of the individual, but also the future and the development of the family and country on the whole. What this means is the Chinese people believe that that only through study, will China be able to ensure the longevity of its people and nation. The maxim from the Three-Character Scripture (an ancient Chinese writing) states, “if no proper education is given to children, their nature will go bad.” I believe the word “nature” can easily be substituted for the overall health of the future of the nation.

Lao Dao also realizes that he is not able to move up in class due to a lack of education for him. This furthers Lao Dao’s feeling of estrangement toward a society he’s apart of because he recognizes that he does not matter, nothing more than a rounding error. Dr. Hao is emphasizing that the lower classes of China do not feel significant to the progression of China because they weren’t given equal opportunity of education as the higher classes. Thus, this allows them to not feel united with the rest of China. I agree with Dr. Hao’s stance on education inequality because it sheds light on the complex problem of the detachment of citizens within a society which I believe to be true.

One experience so far in China that left a strong impression on my mind was a visit to the Shaanxi museum of history. Our tour guide was a locally educated young woman in her twenties. As she took us through the different periods of Chinese history, at every exhibit showing some sort of tool or mechanistic contraption she would turn and say “as you can see, the Chinese people are very smart!” She also recounted a story in which she was very offended that an American made a comment that Chinese people are short, to which she replied “yes, we are, but we have five thousand years of history and culture!” Both the richness and vastness of Chinese history was a huge source of pride for her, as her slightly illogical response to the American’s comment shows. In retrospect, her age denotes that she grew up on the government’s campaign in the 1990s to educated students about China’s greatness, to foster pride.

The differences that exist between the Chinese and American education systems are great and obvious. However, some of these differences don’t play to the strengths of the representative country. American schools allow for greater freedom of movement and choice, while Chinese schools decide the “what”, “where”, and “how” of educational circumstance for the students (Bush, tony, and Qiang Haiyan). These differences in structure should lead to a greater educational standard being held by China, but that isn’t always the case. This paper will examine the differences in education system in the two countries and show that the Chinese system, while

The differences between the Chinese education and the American education are more obvious in people’s mind, not only to the international students, but also to the native students and some people who study on this. As more and more Chinese students come to America to have better education, we should think about why the American education system is better and how could we change our system to have a new education system in China. These differences have some deeply reason, like the American is the nation which loves freedom. It took long time to make such a big difference between the two education systems, and we need longer time to change it. An undeniable