East versus West Education Differences ...

My Wikipedia research didn't prove to be as fruitful with this topic
as I had hoped. So, unfortunately, dear reader, this blog will contain mostly my own thoughts on the subject. (Already I feel your pain).

However, I did learn a thing or two this week. It appears that India and China are centuries ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to education. Both had a long standing academic tradition. India's was destroyed by the imposition of a British system. China fared somewhat better as a colony but I imagine it lost a lot during the infamous Cultural Revolution, where the old classics and the art was looked upon as being bourgeoise and destroyed.

However, that being said, I think that there has to be an emphasis on rote learning in China, especially when it can take 8 years before you know enough Chinese characters to write a letter home.

This is where I see the main difference because I feel (with no facts what so ever to back it up) that America's education reform of the 60's and the 70's moved away from learning by rote and into new territory. Now we are even venturing into brain research to inform our teaching practices. So, I guess I would say that "Western" (meaning American) learning is more about the process than the facts.

Also, I think we have moved further away from corporal punishment in the classroom than most countries. In fact, I think we have taken the lead in this regards and our model is slowing moving in to other countries education systems.

(Although, I guess that student/teacher relations in China also changed significantly during the Cultural Revolution. One would think that they would have to, given the amount of power that students weilded under Mao. For those of you who don't know, some teachers were actually beaten up by their students during this time. See Son of the Revolution by Hen Liang and Judith Shapiro.)