Middle Kingdom

My top 10 Chinese Quotes on Education

10. 读书须用意,一字值千金。 (dúshū xū yòngyì, yīzì zhí qiānjīn. ‘reading books needs use attention, one word worth 1,000 gold’) — Reading requires concentration; a word may be worth a fortune.

The more information is available online, the better it is. Or is it?

Who can process all this information? Is it even worth reading? Each generation´s attention span seems to shrink. Who knows if future generations will even be able to concentrate on (what we see as) normal length articles. Let alone longer books. The more complex a text is, the slower one must read. Concentrate on one topic at a time!

Quantity is nothing. Quality everything. Maybe life was easier when we had less electronic distractions and information at our disposition?

Knowledge is infinite

So, there you have it. Knowledge is power  and has no limit. In Asia and anywhere else. The big difference -at least it feels that way- is the approach to that fact.

Some time ago, I saw a cartoon about the changes in the Western attitude to education. 50 years ago, teachers told the parents that their offspring had not studied hard enough. In the picture, the parents react by grimly looking at the child. These days -the second picture- the parents threaten at the teacher and blame him for their child´s shortcomings.

One might say: This is a good development. Modern educational methods are much more efficient and are treating the child as a person not a slave. They are fit to develop self-worth and respect for others as well as a healthy self-reliance in kids.

Someone else could argue, that former more conservative educational styles did not produce a horde of mentally unstable zombies and have shaped extraordinarily successful people. Beating a child to death over grades is the wrong way, but assertiveness and challenges are what makes success possible and worth it.

But exactly here seems to lie the difference in Eastern and Western approaches these days. While Asians still predominantly try to strive for excellency and work as hard as they can, many in the West seem to feel entitled to success simply for being who they are. Competition is assumed to be a harmful aspect of life. Disappointment and blame allegedly are the worst thing parents or teachers can do to children.

It might well be that in time a more traditional approach to education and appreciation knowledge like the Asian one (of course this is a generalization, I know) will win the race for excellency in the 21st century.

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