China’s Winning Schools?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: January 15, 2011
BEIJING
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
On the Ground
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Nicholas Kristof addresses reader feedback and posts short takes from his travels.
An international study published last month looked at how students in 65 countries performed in math, science and reading. The winner was: Confucianism!
At the very top of the charts, in all three fields and by a wide margin, was Shanghai. Three of the next top four performers were also societies with a Confucian legacy of reverence for education: Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea. The only non-Confucian country in the mix was Finland.
The United States? We came in 15th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math.
I’ve been visiting schools in China and Asia for more than 20 years (and we sent our own kids briefly to schools in Japan, which also bears a Confucian imprint), and I’ve spent much of that time either envious or dumbfounded. I’ll never forget pulling our 2-year-old son out of his Tokyo nursery school so we could visit the States and being handed a form in which we had to list: “reason for
BEIJING
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
On the Ground
Share Your Comments About This Column
Nicholas Kristof addresses reader feedback and posts short takes from his travels.
An international study published last month looked at how students in 65 countries performed in math, science and reading. The winner was: Confucianism!
At the very top of the charts, in all three fields and by a wide margin, was Shanghai. Three of the next top four performers were also societies with a Confucian legacy of reverence for education: Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea. The only non-Confucian country in the mix was Finland.
The United States? We came in 15th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math.
I’ve been visiting schools in China and Asia for more than 20 years (and we sent our own kids briefly to schools in Japan, which also bears a Confucian imprint), and I’ve spent much of that time either envious or dumbfounded. I’ll never forget pulling our 2-year-old son out of his Tokyo nursery school so we could visit the States and being handed a form in which we had to list: “reason for
