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High test scores fuel false optimism
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THIS October an American Pulitzer Prize winner wrote glowingly of a Shanghai elementary school.
“How is it that Shanghai’s public secondary schools topped the world charts in the 2009 PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) exams that measure the ability of 15-year-olds in 65 countries to apply what they’ve learned in math, science and reading?” asked Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist.
When he spoke of “a deep involvement of parents in their children’s learning,” could he imagine the pains for those pupils dragged from one to another training session to attain to excellence in math, English, science, Chinese, piano, violin, and so on?
But I choose to remain silent, for we must also make allowances for a foreigner who, lacking a more holistic assessment, must necessarily depend on an external assessment like PISA on which base his conclusions. PISA exams are held every three years.
But we Chinese are flattered by this kind of praise and external assessment.
Today we are greeted by the news that Shanghai once again ranked first in mathematics, science and reading in the PISA report on global education as students in East Asia continued to outshine their Western counterparts.
I fully know the value of this “top” to our educators and officials, particularly after years of hearing complaints about crushing burdens on students and the need to revamp our much maligned educational system. Each parent might have their own distinct grievances, but sometimes they converge.
Ever since my son began fourth grade, he no longer has time for reading. He has so much homework.
Nearly all his classmates have attended Olympics Math training, a kind of rigorous training denigrated as poisonous by many mathematicians, and he began to develop such a low estimation of his own abilities, that we had to enroll him in one training session this semester.
On an ordinary day, he would count himself lucky if he could finish his homework before 9pm, but the day before yesterday he had to postpone bedtime until 10pm.
The latest external acclaim for educational success said Shanghai students reported an average of 13.8 hours every week doing school assignments, the highest and almost three times the international average of 4.9 hours.
I think it takes a lot of nerve to conclude that “three times the average 4.9 hours” is superlative and dismiss a mere 4.9 hours as trivial, inadequate and irrelevant.
Imagine that when children elsewhere are exercising and playing in the sunshine, running around in a meadow, our “flowers of the future” are enduring extracurricular training sessions, scolded for whispering and rebuked for giving the wrong answers.
When he was in kindergarten, we still heard occasionally about his character, manners and socialization, but ever since he entered primary school, the only reminders we will get from the teachers are about his scores.
The day before yesterday, as I chatted with a colleague, he observed that since my son will be in fifth grade next year, he will either be busy as hell, or just have an uneventful year.
That will depend whether we send him to a public school, which is mediocre, or have him compete for a slot in a highly competitive private school.
Beijing recently has taken the positive step of reducing the relative weight of English language scores in the National College Entrance Exam.
The fuss being made over the PISA result fuels false optimism and it does not help us come to grips with the many problems that make the lives of our children miserable.
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