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In the wake of that one WSJ article, there has been a lot of discussion about parenting and education in general. A really common theme that's been going on for years is this:
The Chinese (and Asians in general) are automatons who only know rote repetition.
Americans are the creative ones with all the great ideas.
I think the whole notion is a total myth. Whenever I see people slam Asians for not being creative enough, I just see it as racist. I facepalm IRL when I see somebody claiming to be an educator disparage his Asian students online. Many times when it's time to discuss, say, the Chinese education system, there will be someone saying "I'm a professor and all my Asian students are unoriginal automatons".
What if the cause is purely socioeconomic? U.S. is a developed country that has been a pre-eminent world power for a century and a free country for 300. Meanwhile, most Asian countries have been colonies and many are still growing. For all of China's success, there are still vast income inequalities and it has not been that long since WW2 or the disastrous Cultural Revolution. So maybe countries need a certain baseline of wealth and equal opportunity before creative outflow begins?
An example of an Asian country that has been very well off economically is Japan. Unsurprisingly, the Japanese are known for being creative. And for all that talk, nobody is even clear on what creativity is. It seems like a made-up corporate buzzword.
What if creativity was just another aspect of intelligence? What if--in an ironic twist--the apparent "lack" of creativity in Chinese people was proof of a superior education system? I'll use a concrete example. Say, a Chinese student of average intelligence learns his math very well through rote repetition. He learned so well that 95% of the time, he seems no different from an American student of high intelligence. But in the 5% when you have to really stretch your mind to solve a hard problem, the American student gets the solution and the Chinese one does not. Then others interpret it as the Chinese student being "less creative" when, in fact, his excellent education allowed him to overachieve. This is just another possibility that could exist.
Having watched pro SC, WC3, SC2 and DotA scenes, I really haven't found any evidence that any particular nation is inherently more creative than another when it comes to games.
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It's obviously incredibly racist and untrue. That's the point of sensationalist journalism. They say something incredibly provocative, and then you want to rant about how bad it is (but in reality, no one is actually taking the position you're arguing against). Thus I will not click on that link so that I do not feed their worthless hands with ad revenue.
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You should probably rephrase to say "does the Asian education system hinder creativity?", since that is what is being actually discussed.
Nobody really believes that Asians are inherently less creative and if they do well you can just point the fact that the Chinese invented fucking paper.
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they obviously never heard of Boxer
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Its just something whites say so that the can feel superior in some way to people who are defeating them acedemically. However I know that often in class, people that are normally high grade focused acedemic acheivers tend to be a lot more reluctant to taking stylelistic risks when completeing asignments.
Thanks for posting this.
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both sides of this argument just relies on truthiness, or things that feel right without necessarily being right. maybe you could look up some actual studies to prove or disprove your point.
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On January 26 2011 12:51 Chef wrote:
It's obviously incredibly racist and untrue. That's the point of sensationalist journalism. They say something incredibly provocative, and then you want to rant about how bad it is (but in reality, no one is actually taking the position you're arguing against). Thus I will not click on that link so that I do not feed their worthless hands with ad revenue.
If that were sensationalist journalism, all would be well. This is a common view in America. There are tons of people who think Asians are not creative for some sort of reason. The WSJ article... I don't know what that was that about, really. But the response is what I'm responding to. In face of criticisms of American parenting, instead of picking out any of logical flaws in the author's argument, one of the most common responses was that the Chinese would still be less creative than Americans even with demonstrably higher achievement. That article's comments are just a small slice of the tens of thousands of comments on the internet of that nature.
You should probably rephrase to say "does the Asian education system hinder creativity?", since that is what is being actually discussed.
People don't just say education. Some people say people say it's the culture as a whole. Other people say it's genetic adaptation. But yes, most commonly this comes up when people talk about education. Usually, when there's a need to explain why a country like China takes first place on some sort of scholastic assessment.
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United States4053 Posts
I think it's right to say that the Chinese learning style is heavily dependent on repetition (e.g. writing characters over and over to learn them, practicing a math concept repeatedly to understand it). I don't think it's fair to say that Chinese people as a race (or Asian people as a population) are less creative.
The former is an argument you can make with evidence and scientific study (and you can even try to extend it - perhaps without success - to determine which method is better). The latter is a racist generalization, which probably lingers in America due to historical events from the end of the 19th century.
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Europeans are pretty creative too.
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I am french living in china, and I can say that almost all of my chinese recruits can't think out of the box. They haven't been trained to learn how to brainstorm and find solutions by themselves. It's because at university they basically learn a method, end of the story. Instead of analyzing the method, understanding why the method is good, and how using the logic behind this method to be able to build a new method to solve a new problem.
But, as soon as you explained everything they are really efficient.
I think the lack of creativity can be explained by their lack of general knowledge and intellectual hobbies. They know nothing about history, geography, and have an extremely limited scientific knowledge other than what they learned at school. My chinese wife is smart, if I explain something she will understand it quickly, no problem, but she just can't understand how I can spent hours reading wikipedia, or why I was crazy about knowing everything about dinosaurs when I was 5. Maybe I am too elitist and should realize that in every country people prefer to watch retarded tv shows rather than reading an encyclopedia, but seriously, 99% are not cultivated at all.
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That article shows one of the most biased portions of the book.
I personally believe that Asian parents are doing what's right for their kids. Creativity in things such as science and art only really come after you have a solid foundation to work upon.
For example, you can be creative all you want with your strategies. Until you have good macro and game sense, all that is pretty much useless.
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On January 26 2011 13:14 endy wrote:
I am french living in china, and I can say that almost all of my chinese recruits can't think out of the box. They haven't been trained to learn how to brainstorm and find solutions by themselves. It's because at university they basically learn a method, end of the story. Instead of analyzing the method, understanding why the method is good, and how using the logic behind this method to be able to build a new method to solve a new problem.
But, as soon as you explained everything they are really efficient.
I think the lack of creativity can be explained by their lack of general knowledge and intellectual hobbies. They know nothing about history, geography, and have an extremely limited scientific knowledge other than what they learned at school. My chinese wife is smart, if I explain something she will understand it quickly, no problem, but she just can't understand how I can spent hours reading wikipedia, or why I was crazy about knowing everything about dinosaurs when I was 5. Maybe I am too elitist and should realize that in every country people prefer to watch retarded tv shows rather than reading an encyclopedia, but seriously, 99% are not cultivated at all.
... not sure if srs
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Do these people know anything about art? For instance, Japanese novelists are some of the most renowned in all the world. Haruki Murukami, Yukio Mishima, Soseki Natsume, Yoshimoto Banana, and so on. Korea is famous for its film and video game industries. I know nothing about China other than their interest in "western" classical, but one would be an absolute fool to discount the achievements of Tan Dun, Zhou Long, and the other myriad of Chinese composers as illegitimate or uncreative.
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It's a highschool excuse for having poor grades. Hey hes a total nerd and has straight A's, but I'm the creative one!
On January 26 2011 13:15 XXGeneration wrote:
That article shows one of the most biased portions of the book.
I personally believe that Asian parents are doing what's right for their kids. Creativity in things such as science and art only really come after you have a solid foundation to work upon.
For example, you can be creative all you want with your strategies. Until you have good macro and game sense, all that is pretty much useless.
I think that art and science are completely different when it comes to creativity. In art you start creative and then you acquire technique. In the sciences you start with perfect technique (perfect knowledge) and then you need to get creative.
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I'm Asian, it's true.
Obviously it's not as flat as that but I think there is a general tendency for it.
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On January 26 2011 13:39 Cloud wrote:
It's a highschool excuse for having poor grades. Hey hes a total nerd and has straight A's, but I'm the creative one!
i believe that.
i also believe that "creativity" is one of those nebulously defined things that everyone thinks is good and should have and they attempt to identify it and kah-ray-zee solutions but in reality that gets nowhere.
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United States4796 Posts
A little offended, actually.
I consider myself relatively creative. I'm fairly (100%) Asian.
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I'd like to see some studies done on the subject of whether a group of students from chinse schools have a lower measured creativity quotient than a group of students raised here. Interesting topic.
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First we'd need a real definition of creativity. This is part of what motivates me to, I guess, "rant" about this topic. There isn't any scientific data to support this very common notion. All the evidence is anecdotal (and I have plenty of anecdotal evidence of the opposite) or something along the lines of "Asian Americans are under-represented as CEOs", "Where's the Chinese Steve Jobs?" sort of arguments. There isn't even a widespread definition of creativity.
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Russian Federation3632 Posts
"Asian Americans are under-represented as CEOs",
Language barriers. A first-generation immigrant has a hard time rising to position where he/she can showcase their creativity.
I do find credence in the idea that cultural differences can translate to differences in creativity, though.
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EPT
