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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 Federation3631 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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Baa?21244 Posts
On January 26 2011 14:20 Hidden_MotiveS wrote:
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.
The hell is a creativity quotient?
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Funny how this came up on tl, I mean this site at least used to have a pretty large asian demographic. And I think people on this site are extremely creative for whatever reason, it's like every person except me has some fucking ninja epic drawing skills, cake making skills o_o, music and so forth.
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On January 26 2011 13:22 meaculpa wrote:Show nested quote +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
Nah I'm serious. When I showed the Schindler's list to my wife, she was shocked, she asked if all that really happened.
My company just recruited a dozen recent master degree graduates and I had to train them. I used to the occasion to ask if they knew who Hitler was. They had no idea.
edit : I know this anecdote is not directly related to creativity. Saying Chinese are not creative is indeed a little racist and is not what I meant. But I am convinced that not knowing about history, art and other forms of culture really doesn't help to be creative. It's not that they're not creative, it's just that during the 20 first years of their life, they're forced to learn a lot of things by heart and by repetition, and the school programs are really focused on Mandarin and maths.
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On January 26 2011 14:54 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2011 14:20 Hidden_MotiveS wrote:
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. The hell is a creativity quotient?
You're right, Wikipedia says that there is no such thing as a standardized creativity quotient because creativity is so subjective.
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.
Because we lack a standardized approach to measuring creativity, it's actually really hard to find studies showing that certain teaching methods make people more creative.
I think to really say that any specific race were raised to be (as a whole) more or less creative you first have to define what creativity is.
I'd like to coin or use a term, useful creativity. I remember a TED talk about how when children in kindergarten were tested for their creativity quotients they were supposed to all be creative geniuses. They said that the kindergarteners were all creative geniuses because they could think up a hundred things that a paper clip could be used for (fishing hook), but when they grew up they could think up fewer ideas. (I don't know how many fewer ideas, the TED talk was rather unstructured and did not say).
But the reason why the kindergardners were able to think up so many ideas was because they didn't know very much about the paper clips, their minds were still malleable. They would ask question like "well what if the paper clip were made out of cheese and weighed a ton? Then it could be used as statue".
Well, that's just silly. Certainly, in the mind of the expert there are few options, but in the mind of the novice there are few, but even if building four spawning pools in starcraft is rather creative, is it really a viable build? Useful creativity is creativity that can be applied to situations to come up with a good solution.
I'd like to say that useful creativity is creativity that comes from general knowledge of a subject. When people know a lot about a subject, they're usually able to be more creative in that subject. It's just silly to think of creativity as something that just comes to you. I find that the most creative people are the ones that know a lot about something and then work hard at it.
Every time I use creativity now, I'm referring to useful creativity.
One can gain general knowledge by reading theory and learn about about interconnections by doing.
Learning theory doesn't really allow the separate ideas of a subject to connect, but learning by doing does. You could spend hundreds of hours learning the theory behind starcraft, but until you tested your strategies out, they would just be untested hypotheses.
At the same time, if you didn't understand the theory and minute details behind starcraft: the build order timings, the unit strengths, the unit stats, the tech trees, the map scouting paths etc... then all you'd be able to do would be to regurgitate builds (assuming you learned the theory behind that build).
Creativity requires knowledge. It requires knowledge about the theory within a subject field and it requires knowledge about the interconnections of the things within the field. Knowing that marines do x damage and medics(medivacs) heal y damage doesn't do much if you don't build both units at the same time. However if you don't know how to build medics, then you're even more screwed.
That said, I think both sides of the hemisphere need to reevaluate their educational systems if they want students to learn how to be creative within their specific fields of specialization. The East has to focus more on teaching people hands on skills, and the West has to focus more on teaching theory.
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What the hell, I didn't even know there was a discussion to be had about this, it's just baseless racism.
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This forum is going to produce biased answers, because most of the Asians here will be sons of immigrant parents, not actual Chinese-Chinese, Japanese-Japanese, or Korean-Korean, or etc-etc.
From living in China as of right now, I can confirm that the education system here is terrible for management and problem-solving skills; a lot of foreign consultants are being hired to solve management problems that Chinese people can't. There's very little QA for basic engineering problems (I've encountered pedestrian crossing lights that turn solid red without any warning, there's only stop and go, no flashing red for 'keep crossing but don't start'), and service is unspeakably bad (i.e. if you were to create a flowchart of how waiters and waitresses acted in most Chinese restaurants, none of it would make sense; it would just consist of people yelling at each other and eventually serving the customer).
The education system right now trains the Chinese to do singular problems consistently and competently, but nobody's good at systemic problem-solving. All employees of all companies do not feel as if they have any responsibility for their individual job to contribute to the ultimate success of their company, they just think "I get paid to do exactly what I'm told, it's not my business to do anything else." Consequentially, you often get referred to management by lower service employees whenever they encounter any situation that isn't specifically laid out for them to handle. I can't speak for the education systems of any other Asian countries, however.
This leaks a little bit into Chinese-American kids: a lot of the pushier parents push their kids to just focus on the quantitatively measurable stuff like standardized tests, squashing actual creativity. The American education system itself is also tending towards this (like with No Child Left Behind) due to the fact that the only objectively measurable things usually don't involve creativity.
This is all anecdotal but if you guys lived in China for a month or so, you'd know :3
Oh just so you guys know about my possible biases, I'm a Chinese-American born in Indiana lived in the US most of my life, my parents are both native Chinese (but their worldview is way different from the majority of Chinese/ChineseAmericans anyhow)
On January 26 2011 15:59 AzTec wrote:
What the hell, I didn't even know there was a discussion to be had about this, it's just baseless racism.
Naw, it's unfortunate that cultural habits often match racial lines really well but this is an issue of culture rather than race.
EDIT: THIS COULD ALL BE BS WARNING:: I can't find the evidence for this right now but I once read an article contrasting the Detroit car engineering model with the Japanese car engineering model. What was interesting, if I recall correctly, is that in Detroit, cars are engineered completely from the top down: engineers design everything, then assembly line workers just build what they're told to build. Whereas in Japan, even though the basic car designs are done from the top down, every component-manufacturer and a lot of lower level workers have the right to give feedback about individual components of the car and possible suggestions for how to improve the cars. This kind of ties into 'creativity,' since the base laborer is allowed creative input, Japanese cars end up being better much quicker. Germany has a similar engineering model IIRC.
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I'm chinese... and this is actually somewhat true. Intellectual property rights don't really exist in quite a few asian countries, so there's really no reward for originality. I've worked with some people that merely copied the exact thing, and when I question the IP rights, I just receive some confused stares.
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To throw out sweeping generalizations is of course untrue, and a side effect of having to make an article that attracts readers.
Something like "Asians found to be more able to perform a repetitious task efficiently than comparable workers of different ethnic backgrounds, while slightly underperforming in tasks requiring problem solving and managerial skills" might be more accurate.
Cultures have an effect on the people who live with that culture, seems a fair assumption to make.
While the actual title may be misleading, the general concept doesn't have to be wrong.
Different cultures have different methods to approach a problem, have different concepts of childhood, have different concepts of education, and have different... everything.
No surprise to me.
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OP begins with an example about a math problem and education, and somehow bearbuddy gives a "lack of intellectual property rights" as an explanation for his perceived lack of originality. In this context, creativity and originality are distinct.
There's no reward for originality? Really?
Trying to generalize an entire country as having a specific "engineering model"... what is that supposed to mean? Just because you work in a certain country you design car a certain way? Just because you work in a certain country you are of that nationality?
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On January 26 2011 17:20 Loser777 wrote:
Trying to generalize an entire country as having a specific "engineering model"... what is that supposed to mean? Just because you work in a certain country you design car a certain way? Just because you work in a certain country you are of that nationality?
Um why exactly can't styles of engineering be specific to cultures? Especially given that in my example, cars, such differences in engineering lie mostly on the lines of the amount of autonomy/influence each level of worker is given, which can definitely be specific to culture. And did I make any comments on the race/ethnicity/nationality of each individual worker generalized within a culture? Are you saying people aren't allowed to make generalizations at all?
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On January 26 2011 17:20 Loser777 wrote:
OP begins with an example about a math problem and education, and somehow bearbuddy gives a "lack of intellectual property rights" as an explanation for his perceived lack of originality. In this context, creativity and originality are distinct.
There's no reward for originality? Really?
Trying to generalize an entire country as having a specific "engineering model"... what is that supposed to mean? Just because you work in a certain country you design car a certain way? Just because you work in a certain country you are of that nationality?
I'm just going with the flow of the discussion, and providing a phenomenon that I observe as a example seems to be more tangible than bringing up vague philosophical points. Excuse me if I seem to have sidetracked from the point, but I feel as though it contributes to the general attitude of the whole system/culture. Also excuse me for my reading comprehension, but I fail to see how being original and being creative are not intrinsically tied together.
Of course, this is a sweeping claim that should not be made lightly, but my personal experiences have reinforced this point. Without patent for intellectual property, the resources spent on R&D can be allocated elsewhere. That is to say, there is no need to think critically when the breakthrough can be made by someone else, and there is no punishment for taking their ideas and making it one's own. The general unawareness or disrespect towards IP laws seem to indicate that originality is not championed to the utmost degree that we have in the Western societies.
If my stereotype is incorrect, then by all means lead me to the right path.
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Mmmmmm I don't think it's a racial issue, I think it's a socio-economic issue.
I believe that asian education systems and value systems basically try to take medicore people and turn them into top level people. You can't really teach something like in depth critical analysis, intuition and imagination, which are all staples of creative problem solving. Therefore, they do it through rote learning.
Meanwhile, western education systems basically let medicore people perform medicore jobs, while outstanding people (perhaps with such skills) are left to rise to the top.
At least that's what I've concluded.
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To be honest it doesn't seem like a lot of people in this topic know what creativity actually is.
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I'm having trouble grasping what "creativity" means in this blog. Perhaps if someone tells me I can give my 2 cents on this topic. 
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In my opinion we can say that one race is more creative than others.
Today we are so well connected and mixed. But i think that in Asia people are better educated so there is probably bigger % of awesomeness.
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did you even read the article that you're talking about op??? it's pretty clear what is meant by 'creative' in there.
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On January 26 2011 15:01 endy wrote:
Nah I'm serious. When I showed the Schindler's list to my wife, she was shocked, she asked if all that really happened.
My company just recruited a dozen recent master degree graduates and I had to train them. I used to the occasion to ask if they knew who Hitler was. They had no idea.
edit : I know this anecdote is not directly related to creativity. Saying Chinese are not creative is indeed a little racist and is not what I meant. But I am convinced that not knowing about history, art and other forms of culture really doesn't help to be creative. It's not that they're not creative, it's just that during the 20 first years of their life, they're forced to learn a lot of things by heart and by repetition, and the school programs are really focused on Mandarin and maths.
i'm almost certain that they all know who hirohito is, and that if you ask most americans, no one knows who chiang kai-shek is.
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On January 26 2011 15:01 endy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2011 13:22 meaculpa wrote: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 Nah I'm serious. When I showed the Schindler's list to my wife, she was shocked, she asked if all that really happened. My company just recruited a dozen recent master degree graduates and I had to train them. I used to the occasion to ask if they knew who Hitler was. They had no idea. edit : I know this anecdote is not directly related to creativity. Saying Chinese are not creative is indeed a little racist and is not what I meant. But I am convinced that not knowing about history, art and other forms of culture really doesn't help to be creative. It's not that they're not creative, it's just that during the 20 first years of their life, they're forced to learn a lot of things by heart and by repetition, and the school programs are really focused on Mandarin and maths.
There's no way masters degree graduates don't know who Hitler is. You have a very western-centric perspective of culture. Lots of Chinese people don't care to learn western culture because they are not westerners. Being cultured or intellectual also has nothing to do with creativity.
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I know nothing about the subject myself but my aunt who teaches elementry school has commented on this saying that a lot of educational systems are geared too much towards the repition part of education and does not stimulate the more creative part. She gets her opinion based mostly on students who are transfers from countries from that part of the world and their parents who apparently prefer the more creative and less stressful western system. Emphasis on the system though.
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EPT
