Month: March 2019

Tutoring is a massive industry in many Asian countries and has become an integral part of the education system. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and China lead other nations in spending on private tuition. Parents have spent billions of dollars every year to give their children a push in the education race. Tutoring used to be only for the slow learners but global competition has placed the industry in the mainstream.

On the other hand, tutoring doesn’t seem to be such a huge industry in the U.S. Is because of the cultural differences, or some difference in society? More importantly, I am also curious whether tutoring is a good complement to the education system and actually improve the quality of education.

The first questions that should be answered are why do Asian parents would like to spend a large amount of money to let their kids get tutoring. One main reason is that the overall competition is more intense, whether it’s entering university for high school and college or in the workforce. They want to arm their children with the best education possible and feel that the formal schooling system isn’t enough. Although there is yet no evidence that grades of these students have improved, parents are not leaving anything to chance and are willing to dish out a sizable amount of the household budget for tuition. There’s also peer pressure and the “kiasu” attitude – the fear of losing out and being left behind because all the other moms and dads are sending their primary and secondary kids to private tutors.

However, in the US the great majority of parents look for the lowest-price tutoring available in their community or alternatively for free, volunteer-based tutoring. The much less demand for tutoring somehow reflects the different meaning of education between the US and Asian countries. In Asian countries, education is always closely related to social mobility. An outstanding grade in those most competitive exams, normally the college entrance exam, is like a ticket to higher social strata. It’s the best evidence of the intelligence and the potential of the person, and it never expires. More importantly, everyone can take the exam. Although the uneven distribution of educational resources certainly exists, the extreme difficulty of the exam makes it more depends on talent.

Despite the difficult nature of those competitive Asian exams, as the urbanization going, the exam is inevitably becoming more unfair. However, inequality has been existing in the US education system for so long that in the culture, people hardly consider education as a functional equalizer in society. If there is not even fairness in a competition, there is no point people would invest too much effort and money in education. It’s true that education equality and fairness has made good progress in the past decades, but it takes time for the public to change their opinion, and I think the historical unfairness in US education system is the reason for the significantly less amount of tutoring in the US.

The next question is, can tutoring actually help the education system to be better-off? In most case, my answer would be no. First of all, kids can only concentrate on studying for a limited amount of time. Spending too much time in after class tutoring can make students too tired to pay attention and thereby negatively affecting learning. Besides, even if all the children are so energetic that extra studying time doesn’t influence their ability to concentrate at all, paying to after-class tutoring is unnecessary. I have discussed one major reason for sending children to tutoring school, which is parents don’t want their children to be left behind. This type of feeling also reflected that parents do not trust the public education system enough. I acknowledged that there are some terrible public school, but if someone lives in a place where the public education system is terrible, it’s also not likely that he or she would find a much better instructor in tutoring school.

In conclusion, I think the existence of too much tutoring school is the symbol of the unhealthy education system. The goal of the education system is encouraging kids to do things they are supposed to do in their age, and everything in schools should just be enough. The schools are paid by the government to provide proper education to everyone, and students personal success should depend on themselves instead of how much their parents spend on tutoring.

source:

https://qz.com/970130/asians-spend-15-of-their-family-income-on-extra-education-and-tutoring-for-kids-americans-spend-it-on-cars-and-gas/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/04/asian-students-carry-high-expectations-for-success/2615483/

I recently found that the way Chinese teacher teaching Math is quite different than the way instructors use in the US, and it’s not just a personal stylistic difference between instructor. More precisely, the difference originated from the different teaching goal setting by schools or even the country.

I have never imagined I would be interested in math in college, and even choose a major closely related to it. In fact, I didn’t like math so much during high school, simply because of the extreme difficulty. I guess that’s where the stereotype that Asian people are good at math comes from. 

Let me explain what do I mean difficult. First of all, the question is normally not about getting the number of A, it’s more like prove A = B/CD * C/AD. On the one hand, there is no way people can understand how to do this question by just reading the question. Since there is no obvious connection between the question and the solution, the only way to do such a question is trying. Using a paper to write down anything they can think of, and try to make some combination to reach the answer. On the other hand, there is no plugin allowed in such a question, all the calculation are about polynomial with letters. In this case, the calculation would be much more difficult, and the student must be really sensitive to the form of the polynomial in order to find out some part that can be canceled out or do some weird transformation.

Besides the difficulty, the focus of teaching is also quite different. Chinese math teaching is more exam-oriented. During class, teachers mostly focus on how to solve a related issue in the exam. The definition and visualization were covered, but certainly not as important as exam questions. Usually, 2/3 of a class is talking about difficult questions appears in homework and exams, that might be difficult to imagine for students here. 

Then there is the pros and cons. Many people feel that Chinese math is for genius. It’s very helpful for those super smart people to realize how smart they are while allowing other students to see the difference between themselves and genius. But I would say such difficulty wasn’t completely useless. One main advantage is that there is no way students can do the question with mindless calculation. So most people can learn to observe and analyze the possible solution before actually start the calculation, which is a useful skill when solving a complex issue. Also, it allows students to be patient. Many people can get anxious when they find a question they don’t know how to solve, while for me, is there anything more usual than stuck in a difficult question??? Such a difficult question is also like training for people to calm down when they meet some troubles.

But there are certainly some cons. Firstly, it’s REALLY frustrating. I kept questioning myself why do I have so much trouble in math. I understand that many other people also have trouble doing this question, and there are tons of people having even more trouble than me, but I still feel not confident about my math. I think the actual reason for such difficulty is that college or even high school only considering exam score, also the large population of China makes the admission process highly competitive. In another word, those exams are designed to be selective, and it is normally that only a small percentage of people can actually get all the questions correctly done.  But is this still education…?

Chinese education system always selecting smart people to receive higher education and left the other with confusion and frustration. As a result, smart people feel that they are better than anyone else in any sense, and they can confidently pursue their dream, while the other has to admit that they are worse from within. I am not saying this education system is bad, making smart people more confident and others less can be beneficial for everyone sometimes, but they actually neglect another important purpose of education, giving people the knowledge to know the world. Higher education is much more popular in the U.S, many college students are not so smart, but they still enjoy the thing they are learning. The thing they learned may be completely useless for their job, but it can give people a different perspective to view the world.

Education is not the privilege of smart people. Everyone should be able to enjoy learning.

 

*(just for fun)A sample question and translation:

source:https://www.sohu.com/a/220485426_579102

parabola C: y + x^2  have focus point F, and there is a point P moving in a straight line l: x-y-2 = 0, then make two tangent lines of C  PA, PB pass through moving point P and intersect with C in A, B.

Q1: use a function to describe the movement of G, the center of gravity of triangle APB.

Q2: prove that angle PFA always equal to PFB

 

 

answer for Q1;

 

 

 

 

here is more question with translation

I don’t think any of you would be interested in the answer for Q2… Let me know if you do.

 

I read a story from VICE a few days ago. The story talked was about a common issue but people hardly take that into consideration, which is what can the younger generation do to offer parents better lives. I am going to translate this story into English and talk about my viewpoints on this story.

Elder people always say that the only thing they need is more accompaniment from their kids, but the protagonist of the story, Yin Ping isn’t satisfied with this answer. “accompany would never be enough.” She said, “No matter how many times I visit my mom, she is always sad when I left.” All the research is telling us that accompaniment is not the only thing elder people need. What they need is actually quite similar to us, which is esteem and self-actualization. While accompaniment is more like a drug. They get high when they use it, but nothing would change after that. And such accompaniment addiction makes them humble in front of their kids, which is not the author wanna see.

Yin Ping is an artist living in Beijing. Her home town is a small town in Sichuan. She went back home in 2015, and she found that there is a retailer purchasing the handcrafted woolen hat made by a local woman. The retailer buys these hat at such a low price that there is almost no space for profit, and then sell these hat with a 5 times higher price in another place. Yin Ping was quite angry, but her mom didn’t. Her mom said that the most common way to kill time for women in the town is to play real money poker, but she simply doesn’t want to lose money, so she chooses to do something more useful.

She didn’t want her mom’s time to be purchased cheaply by those retailers. So one of her friend pretend to be another retailer, and constantly purchasing these woolen hats from her mom. She also encouraged her mom to be creative. No matter how strange the hat seemed to be, the “retailer” will always appreciate her mom’s new creation and purchase them anyway. This kind retailer not only makes her mom much more confident in doing this job but also in other aspects. She never signs in any of the paperwork, since she always felt her husband is the leader for the house. While after she has income by selling hats, she can sign her name or making small decisions in the home.

On the other hand, instead of throwing them away, Yin Ping actually collected all the 300 hat her mom made in one year. “I felt like every time I looked at these hats, I can feel my mom’s passion for the job, and how happy she was when she can finally do something valuable.” Yin Ping even held a show for her mom’s hat. To her surprise, there were actually people expressed their willingness to buy these hat. At the same time, many other women in her mom’s home town also want such a good “retailer”. Finally, Yin Ping decided to become an actual seller for all the handcrafted hat from this town in an online shopping site. 

In 2017, One of Yin Ping’s friend saw these hats, who is currently preparing the 2017 Woman’s March. Her friend found that these hats are actually kind of similar to the pussy hat they need, therefore she invites Yin Ping and all the women in that small town to make the pussy hat for them.

For the woman in the small town, they probably have no idea what pussy means, but when they knew that their hat somehow related to the U.S. president, they were proud.

What Yin Ping did actually make a huge difference in many aspects of these woman’s life, and it was also inspiring in many senses, but I want to concentrate on her original motivation: Making parent have a better life. Yin Ping’s parent born in about 1960s, and they have experienced the cultural revolution in their teenagehood. Social revolution planted the idea of being part of a larger community deep in one generation’s people’s mind. They believe that they are not individuals who have personal wills, but a trivial component of a larger community, such as their family, the small town, and also the country. After suppressing their will for most of their life, they have no idea what to do when they are along except asking for accompaniment. 

I think maybe there should be an education for elder people. When they are confused about modern society, or cannot find a way to be happy, someone should be able to teach them to get used to new rules for new society, and really have the ability to control their own lives instead of infinitely rely on the children.

Here is another report for Yin Ping and more pictures