Chinese High-Caliber Education: What’s Wrong with China’s Education System

Chinese High-Caliber Education Review: Directing Rod and Key Point of High-Caliber Education in China

“Everyone is shouting to promote high-caliber education, but they actively or passively resist what they are advocating,” said Zhu Jiong, the committee member of the People’s Congress.

Why does this phenomenon appear, and how to change it?

Reflection of China’s Current Educational Policy and Some Issues of High-Caliber Education in University

中国推行大学素质教育已十年有余，但效果并不尽人意。大学的根本任务是培养真正的人，培养和谐发展、具有“类主体形态特征”的人，这是大学恒久不变的主题。因此素质教育的实质就是人本教育，实施素质教育的前提是教育回归人本，深化素质教育的关键也在于重新思考我们的教育方针。

In China, high-caliber education in university has been advocated for more than ten years, but the result is far from satisfactory. The fundamental purpose of university education is to cultivate real person and harmoniously developed person with the characteristic of homogeneity, which is an everlasting subject for university education.

Therefore, the essence of high-caliber education is human-centered education. The prerequisite of carrying out caliber education is education returning to human-centeredness. The key to deepen caliber education is to rethink our education policy.

China’s education system may stifle innovation

Focus on testing criticized; being good at math doesn’t ensure creativity

While many Americans view China as a looming global competitor, experts say the Chinese may have to reevaluate their education system to really charge ahead.

Despite China’s dominance in math and science, its emphasis on testing in its education system may keep the country from sprinting ahead of the U.S. and other Western nations in the race to create a world-class work force. China’s education system has been key to helping China emerge as an economic force, but analysts say the country will have to make changes if it wants to take the lead from the U.S. and other Western nations.

Conventional wisdom is that innovation has become the key to sustainable job growth.

“As a nation, if you only value two or three types of talent, no matter how good they are, you can’t run a 21st century economy,” said Yong Zhao, dean of global education at the University of Oregon.

China’s biggest education problem, many experts agree, lies in its overarching structure. It is a very systematic, centralized, thought-out system that focuses on precision — a system that Jing Lin, professor of international education policy at the University of Maryland, says can stifle creativity.

“If China is to become, let’s say, world-class in its education system, the students have to be much more innovative,” Lin said.

According to Lin, this system grew out of China’s labor-intensive economy, developing over generations to produce workers who are disciplined and follow instruction.

Zhou argues the system won’t be enough to keep China ahead.

High-Caliber Education Development in China: Increasing Access to College Education

In the past four years, partially as a way to cope with the economic downturn, China has dramatically increased the number of college students. This is a wonderful thing in many ways, but it has not been handled so well in the smaller schools.

Instead of increasing the number of teachers, colleges have simply allowed class sizes to swell. In my school in Longzhou there had been about 33 students on average per class, the following year the average was 41. It is well established that smaller classes allow better student teacher interactions, and that results in higher quality education.

Intension and structure of Caliber-focused Education of Chinese-style Socialism from the View of Culture

My point here is that China in many areas has set the right goals by trying to increase their number of world class universities, publish more research, and make college education widely available, however these have all been implemented by decree instead of through policies that would work to encourage the desired results.

Any solution must account for the lack of preparation that students encounter in terms of testing abilities, scores, academic caliber, and family monetary resources to finance their higher education.