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For sometime now, there have been a great deal of discussion both in the US and China about “innovation”. I offer here a small personal observation and contribution to this topic. Although I cannot claim the most recent experience, but I am willing to bet the following:

If you sit for an hour in an elementary school classroom in the US and in China, then the most striking difference you will observe is the initiatives the US students will take in speaking up in class. In fact this is encouraged by teacher in the US while in China, the first rule taught to the students is to obey and respond only when asked to.

A young student is never scolded if his/her volunteered answer or spoken words are wrong in the US . The teachers are trained to always find something good to say. For example, if a student got two of ten questions right on a test, then in China this will be considered a total failure by both the parents and the teacher. In the US, the teacher more likely will say, “Good, you got two right answers. Let us see what we can learn from these two answers?”

This Chinese tendency for students to stay silent even persists into university and graduate school. In my Tsinghua classes, I often had to force the students to raise question by adopting the Q&A mode instead of the lecturing mode of teaching (http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=1565&do=blog&id=8412 , http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=1565&do=blog&id=13708, http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=1565&do=blog&id=3859  ).

In scientific conferences, Chinese educated scholars seldom get up and ask questions. I submit this is not a matter of language fluency but ingrained habit from early schooling. Of course, asking stupid questions can make you look ridiculous. This happens. But in one’s own research and innovation effort, the ability and habit to ask questions and not be afraid of failures are very important.

I don’t want to condemn rote learning, memorization, and reciting back what you have been taught as bad teaching. Free form education has its drawbacks too. One reason American middle school students consistently lag other nations in math and science tests can be traced to the lack of rigorous standards and discipline of study in such subjects. How to educate our youth with the proper balance of inquiry and discipline will be a continuous debate both in China and in the US.