"UK David's Take on Yang Rui"

[CCF Beijing]

My buddy UK David gives his take on CCTV DIALOGUE talk show host Yang Rui....

*P.S. I agree with some of this. I disagree with some of this. I will have a rebuttal soon. Jeff

1. "He is a 1994 graduate of Wales University Cardiff College in the UK with a Master's of Arts in Mass Communication"

Oh dear, a somewhat second-rate university. This is not Cardiff University (which is good), but Cardiff Metropolitan OR it is the University of Wales Institute (old name, same thing), which has offered BA and MA in Mass Communication Media. MA is Master of Arts. Whatever, this is definitely the second university in that city.

2. China's universities are themselves hardly top class. Exploring why that is is worth at least a programme's discussion.

3. There is conflict between what the parents think they're paying for - top class education - and what the typical Chinese student is going to do - which is, in their minds, partying. Statistically, Chinese students work harder than their counterparts, but they do not add anything positive to the life of a university. And 'work harder' still does not mean working cleverly or smartly, effectively or efficiently, it only means spending more hours with the books. Those that come back to China are still unable to think

4. A Masters, by definition (European definition) is evidence of having been able to study independently. It does not require new work (that's what a doctorate requires) but it does require lengthy study of an independent nature. That's why my degree is an MA, exactly; I spent three years with almost zero support - one unhelpful tutorial per week. My wife's Masters demonstrates (daily) that she got hers by doing what was required, by the letter if not in the spirit (and she got hers outside China). She can do independent research but she cannot do independent thinking. But then China doesn't want that and cannot afford to have it - it is the biggest single difference between our nations and this one and it permeates the society. It is why (and how) Things Get Done (like the new railways); no-one argues, no-one second-guesses every move by a public figure - so they can (could, perhaps) get on with the job. This is one of the things I like about the country, amazingly.

5. The Chinese education system drives the kids into the ground. They've been at intensive school since they started. Western education takes the pressure off, so many eastern students find this freedom altogether too much. There is a significant number who disappear from campus (a problem in Britain), while sending messages home about how wonderfully well they're doing. A larger number (re-)discover a motivation to work and, besides finding that their English is far worse than they had thought, they buckle down to doing what is needed. Far too many (well, there are far too many) discover that they don't need English any more than I need Chinese, so the level of language of 'my' students in Plymouth was often at its very best for the next ten years on the day they left school (at 18/19). Historically, one per cohort did better and the other (30 or so) went the other way. The solution to this lies in persuading students to make friends outside their national group, which also requires smaller numbers of each nation. China has a problem, there. 600 per typical UK university is 5% (at least) of the university population - too big. The % chasing a Master's is even higher, because the Brits place low value on second degrees ("Go get a job, do something useful"). I won't employ people with doctorates outside the sciences - they know too much about so very little they're no use at all.

6. We might look at party atmosphere in our own countries quite a bit more. Further, we might look at what happens to the partygoers. I'll bet many turn into successful salesmen, politicians and business people. They're (perhaps) networking. What goes wrong is the deliberate drunk chasing insensibility. There's too much of that, but we all have to learn how to cope when the strictures are removed and university is famously when that occurs. What is a surprise is how little the Chinese embrace this - it's not just their incapacity for alcohol at work.

7. Money; the tripling of fees in the UK (2011, I think) put, short-term, foreign students on a par with locals. Result; far more foreign students. Universities said they had no problem filling spaces (because they were selling them abroad to great effect). What we have yet to see is the effect that has. Probably university will get a lot more serious about work - no bad thing, given how relatively relaxed the UK is about work. What do we lose in turn?

8. We should consider how it is that, at 18, I'd done more maths than a US Masters graduate of 24. Even with the dumbing down that has occurred, a typical AAA Brit exceeds a US 3-AP-holder and any AP is less work than the matching A-level (they match well for depth but not breadth). Neither has worked as hard as a 95%+ GaoKao student, but both can understand more new material in a fixed length of time, while learning (in a rote sense) far less. What are we chasing here, learning to parrot or learning to think? We spend a lot of effort in the west trying to make our better students learn to learn, so that that skill lasts the rest of their lives. What I hear too often here is that "my friends know exactly the same as I do" to different degrees of precision; all used the same texts, had the same exams in the same subjects. Whatever they 'know', they know it very well indeed. Just how upsetting is it (that's a question to pose, but the ? belongs here) to discover that your foreign friends all know different ? (or here: about the same total info, but different info), are quite happy to say "I don't know", but then go find out....   We should also consider the variety of student in three countries; the UK will have the smallest range until we are forced to look at new immigrant communities. 

 

9. The programme you refer to does not attempt to provide a fair and balanced approach to subjects. I gave up watching for that reason. The positive in giving a one-sided show is that a speaker can be drawn deeper and deeper into a mire. It is sometimes thought to be 'good' tv when there is an argument (set-up); I disagree, provided a balancing view is provided in an adjacent show / piece. Some of the best tv in Britain occurs when a difficult topic is aired and people of different approaches strive to find the little common ground (rather than facing off over the places they clearly disagree). The seeking of argument is what reduces our politics to the lowest level of understanding and we have a need, as a voting population, to understand more complicated issues - it causes us to trust our representatives when they try to explain a complicated scenario. The dumbed-down version becomes "Trust me, I'm a politician". Yeah, right.

 

Website issues recently written about [found at www.scoins.net] are Peak Oil (more to come), the Mindset list (thanks, Benoit), Consideration, Immigration, Honesty (why I left my job) and 100 other subjects, some of which display overlap of interest.

 

Regards,