教育和文化衝擊 (Education and Culture Shock)

After four months here, I’ve finally been hit by a wave of culture shock.

My culture shock is not a result of different food. It is not due to differences in housing, or pollution (or the lack), or weather or even language. No. My culture shock is due to education.

It’s also proving to be the source of a lot of interesting thought, for this touches on one of the reasons I’m here, I guess. See and understand another culture.

My textbook has been driving me up the wall. When I started in my class, 4ish months ago, I thought the bumps I was feeling were just because I was starting in the middle of a book and was catching up with the other people. After a while, I began to think that the REAL problem was that the authors of the book were incompetent. The language was not being presented at all like I thought it should be. The more I looked at this, the more frustrated I became… the infrastructure I needed in order to learn a language was almost completely absent. I was spending 50%+ of my time trying to “reverse engineer” the infrastructure I needed (and I was losing ground). Then, my instructor commented one day that she didn’t like the book at first but someone had pointed out to her that it taught more “realistic” Chinese than others (to oversimplify, rather than a dialog going “I extend my greetings to you. My name is Jerome Smith. What is your name?” it says “Hi. I’m Jerome Smith. Who are you?”). Once I could look at part of the book with a positive attitude, I had to question my overall assumptions. From there, I realized that almost certainly the majority of my frustration were rooted in culturally different assumption of how education should be done.

If you pick up an English as a Second Language textbook aimed at the same level of comprehension as my Chinese books, they all seem to be organized around the grammatical parts of speech. Chapter 1 is “nouns”, chapter 2 is “verbs”, chapter 3 is “adjectives” and so on.

Every single Chinese as a Second Language textbook that I’ve picked up so far is organized quite differently. Chapter 1 is… well, a dialog with some “grammar” sections that describe particular words or constructions in the dialog. Chapter 2 is… well, another dialog and more “grammar”. Chapter 15 is…the same.

That is, the English ones start off with this abstract categorization system and then use that as the backbone for their information presentation. The Chinese ones have no abstract backbone (that I can see); they make reference to parts of speech, but it is passing, and often only vague references are made to general rules.

Of course, this is baffling to me. How can you possibly understand a language without rules?

Eventually (and, I must confess, in desperation) I bought three books about Chinese grammar that (as far as I can tell) are rooted in the western intellectual tradition. Ah! I was overjoyed! They talked about the language in terms of general patterns and rules and exceptions to those rules. In a couple days of skimming, I went from being increasingly baffled to increasingly unbaffled by what I was reading in my textbook (though, I’m still catching up).

With the panic of “I’m about to drown” subsiding, I could reflect on what I’d encountered.

First of all, I had to admit that neither approach is sufficient: a language is a very complex thing. You can use the western system of parts of speech to present the language, but realistically this probably only gives you a formal understanding of (I’m making this percentage up) 30% of the language. You could use the Chinese method of just presenting case after case after case, and you’re still going to end up covering only a subset of the language (albeit a different chunk). The point I realized is that neither method is “true” nor is either method “complete”. Each use their own system to present stuff and assume you’ll infer the missing stuff as you go along.

So, now I had to ask: why did I think the textbook should be presenting stuff in terms of nouns, verbs, etc?

I fell back on some cultural stereotypes at this point (See The Geography of Thought for more about these). Western thinking is focused around objects and properties and abstractions. Eastern (at least Chinese. I suspect the Indians are a little different) aren’t. In fact, Chinese culture (as far as I can tell) has been a bit hostile to the “objects and abstractions” approach. The feeling seems to be that it is too simplistic.

I also got to thinking that at least since the Renaissance, the western intellectual tradition has been looking at Mathematics as its ideal. Even the soft subjects (history, social science, etc) seem to secretly wish they could express their material with the precision and clarity (and gerativity) of Mathematics. So, explicitly or implicitly everything in the west strives to speak in terms of abstractions. In terms of general patterns, rules and then exceptions to those.

The eastern approach doesn’t do this. Folks in Taiwan, at least, complain about the endless memorization that must be done in school (I have a Vietnamese friend who reports the same from their growing up years, 30+ years ago). Indeed, as far as I can put together, the educational model is: memorize lots of details, and understanding (generalization) will (hopefully) occur on its own. I have every reason to suspect this is how education has been done in China for millenia.

I honestly don’t quite understand how Chinese people think. And, indeed, from a western perspective maybe they don’t. More on that later.

How does the stereotypical western classroom work? Teacher lectures, and students periodically interrupt to question or challenge the teacher. This is the hallmark of a good student. They are supposed to think about what the teacher has said and find logical holes in it. To find logical holes, they must be absorbing the general principles and finding ways the ideas might not actually hold up (again, think mathematics). Ideally, an exam would ask nothing that was explicitly stated in class, but instead ask you to synthesize new information based on that content.

How does the stereotypical Chinese classroom work? As I understand it, the teacher lectures, students silently take notes, go home and memorize. Students do not speak in class. Tests are given frequently (daily), as this is how the teacher gauges the rate of learning. Tests are, I assume, mainly test memorization not of synthesis.

So, the presentation of information in my textbook begins to make more sense. There’s “no” tradition of starting with abstractions in Chinese culture. Stuff is just handed to you with the expectation that you will memorize it.

Here is where the problem sets in. I’m extremely bad at memorizing things. All the Taiwanese folks I’ve talked to speak of the challenge of memorizing things (and hating it). But universally, my Taiwanese friends have prodigious memories that I’m always in awe of.
On the other hand, I’m really good at working with generalities and abstractions. One of my friends (who has experience in both traditions) quipped that it was notable that it was me (not her) that was asking all these questions and making these observations to start with.

So, my textbook is relentlessly handing me factoids expecting I’ll pop them into my head with the alacrity of a Chinese. But, it’s like throwing rubber balls at a teflon wall. They do not stick. The more I look at the structuring of the information in the textbook, the more I see that there is a lot of information there that I’m not absorbing.

As I watch my learning and watch what sticks and what doesn’t, I’m not surprised to find that if you give me a general rule and then state something is an instance of a general rule I can learn that new thing in a wink of an eye. I certainly find it is easier to learn two things related by some (implicit or explicit) principle than one thing. Indeed, I’m beginning to suspect that what I actually learn is the relationships between nuggets of information. It is almost like, I do not memorize what my house address is, but instead remember that it is 400meters from some other known location.

As I begin to appreciate why my textbook is “mistreating” me, I also begin to feel sorry for all the Asians who end up in western institutions and are asked to start working in terms of general principles and to go beyond the info given. I wonder how many memorize everything said in class, then are frustrated when they get a bad score on a test… they repeated the material back with great precision (but the teacher wanted them to go beyond the information).

Here, then is the heart of the culture shock. I’m being asked to use my mind in a way it has very little training for. Even if I wanted to change my learning style, it would probably take me years to build up the skills to memorize as well as an asian.

Maybe I never could, for certainly when I am memorizing things I’m still using the techniques I use for general patterns. You’d think that I would at least be being forced to do brute-force memorization for all the Chinese charcters, yet it is interesting to me that people sometimes make comments which suggest my patterns for failure to remember a character are different than theirs (by implication, I’m remembering the characters in a very alien manner).

Similarly, I wonder how many Chinese never quite grok that they essentially must abandon their entire framework for aquiring knowledge in order to succeed well in the western institutions? Probably many that really succeed do so becasue they’ve managed to find a way to approximate the western style using memorization.

So, of course, the answer is that we should rewrite my textbook to use a western organizational system, right? After all, the western system is aimed towards a deep understanding of information. Look at the technological advances it has brought. Clearly it is better, right?

Well, maybe not.

First, there’s the practical fact. The Chinese language is spoken by a people that are not as concerned with logical patterns, consequently the language itself may be less regular. Trying to teach the language in terms of general rules may actually distort it. (I’m just speculating here. In fact, what I’ve seen so far is that the language is much more “rule governed” than any Chinese person I’ve ever met seems to believe. But, then, I’ve realized English is less regular than my own intellectual tradition has lead me to believe). It may well be that the best way to learn the language is the process I’m going through. (Well, semi going through since I’m instinctively building my own “western” system of understanding on top of the book’s).

But, there’s more than this. The more I stare at this issue, the more I can see the cultures reflected in the teaching style. Asians are said to be very aware of nuances in interpersonal relationships. As I once quipped to someone, I suspect we westerners often come off as being socially ignorant or blind at times. it isn’t hard to imagine that a thinking process of memorizing details goes hand-in-hand with greater awareness of events in one’s moment to moment life. Certainly, I’m rather blind to things if I see no pattern.

Furthermore, reality is not actually made up of nice curves. Reality is messy. Assuming that the world operates in smooth continuous ways has put a hole in the ozone layer. A learning that focuses on details rather than the patterns may in some areas produce much better results. I find myself suspecting that in a decade the best UI designers will be asian precisely because of this. One can also cite the preeminence of Asian companies at delivering excellent technology products… not novel and new ideas, but exceptional execution on existing ideas. I suspect this comes from the same source.

And, of course, teaching builds thinking, and thinking forms part of culture. So,changing teaching risks changing culture significantly.

I’m glad I’m not the minister of education in some country and having to decide what is the “right” for my country. I have yet to meet any Taiwanese who views their educational system favorably (though, apparently, they exist). Almost everyone I’ve met that has tasted both systems thinks the western is better. Yet, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that maybe the westerners need more practice at memorization. (maybe it can be done more humanely than is done in Taiwan, though)

Or maybe, recognizing that I’m rather in the extreme even by the western standards, maybe we need both educational traditions coexisting even within a single nation. I suspect some people are much better with memorizing details, and some much better with abstractions. If you believe that there are intrinsic predispositions in people (this is more of a Western notion than an Eastern, I think) then why torture each with the other’s learning style?