In the last two post, I talked about what reality of what Chinese students are facing nowadays, and in this post I will discuss why allowing students to enjoy their lives is more important than just forcing them to study all the time. So, why is it important for students to enjoy their lives and explore their creativity? In terms of success beyond the classroom, the Sternberg theory of successful intelligence defines “successful intelligence” as “a set of mental abilities used to achieve one’s goal in life through adaptation to, selection of and shaping of environments” and that children’s ability to have creative thoughts is key to this ability. The logic of this argument is that we must encourage and nurture children’s creativity, because that creativity will be a valuable asset to them in the future, as children who can think in a more creative way are the ones that are the most likely to become the scientists, inventors and artists of the future. Huang and Szente emphasize the importance of having abilities in non-academic areas to compliment academic abilities, because exploring a variety of interesting activities allows children to discover and develop their own unique creative skills. Allowing this exploration also encourages students to discover how their creativity can be used to represent their own personality and experiences, which can help them become more independent and self-confident. From both the Sternberg theory and Huang and Szente we can find a growing trend in both the fields of psychology of educational research to view intelligence as a practical ability to truly obtain broader understanding and the creativity to be able to apply it in solving problems beyond just answering test questions. Huang and Szente especially emphasize the importance of exploring one's interests and abilities outside of the classroom. This type of thinking is almost non-existent in China beyond very basic extracurricular activities, such as the occasional singing competition or piano lessons. These types of activities could provide endless benefits to young children, from teaching them to work well with others, to discovering a passion that they can turn into a strong career path.
This is the main problem with the Chinese education system. Students’ lives are driven primarily by test scores and academic ability, and little-to-no emphasis is put on activities beyond studying and classwork. The problem with this is that students are not given any time to enjoy their lives or figure out what they really want to do when they are out of school. There are so many students who simply don’t know what to do after they graduate because their future has already been decided by their parents and teachers. What’s more, even if they had more freedom to choose their own path, they would likely have no idea what to do with that freedom because they have never had a chance to explore their creative abilities and interests. If they have nothing to be interested in, how can they ever be creative? Chinese education is a system of rote learning, all they are taught to do is recite the material and there’s no room for personal opinion or critical engagement with what they are learning. They start to lose the ability to solve the lives problems because they have been taught by teacher by books how to solve math problems but in real life there’s nobody or no any other books can tell you how to solve problems at work, daily problems. In real life, there’s no book for us to follow the arranged way, it requires our own ability to solve all the problems.
While these problems seem like they are isolated to individuals, these problems can extend across Chinese society. While over the past few decades China has become one of the world’s biggest manufacturing centers and fastest growing economies, China’s economy recently has been slowing down. While there are many reasons for this, one of the main reasons is because China has a really hard time innovating. Xu Xiaoping, an angel investor from Beijing argues that the Chinese education often places scores over cultivating passion and creativity, with the Gaokao being the main factor. He justified this assertion with a story of two similar boys, in which a Chinese boy in Canada who had a passion for computer programming received encouragement from his parents to explore his passion and ability with computers. The boy eventually went on to create a valuable technology company. The second boy lived in China. He also had a passion for computer programming and had even invented a program that Apple could’ve used, but his parents told him to stop his programming to instead focus on studying for the Gaokao. All of the years of preparation and studying for the Gaokao eventually killed his passion for programming and he eventually accepted an unspectacular job at a large company. Xu went on to argue that the traditional Chinese mindset of needing to be accepted, rather than encouraging people’s curiosity and passion, deters China from reaching its true potential.
When Chinese children are young, we are taught about the four great inventions in Chinese history: paper, the printing press, the compass, and gunpowder. It was innovations like these that made China one of the world’s richest and more successful countries in the world. Nowadays, even though the phrase “made in China” is on nearly every product at the store, few of these are anything new or innovative. I believe that China needs to take a step back and let the children be children now, not robots repeating meaningless facts and test answers. This is the key to our future, bring creativity back to Chinese culture and unlock the door to innovations to change our world’s future.
