What’s a cultural tradition from another country that you wish existed in yours?
Nobody would accuse me of excessive sympathies towards the Chinese. But in the endless conflicts with Chinese teachers that Lenora Chu describes in her book Little Soldiers, I’m mostly on the side of the Chinese teachers.
It is true that the Chinese take the issue of academic competitiveness too far. However, I find it quite ridiculous that in America we make such a state secret out of grades and test scores.
We have bamboozled ourselves into believing the myth that boundless intellectual achievement is possible for everybody. People sincerely believe that if they cannot overcome an intellectual hurdle, it is their fault because they are not trying hard enough. We are trying to protect everybody’s self-esteem by keeping grades, test scores, and the IQ numbers secret. But it has an opposite effect. People blame themselves for things they simply cannot change. You are just as likely to be able to change your intellectual capacity (that is, your brain hardware) as you are to change your height by efforts of willpower. We would be much happier people, and our society would run more rationally, if we abandoned the idea that the intellect is a moral virtue instead of what it actually is, a physiological characteristic.
This is why I wish we adopted the Chinese tradition of making test results public. Not for the reasons for which the Chinese do it, but for our own reasons.
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