Two Million Minutes – Yong Zhao’s Message

(Note: I have realized that I referred to Yong Zhao as Mr. Yong throughout my post and that this is probably incorrect. This mistake was caused by my years of living in China and knowing that the Chinese put their family/last name first. Apparently Mr. Zhao has reversed his to be more like a Western name.)

1) What is the message sent by Yong Zhao and what is his purpose?

I believe that Yong Zhao's main purpose is to discredit and refute Mr. Compton's point of view. Mr. Yong thinks that Mr. Compton is portraying a negative idea about the American education system. He feels that it would be a mistake for the US to copy the Chinese or Indian system of education. Mr. Yong does come from a unique perspective of being born and educated in China, then coming to the US and receiving education here as well, and then later becoming an American citizen. He also speaks from his own experience of being a parent of two children that are in the US education system that he clearly states he will not send back to China to be educated. He even states that China's and India's educational systems are changing to be more like the US's system.

2) What techniques are used by Yong Zhao to attract and hold attention?

He, like the documentary, uses various persuasion techniques. Mr. Yong tries to represent himself as both an expert and a plain folk person. The expert part comes from his credentials, and the plain folk part comes from his upbringing in China and by being a father of two children in the US education system. He also uses humor such as when he says that his daughter wanted to be an elephant when she was five. Mr. Yong uses a bit of diversion, though I don't think in a bad way, to raise other issues that need to be considered. For example, he talks about the number of patents issued in China and the US or when talking about the economic export drivers between US and China (such as royalties from the US and toys in China). The use of interesting statistics are used to attract and hold attention and finally, he throws in a bit of fear when talking about the suicide rate of Chinese teenagers due to the pressures that they face.

3) What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in Yong's message?

The issues of poverty are brought up briefly when he talks about his own life and the general life in China and India. He talks about the creativeness and talents of American students when compared to the fact that he says most Chinese graduates in China are not trained or qualified for working in foreign companies in China. This is a point of view I also heard many times while in China from Chinese students themselves. Yong talks about the test culture and rote memorization of the Chinese education system which has been part of their culture for thousands of years. Yong talks a bit about the pressures facing Chinese students, but I don't think he fully explains these pressures. Yong also points out that he believes that we can't just focus on math and science and that the bigger picture is more important.

4) How might different people interpret Yong's message differently?

Some may discredit him or ignore him merely because of his accent, though I believe he is capable of expressing himself well. Some people may take his negative statistics and facts about China and hold on to them as reasons to not adopt Chinese educational ways. Facts about the suicide or mental health of the students would be enough to scare most away. Some may also blindly accept Yong's message because of his insight into both Chinese and American culture, and due to the fact that he became an American citizen. Yong comes from an educator's point of view while Compton comes from a businessman's point of view. This fact may have more people give Yong credence since it is about education, but others may like Compton since he is an outsider.

5) What is omitted from Yong's message?

Yong does not talk about how the high stakes testing in China has also created wide spread issues of cheating. He omits a whole view about India, but I suppose that is mostly just due to his lack of knowledge to talk about it. Yong did not address the difference in the amount of studying time that Mr. Compton addresses in the documentary. Yong states his opposition to "No Child Left Behind" in a passing comment, but doesn't state more about it. Probably if he did say more about it, his view and support of the American education system may have been discredited. I was surprised that Yong did not better explain the differences between the high school structures in the two countries. From my own experience, I know that Chinese high schools are divided into liberal arts high schools and science high schools, and so not all Chinese high school students get a strong background in math and science. Most of the Chinese university students I taught came from science backgrounds. Because of this, I ran into many that could not even answer basic geography questions even about this own province.

6) Now you have heard two sides of the story. Which side would you vote for?

I can't say that I agree with either side wholly. From the documentary, I support many of Mr. Compton's ideas. However, from what Mr. Compton stated in the podcast, I actually give less support to him. I feel there are many other factors that he does not address in the points he tries to make. Both sides make sweeping conclusions. Mr. Compton makes his conclusions from small sample sizes and personal experience, and Mr. Yong makes his conclusions based on personal experience and statistics. I at least fully agree with Yong that we shouldn't fully adopt the Chinese system, but I do feel that our system has become too tolerant and that we have allowed some of our standards to be lowered. In some ways, I actually think that it is due to a lowering of moral standards that we have greater issues in schools today than we had twenty years ago.