Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon : Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World.
Title:
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon : Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World.
Author:
Zhao, Yong.
ISBN:
9781118584910
Personal Author:
Edition:
1st ed.
Physical Description:
1 online resource (273 pages)
Contents:
Cover -- More Praise for Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Contents -- Dedication -- About the Author -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Fatal Attraction: America's Suicidal Quest for Educational Excellence -- 1: Fooling China, Fooling the World: Illusions of Excellence -- "China for a Day" -- "The Beijing Consensus" -- "Surpassing Shanghai" -- "Be Afraid of the Friends Who Flatter You" -- "A Very Large Gap" -- Fatal Attraction: The Real China Threat -- 2: The Emperors' Game: A Perfect Machine for Homogenization -- The Fifth Great Invention -- The Irony of Great Inventions -- A Clever Ploy of Social Control -- Change without Difference -- 3: Governance without Governing: The Retreat of Authoritarianism and China's Economic Boom -- The Peasants Who Saved China -- The First Entrepreneurs -- Let It Be (or Governance without Interference) -- The Coke Battle -- Déjà Vu? -- 4: Hesitant Learner: The Struggle of Halfway Westernization -- A Grand Experiment -- Wishful Thinking -- Self-Strengthening Movement Version 2.0 -- Harmony and Innovation -- 5: Fooling the Emperor: The Truth about China's Capacity for Innovation -- The Emperor's New Wishes -- The Miracle Makers -- Publish or Perish -- It Pays to Publish -- A Chinese Heart -- More Inventions Than Young Edison -- Little Cleverness and Junk Papers -- By Design -- Reason 1: Wishful Thinking -- Reason 2: Upward Accountability -- Reason 3: A Uniform and Quantifiable Standard -- The Emperor Is Fooled -- 6: Hell to Heaven: The Making of the World's Best and Worst Education -- One Heaven -- One Small Heaven -- One Gatekeeper to the One Small Heaven -- The Hell to Heaven -- Parents -- Students -- Teachers -- The Township -- Teaching -- Breaking the Spell -- 7: The Witch That Cannot Be Killed: Educational Reforms and Setbacks.
The Disaster of Mao's Revolution against Testing -- Back to "Naked" Tests -- The Witch That Cannot Be Killed -- Another Witch That Refuses to Be Killed -- The Prisoner's Dilemma -- The Tragedy of the Commons -- Bread and Butterfly -- 8: The Naked Emperor: Chinese Lessons for What Not to Do -- Illusions of Excellence and Equity -- Romanticized Misery -- Glorified Authoritarianism -- Why Not Emulate Shanghai? -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- EULA.
Abstract:
PRAISE FOR Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? "This book unmasks the error of our policy makers' obsession with test scores and their misguided determination to get higher scores than Shanghai. Yong Zhao explains why the pursuit of higher test scores is an unworthy goal, both for China and the United States, because it is essentially authoritarian and crushes creativity and fresh thinking." -DIANE RAVITCH, research professor of education, New York University; bestselling author, The Death and Life of the Great American School System and Reign of Error "Zhao's startling and masterful account is the best book ever written about China's schools today. He exposes sloppy thinking on the part of people like me who thought the Confucian principles still at the core of Asian culture were all that were needed to push China and other East Asian countries far ahead of the rest of the world in school achievement. This is an irresistible story of both China's weaknesses and ours, and how the two countries could make each other better if we conquered our mutual ignorance." -JAY MATHEWS, Washington Post education columnist; author, Work Hard. Be Nice: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America "This book is an important message to shake up the illusions we have about schooling in the East and the West. It shows how obsession to top the international education league tables is leading both the United States. and China away from what they should do instead: to prepare all their students to find their talents and to live good lives. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? is a masterpiece that only Yong Zhao could have written." -PASI SAHLBERG, visiting professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education; author, Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
Genre:
Electronic Access:
Click to View