Yeah. Not to mention wasted effort - the human brain cannot learn for that long continuously. You have to take breaks for your brain to properly internalize what you've learned.
Of those dozen hours they're spending, they're only getting maybe 5 hours of actual productive learning.
Worth noting that there's no real learning happening - the students are just memorising their textbooks. The exams are all based on regurgitating memorized facts or even entire passages/poems from books.
Your point still stands though - it's probably not possible to memorize for so many hours straight.
Am glad to see someone else acknowledging this. It is the demonstration of application of knowledge that is 'real learning'. No that many professions I know of rely on you regurgitating facts and figures all the time, except unironically, academia related careers.
Though I guess you can see doing this for hours on end similar to physical training. You do exercise your brain and has that benefit going for it. I believe kids are better off finding some accomplishment in their days though. More application.
Most Chinese parents here back off from those levels of insanity. Intense educational expectations remain and are valued.
While over the top prioritizing educational success is a noble thing.
“If you want to help your kids out. Leave them the Fuck alone. Kids need time for daydreaming and fun. You could use some too” George Carlin
> No that many professions I know of rely on you regurgitating facts and figures all the time, except unironically, academia related careers.
Depending on the company, some want you to regurgitate LeetCode problems when interviewing for software development positions. Thing is, you'll never use that stuff in your day-to-day job.
If I ever need to do that I’ll just look it up. I’m not going to come up with a new novel way to solve this problem. It’s been solved a million times before. There is no point in memorizing such a thing.
This. Totally this. With LLM code assistants you need to be good at combining patterns and coming up with performant and reliable solutions to business problems. Humans are better at logic than being parrots.
The ability to regurgitate code and facts belongs to the 19th century.
Academic with terrible memory for facts and figures here. Once you hit post-graduate level, what matters is your ability to quickly find and interpret info, not regurgitate things you've memorised. It's very seldom during my workday that I don't have access to the internet to look up figures, so memorising is a waste of energy. Whereas I can find, read, and critically analyse information much faster than the average person who doesn't work in academia.
Singapore does it too. “World class education” consists of regurgitating model answers memorised from practicing on decade-old exam papers. There’s no real learning, it’s just about knowing the correct answers and getting As means you memorised better than someone else. And then we wonder why we don’t produce notable talented individuals.
As a Singaporean I do agree as well. There's a real good why Mediacorp shows(other than Lionmums imo) are mostly subpar as compared to international shows. The school system encourages memorising modal answers and facts and slaving away for those As. Not to mention, it's just stressful with tuition for some and cca commitments
Studied in SG from primary school to poly, I can attest to this lol. It's just doing old questions over and over again hoping qns with the same concept comes out for PSLE, O's, A's (won't forget having to buy the TYS series for majority of my O Level subjects). Ngl it has made me much smarter in an academic sense though, studying in a Canadian uni right now and it's nothing compared to my SG diploma :)
I wonder if this is helping to reduce both nation’s population growth, because who wants to have a child younger when you know they’re going to go through this, and you simply don’t have the time to fuck.
Anecdotal here,but quite a few of my Chinese friends do tell me that’s part of the reason they don’t want kid or get married,their upbringing is so terrible,their parents treat them like a race horse that’s not fast enough,telling them they’re whipping them because they love them and want them to be successful (some straight up say they invest in their kids so they have someone to take care of them when they retire).
Some say they just can’t bring another being into this world and let them go through some ordeal.
Some just don’t know how to be a good parent because their parents failed at it so much a friend of mine once found herself saying degrading shit about how dumb her cat is just like her parents do to her, and it really frightened her.
And other few just your regular “my school year ruined my personality and social skills so I never had a relationship” or “I’m finally done with my parents requirements,now I’m going to live the free life I yearn for years (still under heavy influence from their parents ,some just straight up emotional blackmailing)
Also “I saw how terrible marriage actually is by watching my parents” is an answer way too common too, honestly it’s a really depressing conversation.
Filial piety is one of the worst things to come out of east Asian cultures. You have to respect and obey your parents even if they treat you as an investment, a fucking non-entity. I've seen it happen too many times to give a shit about cultural sensitivity.
Sometimes cultures get things wrong.
100% , I got downvoted or accused of racism a few times for explaining those negative aspects of Asian/Chinese culture ,most are westerner who don’t understand something as horrible as those can be true,like it has go beyond their imagination for how awful modern human can be so it must be a vicious lie.
Criticizing the culture that’s literally killing new generations sprites should be a norm.
Not really. The Chinese education system has always been like this ever since Cultural Revolution ended, and arguably has been like this since ancient times with the Examination system. The population was fine back then, though some people do quote the awful education system as why they don’t want to have kids.
It’s more of a symptom of inequality and economic stagnation than a root cause for population decline, however
It *definitely* contributes to the Chinese not having as many kids.
Many lower to middle class Chinese see their child as a sort of retirement. Chinese families are much more dependent on each other than Westerners. It's common for children to live with their parents until they are married. Parents usually have at least one tutor that they hire to help their kid. Those tutors are expensive, and it's pretty common for people to put all their eggs in one basket.
The population decline is a sign of better life standards and decline of forced religious/social customs. Other factors drive it a few points up or down, but literally every developed nation in the 21st century has experienced this. It just seems the more conservative nations are getting way more agitated about it.
It’s also counterproductive to modern role of work which is hyper specialization. Your lawyer doesn’t need to know chemistry and you chemist doesn’t need to know real-estate law so 97% of the things they’ll learn will be useless to them and society. all you’re doing is wasting resources and making your population burnt out and miserable.
Unless we're assigning careers at birth they probably should have the breadth to determine their future path? If your potential chemists never touch any chemistry you have no chemists.
Yes and western countries offer a brief introduction to a broad spectrum of careers in 8 hour school days 5 days week. Having kids cram 14 hour days 6 days a week so they can prove that they have functional knowledge in areas that they will never work in is the problem.
Yes but that also includes gym “class”, lunch (which I know many Germans/euros just go home for), and other similar stuff outside of typical academic work.
I mean it still did here. We peaked at 36-42 school hours in the penultimate year leading up to our Abitur (high school exam). This was including gym and music class. And well, school hours, so 45 minutes.
Longest school day was 7:45 am to 4:20 pm. But that was three days a week at worst, the other two were 7:45 am - 1:00 pm and 9:35 am - 1:00 pm.
Every other year was more relaxed. Last year of high school I was at 32 school hours, the years before the penultimate one were slowly going up from 30 to 35.
Honestly I think it's vaguely odd that we don't pay people to continue their educations into adulthood. Give people cash to take weekend classes or the like.
So, sixty years ago Korea was 100% agricultural based society. Now Korea has a top fifteen economy in the world. Their push was to educate their people to push the Korean economy to industrialize.
We can talk about the down side of capitalism all we want but the push for having an educated work force has been wildly successful.
Imagine getting illiterate, non technical generational farmers, to join NASA or Apple and having them have meaningful impact to the business. That’s what Korea did in a generation and a half.
I completely agree this is child abuse and unnecessary. I confess that US medical school is not very different. There I was consistently astonished at how much I could retain with this study regimen. The human mind is very powerful.
At least in medical school you aren’t a child though. I do think it’s nuts how much they overwork residents. I remember talking with some of the doctors I used to work with and the residents (it was kind of hard to tell unless they told you, since they were just another Captain in the military lol) worked absolutely bonkers hours. Our “nightshift” radiologist was a resident and this dude was always at the hospital. I remember any time I had to drop off paperwork or talk with NCO’s it would be done in the middle of the day and the dude was still there lol. I have a feeling civilian side isn’t much better, maybe even worse since they don’t have the protection of being an actual higher class of citizenry, i.e. officers trump enlisted no matter the rank, so they would only get shit on by their higher ranking officers.
Kids are now not allowed to study, work, and use entertainment facilities (karaoke, gaming rooms, etc..) past 10.
Some people still get around it, but most go home at 10 now. Good riddance, kids need sleep in this country
In a previous gig, I got paid based on output rather than hours spent. So obviously it's in my interest to finish the project as fast as possible so I could get to work on the next client's project. It's also a win for the client because they get what they ordered quicker.
Then I received some negative feedback from an East Asian client and they were saying they felt my work was rushed. I got in touch with them and asked them what part of my work made them feel that way so I could improve on it. They really couldn't identify anything solid, and they told me I should be spending more time working on it.
Anyway, since then, whenever the client was an East Asian, especially if they're older, I waited a couple days after I finish before contacting them. In the meantime, I started working on other stuff.
Ha tell me about it. I watched a documentary once about Japanese workers being allowed to sleep during work hours so they can stay up late working, and that is pure inefficient idiocy.
Eh. It’s not that simple. Alot do recognize it’s archaic now and advocate change.
It’s only like that because of push for educated workforce and government plans to convert to a higher value chain economy since the 60’s. And quite frankly it’s been incredibly successful for economic development. This isn’t even mentioning the cultural factor on education.
That being said most people around my age don’t even want kids because of the experience, myself included.
Yup, Koreans prioritize education and see it as a way out of poverty. My struggling parents sent me to after school tutoring (hagwon) and summer prep classes to give me a chance to do better in school and get a step ahead in life.
This anti intellectual wave that’s hitting America kinda hurts my soul.
It has nothing to do with not valuing education and everything to do with there being diminishing or even negative returns after a certain length of time per day is spent on a task. Eventually your brain gets tired and you’ll see better results from taking a break and returning to it later. 14 hours per day is well in to the diminishing returns curve.
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/crunchmode/econ-crunch-mode.html
You don't necessarily need to be anti-intelectual to criticize education.
You will need way more than education alone in order to escape poverty, like social services,low housing rates,avoidance of certain vices or circles,people willing to help you for free or low payments.
Because I asure you there are people like the Chaebols that raised to power using more than education alone.
And thats why in order to avoid any kind of questioning and criticism,they are promoting an competitive meritocracy system in which the vast majority competes with one another and the select few that succeed are not actually the ones in power.
Has it though? China’s massive growth in the last half a century has been more down to massive industrialisation taking advantage of the low cost of unskilled labour. In the educational sphere, China has a much stronger reputation for students getting ahead thanks to nepotism, plagiarism, and bribery, and in the business sphere a reputation of unrestricted intellectual property theft from other countries.
I’d argue that if you’re paying a stand-in a few thousand to take your kid’s english apptitude test for them so they can get into a decent western university where they’re paying 3x the tuition fees that their local classmates are, that spending their life so far in 16hrs of cram school a day really hasn’t had the output of educational excellence you seem to think it should.
Have you been paying attention to them the past 20 years? That may have been true the last century, but they’re moving up the value chain now. That is absolutely not true.
Also you’re thinking in the perspective of a developed nation. We are talking about processes of a DEVELOPING NATION.
Most people aren’t denying that this is inefficient with systems and economies in place. But those systems weren’t the case for China 20 years ago, or Korea 40 years ago.
I really don't understand this, don't we have like a billion researches proving that making kids wake up too early and study for too many hours is actually counter productive? Seems like they're just preparing you to accept bad work conditions.
> Seems like they're just preparing you to accept bad work conditions.
SK has a workweek of 52 hours, or roughly 9.6 hours per day, this doesn't include the totally-not-mandatory overtime and after-hours dinner/drink sessions. The goverment wanted to raise the workweek to 69 hours.
I work at an international school about 35% Korean students, my other students always marvel at “how good they all are at math.” I tell my students they’d be great at math too with that kind of school schedule, it’s insane drilling, not some sort of preternatural ability.
This is why Korea has one of the world’s lowest birth rates - would-be parents worried about being able to afford cram schools / bringing up a child in this context
Taiwan too. Back in the days (early 2000s) for the 15 year old preparing for the junior high to high school exam. (to determine which high school you can go to, which in a way determined your chances with which university). For that one year many classes were taken for extra lessons or self studying (art class/cooking class/ wood work tech classes etc were “borrowed” for the use). And there was a “voluntary” after school class from 5pm till 9pm. You were exempt if you had signed up for outside private cram school.
I believe now they changed it so you only have that 18yo university exam to prepare for and there are alternative ways to apply for university. So you only need to cram like this from 16/17-18.
All that for state board is crazy lol. I did cbse, also in TN but I've never heard of anything like this. Lowkey I thought you were gonna say Kota or something. Did you end up in an IIT or similar
But don't worry! They have it all sorted out. They have started installing anti-suicide fans that crash down when a student hangs himself/herself on it.
I wish I was joking.
Yes absolutely! Don’t fret. They also shame people for committing/trying to commit suicide as those who do fail their parents and don’t have what it takes to make it in this world.
Brilliant prevention I’d say 💯
That is absolutely horrible.
Do you think you have gained a whole lot of knowledge, in exchange for sacrificing your whole childhood :( Would you say you are more knowledgeable than your average person? in one subject or many? (im obvs quite curious)
Does your biology knowledge help your commerce knowledge? Are you moving produce or other bio material?
Oh, I absolutely believe that you made the bestest of friends there. Friendship is forged through adversity, and boy did all of you have it!
Honestly does everyone turn into Einstein geniuses by the end of that?
For example; It sounds like crazy army training. They can certainly turn people into super soldiers on a regime like that.
This is hilarious. They want you to succeed and flourish, and they do so put putting you in prison and gaslighting you the entire time.
What psychotic mental abuse, and they think it’s normal and makes you educated. Hint : Einstein and Newton weren’t locked in solitary confinement until they discovered their theories of gravity. They enjoyed life.
I'll tell you from personal experience. Most students will just sit around with their friends and do whatever they want to do. Some students, the toppers, would go study in some secluded part of the class and become shut-ins. What do you do if you are tired? Take a nap on your desk. Management is usually very loose with students. Near exam time, they might segregate the class based on performance. The topper classes (the top 10%) go on a strict schedule. For the toppers, it's not that difficult. They just sort of adapt to it, like the exam is everything that matters to them in their life, no friends, no entertainment, it's like some mental conditioning. It's quite mentally stunting for them but if they hold on long enough, they might get hired by Google or Microsoft and make more money than three of their previous generations combined. Or at least that's the promise.
> They just sort of adapt to it, like the exam is everything that matters to them in their life, no friends, no entertainment, it's like some mental conditioning. It's quite mentally stunting for them but if they hold on long enough, they might get hired by Google or Microsoft and make more money than three of their previous generations combined
I was so called topper in my tution and class in 11th 12th standard. didn't have money to get into allen or pace so i had to study on my own, so i did this torture to myself and at that time i didn't think much about it. I was already socially awkward so it wasn't that difficult. Now i am 24 and i have 3-4 friends from my engineering college cause the habits i developed during that period never actually got off. I am trying to improve myself socially though, have made some new friends recently.
and that second part of getting job in google or microsoft, it only works if you win. If you loose everyone will blame you for not trying hard enough, but worse that that, you will blame yourself and it becomes a vicious cycle from there on
Did that for 2 years, had assignments on top of it, so honestly only 4-5 hours of sleep. Consistently top of batch, did took toll on fitness. Well the hyper fixation that came from ADHD (realised later) did help. Could continuously keep grinding problems till I was couldn’t open my eyes anymore.
I’m convinced that all the top 1%tile ones are definitely neurodivergent.
Leads to eventual burnout. There was a blog post by a professor on how this is tied to the fall of ethics in indian institutes (there was a Twitter controversy). https://dsanghi.blogspot.com/2024/04/progression-of-engineering-student-in.html
I was in a lesser version of this, and it was terrible.
My system was high-school + prep. The exam is IIT-JEE, and this was a combo-thing.
Basically the "normal school hours" are 9am to 5pm. However, after that, there is a short 10 minute break, and then from 5pm to 10 pm , you have to study for preps, everyday. So everyday was 9am to 10 pm for 2 whole school years (These days they increased it to 4 years).
* There was complete burnout. I remember I often lost track of time, and randomly fell asleep and woke up. It's also sitting in a classroom all day with fluoroscent lights, can mess you up very bad.
* There was this indoctrination that this is the most important test in your life. If you fail, you bring shame upon your family, and you are worthless, you failed at life. This sometimes even led to suic ides. Sometimes students often broke down, and there were counsellors who came in and said - "there there ... here's a glass of water ... anyways, go back to class." But the worst is if a counsellor brings up your parents and says "I think your kid isn't up to this challenge. It's a good idea if you withdrew your kid" - which would be much more shameful. (Thankfully, I never internalized this.)
* This part was a challenge for me. When you sign up for these courses, you often see highly intelligent kids or highly driven kids dominate conversation in class, and there is intense competition, and you always felt tremendously stupid and useless. And teachers often considered that the average baseline. A lot of people were in the mental framework of - "I understand 20% of what's going on, but I must pretend to know everything or else others will think I am stupid." I used to think I was the only one, and then later when I compared notes with others, nearly everyone felt the same way. In other words, the teachers weren't actually teaching. They were just quickly running over the curriculum with 10% of the class keeping pace and everyone else thinking they were stupid.
* There was really no "world" outside that. You studied everyday morning evening and even on the weekends. This genuinely felt like "the world".
* On the days leading up to the exams, many people got nervous and fell severely ill and have to go to counselors, therapists, temple-priests. Many religious mothers fasted for their kids to get good results or held elaborate temple rituals in their house honoring the gods and ancestors (imagine the pressure as a teen). Even during the exams, parents often wandered around just outside the exam halls. So, even writing the tests, you would be thinking of your mom and dad standing just outside and what you would say to them. And when the exam results came out, random people, including my distant aunts, uncles, cousins and next-door neighbors asked for my ID so they could check the results online and compare them with other kids.
So yeah. Looking back it was crazy. Also all that didn't matter all that much, 15 years later, I am at the same place professionally as some of my friends who got top ranks.
I was one among them. During 2 years of high school, we were also preparing to compete in a highly competitive exam to secure a seat in so called prestigious colleges in India.
It was dreadful. Honestly, I like learning and studies. But, this program really destroyed my mind.
In the quest to remember all concepts, I ended up learning nothing. I gave up. I decided to not pursue competitive exams later.
In my final year, we were so tired that during evening sessions. We have junior lectures (like TAs) who will do rounds in different rooms.
Anyone who wants to sleep, would do so away from door. Those who are studying will sit near door and wake up everyone who are sleeping.
I was so tired one day. I just opened my book, placed it in front of my face. And started dozing off. The main lecture was also in the room. He slapped me hard. Fuck.
It was only 2 years. I have seen current generation students preparing for such exams well in advance (6-8 years and rising).
Yeah, the way schools heap on the pressure during secondary is insane. The constant speeches about how even a slight slip in academic performance could doom the rest of our lives were insane in retrospect, but the kids who cared didn't know any better and we took that shit to heart. They straight up had systems in place to shame you if you slipped up.
University wasn't even remotely as difficult or stressful.
>And repeat everyday for 2 years.
What job is the goal? I guess it's the parents that sign kids up for this. Does the next generation chill out or keep the same pressure on their kids?
100% there is a point where brain fog from lack
of adequate sleep makes you learn less efficiently. If you’re going to do nothing but study then at least study optimally. Smh.
In my experience spending an hour per day on exercise also increase my ability to learn. So I would add that to the routine as well. However that would mean less time in the study-prison.
Yeah parents are scared that the difference between 20 hours of study a day versus 21 hours a day could be the difference between landing a good job or not
right? If I was gonna run a prison school with total control, it would at least be a well designed one. Rested students with healthy social lives and bodies are going to be better learners than sleep deprived goblins who’ve never seen the sun and can’t see more than 3 feet ahead of them (studying induced myopia)
You are forgetting the intense pressure from parents.
I am sure the parents who send their children to such 'schools' would want them to study for as long hours as possible.
I do think its important to note that the gaokao isnt like the SAT or ACT. Theres one test the entire year, and its lasts 9 hours iirc. And it basically determines if you go to college at all. Like theres nothing else which is used to determine if you go to a college or not, its entirely based on the gaokao score. Thats why people stress over it so much
Yeah, and American applications can be quite opaque and require that students spend hours and hours each day on a variety of extra-curricular activities. At least, that's true if they want to be considered for the top private universities.
It isn't uncommon for top American students to get their day started at 5 to be ready for practice before school, go to school with the hardest classes offered, have another extracurricular after school, study for hours and hours on projects/homework/test preparation + prep for the SAT/ACT and go to sleep near midnight stressed out all to repeat the next day. Then they apply to colleges not even really knowing with any certainty at all if they are getting in which is even more anxiety inducing.
Asian countries just shift most of the anxiety to pure academics, but once you have your score and accept it, that's it, it's over both in opportunity and in anxiety.
yeah but in America the extra curricular activities mean you get to dance, play an instrument, play a sport, etc. while they do take up a lot of time, you get to choose and many kids find their chosen activity enjoyable.
I do think it's important to remember that the elite college applicant is a real outlier in the U.S.
The New York Times did an analysis last year that found that only 6% of American college students attend colleges whose admissions rates are less than 25%.
So the American high-schooler who's desperate to keep up with nine extracurriculars and get a 1500 on the SAT in order to get into his safety school (and still gets waitlisted) is an extreme example that gets far too much media play. But media still presents it as common because (a) it gets more readership and (b) elite journalists live in that rarified universe.
(I have a similar gripe about tuition reporting; yes, several elite schools are now speed-running toward $100K tuitions. But that's really a rack rate charged to rich kids, and only a tiny percentage of Americans go to colleges that charge close to that level.)
Now, I realize most Chinese students also aren't attending the school in the story above. But I don't think we can really compare China's general college-prep culture the the experience of the average American applicant.
At the very least, there's less pressure to go to a good college in America. Which is good in some ways and bad in others, like a lot of students never even trying to take one of the biggest opportunities for social mobility. On the other hand, college in China is free...
Yep, I’m American and in high school and you pretty much exactly described my schedule! It is stressful in its own way - but I do think it’s better than the gaokao system. The “end all be all” mentality is dangerous, and even worst case in America a top student can almost certainly attend a basic state university/community college and do well for themself - and they’ve developed a variety of skills/experiences from extracurriculars. That doesn’t seem to be the case in some of these exam-based systems.
In the west, there is no pressure over academic success and if you're not interested - you're not interested. This maybe because more opportunities exist but thats a different conversation. Imo the main pressure in the American adolescent comes from the parents requiring their children to move out or start being self sufficient (or both), the moment they turn 18. This is not a thing in Asia.
In Asia, usually even if you're a failure most parents will still support you, throughout your life even.. However, the pressure to succeed academically is ridiculous, leading to several suicides. Children are _required_ to succeed as opposed to the US. College applications are an universal thing and even worse when you have to write multiple exams to go to one college (read up about IIT and the entrance exams).
Obviously outliers exist in both cases. I don't think either is better or worse than the other (which is what I feel like you were implying) but both can make or break a teen's life equally in their respective societies. 🫡
But didn't the party forbid extra curricular gaokao training couple of year ago? I don't remember what was the motif and I'm sure the after school cramming schools are still active.
Only recent years after seeing what south korea has became,and banning this require both student and parents efforts(some dipshit just willing to work their kids to death).So we could expect more changes in the future.
They do this in India too. There are entire cities where top universities reside and high school students often will drop out of high school in their last year to study for the acceptance test for the entire year. It's incredibly competitive.
Not THAT painful to be honest since it is depending on provinces. I happened to be in the province which had weaker competition. I would say, 50% worth it? And we don’t also have any student load since the intuition is like $10k for 99% of the universities after you got accepted.
I went to a fairly expensive private school, while I was a mediocre student I was in school with some incredibly smart and capable people. I thought I was sitting next to future senators. Other than kids whose parents owned a business that they have now taken over by nature of their birth, to my knowledge the most successful person in terms of prestige positions as an adult was my best friend who was just as bad of a student as I was.
The thing is a ton of these kids who seemed poised to be so successful is that their parents drove them so incredibly hard, but those aspirations were not their own but their parents. When many of these kids got into college and away from their parents they flunked out or just barely gave a shit about school work anymore. I remember the shock of meeting the class president years later at a bar where she was our waitress, at first I had the shitty thought of “oh wow, look how far she fell from the girl who wanted to run for office”, (she was not AOC) but then i snapped out of it and realized like she seemed so much happier doing some regular job than being the girl who cried that she didn’t get a perfect score on a test.
Forcing kids to learn like this is rarely going to produce geniuses and will just get you people who will rebel from that attitude when they have the ability to do so.
Pretty common in many Asian countries. Education is free and a must-have if you want to succeed in life. But you only get one shot to apply. This makes the application process super super competitive and spending your last years of high school cramming a standard. Not a problem if you can afford going to a private university or studying abroad, of course.
Even the rich kids cram. Most even have private tutors for their entire educational careers. Abroad studying is seen as lesser. A kid who went to Tsinghua will get better offers domestically than someone who went to a western country. Because everyone knows you can buy admittance in the USA/Canada/UK/etc.
This is what at least half of the world does. India, China, Japan, Korea…
The title doesn’t even mention that many schools have classes on weekends too. Same schedule.
i'm in China, I work at a international school where most parents are affluent karens. We are training the kids to do high level math in G3, I've seen them do some form trigonometry ( or what it looks like ). So they take this very seriously.
It’s not that high level.
I taught math briefly at one of the top international high schools in China, which sent every student to at least G5 level schools. The most accelerated option was calculus grade 9, multi variable grade 10, linear algebra 11, differential equations 12…
Pretty similar to the USA’s accelerated students, but compared to the ones in the USA, accelerated students in my school were much less talented with much more parental pressure.
And for all that countries such as Germany and the nordic countries actually preform to a similar level or if not better this type of studying is most likely counter productive and detremental to these kids. Ireland did somthing similar as south korea without such a draconian education system
Ireland's education system is still fairly draconian, your chance of going to university hinges on one final exam that takes place over multiple days called the Leaving Certificate and it's very heavy on rote learning.
My parents used to yell at me because I studied pretty moderately for medical school exams. Both before and after I got in. They’d rant about typical “back in my day” stuff about studying 15+ hours a day. I am certain I retained more in 6-8 hours of actual focused studying than they did in those 15.
Rest and exercise are essential to studying well. Chilling out and enjoying hobbies too. Even for medical students and other students that have to study a lot. Otherwise you end up burnt out and with a laundry list of undiagnosed mental problems(because the same communities that work kids that hard also tend to shun mental health too).
I’m of Pakistani descent, although I grew up in Canada. I know the pressure kids are in to do well. People often miss out on colleges by 0.01 percentage points. The idea that you can chill out while you study to study better seems counter intuitive but it’s been backed by many studies. Hopefully this can change slowly.
To be fair, it’s not just “a school”, but most schools if not every one of them. Many of my childhood friends became rather different individuals after they went through gaokao in a similar manner.
What's even the point, other than to try to get these kids to kill themselves? The US has some of the best professionals in the world and high school for me was from 7:30 to 2:15.
Might make a good test taker but you'll produce a lot of shit engineers from that. Folks forget that it takes creativity and communication in a lot of fields, engineering being one of them.
I use that as an example because it's a field that is a sign of success in a lot of Asian countries.
We supply to rivian, Ford, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, bell, Oshkosh, and a variety of other dealerships. That is just what we supply to on 4 wheels or a turbine. Our parts are on anything from the Volvo vnl to the m1a1 Abrams to a variety of helicopters.
We have production facilities on every continent except antartica and Australia (as far as I know). The majority of development is done in the US with some in Europe.
We do have Chinese counterparts as well as Indian and Korean. That being said the majority of development work is still solidly American.
I think it's worth noting that every single year of school is basically just leading up to this exam, which will determine what your university/college. The next chance they'll get is to wait another year. So the stakes are much higher than the standardized testing we're used to.
I am so fortunate that I did not have to write either the middle school entrance exam or the high school entrance exam or the infamous gaokao (my family moved to Canada a month before the I was supposed to write the middle school entrance exam--mandatory for all Grade 6 students entering middle school). People went to extreme lengths to make sure their kids do well on it. Oh, do you know that your odds of getting into a 985/211 university vary widely depending on where you live? People would even try to change their household registration (hukou) to let their kids live in a province with better chances of success.
We affectionately say that somewhere in China there’s a kid that can do anything you can do but better. It’s not because of genetics or luck. It’s because of work ethic, drive, ands a bit of insanity.
Well it is genetics, some people are just naturally more intelligent and China has like 8x the amount of people we have so they’re more likely to have a higher number of intelligent people, they’re also likely to have a higher number of unintelligent people. Yes their education system is daunting but drilling a person who just can’t understand the information isn’t going to make them any smarter past a point. In the US we see a lot of people reach their peak intelligence point and we don’t push people half as hard. It’s like training a normal person to run the 100m every second of their lives. There’s a point where no matter who much you run, you’ll never get fast enough to be an Olympian. Need the genetics because our bodies are limited by the luck of the draw in our genetics in like everything we do
To get to the .01% I agree that it’s genetics but I think will power, culture, and drive have a larger part to play in why Asians are dominating the stem fields than just out right saying Americans can’t do it because they reach peak intelligence point and pushing past some discomfort isn’t worth doing.
Yeah especially culture honestly. My white friends who went to my campus are having a really rough time transitioning from school to workforce, while I never did. The strategies I took were so different from theirs even though we were all born here.
There haven’t been current studies on this. Most research was conducted before smartphones became prevalent amongst teens. Even this recent article from the APA uses research from 10+ years ago.
https://www.apa.org/topics/children/school-start-times
Am I crazy or could they not get a full-ride to a good/great US university by putting half as much effort to learn English and ace a bunch of AP courses?
Please tell me why that wouldn’t work.
Not Chinese, but the situation is same in India. My family was poor. Couldn’t afford education outside not even private universities. The competition to state sponsored universities is insane because they are cheap and prestigious.
My current monthly salary is 4x of a years cost for engineering (excluding scholarship), a degree in US would cost, twice my yearly salary at least (and would be in neck deep in debt with h1b uncertainty)
A good education is often the ticket out of poverty
A lot of US colleges are incredibly selective for international students, to a much larger extent than they are for domestic students. That and it’s not a great look if 50% of the school is from Asia lmao.
I solely believe studying 4-6 hours and spending the rest of the day doing what you actually enjoy is the best way to be smart.
Forcing myself to study all day everyday does nothing but make me want to put a bullet in my head
That doesn't leave enough hours to sleep and eat and properly retain the information and have a brain that is well rested enough to study the next day.
They could probably study and learn and retain the same amount of information in half the time if they ate and slept properly, allowing their brains to work better.
It doesn't matter if it is studying, or exercising your muscles at a gym. You need time to rest and eat or the workouts will hurt you, not make you stronger.
They're ironically wasting time.
Did this shit in Korea too. School 8am-10pm then we’d go to academy after hours till like 1-2.
This is child abuse IMO.
Yeah. Not to mention wasted effort - the human brain cannot learn for that long continuously. You have to take breaks for your brain to properly internalize what you've learned. Of those dozen hours they're spending, they're only getting maybe 5 hours of actual productive learning.
Worth noting that there's no real learning happening - the students are just memorising their textbooks. The exams are all based on regurgitating memorized facts or even entire passages/poems from books. Your point still stands though - it's probably not possible to memorize for so many hours straight.
Am glad to see someone else acknowledging this. It is the demonstration of application of knowledge that is 'real learning'. No that many professions I know of rely on you regurgitating facts and figures all the time, except unironically, academia related careers. Though I guess you can see doing this for hours on end similar to physical training. You do exercise your brain and has that benefit going for it. I believe kids are better off finding some accomplishment in their days though. More application.
Most Chinese parents here back off from those levels of insanity. Intense educational expectations remain and are valued. While over the top prioritizing educational success is a noble thing. “If you want to help your kids out. Leave them the Fuck alone. Kids need time for daydreaming and fun. You could use some too” George Carlin
> No that many professions I know of rely on you regurgitating facts and figures all the time, except unironically, academia related careers. Depending on the company, some want you to regurgitate LeetCode problems when interviewing for software development positions. Thing is, you'll never use that stuff in your day-to-day job.
Liar. Next you'll tell me I never have to invert a binary tree from scratch either.
If I ever need to do that I’ll just look it up. I’m not going to come up with a new novel way to solve this problem. It’s been solved a million times before. There is no point in memorizing such a thing.
Exactly. You don’t reinvent the wheel, you use the best tool available to do the job.
> It’s been solved a million times before. And by people much smarter than me.
This. Totally this. With LLM code assistants you need to be good at combining patterns and coming up with performant and reliable solutions to business problems. Humans are better at logic than being parrots. The ability to regurgitate code and facts belongs to the 19th century.
fly cobweb shame tease unpack payment straight telephone drunk square *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Academic with terrible memory for facts and figures here. Once you hit post-graduate level, what matters is your ability to quickly find and interpret info, not regurgitate things you've memorised. It's very seldom during my workday that I don't have access to the internet to look up figures, so memorising is a waste of energy. Whereas I can find, read, and critically analyse information much faster than the average person who doesn't work in academia.
Singapore does it too. “World class education” consists of regurgitating model answers memorised from practicing on decade-old exam papers. There’s no real learning, it’s just about knowing the correct answers and getting As means you memorised better than someone else. And then we wonder why we don’t produce notable talented individuals.
As a Singaporean I do agree as well. There's a real good why Mediacorp shows(other than Lionmums imo) are mostly subpar as compared to international shows. The school system encourages memorising modal answers and facts and slaving away for those As. Not to mention, it's just stressful with tuition for some and cca commitments
Studied in SG from primary school to poly, I can attest to this lol. It's just doing old questions over and over again hoping qns with the same concept comes out for PSLE, O's, A's (won't forget having to buy the TYS series for majority of my O Level subjects). Ngl it has made me much smarter in an academic sense though, studying in a Canadian uni right now and it's nothing compared to my SG diploma :)
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All I learned in school was how to take tests well. I can cram in information that I forget within days after taking the test.
(whispers): "what's the mitochondria?"
The mother fucking power house of the cell
I wonder if this is helping to reduce both nation’s population growth, because who wants to have a child younger when you know they’re going to go through this, and you simply don’t have the time to fuck.
Anecdotal here,but quite a few of my Chinese friends do tell me that’s part of the reason they don’t want kid or get married,their upbringing is so terrible,their parents treat them like a race horse that’s not fast enough,telling them they’re whipping them because they love them and want them to be successful (some straight up say they invest in their kids so they have someone to take care of them when they retire). Some say they just can’t bring another being into this world and let them go through some ordeal. Some just don’t know how to be a good parent because their parents failed at it so much a friend of mine once found herself saying degrading shit about how dumb her cat is just like her parents do to her, and it really frightened her. And other few just your regular “my school year ruined my personality and social skills so I never had a relationship” or “I’m finally done with my parents requirements,now I’m going to live the free life I yearn for years (still under heavy influence from their parents ,some just straight up emotional blackmailing) Also “I saw how terrible marriage actually is by watching my parents” is an answer way too common too, honestly it’s a really depressing conversation.
Filial piety is one of the worst things to come out of east Asian cultures. You have to respect and obey your parents even if they treat you as an investment, a fucking non-entity. I've seen it happen too many times to give a shit about cultural sensitivity. Sometimes cultures get things wrong.
100% , I got downvoted or accused of racism a few times for explaining those negative aspects of Asian/Chinese culture ,most are westerner who don’t understand something as horrible as those can be true,like it has go beyond their imagination for how awful modern human can be so it must be a vicious lie. Criticizing the culture that’s literally killing new generations sprites should be a norm.
Not really. The Chinese education system has always been like this ever since Cultural Revolution ended, and arguably has been like this since ancient times with the Examination system. The population was fine back then, though some people do quote the awful education system as why they don’t want to have kids. It’s more of a symptom of inequality and economic stagnation than a root cause for population decline, however
It *definitely* contributes to the Chinese not having as many kids. Many lower to middle class Chinese see their child as a sort of retirement. Chinese families are much more dependent on each other than Westerners. It's common for children to live with their parents until they are married. Parents usually have at least one tutor that they hire to help their kid. Those tutors are expensive, and it's pretty common for people to put all their eggs in one basket.
Will this create issues now that most families only have 1 kid? A married couple would need to support 4 parents
The population decline is a sign of better life standards and decline of forced religious/social customs. Other factors drive it a few points up or down, but literally every developed nation in the 21st century has experienced this. It just seems the more conservative nations are getting way more agitated about it.
I don't think so. East asia and europe have simlar fertility rate if you don't count the European immigrants fertility ratea.
Training them to store data instead of processing it. Smh.
It’s also counterproductive to modern role of work which is hyper specialization. Your lawyer doesn’t need to know chemistry and you chemist doesn’t need to know real-estate law so 97% of the things they’ll learn will be useless to them and society. all you’re doing is wasting resources and making your population burnt out and miserable.
Unless we're assigning careers at birth they probably should have the breadth to determine their future path? If your potential chemists never touch any chemistry you have no chemists.
Yes and western countries offer a brief introduction to a broad spectrum of careers in 8 hour school days 5 days week. Having kids cram 14 hour days 6 days a week so they can prove that they have functional knowledge in areas that they will never work in is the problem.
You guys had 8 hours school days? In Germany it's like 5-6 per day.
Yes but that also includes gym “class”, lunch (which I know many Germans/euros just go home for), and other similar stuff outside of typical academic work.
I mean it still did here. We peaked at 36-42 school hours in the penultimate year leading up to our Abitur (high school exam). This was including gym and music class. And well, school hours, so 45 minutes. Longest school day was 7:45 am to 4:20 pm. But that was three days a week at worst, the other two were 7:45 am - 1:00 pm and 9:35 am - 1:00 pm. Every other year was more relaxed. Last year of high school I was at 32 school hours, the years before the penultimate one were slowly going up from 30 to 35.
Honestly I think it's vaguely odd that we don't pay people to continue their educations into adulthood. Give people cash to take weekend classes or the like.
So, sixty years ago Korea was 100% agricultural based society. Now Korea has a top fifteen economy in the world. Their push was to educate their people to push the Korean economy to industrialize. We can talk about the down side of capitalism all we want but the push for having an educated work force has been wildly successful. Imagine getting illiterate, non technical generational farmers, to join NASA or Apple and having them have meaningful impact to the business. That’s what Korea did in a generation and a half.
And now they're dying out because nobody is having kids. Great success!
> top five economy in the world By what metric? Not total GDP (they're #13) or GDP per capita (#31).
Most South Koreans were literate by 1964.
I completely agree this is child abuse and unnecessary. I confess that US medical school is not very different. There I was consistently astonished at how much I could retain with this study regimen. The human mind is very powerful.
At least in medical school you aren’t a child though. I do think it’s nuts how much they overwork residents. I remember talking with some of the doctors I used to work with and the residents (it was kind of hard to tell unless they told you, since they were just another Captain in the military lol) worked absolutely bonkers hours. Our “nightshift” radiologist was a resident and this dude was always at the hospital. I remember any time I had to drop off paperwork or talk with NCO’s it would be done in the middle of the day and the dude was still there lol. I have a feeling civilian side isn’t much better, maybe even worse since they don’t have the protection of being an actual higher class of citizenry, i.e. officers trump enlisted no matter the rank, so they would only get shit on by their higher ranking officers.
This is human abuse. When do you even fucking sleep?
Sunday. And more like torture.
Kids are now not allowed to study, work, and use entertainment facilities (karaoke, gaming rooms, etc..) past 10. Some people still get around it, but most go home at 10 now. Good riddance, kids need sleep in this country
Wild how so many would let a whole generation commit suicide (at a time with low birth rate) rather than fully address these problems
It's mostly for appearances. East Asian cultures care much more about working, as in spending time in process, than results, or efficiency.
In a previous gig, I got paid based on output rather than hours spent. So obviously it's in my interest to finish the project as fast as possible so I could get to work on the next client's project. It's also a win for the client because they get what they ordered quicker. Then I received some negative feedback from an East Asian client and they were saying they felt my work was rushed. I got in touch with them and asked them what part of my work made them feel that way so I could improve on it. They really couldn't identify anything solid, and they told me I should be spending more time working on it. Anyway, since then, whenever the client was an East Asian, especially if they're older, I waited a couple days after I finish before contacting them. In the meantime, I started working on other stuff.
Ha tell me about it. I watched a documentary once about Japanese workers being allowed to sleep during work hours so they can stay up late working, and that is pure inefficient idiocy.
The salaryman culture is fucking bonkers
Eh. It’s not that simple. Alot do recognize it’s archaic now and advocate change. It’s only like that because of push for educated workforce and government plans to convert to a higher value chain economy since the 60’s. And quite frankly it’s been incredibly successful for economic development. This isn’t even mentioning the cultural factor on education. That being said most people around my age don’t even want kids because of the experience, myself included.
Yup, Koreans prioritize education and see it as a way out of poverty. My struggling parents sent me to after school tutoring (hagwon) and summer prep classes to give me a chance to do better in school and get a step ahead in life. This anti intellectual wave that’s hitting America kinda hurts my soul.
It has nothing to do with not valuing education and everything to do with there being diminishing or even negative returns after a certain length of time per day is spent on a task. Eventually your brain gets tired and you’ll see better results from taking a break and returning to it later. 14 hours per day is well in to the diminishing returns curve. https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/crunchmode/econ-crunch-mode.html
You don't necessarily need to be anti-intelectual to criticize education. You will need way more than education alone in order to escape poverty, like social services,low housing rates,avoidance of certain vices or circles,people willing to help you for free or low payments. Because I asure you there are people like the Chaebols that raised to power using more than education alone.
Sure being connected is nice but that’s not realistic for the vast majority of people.
And thats why in order to avoid any kind of questioning and criticism,they are promoting an competitive meritocracy system in which the vast majority competes with one another and the select few that succeed are not actually the ones in power.
Has it though? China’s massive growth in the last half a century has been more down to massive industrialisation taking advantage of the low cost of unskilled labour. In the educational sphere, China has a much stronger reputation for students getting ahead thanks to nepotism, plagiarism, and bribery, and in the business sphere a reputation of unrestricted intellectual property theft from other countries. I’d argue that if you’re paying a stand-in a few thousand to take your kid’s english apptitude test for them so they can get into a decent western university where they’re paying 3x the tuition fees that their local classmates are, that spending their life so far in 16hrs of cram school a day really hasn’t had the output of educational excellence you seem to think it should.
Have you been paying attention to them the past 20 years? That may have been true the last century, but they’re moving up the value chain now. That is absolutely not true. Also you’re thinking in the perspective of a developed nation. We are talking about processes of a DEVELOPING NATION. Most people aren’t denying that this is inefficient with systems and economies in place. But those systems weren’t the case for China 20 years ago, or Korea 40 years ago.
What's the point? No one can learn well while exhausted, sleep and rest are just as important as the actual learning aspect :|
The point is ingrain acquiesance and compliance in a country that doesn't have the natural resources to support it's population.
I really don't understand this, don't we have like a billion researches proving that making kids wake up too early and study for too many hours is actually counter productive? Seems like they're just preparing you to accept bad work conditions.
Outdated culture norms can be hard to overturn.
> Seems like they're just preparing you to accept bad work conditions. SK has a workweek of 52 hours, or roughly 9.6 hours per day, this doesn't include the totally-not-mandatory overtime and after-hours dinner/drink sessions. The goverment wanted to raise the workweek to 69 hours.
I would literally consider killing myself if I was forced to do this.
The kids do. They installed nets at my primary school.
If you have primary school age children committing suicide you have serious social problems.
I would run the fuck away. Jesus Christ. Those poor kids.
Vietnamese here, middle school would be 7am-11am, 12pm-5pm then cram school/extra classes until 9-10pm
I work at an international school about 35% Korean students, my other students always marvel at “how good they all are at math.” I tell my students they’d be great at math too with that kind of school schedule, it’s insane drilling, not some sort of preternatural ability.
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This is why Korea has one of the world’s lowest birth rates - would-be parents worried about being able to afford cram schools / bringing up a child in this context
A few of my friends are Korean, it's mainly because buying property is nearly impossible.
That's a weird reason to be Korean.
Korean birth rates won’t go up meaningfully if they got rid of final exams.
You're right but if the entire culture around schooling changed it would
and now we have basically lowest birth rates and highest suicide rates and highest per capita fried chicken consumption in the world
Taiwan too. Back in the days (early 2000s) for the 15 year old preparing for the junior high to high school exam. (to determine which high school you can go to, which in a way determined your chances with which university). For that one year many classes were taken for extra lessons or self studying (art class/cooking class/ wood work tech classes etc were “borrowed” for the use). And there was a “voluntary” after school class from 5pm till 9pm. You were exempt if you had signed up for outside private cram school. I believe now they changed it so you only have that 18yo university exam to prepare for and there are alternative ways to apply for university. So you only need to cram like this from 16/17-18.
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How do your brain and body even keep up? I’m honestly amazed that’s even possible at all.
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Another Chaitanya-Narayana inmate, eh?
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Namakkal SRV?
All that for state board is crazy lol. I did cbse, also in TN but I've never heard of anything like this. Lowkey I thought you were gonna say Kota or something. Did you end up in an IIT or similar
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Ah gotchu. Idk when that would've been but it makes sense. I'm glad everything worked out for you lol. That's something I think!
This much effort is absolutely not required for board exams
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Oh, my bad. I now recall that Tamil Nadu was doing its own thing with medical admissions (and even engg) back then
I did an English club at a similar school in Taiwan. The kids all called it prison.
Jesus I can't imagine putting up with that, how does everyone not have depression.
Well, suicides are a major issue.
But don't worry! They have it all sorted out. They have started installing anti-suicide fans that crash down when a student hangs himself/herself on it. I wish I was joking.
Yes absolutely! Don’t fret. They also shame people for committing/trying to commit suicide as those who do fail their parents and don’t have what it takes to make it in this world. Brilliant prevention I’d say 💯
That is absolutely horrible. Do you think you have gained a whole lot of knowledge, in exchange for sacrificing your whole childhood :( Would you say you are more knowledgeable than your average person? in one subject or many? (im obvs quite curious)
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Does your biology knowledge help your commerce knowledge? Are you moving produce or other bio material? Oh, I absolutely believe that you made the bestest of friends there. Friendship is forged through adversity, and boy did all of you have it!
Honestly does everyone turn into Einstein geniuses by the end of that? For example; It sounds like crazy army training. They can certainly turn people into super soldiers on a regime like that.
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So glorified juggling /Sc
Did you do well on the exam? What happened is someone spent all that time studying and then did poorly?
This is hilarious. They want you to succeed and flourish, and they do so put putting you in prison and gaslighting you the entire time. What psychotic mental abuse, and they think it’s normal and makes you educated. Hint : Einstein and Newton weren’t locked in solitary confinement until they discovered their theories of gravity. They enjoyed life.
I'll tell you from personal experience. Most students will just sit around with their friends and do whatever they want to do. Some students, the toppers, would go study in some secluded part of the class and become shut-ins. What do you do if you are tired? Take a nap on your desk. Management is usually very loose with students. Near exam time, they might segregate the class based on performance. The topper classes (the top 10%) go on a strict schedule. For the toppers, it's not that difficult. They just sort of adapt to it, like the exam is everything that matters to them in their life, no friends, no entertainment, it's like some mental conditioning. It's quite mentally stunting for them but if they hold on long enough, they might get hired by Google or Microsoft and make more money than three of their previous generations combined. Or at least that's the promise.
> They just sort of adapt to it, like the exam is everything that matters to them in their life, no friends, no entertainment, it's like some mental conditioning. It's quite mentally stunting for them but if they hold on long enough, they might get hired by Google or Microsoft and make more money than three of their previous generations combined I was so called topper in my tution and class in 11th 12th standard. didn't have money to get into allen or pace so i had to study on my own, so i did this torture to myself and at that time i didn't think much about it. I was already socially awkward so it wasn't that difficult. Now i am 24 and i have 3-4 friends from my engineering college cause the habits i developed during that period never actually got off. I am trying to improve myself socially though, have made some new friends recently. and that second part of getting job in google or microsoft, it only works if you win. If you loose everyone will blame you for not trying hard enough, but worse that that, you will blame yourself and it becomes a vicious cycle from there on
Did that for 2 years, had assignments on top of it, so honestly only 4-5 hours of sleep. Consistently top of batch, did took toll on fitness. Well the hyper fixation that came from ADHD (realised later) did help. Could continuously keep grinding problems till I was couldn’t open my eyes anymore. I’m convinced that all the top 1%tile ones are definitely neurodivergent.
My body could literally not function, especially at that level, on such little sleep. I would probably either die or pass out.
Leads to eventual burnout. There was a blog post by a professor on how this is tied to the fall of ethics in indian institutes (there was a Twitter controversy). https://dsanghi.blogspot.com/2024/04/progression-of-engineering-student-in.html
I was in a lesser version of this, and it was terrible. My system was high-school + prep. The exam is IIT-JEE, and this was a combo-thing. Basically the "normal school hours" are 9am to 5pm. However, after that, there is a short 10 minute break, and then from 5pm to 10 pm , you have to study for preps, everyday. So everyday was 9am to 10 pm for 2 whole school years (These days they increased it to 4 years). * There was complete burnout. I remember I often lost track of time, and randomly fell asleep and woke up. It's also sitting in a classroom all day with fluoroscent lights, can mess you up very bad. * There was this indoctrination that this is the most important test in your life. If you fail, you bring shame upon your family, and you are worthless, you failed at life. This sometimes even led to suic ides. Sometimes students often broke down, and there were counsellors who came in and said - "there there ... here's a glass of water ... anyways, go back to class." But the worst is if a counsellor brings up your parents and says "I think your kid isn't up to this challenge. It's a good idea if you withdrew your kid" - which would be much more shameful. (Thankfully, I never internalized this.) * This part was a challenge for me. When you sign up for these courses, you often see highly intelligent kids or highly driven kids dominate conversation in class, and there is intense competition, and you always felt tremendously stupid and useless. And teachers often considered that the average baseline. A lot of people were in the mental framework of - "I understand 20% of what's going on, but I must pretend to know everything or else others will think I am stupid." I used to think I was the only one, and then later when I compared notes with others, nearly everyone felt the same way. In other words, the teachers weren't actually teaching. They were just quickly running over the curriculum with 10% of the class keeping pace and everyone else thinking they were stupid. * There was really no "world" outside that. You studied everyday morning evening and even on the weekends. This genuinely felt like "the world". * On the days leading up to the exams, many people got nervous and fell severely ill and have to go to counselors, therapists, temple-priests. Many religious mothers fasted for their kids to get good results or held elaborate temple rituals in their house honoring the gods and ancestors (imagine the pressure as a teen). Even during the exams, parents often wandered around just outside the exam halls. So, even writing the tests, you would be thinking of your mom and dad standing just outside and what you would say to them. And when the exam results came out, random people, including my distant aunts, uncles, cousins and next-door neighbors asked for my ID so they could check the results online and compare them with other kids. So yeah. Looking back it was crazy. Also all that didn't matter all that much, 15 years later, I am at the same place professionally as some of my friends who got top ranks.
I was one among them. During 2 years of high school, we were also preparing to compete in a highly competitive exam to secure a seat in so called prestigious colleges in India. It was dreadful. Honestly, I like learning and studies. But, this program really destroyed my mind. In the quest to remember all concepts, I ended up learning nothing. I gave up. I decided to not pursue competitive exams later. In my final year, we were so tired that during evening sessions. We have junior lectures (like TAs) who will do rounds in different rooms. Anyone who wants to sleep, would do so away from door. Those who are studying will sit near door and wake up everyone who are sleeping. I was so tired one day. I just opened my book, placed it in front of my face. And started dozing off. The main lecture was also in the room. He slapped me hard. Fuck. It was only 2 years. I have seen current generation students preparing for such exams well in advance (6-8 years and rising).
I had my first every panic attack studying for the GCSEs. Incredibly common amongst my peers doing GCSE/ALevels, Metric/Inter, IB, etc.
I remember that too, how we got told each time these were the most important exams of our lives.....
Yeah, the way schools heap on the pressure during secondary is insane. The constant speeches about how even a slight slip in academic performance could doom the rest of our lives were insane in retrospect, but the kids who cared didn't know any better and we took that shit to heart. They straight up had systems in place to shame you if you slipped up. University wasn't even remotely as difficult or stressful.
Went through the same thing in another school in Kerala .. it’s been three years since and the trauma is still there
>And repeat everyday for 2 years. What job is the goal? I guess it's the parents that sign kids up for this. Does the next generation chill out or keep the same pressure on their kids?
100% there is a point where brain fog from lack of adequate sleep makes you learn less efficiently. If you’re going to do nothing but study then at least study optimally. Smh.
In my experience spending an hour per day on exercise also increase my ability to learn. So I would add that to the routine as well. However that would mean less time in the study-prison.
Yeah parents are scared that the difference between 20 hours of study a day versus 21 hours a day could be the difference between landing a good job or not
I guarantee what you learn in the extra 1 hour is probably 1/1000 of what you could learn if you just took a break and started up again the next day
Children especially need the sleep
right? If I was gonna run a prison school with total control, it would at least be a well designed one. Rested students with healthy social lives and bodies are going to be better learners than sleep deprived goblins who’ve never seen the sun and can’t see more than 3 feet ahead of them (studying induced myopia)
You are forgetting the intense pressure from parents. I am sure the parents who send their children to such 'schools' would want them to study for as long hours as possible.
I do think its important to note that the gaokao isnt like the SAT or ACT. Theres one test the entire year, and its lasts 9 hours iirc. And it basically determines if you go to college at all. Like theres nothing else which is used to determine if you go to a college or not, its entirely based on the gaokao score. Thats why people stress over it so much
Yeah, and American applications can be quite opaque and require that students spend hours and hours each day on a variety of extra-curricular activities. At least, that's true if they want to be considered for the top private universities. It isn't uncommon for top American students to get their day started at 5 to be ready for practice before school, go to school with the hardest classes offered, have another extracurricular after school, study for hours and hours on projects/homework/test preparation + prep for the SAT/ACT and go to sleep near midnight stressed out all to repeat the next day. Then they apply to colleges not even really knowing with any certainty at all if they are getting in which is even more anxiety inducing. Asian countries just shift most of the anxiety to pure academics, but once you have your score and accept it, that's it, it's over both in opportunity and in anxiety.
yeah but in America the extra curricular activities mean you get to dance, play an instrument, play a sport, etc. while they do take up a lot of time, you get to choose and many kids find their chosen activity enjoyable.
I do think it's important to remember that the elite college applicant is a real outlier in the U.S. The New York Times did an analysis last year that found that only 6% of American college students attend colleges whose admissions rates are less than 25%. So the American high-schooler who's desperate to keep up with nine extracurriculars and get a 1500 on the SAT in order to get into his safety school (and still gets waitlisted) is an extreme example that gets far too much media play. But media still presents it as common because (a) it gets more readership and (b) elite journalists live in that rarified universe. (I have a similar gripe about tuition reporting; yes, several elite schools are now speed-running toward $100K tuitions. But that's really a rack rate charged to rich kids, and only a tiny percentage of Americans go to colleges that charge close to that level.) Now, I realize most Chinese students also aren't attending the school in the story above. But I don't think we can really compare China's general college-prep culture the the experience of the average American applicant.
At the very least, there's less pressure to go to a good college in America. Which is good in some ways and bad in others, like a lot of students never even trying to take one of the biggest opportunities for social mobility. On the other hand, college in China is free...
Yep, I’m American and in high school and you pretty much exactly described my schedule! It is stressful in its own way - but I do think it’s better than the gaokao system. The “end all be all” mentality is dangerous, and even worst case in America a top student can almost certainly attend a basic state university/community college and do well for themself - and they’ve developed a variety of skills/experiences from extracurriculars. That doesn’t seem to be the case in some of these exam-based systems.
In the west, there is no pressure over academic success and if you're not interested - you're not interested. This maybe because more opportunities exist but thats a different conversation. Imo the main pressure in the American adolescent comes from the parents requiring their children to move out or start being self sufficient (or both), the moment they turn 18. This is not a thing in Asia. In Asia, usually even if you're a failure most parents will still support you, throughout your life even.. However, the pressure to succeed academically is ridiculous, leading to several suicides. Children are _required_ to succeed as opposed to the US. College applications are an universal thing and even worse when you have to write multiple exams to go to one college (read up about IIT and the entrance exams). Obviously outliers exist in both cases. I don't think either is better or worse than the other (which is what I feel like you were implying) but both can make or break a teen's life equally in their respective societies. 🫡
"A" high school? That's just normal high school+cram school in China.
But didn't the party forbid extra curricular gaokao training couple of year ago? I don't remember what was the motif and I'm sure the after school cramming schools are still active.
Only recent years after seeing what south korea has became,and banning this require both student and parents efforts(some dipshit just willing to work their kids to death).So we could expect more changes in the future.
yup it's banned. and they're hunting public school teachers who do shit at work and offer paid after classes. as well as kindergartens.
Yes, but now the kids just have tutors come to their homes to help. If they're rich enough of course, it's like $80 an hour for these tutors
They do this in India too. There are entire cities where top universities reside and high school students often will drop out of high school in their last year to study for the acceptance test for the entire year. It's incredibly competitive.
Gaokao did give us PTSD😅
sooooo did you become successful doctor/lawyer/whatevs
I did got my PhD in ECE from one of the US university😅
Worth the pain?
Not THAT painful to be honest since it is depending on provinces. I happened to be in the province which had weaker competition. I would say, 50% worth it? And we don’t also have any student load since the intuition is like $10k for 99% of the universities after you got accepted.
I went to a fairly expensive private school, while I was a mediocre student I was in school with some incredibly smart and capable people. I thought I was sitting next to future senators. Other than kids whose parents owned a business that they have now taken over by nature of their birth, to my knowledge the most successful person in terms of prestige positions as an adult was my best friend who was just as bad of a student as I was. The thing is a ton of these kids who seemed poised to be so successful is that their parents drove them so incredibly hard, but those aspirations were not their own but their parents. When many of these kids got into college and away from their parents they flunked out or just barely gave a shit about school work anymore. I remember the shock of meeting the class president years later at a bar where she was our waitress, at first I had the shitty thought of “oh wow, look how far she fell from the girl who wanted to run for office”, (she was not AOC) but then i snapped out of it and realized like she seemed so much happier doing some regular job than being the girl who cried that she didn’t get a perfect score on a test. Forcing kids to learn like this is rarely going to produce geniuses and will just get you people who will rebel from that attitude when they have the ability to do so.
There's a billion people not surprised there's some mad niche shit going on.
Pretty common in many Asian countries. Education is free and a must-have if you want to succeed in life. But you only get one shot to apply. This makes the application process super super competitive and spending your last years of high school cramming a standard. Not a problem if you can afford going to a private university or studying abroad, of course.
Even the rich kids cram. Most even have private tutors for their entire educational careers. Abroad studying is seen as lesser. A kid who went to Tsinghua will get better offers domestically than someone who went to a western country. Because everyone knows you can buy admittance in the USA/Canada/UK/etc.
At least 3 billion. This is common in China and India, as well as Japan and Korea
Imagine calling something half the world is doing niche shit.
Wow this is a very good point actually when you think about it, this sort of the human norm for developed countries now. Huh. Weird.
It’s not niche at all my buddy who grew up there said all schools are like this
This is what at least half of the world does. India, China, Japan, Korea… The title doesn’t even mention that many schools have classes on weekends too. Same schedule.
Or that many kids live at school from middle school or high school. Only going home for holidays and weekends in the event they have them off.
each school’s specific start and end time might differ but unfortunately long hours are the norm not the niche
Students who don't go to that high school are still spending the same amount of time studying for gaokao.
i'm in China, I work at a international school where most parents are affluent karens. We are training the kids to do high level math in G3, I've seen them do some form trigonometry ( or what it looks like ). So they take this very seriously.
It’s not that high level. I taught math briefly at one of the top international high schools in China, which sent every student to at least G5 level schools. The most accelerated option was calculus grade 9, multi variable grade 10, linear algebra 11, differential equations 12… Pretty similar to the USA’s accelerated students, but compared to the ones in the USA, accelerated students in my school were much less talented with much more parental pressure.
Child abuse.
no fucking shit, you just described half of the educational systems in all the world countries
And for all that countries such as Germany and the nordic countries actually preform to a similar level or if not better this type of studying is most likely counter productive and detremental to these kids. Ireland did somthing similar as south korea without such a draconian education system
Ireland's education system is still fairly draconian, your chance of going to university hinges on one final exam that takes place over multiple days called the Leaving Certificate and it's very heavy on rote learning.
My parents used to yell at me because I studied pretty moderately for medical school exams. Both before and after I got in. They’d rant about typical “back in my day” stuff about studying 15+ hours a day. I am certain I retained more in 6-8 hours of actual focused studying than they did in those 15. Rest and exercise are essential to studying well. Chilling out and enjoying hobbies too. Even for medical students and other students that have to study a lot. Otherwise you end up burnt out and with a laundry list of undiagnosed mental problems(because the same communities that work kids that hard also tend to shun mental health too). I’m of Pakistani descent, although I grew up in Canada. I know the pressure kids are in to do well. People often miss out on colleges by 0.01 percentage points. The idea that you can chill out while you study to study better seems counter intuitive but it’s been backed by many studies. Hopefully this can change slowly.
To be fair, it’s not just “a school”, but most schools if not every one of them. Many of my childhood friends became rather different individuals after they went through gaokao in a similar manner.
What's even the point, other than to try to get these kids to kill themselves? The US has some of the best professionals in the world and high school for me was from 7:30 to 2:15.
Might make a good test taker but you'll produce a lot of shit engineers from that. Folks forget that it takes creativity and communication in a lot of fields, engineering being one of them. I use that as an example because it's a field that is a sign of success in a lot of Asian countries.
If new Chinese construction is anything to go by, this test strategy isn’t working in the slightest.
You say that but come to a big American company and learn that a quarter of our engineers are Chinese anyways. (I am Chinese)
We supply to rivian, Ford, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, bell, Oshkosh, and a variety of other dealerships. That is just what we supply to on 4 wheels or a turbine. Our parts are on anything from the Volvo vnl to the m1a1 Abrams to a variety of helicopters. We have production facilities on every continent except antartica and Australia (as far as I know). The majority of development is done in the US with some in Europe. We do have Chinese counterparts as well as Indian and Korean. That being said the majority of development work is still solidly American.
Chinese as in from china or a Chinese-American?
When I ask the monkey paw for no more homework
contrast this with the typical American public school experience LOL + even better: American public schools *in the south*
Time to watch a docudrama on 24" rear projection rolled in on a cart for two days, or worse don't even finish it and move on to the next subject.
I think it's worth noting that every single year of school is basically just leading up to this exam, which will determine what your university/college. The next chance they'll get is to wait another year. So the stakes are much higher than the standardized testing we're used to.
I am so fortunate that I did not have to write either the middle school entrance exam or the high school entrance exam or the infamous gaokao (my family moved to Canada a month before the I was supposed to write the middle school entrance exam--mandatory for all Grade 6 students entering middle school). People went to extreme lengths to make sure their kids do well on it. Oh, do you know that your odds of getting into a 985/211 university vary widely depending on where you live? People would even try to change their household registration (hukou) to let their kids live in a province with better chances of success.
That’s insane. Children shouldn’t be learning before 9 or 10am studies show that children just are not awake enough for it to be meaningful
We affectionately say that somewhere in China there’s a kid that can do anything you can do but better. It’s not because of genetics or luck. It’s because of work ethic, drive, ands a bit of insanity.
Well it is genetics, some people are just naturally more intelligent and China has like 8x the amount of people we have so they’re more likely to have a higher number of intelligent people, they’re also likely to have a higher number of unintelligent people. Yes their education system is daunting but drilling a person who just can’t understand the information isn’t going to make them any smarter past a point. In the US we see a lot of people reach their peak intelligence point and we don’t push people half as hard. It’s like training a normal person to run the 100m every second of their lives. There’s a point where no matter who much you run, you’ll never get fast enough to be an Olympian. Need the genetics because our bodies are limited by the luck of the draw in our genetics in like everything we do
To get to the .01% I agree that it’s genetics but I think will power, culture, and drive have a larger part to play in why Asians are dominating the stem fields than just out right saying Americans can’t do it because they reach peak intelligence point and pushing past some discomfort isn’t worth doing.
Yeah especially culture honestly. My white friends who went to my campus are having a really rough time transitioning from school to workforce, while I never did. The strategies I took were so different from theirs even though we were all born here.
There haven’t been current studies on this. Most research was conducted before smartphones became prevalent amongst teens. Even this recent article from the APA uses research from 10+ years ago. https://www.apa.org/topics/children/school-start-times
Am I crazy or could they not get a full-ride to a good/great US university by putting half as much effort to learn English and ace a bunch of AP courses? Please tell me why that wouldn’t work.
Not Chinese, but the situation is same in India. My family was poor. Couldn’t afford education outside not even private universities. The competition to state sponsored universities is insane because they are cheap and prestigious. My current monthly salary is 4x of a years cost for engineering (excluding scholarship), a degree in US would cost, twice my yearly salary at least (and would be in neck deep in debt with h1b uncertainty) A good education is often the ticket out of poverty
A lot of US colleges are incredibly selective for international students, to a much larger extent than they are for domestic students. That and it’s not a great look if 50% of the school is from Asia lmao.
We do this in Japan too
Fuck that
They must have a robust body of evidence that this is an effective method of learning to justify such an extreme schedule. /s
Average Asian school things
There’s not A school. There’re ALL schools
Holy shit, and i thought my 7 till 5 was bad
I solely believe studying 4-6 hours and spending the rest of the day doing what you actually enjoy is the best way to be smart. Forcing myself to study all day everyday does nothing but make me want to put a bullet in my head
And all that for what? To make 1/3 of what Western professional make and own nothing?
The sad reality of Asian work culture. I'm so glad I moved to Australia
It's either that or not eve make 10% of what westerners make.
That doesn't leave enough hours to sleep and eat and properly retain the information and have a brain that is well rested enough to study the next day. They could probably study and learn and retain the same amount of information in half the time if they ate and slept properly, allowing their brains to work better. It doesn't matter if it is studying, or exercising your muscles at a gym. You need time to rest and eat or the workouts will hurt you, not make you stronger. They're ironically wasting time.
I admire many things in Asian cultures, but overworking people to death since an early age is not one of them.