We often read on this board, how bad, or at least how inferior to the West, the public education system of China is.

I just finished - with surprise - re-reading this article on the New York Times by Tom Friedman, who is one of the top journalists in the world: "The Shanghai Secret" (link below). Obviously, I can't reproduce the whole article here for copyright reasons, so I chose 4 paragraphs that summarize the essence of the article, including one about Chinese teachers teaching... English. I would be very interested in everybody's opinion about this article, including the opinion of the frequent posters who have experience in the public education sector of China.

Also, how is it that we never read on this board about the progress of the Shanghai system as mentioned in this article? Is it because most posters don't have the intellectual ability to evaluate what is going on? Is it because they are too self-centered, too focused on their own personal situation, too obsessed with Willie Woodenleg/whoever likes to rub their ego the wrong way? Why are there dozens of posts about this Willie character and none about the progress of the public schools of Shanghai in the last decade? Education is what is presently differentiating the potential of the next generation of the West as compared to the potential of the next generation of China. Is this gap dis-integrating in front of our eyes without the FTs even noticing it?

"...how is it that Shanghai’s public secondary schools topped the world charts in the 2009 PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) exams that measure the ability of 15-year-olds in 65 countries to apply what they’ve learned in math, science and reading.

"When you sit in on a class here and meet with the principal and teachers, what you find is a relentless focus on all the basics that we know make for high-performing schools but that are difficult to pull off consistently across an entire school system. These are: a deep commitment to teacher training, peer-to-peer learning and constant professional development, a deep involvement of parents in their children’s learning, an insistence by the school’s leadership on the highest standards and a culture that prizes education and respects teachers.

"Teng Jiao, 26, an English teacher here, said school begins at 8:35 a.m. and runs to 4:30 p.m., during which he typically teaches three 35-minute lessons. I sat in on one third-grade English class. The English lesson was meticulously planned, with no time wasted. The rest of his day, he said, is spent on lesson planning, training online or with his team, having other teachers watch his class and tell him how to improve and observing the classrooms of master teachers.

"China still has many mediocre schools that need fixing. But the good news is that in just doing the things that American and Chinese educators know work — but doing them systematically and relentlessly — Shanghai has in a decade lifted some of its schools to the global heights in reading, science and math skills. Oh, and Shen Jun, the principal, wanted me to know: “This is just the start.”