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Maximizing returns and minimizing angst

By Brendan Worrell (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-06-22 15:32

Having taught for almost four years here in various educational settings, from the north-west to the south-east, ranging from tertiary to primary and public to private, I was always perplexed to enter a classroom or lecture theater that was just barely a concrete shell with no multi-media facilities let alone a picture on the wall - to then walk out into the street after class and be confronted by expensive vehicles zooming around.

It seemed like a fracture in priorities whereby the wealth being generated within the nation was not penetrating into the education system. It felt like we were taking short cuts and eating the fruit while not paying our dues and watering the roots. Personally I found it both heartbreaking and cynical but also tremendously shortsighted. As a teacher it made the job a helluva lot more difficult and in terms of learning outcomes for the students it limited the reach and heights that should've been attainable.

Now I'm not saying anything new or previously undisclosed and I'm not pointing the finger – I'm just asking the question; in an information age where knowledge is key and innovation more than ever determining of an individual and a nation's ability to survive, let alone thrive – how can such a situation be allowed to continue? Hitting me where it hurts last week came several news items suggesting my befuddlement is nowhere near towards being cured.

According to a survey by HSBC, affluent families on the Chinese mainland top their counterparts in the Asia-Pacific region in terms of wanting to send their children to study abroad. 82% was the figure, ranking above Malaysia, India, Taiwan and Singapore at 75%, 70%, 50% and 45% respectively. Japan and Australia came in at 17% and 4%.

Now my colleague interpreted this as a sign that Chinese families value education and are more caring for their offspring compared to others. Yes and I interpreted this as also meaning that the education quality here was questionable and less reliable compared to the options being provided offshore. It was about trust, value and also about priorities.

Now speaking of the latter the second news item that had me scraping my finger nails down the blackboard was the announcement reported on the 13th of this month that BMW cars were on the government's purchase list for 2009-2010. It seems I wasn't the only one who screeched. Apparently last Friday Baidu.com had about 150,000 entries on the "BMW procurement", topic with the majority less than impressed.

China National Radio added salt to the wound by further revealing that the government spent 80 billion yuan on buying vehicles last year and all the while it made me ponder where is that internet connection in my classroom that can help me take my students into the 21st century?

In the seminal text 'Globality', the central premise is to learn to adapt and accept the reality that we are now increasingly, "competing with everyone, from everywhere for everything". So if you asked me what's the most valuable way of maximizing my return on 400,000 yuan to improve our competiveness, the approximate cost of a luxury official car, I'd say put it towards a school or college, inject into the intellectual assets of the land, towards the soft infrastructure that's so desperately needed.

At present according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings of 2008, though Chinese mainland had only 6 institutions in the top 200, Hong Kong had 3 in the top 50! At a Teacher Development Forum in Beijing the other month it was also mentioned that in the past decade education expenditure hovered only around 4% of GDP well below that of other nations.

As for the hardworking souls who bust their guts and get through the gaokao college entrance exam to then make it to a local university; they still struggle to find an adequate job that can support themselves let alone their families. And these are the lucky ones. Outside commentators have also been moaning for awhile that the graduates coming out of our institutions are just not 'job ready' and still need further training to bring them up to 'market speed'.

On the side of a press conference that took place earlier in the year coinciding with the release of a McKinsey report into China's performance in the global outsourcing industry, a foreign head hunter who refused to be named said the basic problem was 'EQ not IQ' meaning the current crop of grads' just didn't have the people skills and social communicative savvy to walk into an office and make a deal with international clients.

So as the rest of the world keeps hammering the nation about trade imbalances and saving too much and not boosting domestic consumption - local families keep hoarding any penny they earn to put towards a rainy day because health and education appear still so inadequately funded. All totaled forcing people like me to look further into that dark tinted car window of each luxury car that fails to give way to pedestrians on the street.