<p>You might find this debate interesting.</p>
<p>[Education</a> Week: American Creativity vs. Chinese Skills](<a href=“http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/tb/2007/04/23/2176.html]Education”>http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/tb/2007/04/23/2176.html)</p>
<p>Educators from both cultures are searching for the right educational approach. </p>
<p>How do you foster both creativity and rote knowledge/skills? Are rote knowledge/skills the raw material for creativity?</p>
<p>The short article makes a great SAT essay question. I’m a bit too busy to read all the commentaries, but I don’t think knowledge and skills are the raw material for creativity. Even though I don’t study ancient cultures, I would guess that the wheel and fire were not invented or discovered by people who had incredible knowledge of the world. I guess I would be better able to answer the question if I knew more about the important creations and how they came about.</p>
<p>It’s interesting to note the extreme amount of dissent in the comments on the article page - while some feel like our education system has always been the best and can do no wrong, while others feel that the Chinese are catching up and that we are declining. I think that Chinese students don’t lack creativity innately if at all - rather, they are suppressed by their rote learning system. Chinese-American students have accomplished a lot in their few years in the United States, and many have shown creativity in what they do.</p>
<p>I think the education system here needs to achieve a medium between “creative learning” and basic learning - we can’t just rely on our “clearly superior” creativity, which is BS anyway. Too many students here are slipping between the cracks because of misdirected education.</p>
<p>The language shapes the educational system. By its nature of being hieroglyphics, the Chinese language makes rote memorization a necessary component of education. Unless you have specifically studied a Chinese character, you can only make guesses at its meaning and pronunciation. Western languages need but 20-30 characters and you can make good guesses at the word’s pronunciation, and with knowledge of root words, very good guesses as to its meaning.</p>
<p>On the other hand…</p>
<p>Korea and Vietnam freed themselves from the Chinese hieroglyphic system long, long ago, but I don’t know if anyone would call those places a bastion of creativity. All in all this whole discussion is trading on broadly-drawn stereotypes.</p>
<p>I think it is mostly a cultural thing. American culture values the independent person. We think it is important for people to be able to break away from the crowd. There is no stigma against going against the wishes of your parents. American culture is an “I” culture while most of eastern culture is a “we” culture. America is also much more heterogeous than eastern countries. We have people living here from all over the world who have brought new ideas and new ways of doing things that get incorporated into our everyday lives. Americans more easily embrace newness. </p>
<p>However, those traits mean that we are often not interested in doing rote things. We don’t want to memorize. We often don’t have the spector of our parents/teachers dissappointment hanging over our heads to force us to do things in school that we don’t like. We don’t always value education because we sometimes think that we don’t need schools in order to be successful. It really boils down to a dependent/independent thing. Independence fosters creativity, while dependence fosters conformity. Both things are needed for societies to be successful. Finding the right balance between the 2 is very difficult.</p>