<前言>
以下是2011级SMU-ISCTE-IUL MS徐菀潞同学发来的邮件，是她在留学中的一些思考。
我把它发上来，希望其中一些内容可以为同学们带来一些借鉴和启示。
国际项目办公室 宋老师
2013年4月9日
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Dear Jane,
From my experience and study in ISCTE-IUL,
I consider sharing the difference education of western and eastern to next young students.
I hope It will be better for them to handle it quickly.
Most of Chinese students study hard and many things are arranged. They do a lot of exams. Because it´s a crucial method to measure the capability of students. High school life is the hardest time in the whole study period because of the difficulty in being admitted into a famous university in China. And after entering a nice university, their lives seem like heaven. Most of the students will spend more time to have fun. When they choose the major in university is based on the work for future, rarely because of their own personal interests.
Western students are likely to be under more pressure in the university than before. It seems that the university is the real beginning of the study. They prefer to choose the major is what they like and what to do. It is very buckled down to do every work.
The teaching method of China is cramming method. Chinese students can memorize incredible amounts of knowledge and information, while they lack of the ability of critical thinking, develop their own opinion and creative. The exam is more to answer what is the theory.
The teaching method of Western is interaction and discussion. It is more important to communicate and organize. Have a lot of group work and in time to share the information. The group work and presentation is from child. Foster teamwork and team building. The exam is more use case to connect with it and analysis the theory and give the opinion of it.
There is the opinion from Professor Rodolfo Rivas:
Western is direct to the point,is from general to specific, pragmatic and reasoning based, what if and critical thinking, challenge assumptions, independent thinking (individual).
Eastern is indirect high context，is from specific to general, theoretic and memory based, full acceptance of theory.
From Professor Virginia Trigo’s help said that is:
Western more uses right brain. It is good at linear, specific, logical, in the form of symbols, and quantitative analysis. Tend to procedural rationality, abstraction and habitual way of thinking.
Eastern more use left brain. It is good at Things comprehensive, integrated, comprehensive, content, concept, qualitative analysis, tend the normative, sensual, image and creative thinking.
Form my experience and From the Class I have learned something about the culture shock. So I suggestion Southern Medical University more do is cultural sensitivity training and more group work to let student Better to experience the importance of teamwork and team building. Have the class about the western culture. It is better to adapt it!
Thanks all the help from professors, colleges, and classmates.
Attached is a copy of an interesting article that appeared in the New York Times from professor Rodolfo send it to me.
Best regards,
Wanlu Xu
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The attachment is as below:
February 28, 2013
The Learning Virtues
This contrast between the Chinese superstudent and the American slacker could be described with the usual tired stereotypes. The Chinese are robots who unimaginatively memorize facts to score well on tests. The Americans are spoiled brats who love TV but don’t know how to work. But Li wasn’t satisfied with those clichés. She has spent her career, first at Harvard and now at Brown, trying to understand how Asians and Westerners think about learning.
The simplest way to summarize her findings is that Westerners tend to define learning cognitively while Asians tend to define it morally. Westerners tend to see learning as something people do in order to understand and master the external world. Asians tend to see learning as an arduous process they undertake in order to cultivate virtues inside the self.
You can look at the slogans on university crests to get a glimpse of the difference. Western mottos emphasize knowledge acquisition. Harvard’s motto is “Truth.” Yale’s is “Light and truth.” The University of Chicago’s is “Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched.”
Chinese universities usually take Confucian sayings that emphasize personal elevation. Tsinghua’s motto is “Strengthen self ceaselessly and cultivate virtue to nurture the world.” Nanjing’s motto is “Be sincere and hold high aspirations, learn diligently and practice earnestly.”
When Li asked Americans to randomly talk about learning they used words like: thinking, school, brain, discovery, understand and information. Chinese, on the other hand, tended to use phrases common in their culture: learn assiduously, study as if thirsting or hungering, be diligent in one’s learning.
In the Western understanding, students come to school with levels of innate intelligence and curiosity. Teachers try to further arouse that curiosity in specific subjects. There’s a lot of active learning — going on field trips, building things. There’s great emphasis on questioning authority, critical inquiry and sharing ideas in classroom discussion.
In the Chinese understanding, there’s less emphasis on innate curiosity or even on specific subject matter. Instead, the learning process itself is the crucial thing. The idea is to perfect the learning virtues in order to become, ultimately, a sage, which is equally a moral and intellectual state. These virtues include: sincerity (an authentic commitment to the task) as well as diligence, perseverance, concentration and respect for teachers.
In Chinese culture, the heroic scholar may possess less innate intelligence but triumphs over hardship. Li cites the story of the scholar who tied his hair to a ceiling beam so he could study through the night. Every time his head dropped from fatigue, the yank of his hair kept him awake.
Li argues that Westerners emphasize the Aha moment of sudden insight, while Chinese are more likely to emphasize the arduous accumulation of understanding. American high school students tease nerds, while there is no such concept in the Chinese vocabulary. Western schools want students to be proud of their achievements, while the Chinese emphasize that humility enables self-examination. Western students often work harder after you praise them, while Asian students sometimes work harder after you criticize them.
These cultures are surprisingly enduring, Li notes, even with all the cross-pollination that goes on in the world today. Each has its advantages. I’m mostly struck by the way the intellectual and moral impulses are fused in the Chinese culture and separated in the West.
It’s easy to see historically why this came about. Hellenic culture emphasized skeptical scientific inquiry. With us, religion and science have often been at odds. We’re a diverse society, so it’s easier to teach our common academic standards in the classroom and relegate our diverse moralities to the privacy of the home.
I’d just note that cultures that do fuse the academic and the moral, like Confucianism or Jewish Torah study, produce these awesome motivation explosions. It might be possible to champion other moral/academic codes to boost motivation in places where it is absent.
