China's Super Kids

[taryn]

Hello all!

Back in 2002 Nicholas Kristof, the best op-ed writer ever! (everyone should read his stuff), wrote a piece called, "China's Super Kids" for the New York Times. He mentioned a school in Shanghai, New Century Kindergarten, that taught the little tykes some kind of cool math where they could calculate 10 + 5 - 1 - 4 + 5 before the average American could tell them whether or not they were right.

Is anyone familiar with this school? Is this some kind of special curriculum or is the average educated Chinese a math whiz? Also, does this have anything to do with knowing how to use an abacus?

If you want to read the article, it's here: http://www.clta-gny.org/news-interest-8.htm.

[chris.]

before the average American could tell them whether or not they were right? try the average chinese, korean, japanese, english, aussie, russian too. Seems strange that you compare directly to americans. After all...those kids are super

[nipponman]

What I want to know is, can I learn how to do this?

nipponman

[马杰]

Ever been in a chinese kindergarten? Not much for comfort or play, the kids sit tightly packed in a small area and are stuck in rote learning most of the time.

I may have been at that New Century Kindergarten, is it near the Science Museum subway station?

Anyway, those kids can remember what they are taught, but do they understand what to do with it? It is the conundrum facing alot of companies coming to the mainland to tap the supposedly deep pool of engineer graduates. They can spit out numbers, but when it comes to needing leadership and creativity, the MNCs still have to fork out big bucks for expats. Microsoft has lots of coders in their mainland shops, but no one who can design a piece of software from the ground up.