For those hoping that more access to technology will lead to better academic results, China could serve as a good example. Autumn Arnett and T.A. Cooper write in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education that China has moved far ahead of almost every country in the world on measures of integrating technology into academic curriculum, as well as the amount of time Chinese students spend using tech as part of their education.

Although surveys of U.S. students conclude that they’re satisfied with the role technology plays in their academic experience, Chinese students and educators – on the contrary – are seeking a greater level of integration. San Francisco University professor of information system Sameer Verma makes himself an exception in the American education establishment by calling for China-level uses of technology in the classroom.

“Integrating technology into curriculum is extremely important,” Verma says. “Do not be afraid to reach out to your students for help, because this is their era and ultimately will become their legacy.”

Dr. Michael Mills, assistant professor of teaching and learning at the University of Central Arkansas, agrees that technology will continue to play a vital role in education.

“Apart from the engagement aspect of using technology, students must master the digital literacy skills necessary to thrive in today’s society and workplace,” he says.

The survey results – published by Dell – find that the majority of educators and even parents in the country don’t share Verma’s and Mills’ views. On the contrary, many American parents believe that if their kids want to get their hands on more sophisticated digital toys, they’re more likely to do that at home rather than in school. The perception of Chinese parents is the exact opposite.

According to Dr. George Schuessler, director of academic computing at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College, US schools lag when it comes to the latest and the greatest and – maybe because of budget limits or possibly because of a lack of adventurous spirit – are more likely to provide their students with last generation gadgets rather than top of the line tools.

While many in the U.S. concur that technology plays an essential role in education, most people believe that technology needs are not being met in schools today. Three-fourths of those surveyed in the U.S. believe there should be more technology in the classroom, compared to an overwhelming 95 percent in China.

Mills says this is because the United States has de-emphasized technology infrastructure spending in favor of meeting standardized testing benchmarks.

“We, unfortunately, have become a nation of short-term goals — pass this test, make this quarter’s profit goals … when we should be focused on what infrastructure should be built for long-term success,” he says. “Other nations, and China in some respects, see this need. South Korea is a model for this; their investment in per capita technology infrastructure should embarrass our nation’s leaders.”

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Tablets are becoming a more common sight in Beijing classrooms as students use them not only in place of bulky textbooks, but also to replace notebooks and other study aids. The tablets are being piloted in schools thanks to a half-a-million dollar grant announced by the Beijeing government to be used to create a so-called “e-bag,” where everything a student carried that used to require paper will be digital instead.

Haite Garden Primary School was one of the first to benefit from the government’s largesse when it decided to completely overhaul its teaching practices to make use of the digital tool. Each first and second grader was issued a free tablet with a touchscreen to be used in classes like Chinese, mathematics and English.

Li Jiangnan, a teacher with the school, explains that students use the tablets in three classes — Chinese, math and English. The technology enables vibrant interactions in classrooms.

In Li’s class, students follow the teacher’s guidance on drawing Chinese characters on their touchscreens. If correct, the strokes turn red, while incorrect ones remain their original color, turning the dull writing practice into a vivid online game.

Coming in the wake of the technology’s surging popularity, the tablet roll-out is a trial designed to discover new ways to inspire children to learn, according to school head Wu Youying.

The Haite program is supposed to be a pilot, and it lives up to the name. According to xinhuanet.com there have been a number of teething troubles including getting the school’s network to work with the devices and a lack of funding to purchase the e-textbooks required in classes where tablets are being used.

There are also downright low-tech issues as well. The school is short of places where students can reliably and quickly plug in to charge a dying battery.

School administrators are working with representatives from the Beijing Academy of Educational Science to iron out these and other problems.

Meanwhile, educators are looking at the Haite Garden Primary School experiment closely for signs that they’re pioneering the future of Beijing’s — and even China’s — primary schools.

The authorities should study whether using tablets would have this impact, and that it is irresponsible for the government to take action without such due diligence, according to a post by Internet user Wang Jiafu.

Parents also fretted that the youngsters, lacking self control, will log onto instant messaging tools or games as soon as their teachers’ backs are turned.

“Allowing pupils unlimited access to the Internet is likely to distract their attentions as well as deprive them of imagination,” said one parent on condition of anonymity.

These concerns echo the same cries critics in the United States and the rest of the world have put forth regarding education technology in schools. There’s broad agreement that tech has tremendous potential in the classroom, but will hasty, poor implementation do more harm than good — and with a hefty price tag?

Education expert Liu Yongming, notes Beijing’s attempt to incorporate high technology into traditional classes follows current worldwide teaching trends.

“We should treat the tablet as a supportive tool because the essence of education lies in learning and thinking through reading and writing, and this should not be shattered and changed,” Liu adds.

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An increasing number of Chinese students are complaining that the overly rigid education system in the country doesn’t give them any opportunities to express themselves or their creativity. Many are also struggling with bearing increasing social pressure brought about by competition to achieve the best scores and graduate with the highest grades in the school.

As one ten-year-old student commented on tiankong520.com, a website set up to allow students from all parts of China to express themselves via articles and short stories, the desire to quit school seems overwhelming sometimes because he feared that continuous examinations meant that his individuality was continually under threat of erasure.

According to the People’s Daily Online, both Chinese parents and teachers have escalating expectations of their students — so much that many families now send their students to school to prepare for schools so they “will not lose at the starting line.” Meanwhile, how children can deal with that kind of pressure is consistently ignored, explains Zheng Zhun, a professor at the School of Educational Science at South China Normal University.

The system discourages students from setting themselves apart, which creates a student body more fit to absorb information than to analyze it. All this is done to pave the way for the students to become “champions” when taking their college entrance examination at the end of their primary and secondary school career. Champions are highly prized by Chinese universities when time comes to select those eligible for admission.

Yet the qualities of a “champion” aren’t universally admired. With an increasing number of Chinese families looking to send their children to universities abroad, many are paying attention to the fact that a full 60% of Chinese “champion” applicants were rejected in 2010 by America’s prestigious Harvard University.

Unlike Eastern education, the Western education system focuses on cultivating students’ horizons, creativity, adaptability, independence, and practical ability, and is aimed at helping them develop good character. A 12-year-old Chinese boy who studied in a primary school in New Zealand for three years told the reporter that primary school students there have almost no homework, and the teachers often hold various activities such as plays to cultivate students interest in learning and practical ability.

The approach in China is different, with practical experimentation discouraged in favor of rote memorization. According to Yang Fujia, former president of Fudan University and current chancellor of the University of Nottingham, the system focuses too much on “passing on knowledge.”

The primary school student questioned traditional Chinese education in his article. Experts noted that creativity on the basis of curiosity and interest should not be overlooked again, and children’s good character and comprehensive development is much more important than high scores. Outdated education methods and ideas should be eliminated as soon as possible.

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Although the Communist ideology that ostensibly underpins the Chinese government calls for meritocracy when it comes to education, the reality on the ground is increasingly becoming very different. Thanks to the influence exerted by the newly wealthy and well-connected, there’s a growing gulf in the Chinese education system between those who can exert influence and those who cannot.

According to The New York Times, every academic tool that can conceivably lend a leg-up is obtainable for a bribe. From placement in the best schools and the best classes, to something as seemingly trivial as a classroom seat closest to the blackboard.

The culture of bribery is alive throughout China — not just in education. It has become such a big issue that it was the subject of Xi Jinping’s first speech after taking up position as leader of the Communist Party. Xi issued a warning to colleagues that corruption is becoming so rampant that it is threatening the stability of the Party itself.

Still, on a certain level, it seems like the Chinese have become inured to some level of official corruption. Yet, as the problem is spreading to education, despair among those who are afraid they will no longer be able to afford to give their children the best shot in life is forcing many more to go public. Li Mao, who serves as an education consultant in Beijing, says that since teachers typically bear the burden of higher expectations, the fact that they would participate in bribery is especially difficult for many to understand and accept.

It begins even before the first day of school as the competition for admission to elite schools has created a lucrative side business for school officials and those connected to them. Each spring, the Clean China Kindergarten, which is affiliated with the prestigious Tsinghua University and situated on its manicured campus in Beijing, receives a flood of requests from parents who see enrollment there as a conduit into one of China’s best universities. Officially, the school is open only to children of Tsinghua faculty. But for the right price — about 150,000 renminbi, or about $24,000, according to a staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation — a Tsinghua professor can be persuaded to “sponsor” an applicant.

The price only goes higher with each grade. Although education in a local school through junior high school is free, those wishing to get their kids admitted to a better school outside the district must pay up. They are called “school choice” fees — and they are illegal. If you’re a migrant family only recently moving to a large city, they are virtually impossible to afford.

Admissions tests aren’t immune to this kind of under-the-table dealing, as a few dollars to the right people can ensure that extra crucial points find their way onto anyone’s final grade, even if it’s just enough to get them in the door of the most exclusive and selective schools on the way to the best colleges and universities.

Some parents have found that the only way to preserve any integrity is to reject a Chinese education altogether. Disgusted by the endemic bribery, Wang Ping, 37, a bar owner in Beijing, decided to send her son abroad for his education. In August, she wept as she waved goodbye to her only child, whom she had enrolled at a public high school in Iowa.

“China’s education system is unfair to children from the very beginning of their lives,” she said. “I don’t want my son to have anything more to do with it.”

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Forbes Magazine has some news for U.S. students complaining about the difficulty of the Scholastic Aptitude Test many take as the first step in the college admissions process: you don’t know how good you have it.

Students who aspire to a place in China’s premier universities must first navigate a multi-day “testing marathon” known as the gaokao. And if you happen to be off your game on one of those days, you’re in trouble. Unlike the SAT, which is administered seven times each year and allows highschoolers to retake it multiple times, Chinese students get only one shot at the exam. There are no second chances.

The exam is considered so important to the future of Chinese students that the preparation for it is the focus of the entire senior year of high school.

It is the primary tool used to sort millions of Chinese students into Chinese institutions of higher learning—students, upon learning their scores, submit a ranked list of schools they’d like to attend, and then wait for a decision. About a quarter of them won’t get in to any schools in mainland China.

The demand for university slots in China is so high that the results of the gaokao have become increasingly important. Therefore, it is no surprise that like other high-stakes exams, it is often mired in controversy, ranging from cheating scandals to allegations of exam privileges for students from wealthier families over their low-income peers, to student emotional and physical breakdowns due to the pressure of cramming for the test.

The latest clash over the gaokao comes from a move by China’s Ministry of Education to do away with the requirement that students go back to their hometowns to take the exam rather than be allowed to take it in the location they currently reside. The issue is a particular flash point among residents of Beijing, where those who don’t have a household registration document (the hukou) often face discrimination in many areas, including education.

The change in policy was supposed to address inequality by rescinding the requirement that students who are registered as residing elsewhere don’t have to go back there to take an exam. This is especially important in cases where students haven’t been in the areas they’re technically registered in years, as forcing them in an unfamiliar environment could have a real negative impact on their scores.

Yin Yeping, who researched the story for China’s Global Times, said she became interested in it after witnessing a protest by non-local Beijing families in front of the city’s Municipal Commission of Education building last month to call on the Commission to both confirm and set a firm implementation date on the new policy. Previously, Minister of Education Yuan Guiren said that the policy would definitively take effect no later than 2012.

I initially sympathized with the locals, but upon researching the story and interviewing people I realized the majority of local protesters were neither parents nor students. Instead, they were predominantly locals with a median age of 30 eager at the opportunity to express their animosity toward non-locals.

I contacted some protesters online who claimed to have participated in the war of words on October 18. One local protester, who only identified himself by his Web user name “Tianyabeijing009,” claimed that education was one of many resources being overstretched by non-locals.

In contrast, Yin found the views expressed by those supporting the policy to be both more reasonable and more measured. Du Dewang, who attended the protest, said that he was there to ensure that his son — who has lived in Beijing for more than 10 of his 17 years — got the same opportunities to succeed on the test as a student with hukou.

“My son has been schooled in Beijing since primary school,” he said, adding his son must now return to Inner Mongolia to take the gaokao. “The result is that he will be significantly limited when he chooses which university to enroll at in Beijing.”

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Colorado students asked to choose a second language to study are increasingly picking Mandarin Chinese. According to The Denver Post, statewide, there are now more than 60 schools — from elementary to high school — that are offering courses in the most widely-used language in the world.

The desire to learn Mandarin is spreading beyond the classroom. The popularity of Chinese clubs is growing and the services of private Chinese language tutors are getting increasingly pricey.

While learning Mandarin is only catching on now in the United States, around the world its popularity is not in doubt. In addition to being the first language of a large proportion of Chinese residents, it is also spoken by more than 100 million people who are not of Chinese descent.

Interest in the language could be linked to China’s growing presence on the global economic market. With China’s influence on the rise, it’s conceivable that Mandarin could become the second language of business after English. People who already have some familiarity with the language are likely to be in professional demand. The Post also points to the 2008 Beijing Olympics – often characterized as China’s coming out party – as another factor contributing to the growth of interest in Chinese language and culture.

Speaking Mandarin has become a hot ticket on college applications as well as a starred addition to executive résumés.

“If you are going to get around in the world, you are going to need to speak Chinese. It’s a language everyone is going to be speaking,” said aviation consultant Mike Boyd, who studies Mandarin for one intense hour a week at the Colorado Chinese Language Center in Denver.

Penetration of Chinese in Colorado schools isn’t very deep yet, but it is growing. One school district in the state has already dropped Spanish in favor of a Chinese K-12 program. Several charters around the state run Mandarin language immersion programs beginning in kindergarten. And students’ fascination with the language doesn’t seem to end at high school graduation.

Mandarin has become such an important language around the state that the University of Colorado at Boulder has added a program called Teaching East Asia. It is geared toward training more Chinese instructors and furthering learning about China for more students. It is also aimed at getting a handle this year on just how many Chinese-language schools and learners are out there. The program uses funding from an initiative called STARTALK that was developed under President George W. Bush to promote teaching and understanding of “strategically important” languages.

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Attempts by the Beijing government to take a tighter grip on the education curriculum in Hong Kong might have come to nothing in the end, but the issue exposed an undercurrent of tension between the party ruling the China mainland and the territory that nominally reverted to its control nearly 15 years ago.

Global Voices Online traces the evolution of the national curriculum program that the Hong Kong government recently attempted to implement in elementary schools that included a mandatory class on the advantages of the one-party political system. Many residents viewed the effort as an attempt to indoctrinate the youth into the Communist Party. After protests, which included threats of hunger strikes, the three-year deadline to put the curriculum into place was scrapped and the decision on whether to use it or not was returned to school administrators.

The initial mentions of the national curriculum, meant to tie the education systems of Hong Kong and mainland China closer together, came during remarks by President Hu Jintao on the ten-year anniversary of the reunification in 2007. Three years later, the term was back in circulation and was mentioned during a policy address by the HK Chief Executive Donald Tsang.

But the public was unaware of the policy until May 2012 when Scholarism [zh], a student activist group, organized a rally demanding the withdrawal of the curriculum.
On July 29, 2012, a civic coalition composed of Scholarism, the Parents Concern Group and the Professional Teachers’ Union, co-organized a mass rally against the curriculum; since then the anti-national education campaign has become a common agenda of Hong Kong society.

The negative feelings about the national curriculum were, in part, fed by the general distrust of the mainland government by residents of Hong Kong. As Wong Kwok-kui explains, people are worried that when the content of what is to be taught and what is to be skipped is dictated by Beijing, history of the territory’s sometimes-turbulent relationship with the mainland could be white-washed.

There is a saying within the anti-national education camp: “We do not reject national education, but the content should not be biased and should mention controversial subjects such as the June 4 crackdown…”. Such a position means you agree with the opponent’s premise and ready to negotiate for the substance later. The situation is similar to the Greek’s Trojan horse story: the guards allow the wooden horse enter the city without checking what’s inside. This is dangerous…

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The Chinese government is thinking about overhauling its higher education system to fix a vexing issue of supply. According to Wu Daohuai, the director of the department of vocational skills developments division of the Government Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the country is dealing with an oversupply of university graduates and an undersupply of people trained to work in the high-tech factories that make up the bulk of China’s manufacturing sector.

China’s post-secondary education policy and its focus on increasing the number of college graduates has worked too well, explains Wu. An ever larger percentage of Chinese high school graduates are choosing to go to university instead of entering vocational courses. The issue is compounded by the fact that Chinese colleges and universities focus their academic programs on theoretical rather than practical knowledge. With that kind of preparation, graduates have increasingly grown to expect high-paying white-collar jobs upon leaving school — something that the economy is less and less able to provide.

This also means that the pool of young people from which the economy draws its blue-collar worker has also been shrinking. This is why, according to Labor Authorities in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province, only 15,000 out of 70,0000 university graduates were able to obtain employment last year even though there over 90,000 positions advertised at the local job fairs. The report showed that the preference of the college-educated for white-collar work even transcends the issue of money. Those with a college degree were more likely to accept lower-paid professional work than a higher-paying blue-collar job.

The employment outlook for university graduates is tougher now because 200,000 more graduates are expected to leave school this year. Wu said the current system has led to a huge waste of labor resources.

“We should make becoming a technician more attractive to youths, with more favourable policies and incentives to encourage young people to learn skills and do technical work,” he said.

The government will allocate more funding to support the development of vocational schools, he said.

The government expects to modernize its vocational education system by as early as 2015. Although only 22 million people pursued vocational education this year, Wu expects this number to grow as the modernized schools increasingly come online.

Some students in vocational schools are there because they can read the writing on the wall. Zhou Hao, a 22-year-old former Peking University student said he left the college in order to transfer to the Beijing Industrial Technical College in 2010.

“I disliked the major in the university, and the ideal job in my mind is one where I can make real products with my hands,” he said. Zhou is interested in computer-based mechanical operation, and students in his college can usually find good jobs after graduation.

“My parents opposed my quitting the university, but I finally convinced them because I believe someone – no matter if he takes vocational or university studies – should not take a real white-collar job right after graduation,” he said. “All people would start work from the grassroots.”

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The latest attempt by China’s government to exert control over Hong Kong might seem particularly flat footed considering the timing. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the reversion of the city, formerly a colony of the United Kingdom, to China’s control. While at the time the event was celebrated both in Hong Kong and all around the country, the relationship between the semi-autonomous former colony and the government nominally in charge of it has, in recent years, become more strained.

William Pesek, who has reported on political, business, and social issues in the Asia-Pacific region, writes in Bloomberg News that Beijing’s latest plan to reform education in Hong Kong schools to make teaching loyalty to the Communist Party a compulsory part of the curriculum has drawn so much protest from the populace that the city’s chief executive Leung Chun-ying was forced to cancel his first official visit abroad. Protesters hit the streets almost as soon as the plan was first announced in early July, and the outrage eventually led to the plan getting scrapped and substituted with a program that school administrators could voluntarily take part in.

Hong Kong’s close ties to the West were evidenced during those days in mid-summer when people lined up outside the buildings housing the government headquarters in an attempt to show the powers that be that they will not allow the history of Communist China to be whitewashed for their children. The posters carried by the protesters contained quotes from George Orwell’s dystopian 1949 masterpiece “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” and people kept spontaneously breaking out into songs from Pink Floyd’s hit “The Wall.”

“It’s so offensive that China thinks we are this stupid,” said Andy Tang, a 20-year protester and engineering student. “Most mainlanders don’t even know about Tiananmen Square or the millions who died thanks to Mao Zedong’s policies. They don’t know a thing about their government’s real history. And now China wants to keep us in Hong Kong in the same darkness?”

This is not the first time that the determination of the Hong Kong citizenry resisted Beijing’s attempts to interfere or impose greater control. Ten years ago, massive demonstrations helped defeat a law, called Article 23, which was purported to make the persecution of people involved in subversive activities easier, but in reality was so vague as to possibly make it a crime for residents of Hong Kong to exercise their right of free speech and free press.

Hong Kong is highly sensitive to anything that threatens the “one country, two systems” arrangement. China’s recent handiwork speaks to the clumsiness of its oversight of a city that once put out the welcome mat.

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It was a hard fight, but in the end, opponents of the policy instituted by city’s Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to teach Hong Kong school children a class on loyalty to the one-party system can claim victory as those in charge of education policy have now backed down from the requirement. Instead, Chun-ying announced that the decision to offer the Chinese patriotism courses to kids attending schools in the semi-autonomous city will be left up to administrators at individual schools.

The initial proposal drew strong opposition from Hong Kong residents who have grown accustomed to Beijing taking a more or less hands-off approach to the city’s government. To demonstrate their displeasure with what many viewed as an attempt to “brainwash” the city’s youth, over 90,000 people braved the summer heat last month to march in front of the building housing the government headquarters. The marches and rallies continued throughout the month, with the last one taking place last Friday evening and drawing an estimated 120,000 attendees.

The controversy is the latest sign of increasing discomfort with mainland China’s growing influence on the city. Hong Kongers have also been perturbed about stunted democratic development and an influx of wealthy mainlanders buying up property and driving up prices.

Some speculate that Chun-ying’s retreat is a signal that pro-Beijing candidates up for election to determine the makeup of city’s legislature – to be held today – were afraid that people’s opposition to the policy would substantially erode voter support. Residents of Hong Kong have been zealously guarding the freedoms allowed to them by the Beijing government ever since control of Hong Kong reverted to China in 1997. Since the reversion, although the city is nominally under China’s control, it has been allowed more say in its governance than any other part of the country and enjoys civil rights not available to other Chinese residents, including free speech.

In the original proposal, for the next three years, schools would be allowed to decide whether to offer the classes extolling the virtue of one-party rule to their students, but the subject would have become mandatory in 2015.

The fears rose after a pro-Beijing education group published a pamphlet earlier this year extolling the virtues of one-party rule. The government stressed that the booklet, called “The China Model,” was not part of designated teaching material.

According to curriculum guidelines, students would learn in the classes about China’s political leaders, the contributions they have made and the difficulties and challenges they face. They would also learn how to “speak cautiously,” practice self-discipline and get along well with others in a rational and respectful way.

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