Kevin McGeary

    THIS newspaper’s Yes Teens! section published an article last week comparing Chinese education unfavorably with its American equivalent.

    Problems with Chinese education are myriad and a student struggling with school is nothing new, either. But according to Susan Cain, author of one of this year’s most talked-about books: “Quiet: The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can’t Stop Talking,” there is one characteristic of Western education that China should not adopt.

    Cain believes that in contemporary Western society, introverts such as herself occupy a demographic that women occupied 50 years ago: an entire half of society whose potential remains latent as they are marginalized and repressed.

    Cain believes American education places an unfair emphasis on communicative activities and, as a result, classroom politics play too prominent a role in American teenagers’ lives. She blames the fact that teachers and education ministers are in professions that reward extroversion for further perpetuating the anti-introvert bias.

    Learning English is a national obsession in China. The age at which children are encouraged to start learning continues to go down and the number of training centers continues to go up. As well as flamboyant gurus such as Li Yang, described by English teacher Tony Avila as the most gregarious person he had ever met, foreign experts who work in China’s ESL industry are expected to be outgoing and expressive.

    But just as the Chinese education system places a disproportionate emphasis on memorization, the American system focuses too much on interaction. As Cain says in the book, “The key to maximizing talents is to put yourself into the zone of stimulation that’s right for you.” We can stretch our personalities to a point, but ultimately, being introverted or extroverted is as much a part of who we are as our nationality or gender. Spending hours in solitude polishing a discipline is as much a part of education as bouncing ideas around with a group.

    Societies generally have a problem understanding introverts. Jonathan Rauch wrote in The Atlantic magazine in 2003, “Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, frequently inescapable, interaction with other people.” Extroverts, however, find it harder to understand why introverts often prefer to be alone because introverts would rather not talk about it.

    As Amy Chua pointed out in “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” Chinese parents put less emphasis on social development, which may be grating to extroverted children. But Chinese children have been shown to excel in things that require hours of solitary practice, such as math, musical instruments, and information technology. Everything is about balance, and Chua has a point when she suggests that American parents place too much emphasis on social development.

    Chinese children, despite the brutal competitiveness of the education system, can at least draw comfort from the fact that they are less likely to be cast out of social circles for preferring a Friday night in front of a computer to a raucous party, and from the fact that the captain of the school basketball team is no more likely to be hero-worshipped than the top performer in math.

    (The author is a Shenzhen Daily senior copy editor and writer.)