Read an e-mail where a well-meaning education buff said he wanted to “transform our classrooms so that our kids work like the folks at Pixar or Google: be collaborative, creative, flexible but highly productive (academically excellent).” He went on to say that a recent article about Shanghai’s test scores against other countries is a piece of material that can support his case.
That’s comparing apples to Mickey D’s Big Mac. Apples (un-messed-around-with) are grown from a seed, watered, nurtured, sun-drenched, reaching towards the sky, and then plucked to eat or drop to ripen, ferment and nourish the ground and repeat the cycle. A Big Mac takes that cycle listed above and processes the hell out of it (removing nutrients), assembly-line’s production, and knowingly adds things to addict people (i.e. white sugar). With little difference (save flavors and a layout here or there), McDonald’s worldwide has mastered a cookie-cutter enterprise – no creativity left to management or employees. A stunting of that workforce. (There are a ton of other quips many of us have with them, but I’ll leave that for someone else to write about.)
If we are trying to: have nearly 10% of our population illiterate, generate the 15 million jobs needed annually to manage an ever-growing population, deal with 10.8% of Americans living on less than $1 a day, or make a decades long come back after being left behind in the private-sector-growth-race, then I agree – use China as an example to educate our children.
[HARDLY MENTIONED: The United States is the largest importer of goods; 20% of China’s exports come to the US. China, on the other hand, is the largest exporter in the world. If we slowed down our negatively motivated consumption, identified our individual passions, strengths and purpose, and focused our economic energies to create intellectual property and innovation (across industry & culture), I think we’d stop comparing ourselves to an “answer-based” (largely left-brained) educational system.]
What I want to unearth, or rediscover, is the Apple Tree. I do not want to franchise China’s golden educational system.
*wipes brow*
We have the ability to look at our demonstrated strengths, our most envied and used contributions in the world and work backwards from there to find a formula to put us on a different track. Starting with The Story of Stuff and ending with a burst of collaboration, passion, and imagination.
Arguably, the world’s most influential and innovative brands/leaders – TED Conferences, Microsoft, Apple, Google, FB, Myspace, Wikipedia, Youtube, Amazon, eBay, Pixar, Twitter – are all products of American schools.
How’d you like them apples?!
Dream MGMT 
The OECD also looked at some rural areas of China and found they matched Shanghai s quality and that even in some of the very poor areas the performance is close to the average. Renewed emphasis on modern science and technology coupled with the recognition of the relative scientific superiority of the West led to the adoption beginning in 1976 of an outward-looking policy that encouraged learning and borrowing from abroad for advanced training in a wide range of scientific fields.