Does British turning to China’s maths education work?

"Weapons of math instruction." That is what Beijing's English-language mouthpiece, Global Times – not normally much given to such wit – calls a Sino-British plan to export Chinese maths instructors to the UK and to send British teachers to Shanghai to learn why China is so good at numbers.

中英两国计划将中国数学教师派遣至英国，并将英国教师派遣至上海了解中国人的数字头脑为何灵光。

A scouting party of British teachers has been in Shanghai for the past week learning how to deploy those weapons in the gross domestic product wars. The logic is simple, not to mention simplistic: Shanghai tops the global league table in tests by the OECD, the Paris-based think-tank, of 15-year-olds' maths skills. Now the UK wants to get its hands on some of that Shanghai magic for its own maths-free masses so they can end up as rich as the Chinese.

一个英国教师先遣小组近来在上海取经，学习如何将这些“武器”部署于“国内生产总值（GDP）战争”中。这一计划的逻辑很简单，且不提简单化：上海在经济合作组织（OECD）举办的全球15岁学生数学能力测试中拔得头筹。经合组织是总部位于巴黎的智库。如今英国希望向上海取经，让该国缺乏数学细胞的国人向上海的魔力借一点光，最终让他们像中国人那样有钱。

Elizabeth Truss, then UK education minister, this year visited the Chinese financial centre and waxed lyrical about the advantages of giving the UK a maths education system with more Chinese characteristics. But quite apart from the rather breathless quality of her accolade, the logic is faulty.

今年早些时候，时任英国教育部长伊丽莎白•特拉斯（Elizabeth Truss）访问上海这个中国金融中心，热情谈论赋予英国数学教学系统更多中国特色的好处。但与她的热情赞扬形成较大反差的是，这个逻辑是有问题的。

If Chinese schools are so fabulous, why are a staggering 85 per cent of Chinese parents thinking about sending their children overseas to study, according to a recent HSBC report? And why are more and more mainland parents eager to expatriate their children in time to finish their final years of secondary school overseas when they could just as easily stay at home and win accolades from the OECD?

汇丰（HSBC）近期的一份报告称，高达85%的中国家长考虑将孩子送到国外去留学。如果中国学校真的那么好，为什么还会有那么高比例的家长考虑这样做呢？中国内地的家长完全可以让孩子轻松留在国内、在经合组织举办的测试赢得荣誉，为什么他们当中有越来越多的人宁愿将孩子送到国外完成最后几年的中学教育？

The apparent obsession of Britain’s Conservative party with the performance of one Chinese city’s students on a single mathematics test is probably just a manifestation of a global angst about China taking over the world. But other countries don’t seem to be importing Chinese teachers wholesale to show the locals how it’s done.

英国保守党貌似对中国某个城市的学生在一项数学测试中的表现念念不忘，很可能体现了世界各地对中国成为全球老大的焦虑。但其他国家似乎不打算批量引进中国教师，以便让本国教师学艺。

Of course, every education system can learn something from every other – not least about how not to do things. And there is much to be admired about Chinese students, their teachers and even their tiger parents.

当然，每个教育体系都能从其他教育体系那里学到一些东西，尤其是如何避免走弯路。中国的学生、老师、乃至“虎爸虎妈”，也有许多值得钦佩的地方。

There’s plenty of academic debate about why exactly Shanghai tops the maths charts on the OECD’s programme for international student assessment tests. There are those who would have us believe it’s all genetic – though, as the mother of one ethnically Chinese child who flunked her last maths test and another who counts maths as her worst subject, I am not much swayed by that argument.

关于上海在经合组织举办的国际学生评估项目（Pisa）测试中拔得头筹的确切原因，有不少学术性的辩论。有人主张这是基因所致，不过，作者不太相信这种观点——作者有两个中国养女，一个上次数学考试不及格，另一个说数学是她学得最差的一科。

Then there are those who say that it makes no sense to compare the test results of one of China’s richest, most advanced cities with entire countries where rich and poor school districts are combined. But that, too, is not all that persuasive since poor Chinese students in the hinterland have, if anything, even more incentive to do well in maths exams.

还有人说，上海是中国最富裕、最发达的城市之一，将上海的测试结果与既包括富裕学区又包括贫困学区的整个国家的结果相比，是没有意义的。但这个理由也不太站得住脚，因为如果有什么不同的话，中国内陆地区的贫困学生只会更有动力在数学考试中取得好成绩。

Australia’s Grattan Institute argues, in a recent study, that it is all about pedagogical strategies, such as mentoring and giving teachers more time outside the classroom. Grattan says, for example, that each new Shanghai teacher has two in-school mentors, one for classroom management and one for content. But an admittedly unscientific straw poll of a handful of teachers in Shanghai schools found that this was true for them only in their first year. How much difference can that make?

澳大利亚的格拉顿研究所（Grattan Institute）在最近的一项研究中指出，关键在于教学策略，比如对教师给予指导，以及让他们在课堂之外有更多时间。格拉顿研究所称，比如说，上海每名新教师都有两名校内导师，一名负责课堂管理方面的指导，一名负责教学内容方面的指导。但对几名上海中小学教师的不科学调查显示，只在他们入校第一年是这样。这能带来多少差别呢？

And then there’s the parenting: even Chinese cubs who don’t have a tiger mum usually have parents who spend a lot of time teaching them basic numeracy from infancy – when mums elsewhere are still mesmerising them with Baby Beethoven.

还有人说是家长的原因：中国母亲即便不都是“虎妈”，通常也会花很多时间从孩子婴儿时期就教他们基本的算术，而其他国家的母亲满足于用《小小贝多芬》（Baby Beethoven）哄孩子入眠。

And last we come to what is, for me, the most entertaining argument of all: thatMandarin is a better language to learn maths in, for – among other things – the excellent reason that Mandarin speakers say “10+1” and “10+2”, saving the effort of learning to say “eleven” and “twelve”.

最后，还有一个看来最好笑的观点：中文更适合学数学，最理所当然的理由就是中文里“十一”和“十二”摆明了就是十加一和十加二，不像英语那样还要学两个新单词“eleven”（十一）和“twelve”（十二）。

So by all means, let’s learn from each other. But the war on British innumeracy will not be won just with weapons of maths instruction from a Chinese education system that has lost the confidence of much of its own population, at least when it comes to the immediate pre-university years and above. Chinese parents are voting with their pocketbooks to remove their children from China’s schools. Maybe they know something we don’t. 

说到底，相互借鉴没错。但要打赢英国人缺乏数学细胞这一仗，仅凭从中国数学教育体制引进“数学教学武器”是不行的——中国国内的许多家长已对这一体制（至少是对高中及高中以上阶段）失去信心。中国家长正在用钱包投票，让自己的孩子告别中国的学校。或许他们知道一些外人不知道的东西。