Underestimating The Threat From China
American public schools are busying themselves turning back the clock on Martin Luther King and making racism -- identification by color rather than merit -- a thing again. There's a movement to accept, um, creative answers in math (2+2 = 5, or whatever the spirit moves you for it to be).
We used to worry about competing with the Russians back in the Cold War days. Well, now we're in an invisible war -- invisible to much of the American public: a race with the Chinese.
And let's just say those who replace STEM with creative math are not going to be the winners.
And that's a very, very dangerous thing -- maybe not today or tomorrow, but perhaps even in a number of decades -- for America, if you care at all about rights and freedoms.
In the WSJ, Wenxin Fan writes about how China's biggest movie star was "erased from the Internet," and nobody knows why:
HONG KONG-- Zhao Wei spent the past two decades as China's equivalent of Reese Witherspoon, a beloved actress turned business mogul.She directed award-winning films, sold millions of records as a pop singer and built a large following on social media, amassing 86 million fans on Weibo, China's Twitter -like microblogging site. She also made a fortune as an investor in Chinese technology and entertainment companies.
Today, the 45-year-old star has been erased from the Chinese internet. Searches for her name on the country's biggest video-streaming sites come up blank. Her projects, including the wildly popular TV series "My Fair Princess," have been removed. Anyone looking up her acclaimed film "So Young" on China's equivalent of Wikipedia wouldn't know she was the director; the field now reads "----."
Ms. Zhao's online disappearance on Aug. 26 came at the onset of a broader clampdown on the country's entertainment industry as the Communist Party attempts to halt what it sees as a rise in unhealthy celebrity culture. The Chinese government hasn't publicly stated what prompted this sudden change to her status, raising questions among fans and observers about how far it is willing to go against her and other celebrities, and why.
The mystery also has sparked open speculation about what, if anything, she might have done wrong.
"Zhao Wei is like a poster child for what the Communist Party sees as what's wrong with celebrity culture in China," said Stanley Rosen, a professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in Chinese films and politics. "It's a demonstration that no one, no matter how wealthy or popular, is too big to pursue."
In Zhao Wei's case, he added, the lack of explanation "will certainly make other celebrities extremely cautious and proactive in embracing regime goals."
Ms. Zhao didn't respond to requests for comment. Her films and TV shows remained unsearchable on video-streaming sites as of Wednesday afternoon. The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country's internet regulator, didn't respond to an inquiry.
In the past few weeks, other celebrities also have been scrubbed, including Zheng Shuang, an actress bogged down by a tax-evasion probe, and Zhang Zhehan, a young actor who was earlier slammed by the Communist Party's flagship newspaper after he was found having visited a controversial shrine in Japan related to World War II while attending a friend's wedding.
In an unprecedented campaign launched last month, the party banned the ranking of celebrities by name on social-media platforms, ordered traditional broadcasters and streaming platforms to ban artists who don't meet political or moral standards, and effectively banned the children of pop stars from appearing in entertainment shows.
Was checking out "Zheng Shuang" in wiki and seeing front and center her tax troubles but the WSJ sort of ignored her child surrogacy issues and abandonment.
John Paulson at September 22, 2021 12:22 AM
So my husband's a mathematician. He is not impressed with the math coming out of China. While they are growing stronger with advocates like Shing Tung Yao who do a lot to help Chinese students, in general the people advancing the field are still very much in the Western world. After all, even Yao's in America.
NicoleK at September 22, 2021 2:12 AM
US education issues and China's economic issues are fairly unrelated.
On China Xi has completely eliminated any rivals or alternatives to his rule. As such he has sole responsibility for any and all problems as well. Rights and responsibility, you can't separate the two. Well . . . Xi has always wanted a return to Maoist style communist rule. As he continues to implement that China's economy continues to slow down. As his government's failures become more and more apparent Xi has no intention of changing direction. Instead he is escalating. More state control of the economy. More military to distract people from the economic failure. At some point China may suffer mass starvation again assuming Xi lives long enough.
In the US the only solution to improve education is to return it to local rule. Currently US public schools are very uniform and there is very little you can do on a local level. Policy is determined at the national level and any deviation results in lost funding. Parents really have no control. Schools are no longer part of their community. Especially as they've grown in size. 50 years ago a normal elementary school had under 500 students. Typically more like 250 in an urban area. Today a 'small' elementary has 1000 students. As a large institutional bureaucracy US public schools suffer from all the standard failing of large institutionalized bureaucracies. The retarded fads are normal for anyone who has worked for similar organizations. If you want better education there is only one realistic solution at this point. Charter schools.
Ben at September 22, 2021 5:20 AM
Trust at September 22, 2021 8:03 AM
" "
"Trust", with a blank comment, has now made more sense, on average, than Artemis. Well done!
Radwaste at September 22, 2021 8:13 AM
Meanwhile, Common Core math students are drawing a box.
Conan the Grammarian at September 22, 2021 8:28 AM
My kids are doing the colored box stuff. At least that is better than the 'if you can do math you must be a white supremacist' stuff.
Ben at September 22, 2021 9:19 AM
@Radwaste: " "
"Trust", with a blank comment, has now made more sense, on average, than Artemis. Well done!
________
Ha! Totally unintentional.
That was my failed attempt at displaying this image:
http://esq.h-cdn.co/assets/15/34/1600x800/landscape-1439831481-trump-signal.jpg
Trust at September 22, 2021 10:12 AM
Looks like the start of an Alfred Hitchcock show. Should I worry about birds now?
Ben at September 22, 2021 10:23 AM
I've been having minor success in getting through to those moderates who don't see it by asking "Is segregation (the main part of redlining, jim crow etc) racist or not?
if they are not extreme far left they say yes of course. Then you pull up things from the new left saying/showing it's not.
Joe J at September 22, 2021 3:06 PM
Is the colored box stuff the multiplication model? Because I'm pretty sure that comes from china
NicoleK at September 23, 2021 10:21 AM
No, just a graphical way to display addition. What is 3+4? First color three boxes, then color three more, then count how many boxes are colored. You also have number line and several other way for doing the same old thing.
Honestly most kids learn better with the older styles. Addition isn't exactly a new thing. Though I forget just how many thousands of years old the concept is.
Ben at September 23, 2021 7:18 PM
Hmm. Seems time consuming, do they no longer use manipulatives? Take three chips, take four more, count them?
NicoleK at September 24, 2021 6:10 AM
They do all kinds of things, NicoleK. The sub point is to avoid teachers being bored. But the real point is to keep things non-comparable so that teachers and schools can't be evaluated. That game is given away by the timing of the changes.
As you say all these graphical methods are time consuming. I just teach my kids the standard positional numerical method. Thus they are much faster than the other kids.
Also, this stuff isn't being pushed by actual teachers. The adults in the classroom know how to do their job. It is the army of administrators sucking up cash and wasting everyone's time.
Ben at September 24, 2021 12:34 PM
To put this another way, how do you show manipulatives on the standardized test? You really can't. Especially since the tests have to be shipped off and blind graded in a central location. Hence manipulatives aren't part of common core. Instead you need ten frames and number lines that can be draw on a piece of paper in order to change the standardized test. And changing that test was the entire point of the exercise.
Good teachers are still using M&Ms or chips or whatnot.
You get the same thing over here with the distance learning stuff. You can't just put the teacher on zoom and run a kindergarten the same way as an in person class. It just doesn't work that way. But the administrators aren't willing to listen. So eventually the teachers get worn out and just put up some flashy youtube video and take a nap . . . and many of them quit. It doesn't mean distance learning can't be done. Hell, mail order degrees are hundreds of years old. Just that what the US public school administrators want to do is effin retarded.
Ben at September 24, 2021 12:48 PM
When getting the right answer no longer matters:
"What is 3+4? First color three boxes, then color three more, then count how many boxes are colored."
markm at October 1, 2021 10:20 AM
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