2015/6/23 Education in East Asia: “The Good, the Bad, the Ugly” Hamish McRae, The World in 2020: Power, Culture and Prosperity, Harvard Business School Press, 張保興 副教授 淡江大學水資源暨環境工程學系

2015/6/23 The countries we are interested in East Asia includes: –China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.

2015/6/23 The Good 13-year-old pupils’ performance on mathematics and science were excellent. –The Table below is from: UN, Demographic Yearbook; Council of Europe, Recent Development in the Member States in OECD Long term Prospects for the world Economy, 1992.

2015/6/23

vFutures/Rank.pdf 我國國中生數理科表現最新世界排名

2015/6/23 The Bad Knowledge contribution to the world is poor. –Up to 1991, there were 410 Nobel prizes awarded for natural sciences. But the distribution is disappointing. US 159, UK 65, Germany 60, France 23, Japan 5, Any other Asian nations: very few

2015/6/23 The Ugly Learning-by-rote educational approach weakens our creativity. rote /rOUt/, noun, routine. by rote: from memory, without thought of the meaning; in a mechanical way, to learn a language by rote. Perhaps number of creative minds is a good measure of our educational success, but definitely not the scores of science or mathematics.

2015/6/23 My personal observation to our younger generations’ characters and their values Less of East: –Chinese tradition: dresses, music, arts, buildings, life style, etc. –Chinese culture: 5,000 years Chinese philosophies might be considered not important or sometimes even suck. More of West: –colorful hair, cellular phones, western-tone-but-with- one-word-English Taiwan songs, idol worship (e.g., Yo-Yo Ma and Michael both Jackson and Jordan), self- centered mind (e.g., relation with parents, teachers, and friends), western life style.

2015/6/23 總之，要有自我特質！ 在我們的外觀及內在被西化（通常在不 自覺的情況下）之時，必須要過濾及有 所警惕，並傳承老祖宗所留下之精華於 內心。否則老外如何辨知我們是台灣 （或中國人）還是美國人？