A reader of this thread asked me off-forum to comment here. I've been reading the comments posted earlier in this thread, and just finished reading the fine article. I wonder how much background on the school and the teachers (both the British teachers and the Chinese teachers) the full television program provides. I felt that the article kindly submitted here teased with just a few details and didn't provide a lot of context. For example, when the article notes, "an experiment was carried out at the Bohunt School in Liphook," I immediately wonder what kind of school that is compared to other schools in Britain, especially when I see the headteacher of the British school say, "As the weeks passed, thanks both to the support of Bohunt's pastoral staff and a slight shift towards a teaching approach more recognisable to our pupils, behaviour improved." Most schools here in the United States, and I think most schools in Britain too, do not have a "pastoral staff," and maybe that school and its students are unrepresentative of students in general in the English-speaking world.
The point in the article that students have to be acculturated to what their school expects is very well taken. Students at a school-within-a-school for highly gifted students (a situation that exists in my local school district) have to be especially brought on board a school culture that differs from everyday school culture. And so it is for any school that introduces a change in curriculum, and for any school enrolling students who used to live elsewhere and attend other schools (a VERY common situation in the United States, and a situation I experienced while growing up).
Several comments here talk about "copying" or "regimentation," but the fine article points out that the Chinese teacher wanted to inductively lead students through a proof of the Pythagorean theorem--something I have done for much younger students here in the United States--while the British students insisted on just being told applications of the theorem without having to think about how the theorem is proved. A Minnesota Public Radio report just yesterday, based on a recent Aspen Ideas Festival discussion, "Is Math Important?"[1] includes statements that I think are factually incorrect about comparisons between education in the United States and education in China, but I have to agree with Professor Jo Boaler's statement that a mathematics lesson in secondary school in China is anything but memorization--it is all about students discovering mathematical ideas by pursuing a few hard problems each day with group discussion. There is a whole book about what Americans don't know about how elementary mathematics is taught in China[2] that is a good read for any participant here on Hacker News.
To answer the question posed by the article title, "Not without a lot of careful preparation, but it could possibly be an improvement for some students in some British schools."
Comments
A reader of this thread asked me off-forum to comment here. I've been reading the comments posted earlier in this thread, and just finished reading the fine article. I wonder how much background on the school and the teachers (both the British teachers and the Chinese teachers) the full television program provides. I felt that the article kindly submitted here teased with just a few details and didn't provide a lot of context. For example, when the article notes, "an experiment was carried out at the Bohunt School in Liphook," I immediately wonder what kind of school that is compared to other schools in Britain, especially when I see the headteacher of the British school say, "As the weeks passed, thanks both to the support of Bohunt's pastoral staff and a slight shift towards a teaching approach more recognisable to our pupils, behaviour improved." Most schools here in the United States, and I think most schools in Britain too, do not have a "pastoral staff," and maybe that school and its students are unrepresentative of students in general in the English-speaking world.
The point in the article that students have to be acculturated to what their school expects is very well taken. Students at a school-within-a-school for highly gifted students (a situation that exists in my local school district) have to be especially brought on board a school culture that differs from everyday school culture. And so it is for any school that introduces a change in curriculum, and for any school enrolling students who used to live elsewhere and attend other schools (a VERY common situation in the United States, and a situation I experienced while growing up).
Several comments here talk about "copying" or "regimentation," but the fine article points out that the Chinese teacher wanted to inductively lead students through a proof of the Pythagorean theorem--something I have done for much younger students here in the United States--while the British students insisted on just being told applications of the theorem without having to think about how the theorem is proved. A Minnesota Public Radio report just yesterday, based on a recent Aspen Ideas Festival discussion, "Is Math Important?"[1] includes statements that I think are factually incorrect about comparisons between education in the United States and education in China, but I have to agree with Professor Jo Boaler's statement that a mathematics lesson in secondary school in China is anything but memorization--it is all about students discovering mathematical ideas by pursuing a few hard problems each day with group discussion. There is a whole book about what Americans don't know about how elementary mathematics is taught in China[2] that is a good read for any participant here on Hacker News.
To answer the question posed by the article title, "Not without a lot of careful preparation, but it could possibly be an improvement for some students in some British schools."
[1] http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/08/03/mpr_news_presents
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic...
http://condor.depaul.edu/sepp/mat660/Askey.pdf
Most schools here in the United States, and I think most schools in Britain too, do not have a "pastoral staff,"
The American schools I've seen did have such staff, but they called them guidance counselors or something like that.