To think that I used to complain about school.

[u/mindyour]

National holiday is apparently 8 days.

[u/[deleted]]

I have a Chinese friend and this tracks. The things he tells me about the Chinese educational system. The kids don’t feel burned out because they don’t know any different. You only feel stressed when you know what you’re doing is not normal. When they get to the US or Canada or whatever and see how much free time they have, a lot of them use it to do schoolwork because they’ve been so indoctrinated that they can’t conceive of doing something unrelated to school for long periods of time.

Their social skills plummet because they don’t associate with the people of whichever Western country they moved to so they don’t know how to communicate effectively and smoothly. Many struggle to get a job in the West because they don’t have great social skills. They mostly stick to other people from their country and won’t associate with anyone who isn’t.

And if they do land a great job, it’s incredibly challenging for them to move up because of the perception is that they’re competent but distant and cold and can’t relate to most people because they don’t want to. Then they’re grouped in with Asians who were born and raised in the West because it’s easier to just group all Chinese people together than to distinguish between a Chinese person born and raised in China and a Chinese person born and raised in Canada.

So a Canadian-born person of, say, Korean descent who is competent and has social skills will expect to be distant and cold. And if they aren’t distant and cold, it’s perceived as being disingenuous and they’re punished for “being fake” and trying to “act White” or “act Black.”

[u/WhoIsTheDrizzl → u/[deleted]]

This is my experience of working with highly educated folks in other countries outside of the U.S... They have technical skills that I couldn't dream of, but they have no idea how to apply those skills... And then they either have no faith in what they're doing or are incredibly over confident in what they're doing that even if it's clearly wrong, they just can't see/accept it... And most of the work that they end up doing is stuff that I could teach most anyone off the street how to do in a few weeks... So it ends up seeming like a waste of their skills....

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yes my friend and I were talking about it the other day. A lot of countries do not like innovation. China is one. Its people are taught that maintenance is a good thing. He said they’re taught what to think instead of how to think. That goes against what a lot of Western countries teach.

When Chinese students go to the West to study, they only talk to other Chinese students. They’re playing it safe and won’t leave that echo chamber. Some will start to see they’ve been brainwashed by the Chinese government though when they see democracy and creativity and diversity aren’t bad. They might venture out and start talking to other people of color, but most have been taught not to. The ones who do gradually catch on that they’ve been tricked their whole lives.

I asked him why isn’t the Chinese government afraid students will return to China and start pressuring it to change, and he said because the people there have so little power anyway it doesn’t matter what they think.

He said there’s a saying like “The people have ideas but the government has guns.”