On Education

Before I came to China, I was increasingly concerned about the state of our educational system. After attending university at the age of 28 in Pullman, Washington, I quickly discovered that in the five year break that I had taken since leaving the confines and comfort of the University life, that there was a general disconnect amoung students and their education. I frequently ran into immense apathy at Washington State University--a culture of middle class students who thought that by being able to afford to go to college, they were indeed entitled to the piece of paper. Sure they had to do a little work in order to make it, but since the workload rarely, if ever, interfered with their drinking, it was all okay. Instead of education being the last moment in your life to suck up the free flowing thoughts that were supposed to so token of the University experience, people seemed to not care in the least about their studies, but moreso in what kind of financial success it was going to bring them in the post graduation world.
This rings true in the types of graduates that WSU throws into the population--more communications students (which I once was) than biology or neuroscience. (Although, it gets most of its research funding from the sciences). Liberal Arts at a conservative University like Pullman is a total figure of speech.
When I left college, I had a plethora of college experiences that few could match, especially at my age. I had seemed to bridge the gap between ages and be somewhat accepted by a large group of students, even going so far as to live in a fraternity house which was not my own and help advise these boys to try to think and be like men. It was a struggle at times, moreso me trying to act my age, but we got along well. Some of them will no doubt do some good things with their lives while most will get out into reality and realize that the real world is a different and abrasive place and you need to be very careful about the choices you make.
For me coming out into reality for the second or perhaps third time in my short life was a crazy time. I found myself much more out of shape from the epic nights of drinking than I knew. I had withdrawls of the freedoms that the college life brings us, but moreso I felt depressed at how the marketplace for work not only looked, but is.
The american workforce is in deep shit--especially in Seattle, where it took me several months just to find a job that paid more than 10 dollars an hour--not quite the college graduate experience that we are dubed into thinking when we begin to sign off the student loan checks for thousands and thousands of dollars each semester of college. During the time I was in college (and W. just happened to be in office) I watched my fees for school increase by 18, 21, and 15 percent every year I was at University. The price tag when I was finished is close to $50,000usd, yet when I got out of college, the only jobs to be found, paid about 22,000 a year.
The point of throwing all those numbers out there is that perhaps we need to begin to consider if it is worth our money to get the education and more importantly, if that piece of paper is actually worth the amount that you pay for it? Are we getting fair market value for our education dollars or is it just another cost of being an American?
Part of the reason why I chose to come to another country to teach is that I could get opportunites abroad that I cannot get in the United States. Here, I am a University professor who is beginning to develop lesson plans and circullum for Chinese students who are majoring in English just I am. Another part of the reason was that I was very curious about the Chinese and how valid the claims that the Chinese century is just upon is actually is.
First, allow me to say this. University students in America, no matter how much they party and no how stupid they are in terms of academic intellegence, have nothing to fear from the Chinese.
China, no matter how advanced them seem to be becoming, are way behind the developed countries and even further behind in their intellectual development. This is not to say that they are stupid and that they can not catch up, but they have a long, tough road ahead of them to industrialize and educate their population.
And they need to do it soon, because this whole disregard for the enviromental status of the world is not going to go on for more than 10 or 15 years and the chinese will need more time to get up to snuff with the rest of the developed world--if it even choses to keep forging ahead, which I also doubt somewhat.
I know that one of the immediate arguments is going to be that I live in a smaller part of the country and have no idea about places like Shanghaior Beijing, where I am going, but I will say this-- the Chinese manufacture things cheap for other countries because it does not pay its workforce any money and its people are cash poor. With industrialization and capitalism coming in at the same time, people are going to realize that they need to be paid what they are worth--and that is going to drive the price of goods up--and at the same time, the good consumers back home will perhaps begin to realize that the reason why there are no jobs for college graduates back home in the USA is because everything is being made somewhere else, which makes the workforce shift.
There is no question, China is building in huge ways -- and it has been this way for the last decade. More companies are coming here than ever before-- Shanghai is more than 2,000 square miles in size. However, the fact of the matter remains and I see it each and every day-- the Chinese people as a nation are decades behind the rest of the world and I do not see them staying with this until the end. If you go outside of the main city walls of Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guanzhou, there are thousands and thousands of towns that have still never seen a white man in person before.
And like this essay begins, its about education. If you do not educate your workforce, if you do not educate the people that will run the factories and manage the operations, then you will still behind because your own people will not profit from the tremendous burden their country is putting them under. People are curious about the west, but they don't know what it means. They think America is the backstreet boys and michelle branch. They oppose the war on Iraq, but dont know why. They don't like war. These college students here are so young and fresh it is so refreshing to see people in their early 20's that are so pure and innocent. so sweet and harmless. Then I think about how they are going to become leaders of the free market and I giggle to myself because the Chinese as a people couldn't be worried about such things. They realize more than Americans do that Wal-Mart is no fun ( Check out how awesome Wal-Mart is doing in Asia). It would seem that Americans are at the top of the food chain, we have become so smart that we have managed to forget that we need to take care of our own people and not just a small percentage of people-- and the Chinese are at the other side of the specturm--decades of political oppression and now they are giving the open market a run for its money... But I think when China has had enough, they will again close their gates, tip their hat in the friendliest of forms and wait out the enviromental and financial storm it will have caused.

I am just glad I have the option to ride both waves.