China Says Government To Set Prices for After-School Classes (bloomberg.com) 48
China said local governments should set the fees for after-school tutoring institutions that offer compulsory education subjects, another step in the country's efforts to overhaul the private education sector. From a report: Local governments should establish benchmark fees and floating ranges, and include them in pricing catalogs, according to a notice from the National Development and Reform Commission. Price increases from the standard level will be capped at 10%. Local governments need to release their standard price for private tutors and related polices by the end of 2021. Beijing unveiled a sweeping overhaul of its private education sector in July, banning companies that teach school curriculums from making profits or raising outside capital. It also banned any tutoring for school subjects during vacations or holidays. The shares of companies such as TAL, New Oriental Education and Gaotu, once stock market darlings, have all tumbled.
Education (Score:3)
Great, government interference in the education sector. That should end well. Talk about shooting themselves in the foot in a repeat of Hongxiâ(TM)s blunder. No wonder the top Chinese students have to come to western countries for education. Reference: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a... [chinadaily.com.cn]
Re: (Score:3)
It is a perfect fit, no?
Re: (Score:3)
That's an area that consumes a lot of time and effort and helps create and justify the impression that educational opportunity is unequally dis
Re: Education (Score:2)
Not just cram in the sense of college prep. it affects students all the way to kindergarten. I teach in a poorer region of China and I have been affected. We are talking so poor, only one international school this far and they are shit. Notice too how they mention private tutors. This may affect upper middle class, but the high class will still find tutors even illegally, you can bet that. I personally wonder, how much the desire is to push out foreigners and related investors... Maybe more the latter than
Re: (Score:2)
One international school for how big of a population? When you say international school, do you mean a school that is foreign owned, with foreign teachers?
Re: (Score:3)
Xining is 2.2 million which is quite small for a Chinese city but it's the capitol of Qinghai.
The school I mentioned is Chinese-owned. It's run primarily like a Chinese school with a bit better facilities than a public school. It has a co-operation with a Beijing school that primarily provides subjects in English (at a subpar level, i.e. first generation immigrants to countries like China who barely know the subjects). I taught there for awhile and generally they only have one on-site foreign teacher. The s
Re: (Score:2)
I'm completely skeptical as well. Regulating how much afterschool tutoring pays seems like a great idea - but the rich trying to help their kid through exams will likely find ways, and the tutors who work from them will find ways around it.
If China wanted to be more equitable, they'd get rid of this one-test-to-rule-them-all mentality that contributes to teen suicides. Of course, the problem is that's a modern Western idea and we can't have that. (The One Test really came from the UK education system back i
Re: (Score:2)
I mean....I doubt they're going in to this thinking it will end in any other manner than supression of everything they feel is incorrect and a strict policy of pushing their own propaganda.
You know...like the GOP.
China de-evolving (Score:4, Insightful)
Sad to see China reversing all the things that helped them make enormous strides over the last 35 years. First the war on online gaming, and now this. Seems they have purchased Kool-Aid and are reverting back to communism. Price fixing never works for anything. Competition works the best. If there is no profit, there is no investment in education. If there is no investment in education, it dies â" or flees.
Re: (Score:3)
I imagine that in China, where like the rest of Asia, after-school cram schools are a staple of education, a US-scenario was starting to happen. Parents who wanted to insure the best future for their children had to put their kids in the best cram-schools they could find, even by taking loans to pay. But since every parent wanted the same thing, cram-school costs skyrocketed while becoming near mandatory.
Much like their ban on online gaming, China is looking at the current state of its new generation, in al
for profit education = big loans in the usa! china (Score:2)
for profit education = big loans in the usa! china is right that for profit education needs to be controlled
Answer: How to be an leader/aristocrat (Score:2)
The obvious question - what are children not learning during school hours that necessitates expensive private tutoring?
Education isn't about what you know, but who. Facts and knowledge are for the poor and middle class. The elite advance through ways that are somewhat mysterious to me. However, the elite and affluent aren't that way because they know a proportionally greater amount than the middle class or upper middle class but for other forces, presumably networking being a top one.
I can see why China would want to prevent this from getting too far out of hand. They don't want the class divide getting too extreme.
Re: for profit education = big loans in the usa! c (Score:1)
You are essentially advocating a reduction in education. No other outcome to what you are saying. Reduced profit translates to reduced investment, which in turn translates to reduced product quality. They should focus on increasing competition rather than regulation and price fixing. Price fixing always reduced quality dramatically.
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, so price fixing will increase the number of available top tier spots? How does price fixing solve anything? Seems it is aimed at appeasement rather than solving a problem.
Re: for profit education = big loans in the usa! (Score:2)
You are right. The solution is to raise the bar at public schools. I have a weird feeling this is potentially a precursor to that but since the jobs being challenged here are private versus public/government, this is an easy precursor...
No worries now! (Score:3)
People in Western countries were starting to worry about China surpassing them.
China seems to be trying to take steps to ensure that citizens through their whole lives only gets what is basically a super low cost public education, basically worthless compared to advanced western education.
Hell, they are even making sure the population has poor reflexes and a dull mind by limning video game use to three hours a week [techcrunch.com]!
So at least now the west no longer needs to worry about China overtaking anyone...
Re: No worries now! (Score:2)
Still likely to get a better education at Harvard, chasing diminishing returns on rote learning isn't all that helpful academically. Raising kids to be undisciplined and academically lazy isn't either, but there's gotta be some middle way.
That is why you fail (Score:1)
Chinese believe in lesser and greater learning. Xiaoxue, Daxue. Xiaoxue is what is taught to children and HS students in order to understand the world in terms of order and rationality.
Translation: All Chinese students are taught that how things are, is how things are.
This is fundamentally why China has not been able to compete with the west on it's own terms, surviving only by mass outright theft of western tech and low labor costs.
These fundamentals that you hold so dear, just destroy innovative thinking
Re: No worries now! (Score:2)
Xiaocue does not translate to Daxue.
Let's look at some examples.
Let's say I teach you Xiaoxue that there are three States of matter. You learn there can ONLY be solid, liquid, and gas. Now this lesson is generally reserved for roughly 8th to 12th grade. Since they rigorously know Xiaoxue, when they later learn of plasma or the BSE, it will be mind blowing, because there education has taught them never to question the small education that there are three States of matter. On the other hand a student with dev
Re: (Score:2)
Sometimes, being mind blown is a good thing. It helps you to appreciate the mystery of it. Otherwise, you'll be like "so what?" or "no big deal". If some phenomena or technology is no big deal to you, you won't see the point of studying it deep.
Re: (Score:2)
Correct. It's one of the reasons I think fractals should be included in k-12. I think this is the problem with most Chinese education. The rout learning is thick that divergent thinking is extremely discouraged. This means later when divergent ideas are introduced, students are less likely to have the thinking flexible enough to comprehend them well. The other solution in such an education system is to simply avoid the subject. In the case of matter states, we can see how this would quickly become a problem
Better in one way anyway (Score:1)
Still likely to get a better education at Harvard
Of course, by "better education" you mean a better contact list.
Just to be clear.
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen the stuff Chinese kids are studying, it's more than comparable to what I was learning in the UK at her age.
The Chinese government is doing this because it doesn't want wealth to multiply by giving the children of wealthy parents a massive advantage. It wants China to be a meritocracy.
It's also a public health issue. Children that are pressured to study too much have mental health problems. Children need to be children.
Re: (Score:2)
I personally know chinese who came here for university because they aced every part of the gaokao except for the loyalty test. They had the gall to write that the situation with Taiwan was maybe, just maybe, a little bit nuanced. Boom. No university in china for them. They came here. China wants to keep JUST the obedient ones? Fine, w
Re: (Score:2)
Xi Jinping is from a poor family. He rose to the top, and believed everyone should have that opportunity.
Re: (Score:1)
I've seen the stuff Chinese kids are studying, it's more than comparable to what I was learning in the UK at her age.
Ahh, you have seen what they learn, not HOW they learn.
It wants China to be a meritocracy.
Very much the opposite, they are dumbing everything down so no individuality can spring forth to challenge the state.
You cannot obtain a meritocracy by leveling all student ability to learn, because you are retarding (in the classic sense of the word) access to more advanced study material for those will
Re: (Score:2)
You have never been to China, have you?
Bot Production (Score:2)
CCP Official (seeing an 11 yr old school girl): What's wrong with her?
Teacher: It's complicated.
CCP Official: She's only 11 yrs old, how come she's just sitting there with that blank stare?
Teacher: I cannot say.
CCP Official: You'd better say or its your ass!!
Teacher: Oh alright, she's been Jinpinged.
CCP Official: Jinpinged? What do you mean?
Teacher: I mean that her youthful creativity, ideas, reason for living has been Jinpinged out of her.
CCP Official: Wow!!! Wait until I tell my boss we've succeeded!! Pra
Re: (Score:2)
If I only had mod points. Funny and Insightful!
Re: (Score:2)
"The most important thing is, even when we're apart, I'll always be with you."
-- Pooh Bear
Non-paywalled (Score:2)
Non-paywalled article on this topic:
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Freenode got taken over by a rich cocaine-addicted crypto scammer. Old-freenode is called Libera.chat [libera.chat] now.
Crypto is for money laundering.
There are lots of web browsers, you just think that those 2 are so much better than the others, that the others don't even count. That's on you.
Stop abusing web services designed for storing source code.
Stop trying to use Tor to send spam. Spammers rot in hell. Tor is intended for people in dystopic backwaters to be able to connect to 1st World internet.
If you don't standi