How to Fix Results

FIXED - Formatting and pictures, I don't know why it did that.

Don't read this if you're a grandparent.

Read this article by the BBC.

Read the whole thing, and now sit back while I demolish it.

First up, an opinion I voiced a few weeks ago that caused upright outrage in the comments section.  Check out the post I uploaded here; read the first few lines, become bored, then skip to the comments.  The gist is this: a chinese person was claiming that they don't copy others, and their education system is a unique flower uncorrupted by those Japanese dogs, or the damned meddling Western Pigs.  (By the way, doesn't that sound like an awesome american football or rugby league team name?)

Then feast your eyeballs on this quote:


.... willing to adopt the best educational practices from around the world to ensure success.


The BBC often get things wrong, as do I, as do the Great Chinese Peoples Republican Party members.  (That is probably a real title somewhere in china.)


In this case, the reporter is not wrong.  He is so far from being wrong, that he is in fact correct.


Alas, I will undoubtedly be listed to the chinese governments 'behead on sight,' list, which interestingly includes a large number of the BBC themselves.  That or they just won't let me into the country.

The thing that makes me chuckle about this situation, is that they see copying as a great national source of embarrassment - as if china hasn't stolen ideas for the last fifty years, and mass produced them on the cheap.  As if the entire economic foundation of china isn't based on 'finding,' plans for western developed electronics, then 'appropriating,' their designs for domestic and international markets, at a fraction of the original cost.


There are literally millions of examples, and if really needed, I will take it on my own back to list a hundred of these copies.  I will do it, if the internet starts getting uppety again.


(Please don't make me trawl the internet to find that shite.)


So here we are - after a paid up communist party member denies it, the BBC does some hard hitting research and finds that china actually copies people.


And wow, it works.  Why be ashamed of that?  Communists 0, privileged shanghai schoolkids 1, the rest of the world ???  Results yet to be confirmed.


So moving onto the rest of the article (thanks for persisting through that amazing rant).


Early on in the article we learn that the results are only based on two major cities.  Shanghai, the western centric (oh crap, I've lit another bonfire under someones ass with that intimation, haven't I) city of china (and to qualify that, it's western centric compared to the rest of china, as a traditional port for western and asian countries alike.  It was also one of the first economic development zones established by the commies, way back when.)  and Hong Kong, which was owned by Britain a decade or two ago.

Unsurprisingly, Hong Kong has solid foundations in infrastructure, housing, waste management, education and whatnot, thanks to the influence of imperial rule.  What HK has done so well, is take these foundations and apply good, communist work ethic to everything - improving things in a way its ex-rulers could only hope to accomplish.


What I didn't know until reading this article, is that some consider the Shanghai leading light and economic development zone to be elitist.

Shanghai controls who lives and works in the city through China's notorious "houkou" or permanent residency system, allowing only the best and the brightest to become residents with access to jobs and schools.

"For over 50 years Shanghai has been accumulating talent, the cream of the cream in China. That gives it an incredible advantage," says Ruth Heyhoe, former head of the Hong Kong Institute of Education, now at the University of Toronto.

Notice how I prefaced that statement with the word 'some.'  That's because I'm afraid of waking up with a horses head in my bed.  It's only a single after all, and there wouldn't be much pillow real estate.

The truth is this: china is a third world country.

It also has a behemoth of an economy, built on the back of a billion exceedingly poor chinese.

When you make a million people work, take all their money and pump it into a few cities, population totaling tens of millions, is anyone surprised when they turn out to be extremely strong in any discipline they wish?  Couple this incredible economic power with nazi style person management, that is to say; only the blonde haired blue eyed individual (in this case, the best and brightest) is allowed into the city, should they be proud of their achievement, or ashamed at the thousands who die every day in their countrysides from curable diseases, or lack of sanitation or clean water, or AIDS.

Congratulations china, your communist ideals are truly worthy of praise by one and all.

I no longer expect a shitstorm, more of a shitvolcano accompanied by a shithurricane and shittsunami.


I don't even have time to address the claim that the tests are inclusive of migrant labourer children, and the undesirables - despite the vast, vast majority of them being too young for their testing, making their claims false.  It's all in the article, read it again.