The Chinese International Education Myth - The Vast China & American University Collusion Scandal

We have often heard, for years, that Chinese education is more disciplined and better for children’s academic future. We were told that Chinese or Asian students were so much better than American students. However, I can say, after several years, not as a tourist, but actually working in the culture, with very excellent Chinese teachers, side by side, that my time in China has popped that bubble and that Chinese students are not better than American students. The Chinese education systems are not better, and the students have the same emotions, the same difficulties, and they have good and bad boys and girls.

For me, I love all the students and go out of my way to make sure I help them all to thrive. American kids and Chinese kids have the same hardships, have the same periodic malaise and good and bad days. They also come from good and bad families, many of which, like American children, have parents that spend little to no time with them. In fact, education is treated as a babysitting position, where students study and live five to six days a week.

The American education system is actually better because it emphasizes critical thinking, forming one’s own opinions and learning to back up, through research, what they say or write. The Chinese education system is totally teacher-centered and the students say little, think little, and they mentally absorb what is said, by the all-consuming instructor. Chinese students have virtually no possibility of forming opposite views that contradict what their teachers say. For Chinese students, who plan to seek higher education within China, it is very good for them. For those Chinese students, who wish to study abroad, the Chinese education system provides them with a very great deficit for Chinese students, who hope to work globally.

The Chinese education system makes them unable to consider other cultures, ideals or different ways of working and thinking with different people, other than their own set of ideal that make them almost impossible to assimilate in settings other than their own. Just remember, what is ignorant for one is truth to another. Also, disagreement with some does not mean they are wrong. It means you are freely expressing your views, as the ones you disagree with are doing. Often our own biases get in the way of critical thought, and we cannot see the truth for the feelings that others' opinions cause to arise. 

Concerning what I said earlier, it is important to see the data, the history, and the facts that bear out what I wrote. Nevertheless, one of the most impressive things about China is the sheer and real love they have for their country. That is a beautiful thing. Sadly, it also probably prevents Chinese people, in general, from rationally seeing things as they truly are, for fear of being shown to be wrong, which equals weakness. The most important thing, in life, is being able to question oneself and consider that, after all the patriotic fervor, cultural affinity and nationalism, we should look beyond your own experience to consider what others say to us and that just maybe, they are right and we are wrong. 

As far as travel and world view, China has had a profound effect on me. It is obvious, after living in and visiting 37 countries, I have a fairly good amount of information to speak and write from an educated point of view and in an experiential manner. No one could ever say correctly anything but that China has to be the most amazing country on Earth. Power, wealth and the ability to wage war does not equal greatness in a people. China is a great people because it is the longest surviving human culture and because of the great influence and human experience their 5000 years have beautifully given to the world. America certainly cannot boast that.

In my position, in China, as a headmaster and/or Academic Director, in the various public and private schools, in which I have worked, I can recall many moments when the fake and hazy reality of the weak Chinese crouching paper tiger played out before me. One such occasion stands out in my mind. In my role, with my schools, one of the most important activities is in student recruitment.

At the outset of my time in China, I really cherished this role and felt it was an indispensably important task. That soon changed though, as I quickly realized that my many interviews, with potential students, were nothing more than a means of making it appear that the Chinese school leaders actually valued intellect, ability and drive. However, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the real driving force of international education, in China, is nothing more than a money-making scheme called international education, for both the unethical so-called Chinese international schools and the immoral American Universities that collude with them.

Actually, I was being used as a poster on the wall or an image that made Chinese parents more apt to enroll their students, who had no capacity in English and who had failed out of other, far easier schools. To make it even more devastating, American, British and Australian universities are in profound cahoots and collusion with China's charade, as the universities who accept students, who have fake transcripts, erroneous grades and paid success, know they are constantly accepting deficient and incapable students simply because their families have the financial wherewithal to pay the fees.

Though it sounds harsh and mean, as the truth most often does, as a result of their willingness to accept any students, whose parents have no qualms about paying the high, exorbitant price of the international departments, of the schools, in which I worked, Chinese international schools become the schools of the dregs of all things that enroll customers rather than students. The same can be said for the international universities that enroll them too. With parents who are ready and willing to pay full tuition, in American, British and Australian universities, universities are more than happy to take their cut of the international scam that is Chinese international education today. Therefore, the hundreds of interviews of students I have done, which were supposed to be an assessment of their readiness academically, in terms of their study habits and a means of determining their abilities in English were, in truth, predisposed, predetermined, and pointless moments of vain repetition.

Once, I had a student, who could not understand even one word that I spoke to him in English. English is a vital component of international programs, as every class is in English, and no students could ever pass without it. In reality, English does not matter at all in Chinese international schools. For, in the end, their grades would be manipulated and changed so that American universities, which are in cahoots with the Chinese international-school market, could appear to ‘ethically’ accept them and soon after, fail them and send them back home, while keeping the exorbitant fees they were charged.

This fact can be demonstrated through my own experience in a public school in Shaoxing, China. This school had an international department, in which I served, as the head principal. I noticed, soon after my arrival there, that the director, whose name was Jing, had a special well-honed knack for helping the students cheat. She would quite openly give the students the answers to test days before the tests were give, so they could memorize the answers. When I confronted her about such an unethical practice, she said that the former principal, Bruce Major, who was an American, had never questioned her, and she put on a wounded and irate attitude of being offended, by my even questioning her practices. My response was that if the former principal, Bruce major, had never questioned her giving students the answers, then he too was being unethical. She decided right there and then that I had to go.

Later, at the end of the semester, I had four students, whom my teachers and I loved very much but had done virtually nothing and were getting C’s and D’s in most of their classes. Jing came to me, and handed me the four students’ final transcripts, as she knew it was I who had to sign them. When I looked at the four students’ final grades on the transcripts, all of the C’s and D’s were changed to A’s. I calmly looked at Jing and told her that I would not sign them. I told her that we could give the four students some additional work to do for extra credit, but I could never raise their low grades all the way to A’s. She told me that I was causing them a problem because they may not be accepted in the universities that had given them their provisional acceptance. I smiled and asked how it could be me who had caused them their possible rejection. It was the four students who had failed to do anything in class. In reality, such students know they do not need to work hard to pass because they know they will pass regardless of how badly they behave or study. After I again refused to sign the transcripts, Jing jerked them out of my hand and quickly walked away speaking something I was glad I could not understand.

What I lived after this encounter was nothing short of sinister. Jing began finding fault against my every deed. Finally, my employer, Ambright Education Group, contacted me about a week later and recounted a supposed list of things I had seemingly done wrong. I told the director, Kevin Dai, how they wanted me to change low graded to the highest grade. His response seemed typical for China, but still seared my professional educator’s soul. He said, “Well, Steven, that is a very common practice in China.” I kept a calm voice and replied, “Suicide is a common practice in Asia, but I don’t intend to participate.” I let him know that I would not submit to being ordered to doing something immoral and unethical. Kevin’s voice changed and I knew what was coming next. Before he could utter the words, I interrupted him and said, “You can never fire me.” He asked me why. I said ‘Because I quit.” I walked out of the school with all my belongings and never returned.

Since the time that I endured such concerted abuse from both Shaoxing No. 1 High School and my former employer, Ambright Education Group, I have learned that International Program Director, Jing and former Ambright Education Group Principal, Bruce Major were actually receiving large payments from Chinese students’ parents to ensure their children’s grades remained high, regardless of their lack of study. That was why they never studied. They knew they did not have to. So, when I refused to play Jing’s and the former principal’s game, it placed them in jeopardy. I also learned that Jing’s own father had been in prison for the very same practice. It all shows that Chinese international schools, both public and private, and the international universities, to which they send their students, have turned education into one of the most lucrative money-making schemes on earth. It proved that the children in Ambright Education Group’s site schools, and virtually every other education group in China, are not students but customers.

Another incident, from Wei Ming Education Group, where I served as Academic Director, shows that Chinese children are merely customers and not students. After interviewing a student, who had neither the intellectual prowess nor the linguistic capacity to join our American Educational Program, I rejected his application and denied his enrollment. It was and still is, my view that accepting a student into a program, which I knew he was sure to fail, I was not only protecting our school’s reputation, but also stopping a terrible waste of a student’s time, when it was sure that they would never succeed there. Of course, that did not matter, for my overseers, because the schools, in China, and the universities, in the United States, Great Britain and Australia, would make sure to squeeze all the money out of them that was possible.

My director asked me to come to her office and she proceeded to explain that they would give this totally unequipped student a provisional acceptance, after I had denied his application. I made my case and explained my ethical and professional academic reasons for denying his enrollment. Since I will always fight for the right, if I have a chance to win a battle, but will never fight when there is no chance of doing so, I finally relented and looked at my director and said, “I am sorry. I forgot that in China it is not important how well the students can do but how good it looks to have them in our school, as long as they have money. My director looked at me, at first with surprise and then with an expression of shame, and she simply said, thank you and walked away. I made my point, and she knew I was correct. He was admitted, nonetheless.

I had been in China long enough to be too aware of the real Chinese smoke and mirrors culture to ever be swayed by it. There is nothing that the CCP cannot corrupt and render unethical. I fought my best fight, for nine years, to make the schools, I worked in, honest and morally sound, but I realized that the whole social, political and academic systems, in China were permeated with fake success, social treachery and political smoke and mirrors. That is why I terminated my work in China, and I will never let the smoke of dragons ever cloud my sight.

- Dr. Steven Clark Bradley PhD