Posted 5/15/2007 05:16:00 PM by Douglas

China's economy is growing, seemingly without bounds. Can anything slow it down? How 'bout we export our disastrous American educational system? [Loved the headline]

But all is not lost. There was good news in the April 1 New York Times Magazine, in an article by Ann Hulbert entitled “Re-education.” Hulbert describes the enthusiasm among Chinese for American-style education. She opens with the story of Harvard freshman Tang Meijie, an exceptional young woman from Shanghai who earned her way into Harvard by bucking the usual academic grind in China and focusing instead on extracurrriculars. Meijie is on our side: “There is something in the American educational system that helps America hold its position in the world.” Meijie’s goal is to bring American-style liberal education to China.

Our master plan for dumbing-down Chinese education, however, is not just about atmospherics or theatrics. Let’s not forget: this is American educationism. And that means theory. Hulbert eventually gets to this: “If there is an American figure to whom Chinese proponents of more active, multidimensional, student-centered learning have listened especially attentively over the past half-decade, it is Howard Gardner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.” Gardner is, of course, the originator of “Multiple Intelligences” theory, or M.I., the charming idea that intelligence isn’t a single capacity but many separate capacities. Gardner’s theory has instant democratic appeal since it implies that no one is truly dumb. We are all just different. I may have trouble with calculus, but I’m really good at skipping stones. I have stone-skipping intelligence. So there.

Let us be patient. It took nearly a century for the “reforms” of Dewey’s progressivism to make American schools into places that cultivate self-assurance over knowledge, co-operation over achievement, blandness over distinction, and dullness over everything. Gardner is widely recognized as one of Dewey’s most important heirs, and we need to give his ideas some time to turn China into a nation of self-satisfied ignoramuses.

But when they become as lazy and stupid as Americans, who will make a dozen tube socks for $1.99?