China’s great leapfrog forward?

Yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Magazine had an article on educational reform in China. Whereas the United States is moving toward an educational model that displays characteristics of traditional Chinese education (especially an emphasis on testing), the Chinese are moving toward an educational model that is, in their view, more Western. This means integrating liberal education into curricula otherwise dominated by the “left-brained” fields of the sciences and mathematics.

As China moves to a whole mind approach to education, where will this leave the U.S. and other nations that aggressively pursue partial-mind education only?

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Dr. John Moravec is a faculty member in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development and the Innovation Studies/Master of Liberal Studies graduate programs at the University of Minnesota. He is the principal of Education Futures LLC; a co-founder of the Horizon Forum, a roundtable on the future of education at all levels; and is the editor of Education Futures. He can be emailed at john@educationfutures.com.

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