Education: West, East can learn from each other

The three-episode BBC documentary Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School, which delved on the cultural conflicts between British students and Chinese teachers, has concluded. Foreign audiences, which at first scoffed at the teachers from Chinese middle schools and even thought Chinese-style education is doomed to failure, were surprised to see that a month later the group of British students under the Chinese teachers' tutelage outscored their peers in mathematics, science and Chinese by more than 10 points.

Instead of a "reality show", the BBC documentary should be seen as a unique attempt to build a bridge between Eastern-and Western-style education and an opportunity to start a broader discussion on our education system. In particular, it should prompt us to ask ourselves what good education is all about, and what standards should be followed to determine the quality of education.

Since scores only tell how well students have mastered a certain set of knowledge, they cannot be used to judge whether one education system is better than another, or to assess the overall education level of a country or region.