Chinese students are known far and wide for their impressive math skills, especially compared to

their elementary school and middle school peers in other countries. For such a large country with

limited educational funding far below that of rich countries, only a truly integrated and smart

national educational policy could have allowed Chinese elementary schoolers to keep up.

China has a long history of educating youngsters in various subjects. Since ancient times, children

have been educated collectively at facilities that we now call schools, on subjects like math,

Chinese, ethics, archery, chess, and others. Like now, these students studied for national exams

known as the keju exams, in place since the seventh century. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties,

students were forced to memorize large amounts of ancient scripture designed to imprison any

disobedient or creative thought in the bureaucracy. These exams were abandoned in 1905, a

prelude to the downfall of the Qing Dynasty itself years later.

Teaching methods today vary greatly from the days of Confucius and his disciples, but at its root

is still an emphasis on memorization, especially at the primary and secondary school levels. This

certainly contributes to the learning of Chinese and English, which are memory-intensive subjects

for sure. But how does it enable Chinese students' math skills?

One of the most vital skills involved in elementary school math is calculating simple

multiplication. Many children find it challenging to do simple multiplications at age 8 or 9. How

do Chinese students counter that? In a nutshell, they memorize it. A simple table containing all

single-digit multiplications is given to students, who are expected to memorize it word for word.

Weeks and months are spent on this exercise, with additional practice problems numbering in the

hundreds per week to reinforce memorization.

This may seem like a simple trick, but in reality, by bypassing actual calculation, it provides a

straightforward and easily applicable way for children with comparatively low cognitive or

arithmetic skills to overcome a huge hurdle in elementary school math. In more developed

countries, schools try to teach children who have just barely learned how to count the mathematical

principles behind multiplication, as with America's "New Math," which high schoolers find hard

to comprehend, according to an American friend of mine. Without a doubt, Chinese teaching

methods in this area are very suitable for a country that needs a lot of engineers and can't afford to

invest as much as Europe or America in education in poorer areas.

However, this method, when extended to other subjects, can cause a lot of unfortunate side effects.

The scientific method pioneered in Europe involves experimentation and observation, not

memorization and theorization. We learn physics by memorizing theories and chemistry by

learning about experimental methods but never using them. Of course, that is not to say we don't

know how to use these theories.

Chinese is not an easy language to learn by all accounts, and it is only taught in China as the

official language (it is an official language in many Southeast Asian countries), so we had to

pioneer its teaching. The introduction of pinyin in the last century made it much easier for ordinary

folks to learn. I won't go into the details since I've already written about this before for our

newsletter (see Jornt Weekly Newsletter, Issue 2).