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It's a face-saving culture and a police state. Revealed preferences speak louder.
Eyeing these charts, China has lost on average 300,000 per year since 2000, and the USA has gained 1.2 million. That's roughly 7.5 million leaving China, and 30 million people entering the US.
About Gaokao and SAT questions? That naturally keeps you up at night? Are you sure? Is it really just the curiosity which the Chinese are internationally renowned for that drives their excessive studying?
Ah, but studying what? Does the United States really benefit when a Chinese immigrant spends 800 hours studying for the SAT starting in junior high, when the American norm is <8 hours of studying for the SAT? Does the United States really benefit when Chinese immigrants become supercilious towards their host, proclaiming that „Americans have it too easy and need to study harder” ?
Society benefits when smart people invent, not when they study. It benefits indirectly by studying when smart people study how to invent. Studying for standardized tests is not that.
Return rates of Chinese students abroad have consistently increased since then, with around 80 percent returning between 2016 and 2019..
You're speaking to the same crowd here. Again, I am an immigrant, I'm not denying that USA is a more attractive destination than China for me personally. I am on this US-centric forum after all and relishing in American way of living and American values. I'm just saying that Chinese people's yearning for America has reduced.
I've personally remembered really like learning the new words and vocab for the SAT. Some of the text in the reading questions was actually quite interesting on their own if I didn't have to answer the questions too. I do think my natural curiosity made it easier to do the grind. I think you're asking me if I would seek out SAT tests then I agree I don't. I think finally we get to what you meant (which I missed) which is that you "dislike too much studying for test taking purposes". I was arguing against "dislike too much studying".
Yes. Does America wants the exceptional or not? America does not benefit from a Chinese student spending 800 hours studying the SAT, but America certainly benefits from a Chinese immigrant who spent 800 hours studying the SAT. Studying extremely extremely hard is not mutually exclusive to being creative. The value of hard work is pretty much common sense.
If you look at my original comment ("My first immediate thought is Americans live on easy mode. For East Asians, top of graduating class would mean minimum 1500.") or the subsequent comments, I did not ascribe good or bad value to "Americans live it on easy mode", you projected that yourself.
As for whether I think Americans should study more, yes, I do. Not to the excessive level of your strawman example, but I do think Americans should take heed of their own advice
The value of hard work is that it allows the less capable to attain, by rote, some of the diligence and understanding that comes naturally to the more capable. It is a virtue when it allows one to be useful rather than not. When selected for in highly competitive spheres that ought to require talent and creativity, it burns billions of man-hours on rat racing against each other and accomplishing little other than letting employers demand higher credentials for the same level of actual competence.
Like you, I agree that on the spectrum of effort from sloth to inhumane, there is a sweet spot of maximal benefit to both the individual and society. Even in my original comment, I said East Asian minimum for top of class is 1500. Searching it up, to land in 1500 for SAT that's about 5-7 questions wrong in a 98 questions test, that's a range of 93% to 95% correct (assuming questions are equal in score). That's not asking for perfection, that's an A- to an A in most classes.
I remember one of the members of this forum has the tag "you're still a rat even if you win the rat race. but you'll also still be a winner." Anyways, I think your true distaste is in the "letting employers demand higher credentials for the same level of actual competence.". This is my response: any marker, any status symbol, any award, any slightly higher higher privilege, can become a "credential". And combined with micro-level priorities and incentives of thousands, millions, billions, and some day, trillions of being, there will be many that will compete and try even a little more than the next. That doesn't have to be you, you can find meaning in not doing that, or you can try to change the system so the incentives, signals, and results are better aligned, but there will always be "billions of man hours rat racing against each other". The problem is that we will only have the relatively microscopic view from our perspective, and what we think is wasteful effort of others are just them making the most rational and rewarding decision from their perspective.
I wanted to draw this particular bit out because it poked at me, my response I will borrow from someone else: "Talent is something you make bloom, instinct is something you polish."
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