While it seems that the United States has only just put emphasis on the STEM disciplines in recent years, the Chinese have had a long tradition of integrating high levels of mathematics and sciences into their middle school curriculum. Many of my Chinese classmates in college would describe their middle school experience in China as “hell-ish” because of the hours of studying that they put in during those years. I have heard stories of students waking up at 7 AM and studying over breakfast before attending class until 11 PM. Bedtime is generally around midnight.
In contrast, college is a cake-walk for Chinese students, because of the strong foundations that they built when they were younger. The same math that I am learning in college today, Chinese students have already mastered in middle school. In my current accounting class my Chinese professor actually worried that the foreign students would not be able to keep up with the mathematics portion of the course. In the beginning, we didn’t think that it would be too difficult, but as the class progressed we realized that her concern had a sound basis for some of us.
The gap between my level of knowledge and my Chinese counterpart’s is very noticeable and should be a cause of concern for many American students.
