Marrying East and West

I do not mean marrying east and west as in this picture, but if we can marry the work the Asians bring to their work with the western approach to problem solving and creativity we would be creating a super race of human beings.

As I study the Asian curriculum in more and more Asian countries, I have come to a starling conclusion that much of it is based on simple rote learning. There are copious amounts of content and students must "cover" all of the content to regurgitate on exams but there is little effort made to analyze and synthesize information

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In Asia, you will often see a factory filling a truck with workers all wearing the same colour shirt as their workplace. The trucks are usually so full of workers I cannot believe they can breath . I have been told, usually at the golf course by western executives, that the Thai workers, as one example, are better workers than the Japanese, but when they get promoted they invariably fail because they never learned how to work in groups or think for themselves. Creativity is not highly valued. 

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so I figure all you can do as a western teacher, if you are one, is to push the envelope, encourage your students to think outside of the box and do the best you can, realizing that we are teaching kids for jobs that do not even exist as of this moment in history. 

...and if you can't marry east and west, perhaps you can just DANCE a little so that the two cultures can at least meet!

Good luck. The pity is that both sides have so much to offer and so little opportunity to make it happen. That is what teaching in Asia is what about actually, in my opinion. Not to say the picture below is not an incentive to come and work here!

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