Left Style or Right Style? (1)

In the eyes of general Americans, especially for those who are in the educational field such as professors and college students, their perceptions of Chinese students who are studying in the United States are mostly the same.  They assume all Chinese students are good at numbers.  It is not surprising as most of the Chinese students in U.S. who are from Hong Kong and mainland China usually receive the post-secondary education in the areas of science and mathematics.

If we look at this circumstance with a scientific mind, probably we can observe that most of the Chinese people are left brain users whereas most of the Americans are right brain users.  Left brain is more like a rational style which the people solve problem by logically and sequentially looking at the parts of things.  In contrast, right brain is more like an intuitive style which the people solve problems with hunches, looking for patterns and configurations.

The levels and grades are quite similar between Hong Kong and America before graduating from college.  Hong Kong’s system can be divided into 19 levels or grades.  Similarly, America has 18.

People in Hong Kong start their education when they turn to the age of 4 year old.  They enroll in kindergarten for three years, then six years in primary school.  Afterward, they have seven years in secondary school and then a three-year tertiary education.  Even though the length of the academic year for a bachelor degree is quite similar to Hong Kong, Americans start when they are 4 for a year of pre-kindergarten.  It follows by six years of elementary school, three years of middle school and four years of high school accordingly.  Then they study in college for four years.

Because of the difference of the academic patterns between Hong Kong and U.S., students are trained naturally into different ways according to their educational systems.  The three-year kindergarten education in Hong Kong focuses heavily on talking and writing, which demand the usage of the left brain a lot.  For example, those kids receive homework every day from every class without exception.  Usually they have to spend at least two hours to finish it.  It comprises at least several pages of copybook writing and a few pages of vocabulary writing.  However, the system in U.S. is quite different.  They don’t emphasize that much on writing.  The one year pre-kindergarten and the one year of kindergarten in elementary school concentrate more on the usage of the right brain.  Those kids are trained by drawing and manipulating objects, and also asked open ended questions in class.  For example, the teachers ask the kids to draw whatever according to how they feel about things. But the teachers in Hong Kong rarely do it.