Hasta La Gadget!

“In general, any education system that highlights achievement and goals above process and attitude is, in my opinion, bad for students.” — Jiang Xueqin

Jiang Xueqin believes that the very best American institutions of learning have “a culture and tradition of openness, diversity, and risk-taking that China must emulate if China is to progress as a society and as a culture.”

Jiang Xueqin would know; he is a Yale graduate. From 2008 until 2010, he was a curriculum director at Shenzhen Middle School and then deputy principal of Peking University High School. His recently published book, Creative China, is about his experiences in Chinese public schools developing curricula to teach Chinese students creativity and critical thinking skills. A recognized expert on Chinese education, Jiang joins me today in The Global Search for Education East vs. West series.

“Chinese students are focused and disciplined learners who see pain and hard work as fundamental to self-improvement. It seems nowadays that American students put instant self-gratification and high self-esteem above all else.” — Jiang Xueqin

Jiang, how would you define college-ready students in China? What are the skills your higher education system is looking for?

China’s Cultural Revolution used education as a steamroller to level the class divisions (especially between intellectuals and the proletariat) that have defined Chinese society for thousands of years. During this period, access to higher education depended entirely on one’s family background.

After Deng Xiaoping came into power, education was seen as an important tool in his economic modernization campaign. Based primarily on Soviet Russia’s Leninist-Stalinist education system with antecedents in China’s keju system, China’s examination-oriented system, in which access to higher education was determined by one’s performance on a series of national examinations (the gaokao), achieved two major goals. The first and most important was to bring basic literacy and numeracy skills to most of the student population, giving China a young literate workforce that could transition from the fields to the factories (which is what accounted for most of China’s economic growth and productivity in the 1980s and 1990s). The second was to filter the students with the highest analytical intelligence to produce a high number of engineers and technocrats to oversee this economic transition as managers and as bureaucrats.

This is to say that the education system exists to serve economic and political objectives in China, and students in China who enter higher education display the follow characteristics: a) Basic literacy and numeracy skills, as well as a solid foundation in history and politics that conforms well to Communist orthodoxy. This is to say that Chinese students are very good at algorithmic tasks and at being micro-managed, but they are not equipped to display critical thinking skills or to work independently; b) Values and attitudes, habits and thinking that permit them to function well and effectively within a Chinese context. This is to say that Chinese students are trained to work very well in factories or bureaucracies, but they tend not to thrive in multi-cultural environments engaged in open-ended projects; c) A fear of authority. This is to say that Chinese students are taught to follow orders and to answer questions, not to give out instructions and to ask questions.

“There is genuine concern among Chinese parents that as China engages the world and as the Chinese workplace puts more emphasis on teamwork, creativity, and independent thinking skills, a Chinese education is failing to prepare students to think independently and to work collaboratively.” — Jiang Xueqin

How much emphasis do you believe your higher education institutions put on test scores versus other attributes and accomplishments? What are your views on this?

In general, Chinese society is obsessed with quantifiable metrics: your salary, the ranking of the school you graduated from, the number of papers you’ve published as a professor, the number of patents you have, your test score, etc. Currently, the entire emphasis is on a student’s test score. It’s seen as a reliable, fair, and objective gauge of a student’s ability to do well in college as well as the quality of education he has received in school. In the future, college admissions in China will expand to include other metrics, such as the number of scientific papers a student publishes or the number of musical competitions a student wins. In my humble opinion, this really amounts to the same thing, which is to produce and promote a school culture that rewards utilitarian, unethical, shortsighted behavior that destroys a student’s intrinsic curiosity, creativity, and love of learning. In general, any education system that highlights achievement and goals above process and attitude is, in my opinion, bad for students.

What can our high schools and higher education institutions learn from yours in China?

Chinese students are focused and disciplined learners who see pain and hard work as fundamental to self-improvement. It seems nowadays that American students put instant self-gratification and high self-esteem above all else.

“Study abroad is a big business in China. The market is saturated with “agencies” that act as go-betweens between American state schools desperate for international students who can pay full tuition and Chinese students looking to study abroad.”
— Jiang Xueqin

Why do so many Chinese students wish to attend undergraduate university programs in the US or the UK?

There are three major reasons for this increasing trend. First, there is genuine concern among Chinese parents that as China engages the world and as the Chinese workplace puts more emphasis on teamwork, creativity, and independent thinking skills, a Chinese education is failing to prepare students to think independently and to work collaboratively. Second, as the economic and political situation in China becomes unstable, the wealthy want to hedge their bets and diversify their assets — by having their child attend college overseas, it’s a good pretext for capital flight as well as a basis for emigration abroad in the future. Third, there is elite segmentation and differentiation — having a child attend an overseas school is now seen as the equivalent of driving a BMW and carrying an LV handbag in China. And now that the numbers of students studying overseas are so many, there’s also a herd mentality taking over.

How do they prepare to become strong candidates for the application process to these schools?

Right now, study abroad is a big business in China. The market is saturated with “agencies” that act as go-betweens between American state schools desperate for international students who can pay full tuition and Chinese students looking to study abroad. Test prep centers make good money making sure that Chinese students achieve the minimum test scores on the SAT and TOEFL required by American schools without actually having to learn how to read and to write in English. At the higher end of the market, to get into the Ivy League, more and more Chinese students are opting for American private high schools (ideally, the traditional feeder schools such as Exeter, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, etc.). Unfortunately, there is a herd mentality and follow-the-leader attitude among Chinese students and parents. It’s hard to distinguish the very top Chinese candidates from each other (high SAT scores, perfect GPAs, president of student council and general secretary of Model United Nations, summers teaching disadvantaged kids in rural China). That’s why Ivy League schools are now opting to trust American private high schools or elite Chinese high schools they know rather than the student himself.

For more information on Creative China

C. M. Rubin and Jiang Xueqin

(All photos are courtesy of Jiang Xueqin.)

Join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. MadhavChavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Honourable Jeff Johnson (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. EijaKauppinen (Finland), State Secretary TapioKosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor PasiSahlberg (Finland), Professor Manabu Sato (Japan), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (LyceeFrancais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland, is the publisher of CMRubinWorld, and is a Disruptor Foundation Fellow.

Notes from Indian Country
By Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji)
© Native Sun News
August 11, 2014

Neil Cavuto, a broadcaster with the Fox Business Network, can’t be blamed for looking askance at the decision by the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office for cancelling the Washington professional football team’s ownership of the name “Redskins” and the patent protections that go with it.

Cavuto was looking at it from a purely business point of view. When he wrote that it has only been in the past couple of years that this has become a contentious political issue he was dead wrong. Of course he had no reason to know what was happening to Native Americans and what their feelings were about this issue even though we had been making noises about it for more than 30 years. No Neil, it was not just a couple of years ago when this issue first came up.

I started writing locally (South Dakota) about the use of the word “Redskins” in 1982 and I wrote about it nationally for Newsweek Magazine in the January 27, 1992 issue. One year before that Suzanne Harjo, Michael Haney and I appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and confronted a die-hard Redskin fan about the use of the word.

When Suzanne, Michael and I were having lunch that day before the show we noticed this white guy standing at the bar throwing down drinks. We were very surprised when this turned out to be the guy who was going to speak up in defense of the Washington football team. Michael Haney later referred to the confrontation as “Three sober Indians and one drunken white guy.” Native Americans are often depicted as “drunken Indians” so this reversal of roles was pretty ironic to us. Oprah apologized to us for having him on the show.

In his anger over how this would impact the business end of the Washington NFL franchise, Cavuto wrote, “Redskins” today? “Red Bull” tomorrow? Should the Cleveland Indians worry? Or the Atlanta Hawks?”

If he had been following the historic battle of Native Americans fighting to remove all usage of their image as mascots for America’s fun and games he would have known that one of the first confrontations between Native Americans and the police involved a protest against the aforementioned Cleveland Indians in 1982. A lawsuit brought by activist Russell Means in 1983 against the Cleveland baseball team was settled out of court for $35,000. The Chief Wahoo mascot is still considered to be demeaning by Native Americans. If such a racist caricature of any other race, black, Hispanic, or Asian was displayed publicly as a mascot all hell would be raised by members of those minorities.

Native Americans have every reason to detest the Washington team’s use of the “Redskin” mascot. For one, to name a mascot after the color of a people’s skin is in itself racist. Why did the Pekin, Illinois High School mascot known by all of the fans as the “Chinks” become extinct? Simply put: it was considered to be racist. Why doesn’t that common sense reasoning apply to Native Americans?
There was a time in the not so glorious past of this country when bounties were being offered for “Redskins.” Literally! The skin of an Indian man, woman or child brought a bounty to the person who bagged the “Redskin.” Most history books have long since erased this little part of American history because it does not reflect well upon the imagined morals of a nation.

When Suzanne Harjo was asked on the Oprah Winfrey Show why it was that some Native Americans did not object to being used as mascots she replied, “There were also happy campers on the old plantations in the South.”

When the “Redskin” fans took a pig and painted it red and put a miniature feathered war bonnet on its head and proceeded to chase it around the football field at halftime, for me that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Now imagine if they had taken that same pig and painted it black and put an Afro wig on its head? Would that not be considered racist? You can bet your bottom dollar it would.

I think if Neil Cavuto and many other die-hard Redskin fans could walk a mile in our figurative moccasins, they would begin to see things a little differently. But in the interim, I have been writing about this for more than 30 years and to see something positive finally happening warms my heart. It just shows that persistence and patience can be rewarding. In a business sense I know where Cavuto is coming from and I feel sorry for how it will impact Dan Snyder, but all he has to do to remedy the situation is to change the name.

(Tim Giago is an Oglala Lakota and is the editor and publisher of Native Sun News. He was the founder and original publisher of Indian Country Today. Giago was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard with the Class of 1991. He can be reached at editor@nsweekly.com)

“If you are not a horse person, it might be hard to understand why some people love their horses so much,” writes HuffPost blogger, bestselling author and relationship expert Margaret Paul, Ph.D. “There is something about a horse’s energy that creates a powerful shift in me. Whenever I’m at all tense, I have only to hug Stryder and I can feel my whole system coming into alignment. His heartbeat slows my heartbeat until the stress completely leaves my body. His soft eyes bring me into the present moment and I can barely contain the love I feel.”

While this kind of experience is far from universal, there’s a lot to recommend spending time with horses. For the people who love them, time riding and caring for these animals is full of natural, organic interactions and a deep sense of fulfillment.

Luckily, you don’t have to be a horse owner to spend time with them and reap the accompanying benefits. Horse stables nationwide often accept grounds volunteers enthusiastically, and as well as offer riding lessons and trail rides — and not all of these opportunities are restricted to rural areas. In fact, you just might be surprised by the unexpected places where quality time with horses is an option.

Here are 8 ways horses can help us truly thrive each day.

They can help us find common ground.

When spending time with horses — from brushing their manes to guiding them along wooded trails — we naturally sense a connectivity and closeness to them that, turns out, is rooted in science as well as our intuition.

“There are striking similarities between horses and people,” Dede Beasley, M.Ed., LPC, an equine therapist at The Ranch, told Elements of Behavioral Health. “Like people, horses are social beings whose herd dynamics are remarkably similar to the family system. As a sophisticated herd animal, horses immediately begin building relationships with people as members of their herd.”

They can help keep us calm.

Pets have the incredible ability to reduce our stress and boost our sense of Zen by simply looking at us with those beautiful eyes — and that power isn’t limited to just dogs and cats. One of the many psychological benefits of spending time with horses is the tranquil nature they encourage within us. A Washington State University study suggests that teenagers especially are impacted by a horse’s presence — frequent time in the pasture makes them less likely to suffer from stress.

They can help us learn.

A pioneering 2013 study from the University of Kentucky discovered that spending time with horses can help people develop a sense of empathy as well as enhance their social and leadership skills. The small group of nurses from UK Chandler Hospital who participated in the study noted the importance of self-awareness and non-verbal communication during their time in the stables.

“If horses can increase our ability to understand ourselves and others better, then the healthcare industry is a perfect place for studies like these,” study project manager Lissa Pohl said in a statement. “When nurses and doctors benefit from collaborating with horses then ultimately their patients also benefit.”

They can keep us healthy.

Research suggest that equine therapy, a method of integrating horse-related activities and their environment to assist people suffering from a variety of health problems, can promote physical, occupational, and emotional growth. A study commissioned by the British Horse Society in 2011 confirmed that regular horse riding and horse riding-related activities like mucking out stalls counts as moderately intense exercise and can help keep a person healthy. Additional research associates equine therapy with lower blood pressure and heart rate, reduced stress, and fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression.

They can help relieve symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.

While spending time with horses can provide physical and mental benefits to people suffering from a variety of illnesses and conditions, those who struggle with Alzheimer’s disease find their time with these majestic creatures especially therapeutic. The disease is mainly associated with memory loss, but patients also find their personalities changing as the condition worsens, often leading them to feel more moody and withdrawn from others. Equine therapy seems to help them find a sense of calm and ease the frustration that comes along with living with Alzheimer’s. A new study from Ohio State University researchers found that such an experience helps lift patients’ mood and reduce incidents of negative behavior.

They can be our best therapists.

Equine therapy activities, including everything from grooming and feeding to walking and riding, can substantially improve psychological health — particularly in people who don’t feel comfortable with the more traditional verbal therapy methods. Alongside a licensed therapist and horse professional, people can find relief for behavioral issues, attention deficit disorder, substance abuse, eating disorders and abuse issues, to name a few.

“The horse is the perfect mirror, they are very emotional beings; we’re only starting to realise how intelligent they are,” Gabrielle Gardner, a therapy counselor of Shine For Life, told The Guardian. The benefits of working with horses are also being increasingly recognized by therapists who work with autistic children.

They can help us live the present.

In an open clinical trial published in 2007 by the Journal of Human-Animal Studies, researchers explored the potential effectiveness of equine-assisted experiential therapy. Afterwards participants reported feeling more oriented in the present, better able to life more fully in the here-and-now, less burned by regrets, guilt and resentments, less focused on fears related to the future, more independent and more self supportive.

They inspire a sense of wonder in all of us.

“There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.” – Winston Churchill

Horses have played a prominent role in mythology, inspired countless books and stories, and served as some of the most beloved family members of people across the globe. Many argue that there is no better example of both gentleness and power in nature, a combination that instantly leave us feeling lighter in their presence and free to explore the world we live in. Science aside, there’s no denying this magical and moving quality they possess.

Flickr: Xamogelo

This month’s top 10 list plays host to a variety of dance cuts, club remixes, and curious collaborations. On the cardio front, you’ll find a pair of songs from Cash Cash — an original song and a remix of Katy Perry’s latest single. If you’re looking for something uptempo to score your next run, either will fit the bill.

For lower rep workouts — crunches, push-ups, and the like — there’s an updated version of the summertime smash “Turn Down for What” that keeps the same 100 BPM as the original, while dialing up the intensity and adding new verses from Juicy J, 2 Chainz, and French Montana.

From out of left field, you’ll find a country-meets-pop hit featuring Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan and Jason Derulo. Equally surprising, the single, biggest vote-getter of the month is an ode to going hard from Swedish DJ duo Dada Life and heavy metal icon Sebastian Bach.

On the whole, this playlist compiles a healthy mix of new tunes, fresh takes on recent favorites, and a few curve balls. So, there should be plenty of songs here to keep you moving and a few to keep you guessing.

Here’s the full list, according to a poll on Run Hundred — the web’s most popular workout music blog.

• DJ Snake, Lil Jon, Juicy J, 2 Chainz & French Montana – “Turn Down for What (Remix)” – 100 BPM
• The Black Keys – “Fever” – 128 BPM
• Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan & Jason Derulo – “This is How We Roll (Remix)” – 132 BPM
• Billy Currington – “We Are Tonight” – 128 BPM
• Royksopp & Robyn – “Do It Again” – 125 BPM
• Katy Perry – “Birthday (Cash Cash Remix)” – 128 BPM
• Lady GaGa – “G.U.Y. (KDrew Remix)” – 125 BPM
• Cash Cash & Bebe Rexha – “Take Me Home” – 127 BPM
• Dada Life & Sebastian Bach – “Born to Rage” – 128 BPM
• Tiesto & Matthew Koma – “Wasted” – 112 BPM

Check out this month’s top 10 workout songs on Run Hundred: www.RunHundred.com.

For more by Chris Lawhorn, click here.

For more from HuffPost Workouts, click here.

In the last 10 years, a new field of neuroscience has mapped the mental zone that can literally change the brain to quiet an overly active stress response system and simultaneously pave the way for higher brain networks to perform at optimum. The more we function from this mental zone, the less we stress, and the more our brain lights up with the mix of intelligence that predicts a successful life.

When these higher networks wire and fire together, humming away at the brain speed of a hundred million computer instructions per second, we not only succeed, we excel at every level of life: from career to family, from physical and emotional well-being to fully actualizing our talent and ability. It’s a brain generating the fluid and creative intelligence to achieve goals, along with the emotional and social intelligence to instill joy in our work, peace in our life, and harmony in our relationships. It’s also a brain generating the homeostasis that promotes health and longevity. The key to all of these positive outcomes is building the mindset that transcends stress.

First, the Bad News You Need to Know

Stress hormones erode higher-brain networks, inhibiting you from succeeding fully at life. Chronic stress means the stress response system is turned on nearly full time, releasing toxic hormones into your system.

• Stress hormones can shrink higher brain networks, [1]
• Expand lower brain networks that switch our emotional set point to negative, [2]
• Impair the immune system, ruin the cardiovascular system, and damage chromosomes producing cancer cells and prematurely aging you, [3]
• Kill brain cells, [4]
• And can eventually kill you, if you ignore stress.

Add together all the life-threatening stress-related illnesses and you have the No. 1 killer of Americans. At work, stress dampens performance, thwarts teamwork, leads people to make bad decisions, and accounts for nearly half of turnover. [5] The greater the stress at home, the more spouses will argue, criticize, withhold affection, and judge the relationship negatively, not realizing that stress is the real problem. [6]

Stress isn’t something we should someday do something about. Yet 83 percent of Americans are doing nothing about it. [7] And neither are organizations, and it’s cutting into their collective brain power.

When a company hires an employee, they are essentially hiring that person’s brain and hoping it’s a smart brain that will grow even smarter with experience. But place that person in a high pressure work environment without the tools to transcend stress and the likelihood is that he or she will lose brain capacity. There are two brain scans from the Mayo Clinic that show the impact of stress on brain function. One scan shows a brain beleaguered by stress. The other shows a brain functioning at optimum, lit up and pulsing with activity. The scan of optimal brain function looks like the massive network of lights you see when flying on a dark night over a metropolis like New York, while the stressed brain looks like the dim lights you see scattered here and there as you fly over Nebraska’s farmland. The difference between the two brain scans is a good representation of the brain power a company has lost and could retrieve if they could solve the problem of stress.

The Good News in All This Bad News

The good news is neuroscience has identified a solution to stress that goes far beyond conventional stress management. This approach not only repairs the damage stress hormones cause, but also generates the neurological conditions that stimulate the growth of new connections within the higher brain that expand brain capacity, making people smarter, more innovative, and emotionally intelligent. The solution lies in the power of our mental state to rewire our brains. Change your mindset in specific ways and you can literally change brain structure to extinguish stress reactions and amplify higher brain function. The technical term for this change is neuroplasticity.

Here’s a list of the positive change neuroplasticity can produce:

• The usual networks that generate the brain’s executive functions grow larger and become more fully integrated with other neural networks. This means you increased your skillfulness at planning, decision making, error correction, and troubleshooting. You build strong cognitive abilities and can think abstractly.
• Gamma wave activity is far better organized and coordinated, signaling the higher mental activity and heightened awareness found in peak performers.
• The right brain and the prefrontal cortex work together to elevate intuition and creative insight into practical innovation.
• Activity in the left prefrontal cortex, the seat of positive emotion, swamps activity in the right prefrontal cortex, the seat of negative emotion. This condition enables you to achieve a high level of emotional intelligence.
• There is greater activity in the center of the brain, especially the caudate and right insula, generating the social intelligence that sustains interpersonal resonance.
• Your physiology functions at optimum, securing a high level of health and energy.[8]

Who in their right mind wouldn’t want a change like that? Who in corporate leadership wouldn’t want a work force operating at that level of brain function? The point is, if an individual or company is not actualizing the mindset that transcends stress to empower higher brain function, they are not maximizing their full extent of fluid, creative, emotional, and social intelligence.

Achieving the prescribed shift in mindset is easier than you might imagine, adding little to your to-do list. It’s essentially about practicing a to-be list. Even better is the fact that change in brain structure happens quickly, within four to eight weeks.

More and more, CEOs and HR executives are contracting with experts on neuroplasticity to heighten the brain power in their company. Mark my words, neuroplasticity will soon become the new competitive edge.

NOTES:

[1] Eduardo Dias-Ferreira, João C. Sousa, Irene Melo, Pedro Morgado,Ana R. Mesquita, João J. Cerqueira,1 Rui M. Costa,2,4,* Nuno Sousa1,* Chronic Stress Causes Frontostriatal Reorganization and Affects Decision-Making, Science 31 July 2009: Vol. 325. no. 5940, pp. 621- 625

[2] S. T. Charles, J. R. Piazza, J. Mogle, M. J. Sliwinski, D. M. Almeida. The Wear and Tear of Daily Stressors on Mental Health. Psychological Science, 2013; DOI: 10.1177/0956797612462222

[3] Robert M. Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: An Updated Guide to Stress, Stress Related Diseases, and Coping, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1998), 144-153.

[4] Ibid

[5] Wesley E. Sime, MPH, PhD, Stress Management: A Review of Principles, an online series of lectures on stress management, Lecture 1, University of Nebraska, Dept. of Health and Human Performance

[6] L. A. Neff and B. R. Karney, “Stress and reactivity to daily relationship experiences: How stress hinders adaptive processes in marriage,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97 (2009): 435-50.

[7] American Psychological Association, “Stress in America, Missing the Health Care Connection,” February 7, 2013, pg. 5

[8] Daniel Siegel, MD, The Mindful Brain (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007), 41-44.