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Why East and South Asian Nations are Overtakingthe West
Michael MohamedENG4U0
In a rapidly globalizing world, there is a quickly closing divide in termsof the economic development of the Asian and Pacific nations in the world,particularly China and India, as compared to the Western world, specificallythe European and North American nations. As a stark contrast to only 20years ago, what were formerly slums and farms in the People’s Republic of China have become large manufacturing factories; what were formerlyempty lands and poor villages in India have rapidly become replaced byservice and computing sciences firms all across the nation. In comparison,the West is currently facing a regress in terms of education and economics;in the United States alone the debt to other nations has reached the highestof any other nation in the world. The combination of a highly competitive andeffective education system, the economic and educational crises facingNorth America as well as the overwhelming population and development of China and India are all factors helping these nations to become the mostpowerful in the world. The extremely focused and resourceful education systems being put inplace in China, India and Japan are all factors in helping their economicgrowth; aside from being able to develop some of the world’s most eliteclasses of specialists in various fields in privatized education, India and Chinahave both made large investments in order to increase the overallpercentage of educated citizens. According to the book
Chindia: How Chinaand India are Revolutionizing Global
Business, the Sarva Shikva Abhiyan(Universal Education Incentive Program) in India provides a $2.4 billion dollarbudget for the benefit of the nation’s education system and also providesstudents and schools with a meal a day, free textbooks, medical care, andspecialized and remedial classes. Although the class sizes can be over 100students per teacher in some classes, students who do excel can be placedinto extremely high level mathematics and computer/information sciencescourses; many of these courses lead into some of the most gruelling andprestigious universities in the world.
Chindia
also has a lot of information onChina’s education system: in China the resources for many schools involvebrand new Lenovo PCs for most of the students, LCD monitors, basketballcourts and track fields along with various laboratory equipment and scientific
 
studies for the sake of encouraging curiosity and investigative skills in pupilsof the programs. As a result the literacy rate for students between the age of 12 and 40 is 96%, many of these students being literate in both English andChinese; these kinds of results are part of the Chinese government’s effortsto ensure an education for every single student in China. Many of theeducation systems in East and South Asian schools are centred around thepassing of ‘entrance exams’: this is a system whereby a person can enterany school provided they can pass the entrance exam for that school, someschools having much more difficult entrance exams than others; for some of the hardest entrance exams, students as young as elementary and middleschool age will spend entire years studying and preparing for their exams inan attempt to compete with their peers. What it results in is one of the mostproductive and educationally proficient groups of people on the planet; innations where studying is not even required to graduate from high schoolmore often than not, students work constantly to surpass their peers andensure entrance into some of the most prestigious schools in not only thenation, but the entire world. Some of these include Indian Institute of  Technology, where from 100,000 exam entrants only 2,500 are admitted intothe institute and only 2000 graduate; for their expertise in problem solvingand gruelling work ethic (most IIT students only sleep 5 hours a night atmost, working until 3AM or later) IIT graduates are sought after all over theworld in nations like the US, France, Germany, the UK among others. Animportant point to note is just how much emphasis is placed on Englisheducation in China and India; this is important because of how muchcomputer information documentation, business transaction, internationalservices and overall frequency in which English is used. Some facts from theeducational video
Did You Know? 2.0:
by the year 2010, China is estimated tohave the most English speaking citizens of any nation in the world; Indiaalready has the most English documents printed and produced (along withpublications in over 20 other languages) as well as having a 100% rate of graduates from universities and colleges able to speak English fluently. TheGuangdong province is one of the richest and also one of the best centres foreducation in China according to
Chindia
: Shantou University for example hasbegun to abandon the old method of simply forcing students to become rotememorizers, using various US universities as models on which to base itscurriculum; this is in an effort to produce more creative and inquisitivelearners in China. Along with this, there are even more difficult universitiesthat can be entered in the northern regions such as Beijing; in theseuniversities students still spend all their time memorizing facts and data inorder to pass their exams, which again produce an extremely diligent group
 
of students. From these examples, it can be seen that while China and Indiado have extremely large populations which are difficult places to ensure thatall or even most students are educated or graduate, they have beenextremely effective in mobilizing students to study vigorously; as a resultthey have produced some of the greatest experts in various fields in theworld. To compare to this, in North America and especially the United Statesan economic regress is taking place; as a result the quality of education isalso diminishing. Even in countries such as Canada, due to the decreasingsuccess rate of students in the nation, courses have been simplified andremoved from the curriculum and students as a result are taught less inmore time; an example of this might be the removal of Geometric andDiscrete Mathematics (which teaches many things about computationalrelated mathematics such as matrices, computational timing, etc.) as well asthe recreation of Calculus courses, the reform of courses such as Chemistryand Physics to be more heavily reliant on technologies, etc. According toWikipedia, since early 2008, it has been predicted that the United States of America is rapidly entering an economic recession; the consequences of thishave been predicted that the nation will not be able to support itself by theend of 2010 according to the International Monetary Fund economicforecasts. For what was once the world’s leading superpower, this isdevastating. This affects the government’s ability to provide qualityeducation for its children, and also increases the price of university tuitiondramatically; for more prestigious universities such as MIT, Caltech, Stanford,Harvard, and Yale (among many other scientific and political science baseduniversities in America) what this means is that the tuition has skyrocketedto an unaffordable price for most students. When the ability to becomeeducated worsens, the careers that can be pursued become either filled withgraduates who are less than stellar, or simply not filled at all due to a lack of graduates available. Since almost all of the conveniences and progresses of human life depend on mathematical and scientific work, this puts the UnitedStates in a poor position as a leader of human progress and a developer of its own technologies; instead the US relies heavily on imported goods. Whenthe Clinton Administration ended its term, the national budget was in surplusof over 2 trillion dollars. After the Bush Administration ended, the nationbudget was in debt of over several trillion dollars (as of February 12
th
2009, itis estimated at 10.76 trillion); even if the Obama Administration is a muchbetter economizing force than the Bush Administration, this is still agargantuan problem to be solved. This affects other nations in the Western
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