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International Law

: IP Dragon

Why The Chinese Educational System Is Not More Conducive To Creativity: Some Hypotheses

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China is the country with the most creative people in the world. That is a truism in a country with 1.3 billion people. In the past China showed the world the way to creativity: compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing, all are Chinese inventions. So why are copyright piracy, counterfeit trademarks and patent infringements that origin from China so rampant?

I have written about some of the extra-judicial factors before, see here (chapter 8), but I have overlooked one of the fundamental flaws that China has to fix: its educational system.

I assume that for an educational system that fosters creativity the following factors are of crucial importance:

- Idle/play time;

- Combining factors that have not been combined before;

- Atmosphere where experimenting (or put it another way: critical thinking) is possible.

Based on these assumptions are my hypotheses:

- Most students work too hard and too long and learn too much by rote (learning by repetition) to develop their creativity;

- Many students limit themselves by focusing exclusively on what is relevant, but often it is hard to know ex ante what the ingredients for success are going to be, and following the downtrodden path is not helpful for making new combinations or to "think outside the box" or to be open to serendipity;

- Most schools do not give enough room for experimentation;

- Although there are many ways to Beijing, parents, teachers and society at large expects students to excel and go to the Chinese Ivy League schools and universities. This puts students under immense pressure.

Of course these Hypotheses need to be tested.

I am interested in your views. Let me know. ipdragon at gmail dot com.

Full post as published by IP Dragon on November 10, 2010 (boomark / email).