Innovation
is a central concern for any civilization. Technological innovation continues to be driven largely in
the west. This has been a source
of much public, consternation in China.
How to drive “self innovation?”
How retain more of innovation’s value, domestically? How to create regions that replicate
the remarkable dynamism of, say, Silicon Valley? Having driven a disproportionate amount of humanities' innovation for most of its trajectory, there is no rational debate about
whether or not Chinese civilization is capable of innovation. Rather, the questions center around
when will this finally be manifest once again and will it happen independently,
or in collaboration with others?
I was home with
my daughters yesterday, asking them about their school day. Reviewing the day at their still
new school experience, they discussed their new friends, the school menu, the
clubs they’d signed up for. Then my
older one said “I really like my science teacher. That class is interesting.” I couldn’t recall her ever speaking this way about science
before. “Cool. What’s so good about the class?” “We do a lot of experiments.” After explaining the inductive process
they all proceeded with to build and test hypotheses, her younger sister, piped
up to say that she too was conducting experiments, in her case with the heating
and cooling of marshmallows.
Then I asked the obvious, “hadn’t you done experiments
previously at your Chinese program last year?” “No. Maybe once
or twice year. They just said here’s
the stuff. You need to memorize it
for the test.” “Totally. We never did experiments.”
Can it really be that simple? China emerging from two centuries of chaotic indignities, is
all-consumed with ‘catching up.’
The education system which requires phenomenal memorization efforts,
simply to secure literacy applies the same approach to math and science,
requiring children to memorize ever more information, sooner, in preparation
for one all important gating test effort.
There is no time to experiment or speculate, there is simply too much to
master first.
Mind you, this was a private, elite Chinese program in a
wealthy suburb of China’s capital city, home of not only the government and the
nation’s most prestigious universities, the undisputed cultural epicentre but
also to many of the nation’s most important technology companies. If that’s what its like at a
program like that, then one can only assume it is a very rare thing indeed for
young Chinese anywhere domestically, to be encouraged to experiment as they
learn about any scientific disciplines.
Indeed, the education system could be said to thwart
innovation, most fundamentally, in and around the education system itself. What’s the point of talking about
Shenzhen being the next Silicon Valley, or predominantly positioning the two
characters for innovation in the highway cloverleaf park on the way out to the
airport, if you can’t allow kids the time to experiment and speculate? How can Chinese students be expected to 无中生有[1]?
Unplanned, I have wound up with what can only be described as
“experimental” jazz up in the ears this morning. Odean Pope lead me to Thomas Chapin. I was enjoying one of the alto players
albums, when I found out he was in a band called “Machine Gun” that sounded
vaguely familiar. I have their
1992 release “Pass the Ammo” on.
The tune “Brooklyn Brownout” starts out with Chapin’s angular alto
attack and then aggressive hardcore drumming by Bill Bryant. John Richey’s guitar work sounds like
Sonny Sharrock meets East Bay Ray.
There are a dozen live albums of theirs up on Rdio. They all seem to have been recorded in
and around the Lower East Side at the time when I lived there. I’m wondering if I didn’t seem them
there at the Knitting Factory some night, walking home. Born up in Connecticut, Chapin died of
Leukemia in New York in 1998, some four-month’s after he was married.
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