Never Trust An Expert

I am in a bit of a dilemma. I don’t trust experts.  And yet my job on this blog, as a consultant, and as a global speaker on a range of issues often comes as a result of my knowledge and experience. In other words, it does not take much looking around my website to see that the US News picked a headline for my essay article that states: Sound Advice From An Expert.  Just to be clear this was not my title, but nevertheless I am being promoted as an expert. And that scares me. Lately experts have been getting a bad name, and I think for justifiable reasons. As Michael Lewis so brilliantly tells us in The Big Short

The smartest guys in the rooms of the biggest investment banks never saw the housing market crash coming. Instead, it was a guy who did some data detective work from his garage in California, who said as loudly as he could, the sky was falling. And no one listened. He was not deemed to be an expert. Ditto the fall of Soviet Union. Ditto the Arab Spring. The list goes on and on.

Why am I telling you this? Because the same is true about students and about admission to highly selective schools. Here is one recent example. Tom Doctoroff is an expert. His just published book, What Chinese Want, tells us, in his expert opinion, what Chinese want. He should know. He is the expert. The back cover states, “a leading authority on marketing in China and Chinese consumer culture”. Sounds very impressive. So I bought the book as I do lots of work on China and have myself been called an authority. But what I can say is every time I am on the ground there I have to redefine my assumptions. The country is changing faster than anyone knows and this is something I will be talking about in many future blogs.

In any case, what caught my eye was something Mr. Doctoroff says on page 126:

Despite the government’s professed desire to cultivate creativity, China’s educational system revolves around received wisdom, even in high school and at university. Teachers are never challenged by students”.

Now that is pretty definite stuff. The problem is it is not accurate. At least not now. 10 years ago this was true. But things are changing. Not overnight but they are. And here’s how I know. I talked to the people who know: the students.

Last week I took several students to Thomas Jefferson’s home for July 4^th. Since I will blog on this soon I will not go into details. One of the students is a visiting scholar. By that I mean she is working on a PhD in architecture and has been funded to come to the US for a year of research. She is dauntingly bright. After our visit to Jefferson’s home, we had lunch and I asked the students if this statement was true (kindle is great for this by the way). She told me and then I asked her to write it up:

When I was told that there is a book about China that states that no student in China ever questions their professors, I was so surprised. How could that be possible? In China, we do question our teachers and professors a lot. Take me for an example. When I was in High School, my classmates and I often questioned our teachers in class and discussed the questions after class. Sometimes, there was not even time for our teachers to go to the restroom between classes. I usually questioned because I thought the solution of some problems were not the best and the quickest way, and I had better ones.

So I would discuss it after class if we didn’t have enough time in class, especially in Math. And also, if I didn’t agree with my teachers’ opinions, I questioned, and shared my thoughts with the whole class, especially in classes related to liberal arts. Besides these, I questioned when teachers made some mistakes. Everyone could make mistakes and teachers sometimes too. Most of my classmates did as what I did, yet there were still some classmates who didn’t question because they may be not intelligent or they just pay too much attention on playing electronic games.

When I went to university, I questioned more often. And actually I do this now when I discuss about my dissertation with my supervisor. Both the study environment and the subjects are more open. In fact professors would love to hear different thoughts from their students, and they often encourage the students to question.

Sometimes I don’t like to question professors in big lectures when I haven’t thought through my questions thoroughly on my own. Instead, I choose to ask after lectures, so that I would not take other students’ lecture time.

Anyway, I do question professors, and often do that, so do my classmates. Thus, I think what that book says is over generalizing this issue in China. The author may need to reconsider his opinion about Chinese students. Actually, I think what I’m doing now is also a kind of questioning a professor, am I?

 

Su Xia, visiting Scholar, School of Architecture, UVa. PhD Candidate, School of Architecture, Tianjin University, China

苏夏，美国弗吉尼亚大学建筑学院访问学者，中国天津大学建筑学院博士在读。

I am tempted not to make any comment except for this. Anyone who tells you they are an expert and knows how the world works, whether it be China or selective admission, you might think about looking for another resource. No one knows a country or an educational system. At least I don’t. I have spent my life learning about educational systems but I still learn something every day. I will just end with a question. Who is the real expert here?