Jenny Wang graduated from university with a major in English literature and never thought her daughter, four, would be able to baffle her with a question about the language.
But the unthinkable happened when, one sunny afternoon, the little girl showed off her English vocabulary, built up by tireless kindergarten teachers, and asked her mother, a Shanghai newspaper editor, the meaning of 'overcast'.
'I was running short of a sensible explanation because she had never come across the word yintian, the Chinese equivalent of overcast,' Wang, in her early 30s, said. 'So I decided to be specific and told her the word 'overcast' refers to a rainless condition without sunshine. But I soon realised that I had put my foot in my mouth. As evening descended, she threw in a new question, 'Mum, is it overcast now?''
Wang was put in a bind, not by a near-prodigy, but by a dazzling, yet probably misoriented, elementary education system that is churning out a generation of world-class test-takers and knowledge absorbers.
Last month, secondary school students from Shanghai topped a two-hour test designed to gauge school performance across 65 countries and regions, most in the developed world. The triennial Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA), courtesy of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, found Shanghai's teens well ahead of overseas peers in reading, maths and science abilities.
People outside China may have been surprised and conclude that its quality of education, or at least in the prosperous coastal areas, has matched, if not overtaken, that in the West.
Within China, however, reservations seem to rule. Mainland critics put the programme's credibility and significance under the microscope and question the link between a one-off test result and the future strength of the mainland's human resources. They cite deeply rooted flaws in the education system that can easily undo whatever advantages the youngsters gain at an early age.
