From the surface level, groups with resources are moving towards learning machines, which is closely related to Mainland China’s gradually improving copyright protection system.
Below the surface, based on my observations in Beijing with my child attending local primary school, the most common exit for tutoring teachers is to break down their services into smaller parts, resulting in an inability to scale economically. This leads to a significant increase in the cost of after-school tutoring for parents, just as economics would predict.
I originally thought that new education policies would greatly increase the influence of family financial resources on children’s competitive advantage in academic examinations. However, conversely, the aforementioned learning machines on the surface level are reducing the overall cost of after-school tutoring in a more economical way.
In other words, due to government intervention, the after-school tutoring market in Mainland China is polarizing. The general public is turning to learning machines and online education, which reduces costs, while wealthy families are paying higher fees for more customized and private educational services. The latter seems to be less related to the policy itself; there is always a supply when there is money.
One thing for certain is that over a decade ago, I explained in a column for the Southern Newspaper Group using economics that the pressure and competition level in education stem from the competitive pressure in the terminal labor market. Therefore, those so-called “human-centered education experts" who blindly call for adopting relaxed Western education methods are either foolishly unaware of the real world or intentionally pretending to be ignorant to deceive people for money.
Delving deeper, we can discuss the differences in intensity and quality between Western elite education and public education, and how the West relies on many artificially created monopolies to enjoy premium labor costs (e.g., patent and copyright systems). This topic is complicated and troublesome to discuss in detail. However, broadly speaking, the nearly 50-year catch-up by East Asian countries has inevitably led to a situation where the workforce in catching-up countries faces far greater intensity and pressure than those in so-called “advanced Western countries" who enjoy more monopolistic benefits. Thus, for a considerable time, we will see East Asian workers experiencing longer work hours and more pressure, yet seemingly having lower “nominal marginal productivity" compared to Western workers, which is a paradox that actual participants in the production line cannot discern.
Therefore, until per capita income levels out, the average work intensity/pressure in catching-up economies, along with the learning intensity/pressure passed down to all age groups, will remain relatively high. This level will be inversely proportional to the aforementioned difference in actual per capita income.
Hence, we see that Japan, which became wealthy earlier among the catching-up countries, is relatively early in adopting a laid-back attitude and experiencing phenomena such as the hikikomori (social withdrawal) culture in society.
(translated by ChatGPT)
元毓說 