What I particularly found fascinating was this article claiming that Canadian high school students are significantly worse off in math than the majority of new Chinese undergraduates. It's not a surprising development; I myself had several months of rigid adjustment in first year undergrad trying to move from my high school's flippant trivialization of calculus and over-reliance on calculators in algebra to the level where I could even marginally approach students who even came from other provinces, let alone third world countries.
What is wrong with this country's priorities? Education is the priority -- Quebec nationalism doesn't matter, terrorism doesn't matter, even the economy and health care don't matter in comparison. Why don't politicians understand this? Why do we continue to sit back and let the likes of Ralph Klein slash the public education system early and often, instead of farm aid, corrupt opium-addicted police in Kabul, secret Syrian torture dungeons and corporate tax breaks?
This country -- indeed, this entire continent -- is going to hell -- and it took the Chinese shaking off their Mao-induced retardation for us to realize it.
I should perhaps start looking at books on learning Cantonese.
