Thanks for the comments. Before answering your questions, I want to kindly point out that there is no “u” after “Q” in my name. ?

Now first, whether education needs competition, based on my understanding, depends on the approaches the educators are using. Including competition could be a way of engaging students (like the score and competing systems in gaming). If you are talking about competing for the education resources, I don’t think it’s appropriate to use the term “winner” or “loser” to represent the competing results. Competition in education resources is not something I want. It’s something that is already here and we need to think about the way to deal with it rather than ignore its existence. A further thought on competition in education resources will be talked in my last response.

For your second question, I don’t think that human’s learning capacity is determined at birth. I believe in hard work and that most skills and knowledge can be learned. Actually, I believe that is what can make our human society evolve to today’s civilization and the reason why I’m doing research and want to teach. And because human’s knowledge body can accumulate by the contribution from all the talented minds, I think when we promoting new ideas, we should have the idea in mind that the old fashions have their usage at certain conditions. It’s easy to propose something new without thinking about all the constraints the reality have. Ignoring the value of old-school methods would trash the exploration of the past generations.

Lastly, I do not believe I would be in the same place if anything changed. Actually, I do not even think I would be me if anything changed. Back to your first question about competition in education. I understand that the education resources are limited and my success, if there is any, strongly depends on the resources that I got. Also, I can see many people, including me, are still on their way to a better life because they could not get enough education resources earlier. Since education is so valuable, I must defend the standardized tests because they offer a relative fair approach for the under-represented groups. There were ten years when the college entrance exams were abandoned in China. During these years, only the ones who know someone could get the chance to go to colleges. When the elites are talking about how to widen their kids’ minds, someone far away is still struggling to get to figure out what are the colleges in this country and how to get the chance to get in.

With the limit of time (the class is coming), I can only mention these thoughts. Hope you like it.

The reason of being mindless in a class may be the students do not believe this class is important to him/her instead of being lazy. Some classes are required for a degree for some historical reason and the syllabus are outdated. Adjust the syllabus and it’s possible that the students can get more engaged.

I would eat one dessert because I do not need the second dessert.
With being mindful in one’s mind may not lead to that ultimate state of mindfulness. But I think you can get a better chance if you can keep the goal in your mind rather than go with the chance.

This is such a good example of being mindful (of learning the mindfulness) and applying the theory (of mindfulness) to the real world.

Sorry to hear that. A refined system should be able to capture the talented outliers. The individual enrollment + extra credits for extraordinarily talented students channel in China could be a reference to moderate the “lack of regulation.”

From my understanding of mindful learning, it should be about learning and learners themselves (i.e., being mindful instead of being in autopilot mode). However, I see many comments on the supporting education systems that how we should treat each student individually and it’s ok that they cannot do certain things. It seems that they want to teach the students to break the boxes even before they framed the boxes. The thoughts in this blog are trying to critique the comments from mindful learning (e.g., Langer, Ellen J. (2016): The power of mindful learning. Second edition. Boston, MA: Da Capo Lifelong Books (A Merloyd Lawrence book).). The thoughts here are also a reflection of the phase “evaluate” (on the topic of mindfulness) in Bloom’s Taxonomy.