Why countries should get out of PISA! - A Conversation with Dr. Yong Zhao

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

The key is for the next generation of education is diversity. Does a country value diversity? I don't know if a true education in the future has to be a national system because it's very likely if it's a national system, it's easier to centralize. Once you centralize, it's easier to standardize. That's the challenge, right?

Hi everyone. Thanks for joining me again. My name's Tim Logan and the podcast is brought to you in partnership with Notosh. This is Yong Zhao's second time on the podcast, and a lot has changed since 2020 when we last spoke. What hasn't changed at all is Yong's provocative whistle-stop style, challenging many of the sacred cows of the current education system. In this conversation, we chat about why the US should abandon PISA, why countries generally should stop comparing and borrowing from each other's education systems, and why diversity, localization, and personalization are Yong's keys to how the educational landscape needs to develop in the future. Yong is a Foundation Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas and a Professor in Educational Leadership at the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Hello, sir. I'm good. How are you?

Good, good. I'm here and everything's good.

Lovely to see you again. Is this your second time on the podcast tonight? It's been a little while and quite a lot has happened since we last spoke, I think nearly 4 years ago. So yes, thank you for joining firstly.

Thank you, Tim. Good to be back.

Awesome. Well, so let's start with you because I know that last year you published your memoirs, which I know you have a very interesting personal story. That's how it led you to your ideas about education. But one of the things that I thought was really interesting about your memoirs was how you've identified the way that context and the environment and even luck and chance events have come into that process to bring you to where you are today. So firstly, perhaps you could just reflect a little bit. What's that personal journey been for you and the role of chance and context?

Well, thanks, Tim Logan. I think the idea of luck has really struck me as something very important. I don't think in education, in psychology, we talk enough about luck. So that really struck me as to say, what is luck? Why are some people luckier than others? So, you know, I summarize my life It's interesting, but really I have had a lot of luck. So I think I'm really summarizing luck as that everybody is presented with a randomness of thousands of opportunities.

Yeah.

But whether you take advantage of that opportunity, that's luck. That is, you know, are you lucky enough to do that? You know, many people I'm sure read my books, but you, Tim Logan, said, I want to talk to this guy. And you email me, we're talking. Do you see that?

I do.

That's kind of opportunity becomes luck. And who knows through this what may happen next.

That's true.

I think our life, everybody is presented with a lot of opportunities, but do you do something about that opportunity has to do with your mindset, your ability, and your context. I think in my memoir really is about How can we as teachers, as educators, create an ecosystem where we can help our children to be luckier?

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because you've just— I'd love to ask you about your blog that you published yesterday about PISA. So that was on Diane Ravitch's blog. And the way she described you in that was really interesting because it talks about you. So I think the narrative of the rugged individualism of just you you know, you fought through all of these challenges and you, you know, you made good. And, you know, what does she say? Born in China to an impoverished family, he pursued his dreams, migrated to the United States, and has made his mark. And it's like sometimes I think in education there's this narrative that it's like it's all about the individual beating the odds. But actually I think it's really important to identify that, yeah, we've got these, these contexts. And maybe that's our role as educators, right, is to create these rich contexts in which the young people can then take advantage.

I, I absolutely— I, Tim, I think you got it absolutely right. I think education is about creating opportunities that supports a diversity of talents. I, I think education's biggest mistake over the last few decades in every country is we want to develop an effective and efficient system to force children to learn math and science and reading. And that's basically, you narrow the opportunities. Even developed countries like the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, England, these developed countries, they have resources to do a lot more to make their education much richer, more diverse. But no, they don't. They try to make their schools look like a school that can't afford anything. So you just have a few books to read. It's impoverishing our own environment. It's just stupid. It's just— I said this, how is it possible? We should really diversify, especially today. I think we are living in all this global conflicts, all this. We need human diversity, but the governments and schools try to homogenize people.

Yeah, and I've also heard you talk about fixing children, and I think there's that idea that you, you know, you're going to find all these things that these children are not so good at and then fix them into this one particular mold of all the ways that we've identified these children should be fixed. And so that idea—

you know, Tim, the powerful, the wealthier, the more authority people, they always like to say, you have a problem and I want to fix you so you can be like me, but you will never be me. So that's, you know, if you look at the whole structure, that's how we define as you. So I would define you, Tim, You don't have this ability, but I do. So you can be like me, but you'll be secondary to me. So that's basically the authority, do it, you know, this whole thing, you know, all kinds of testing, all kinds of school, all kinds of blue ribbon. We give you somehow a belief that you can be like me. The poor, the people with no power, the disadvantaged, can never get to define that. So they define it and they judge you. And unfortunately, teachers, a lot of teachers believe that. You can never do it, but we believe that. And yes, there will be a few poor people who passes through the test, get into the high, you know, Yale, Harvard or something, but that's very small. So the whole education was to perpetuate a social structure, but the poor people can never get out of their situation because they do not get to define what matters.

Yeah, no, I mean, absolutely. I think the inequality is built into the system, the structure of the system somehow, right? Exactly. Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah. And so, okay, let's talk about the blog that you published yesterday then, because I think part of what maintains that weaponized inequality is the ranking, these global ranking systems where we all compare each other to this supposed gold standard, and we're all trying to reach for this other thing. I mean, it's a completely damning blog post that you've written there about why the US should scrap PISA. So there we go. Lay out the case. Why should the US just not bother anymore?

Well, I was really writing a lot about PISA. I kind of forgot it still existed. So Diane said, hey, it's still here. Don't you want to write something about it? And I said, yeah, okay. I mean, really, if you Look at the US, actually I would say US, Australia, New Zealand, and all these developed countries. I don't know what they get out of the PISA test. Nothing. Over the past 20 years, you would have learned everything anyway, but the lessons they've learned doesn't really work. All education in these countries, even PISA scores have not improved. They've been in decline. I'm actually, you know, as I was joking about it, Finland was the best country education. But Finland's decline in test scores is the largest in all 3 subjects. And the high-performing countries are always East Asian countries. There's nothing you can learn. It's a fake test. It's a test that doesn't test anything other than what it tests. So it claims, you know, 21st century skills, 21st century ability. If PISA truly did that, we know, you know, those countries who took the test in 2000 be much better than other countries? You know, plus American students have always scored low since 1960s. They've never done well, but the country is still here. So it is a very strange thing. Another thing I think PISA is really doing bad damage to everybody. It, it has over 80 education systems and you compare, like I was joking in, in, in, in article. America has over 300 million people. You compare to Macau with 600,000 people, what are you trying to do, right? It's— so America is huge, occupied in oceans, Atlantic and Pacific, have Alaska, Hawaii, huge. But you try to compare with Singapore. So anyways, I think it's just, it's very nonsensical. And of course, you have a country like what, still can US the GDP per capita was over $70,000. You try to compare education with Albania, which the GDP per capita is like $6,000. You are 10 times. I said, why do you even do this? It doesn't make any sense. But anyway, just that's why I said all developed countries should have visa.

One of the things I also heard you talking about was I mean, you like to be provocative, I know. And just the fact that we are measuring numeracy and literacy as the standard by which we compare, you know, we, we use that as the proxy for everything else in terms of the way that the education system is developing. And just, you were challenging even that kind of basic notion, which I think would poll most people. They would say that that's a pretty basic and important thing and it's a good thing to do, so why wouldn't we? So lay out that case. Why, why is that not necessarily the thing we actually should be focusing on?

Well, there are several things. First of all, if you look at literacy and numeracy, definitely they're important, right? I mean, that's, you know, everybody say it's important, but when do you assess them? You know, like in the PISA test, we assess 15-year-olds. I mean, are you joking? Human beings are so diverse. Some live to live for 60 years old, some live over 100 years old, and you are saying 15 years, everybody should know this thing. That's just a joke. I mean, like, same thing with young kids. Like, every 7-year-old should be able to read this. Who says that? That's just— it's ironic, right? So if you have a standard to say, okay, let's say everybody should be able to read, maybe by age 10, by age 13, they may be able to reach there somehow, someday. You know, we have a lot of late bloomers in life. Why do you do that? Second thing is that How are these measures? You know, we always look at that in the US, for example. Oh, we got so many percentage of children are not proficient in reading. So are you saying Americans in the 21st century are less literate than those people in the 18th century? What does that mean? I mean, what is this test? The same thing with the— we're testing math abilities. Are you testing Algebra 2? Are you testing arithmetic? We don't know, but as soon as we have a number, we can go tell people, oh, America is no good. But we don't know what, what does that mean? You're like, you know, do we need algebra too? So we have not a clearly defined outcome. And how good are these measures? You know, these measures, that's the third point, get changed all the time. They are not necessarily good. They're always changed, but now we pretend to compare test in 2022, again, PISA, with the year 2000. I bet the PISA tests have changed so often, they're not even the same test. But why do you compare a test? And if you compare test scores, why don't you look at those students? Do they really mean anything from 2000? Those students should be right now about 40 years old. Why don't you go track them? So basically, I think we, we have a business that makes people think they're doing something useful, but it's not. It's not doing something useful. And, but we spend a lot of money, a lot of efforts on those things. It's crazy. But the other problem is educators. As soon as we have a number, we just believe the number. You know, you give the number, say, oh my God, it's what, that bad? We are not, but we, we just believe the number. It just, it doesn't mean, but we believe it, you know?

Yeah. It's a kind of a fake certainty, isn't it, that we kind of lean into to give us some benchmark. We love these kind of benchmarks or standards that we can compare ourselves against. And to your point earlier, people generally don't get to define what those things are. The people who define what those standards are somehow are elsewhere, get to define what success looks like. But that, I mean, that was the other thing I would love to talk to you about was one of your, it's actually from 2018, one of your papers about international borrowing. And I think PISA speaks to that, right? That idea that we start comparing, well, this country's doing really well and this country's struggling. And as you said, Finland's going down or whatever. And there's a lot of transnational kind of comparison going on of who's doing well and who's not. And I thought it was really interesting what you were saying in that paper about the fact that China, as a different political context from the US, for example, or European countries, effectively you've got the same paradigm of education happening, but manifesting itself quite differently because of the culture. And I think again, more over and over again, I hear you talking about diversity as the kind of, it's like the diversity is the emergent property of just different people in, in these different cultures. And they, that's what happens. These kind of diverse patterns emerge. And yet we then look to each other and say, well, they're more entrepreneurial than we are, or they're more high performing in maths. And, you know, in calculus or whatever it is, we need to be more like them. So the first question I suppose is, why is that international borrowing just kind of— why does it keep going? And how do we move away from that and start setting something different kind of pattern up?

I love this question, Tim. It's— first of all, if you go back about 2008, around that time, there are a lot of Westerners talking about China has carved out a new way for economical development, the new model, including, you know, Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat. Everybody was— so I had— took me a while to write a book called Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? Why China Has the Best and Worst Education in the World. I was basically making an argument to say all these people, they don't understand China and they pretend to know and want everybody to learn from China. Remember Shanghai used to be the country to go there? Yeah, in England took a lot of Shanghai math, math teachers.

Exactly.

Yeah. Right. So then at the same time, China is trying to learn from West and US mainly to say China wants to be more creative, innovative, all those, you know, all the, so basically the issue is this, right? Like right now it's very hard to find anybody praising China because China now is in conflict and everybody's saying China is a bad country. I mean, just people just change their mind, you know, I don't have comment for those pundits, but the real issue is this. We are at a very different time. That is, you look at technology and AI. None of the education system, PISA tracks, is gonna work for the future. None of those. We've been arguing for the 21st century skills for a long time. We are in a new age. Just look at ChatGPT, Gemini, and all those things. We are in a new world. Even 2018, I wrote the article. That was a different world already.

Yeah.

COVID, ChatGPT, artificial intelligence, generative intelligence, all is a new way. We need a different education, but in education, people are never able to be brave enough to say education needs to be different. We're still taking the 19th century Prussian education model. We still pretend you have to be in my class, you have to follow the national curriculum for national testing. Books are still only in my school. You know, like we pretend nothing's happening, but learning has escaped the classroom. Learning has escaped. Education may not. Our children learn way beyond our schools, but they pretend to come to school. So, so right now, no country can learn from others just to be successful in the 21st century. Who knows? Human beings may collapse. Our civilization may collapse in the 21st century. Because the smart people are not thinking beyond.

Yeah.

They're trying to replicate education from the past. So this is why when you asked me, I was talking any country can be leader in the future if they're brave enough to say, I'm done with the old education. There's no fixing. I cannot fix it. I'm gonna invent new education.

And you said in that article that you felt that China was in a, in a strong position to lead the development of this new and this next educational paradigm. So that was 6 years ago. As you say, a lot's happened between now and then. Do you still feel that about China?

I'm not sure now. I, I think it had, if you remember the article I wrote about it, it's, I mean, the key is for the next generation of education is diversity.

Yeah.

Does a country value diversity? That's the key. You know, do you value that diversity means you are different, but difference does not mean you are worse than others.

Yeah.

I think education right now, the current education has always used math and reading to judge people, judge young kids coming. If you are good at math, you're a good kid, you're good school, but that doesn't really mean anything. You know, you know, some people maybe, maybe not so good in math, but they're really good in something else. So this diversity is key. I don't know how China is going to move in terms of diversity. And of course, China has another power that is, is a national system. But I don't know if a true education in the future has to be a national system because it's very likely if it's a national system, it's easier to centralize. Once you centralize, it's easier to standardize. That's the challenge, right? But the key, I think, lies who is willing to support diversity of talents and also who is willing to be able to take the development of diversity of talents outside the classroom. That's another thing. I think those are key.

Yeah. And I mean, they're, I think they're just such important questions because as you say, it takes real courage to do that because one of the things about the standardized centralized urge is control, right?

Yeah.

And control and to maintain the sense that every young person, I'm sitting here in France, right? I live in France and you know, the centralized control over public education here is so strong because everybody has a right to that same provision, where whatever background you're from. And so there's, you know, this important equality aspect built into there, but it ultimately, it requires and demands that control, centralized control. So I suppose the question for me is where does the diversity develop up from? Is it coming from very local communities? Like what, where, how do you see that diversity kind of, it's almost like flowering up in the different places that around across China or across whatever, wherever you are, what are the things that are driving that diversity?

Well, I think it's, I'm really trying to rely on communities and culture. I know France is a good example.

Yeah.

I'm hoping you got enough individuals like you or young people would say, okay, I am trying this because the resources there. If you get on ChatGPT or Gemini, the resources there. If you wanna learn online, you can. If you wanna connect with other people, you can. I just hope that will drive the change. Change drives from people. Well, actually, France is a good example. You got to think about your French Revolution. Think of all the history of, you know, it's the people that really ultimately matter. But at the same time, are there enough oppressors? So if schools and school teachers, if we cannot support our children, perhaps at least we can try to retreat. From oppressing them. So you may have governments, I don't know how good the French government is, you may have governments who really control schools by testing, by curriculum, by forcing teachers to do certain things that they will lose in the long run. But you may have governments who take a laissez-faire approach to say, ah, you know, it's no big deal. Maybe you have, I don't know about your, the parents in France, maybe they don't really care about test scores. So you are relaxed. Do you see what I mean? You have a relaxed, so that is some The emergence of diversity, the harder the government works in education, the worse it will be. Because no government will lead the true change that what, you know, we need in education.

Yeah. And what you're saying there about oppressing, I think is really interesting because given the increased uncertainty that we're facing, right? You know, with the climate emergency, with Ukraine, with Gaza, with, you know, the more and more conflict around the world. There's a sense of even more uncertainty that everybody's facing. And in the face of that, politics often will move towards the authoritarian, right? So there will actually be more oppression, more control rather than less.

Yeah. Well, that's how human beings collapse themselves. So human beings kill themselves. I don't really have a lot of hope for human beings. You know, like exactly what you said, you know, the more uncertain we are, the more certain we want to be. Right? So who is the big certain? The conservative dictator who promised to do it. That's why our dictators arrive. You know, we want to, the, the God from machines. So let's control this. You promise, you say all this. That's how conservative rises, right? Is it, oh, we're going to close borders, no immigration. They don't solve problems. They basically promise they will just shut down people, which is just complete. Another thing, of course, is purify. Our race is the best. It's the same history, but that's not going to solve our problem.

No, absolutely. But I think actually for one moment, I'm going to disagree with you because I think that you actually have a much more hopeful vision of what human beings are because I've heard you a lot, right? I've read a lot of your work and often you come back to love and trust and care and these core parts of what human beings are. I'm not sure I'm not sure you've completely given up on us yet, Yong.

I think you're right. You know what, I was hoping COVID would make human beings loving each other more. I was really hoping that, but unfortunately, the beginning of that started that culture and race war. You noticed that, right? That was really unfortunate. Any big disease, no matter what, we should be more caring, right? It's That was sad. I never thought Putin would invade Ukraine. I mean, like, for what purpose? In the 21st century, I still don't get it, right? I never expected Hamas and Israel would still get into deadly war with each other. I mean, just, it's, I'm still seeking, Tim, the reason for any of those. I'm just saying, why are we spending in the 21st century more money building weapons to kill each other? Than to help each other. You know, if we spend any of the money, you know, one missile, it costs millions of dollars. Why do we do that? And why did the richer get a lot more richer during COVID than the poor get a lot poorer? So I'm just really trying to say, where are the heroic leaders? Education has to be responsible, right? We produce these people. I mean, like, how come right now we do not have great politicians to lead human beings into a better future? Anyway, that's just— I'm not giving up on us, but no, we need to do something about it, right?

I hear you. No, I do hear you, but I, I think there's an interesting move there, isn't there, about the fact that education always has a role to play, whether it's for good or for ill. You know, it's like we're not teaching enough of these positive qualities, or, you know, it's, it's always that we reach to education to kind of solve the social problems. And I think personally, I think there's a really interesting problem with that move, because I think education itself has an integrity that is valuable in and of itself, right? Learning together, being in community, and that whole learning process just has value in and of itself as part of being human and understanding the world. Not only as a way to serve the labor market or to serve positive qualities to a better tomorrow that the government has decided, right?

I think we need to really develop very healthy kind of mindset about government, about authority, about leadership. I mean, it is the time that technically all of us have thoughts, we can express our thought, we can influence others, and technically we can all do that. And how do we do that? I think that matters. So I think in education Learning itself should be fun. Learning, I mean fun, I mean interesting. It just really boggles your mind to think, to think big. At the same time, working with students, with teachers, it's supposed to be a human community. So I guess when I was depressed, I kept thinking about human beings should be smarter than we are, than the behaviors. If you look right now, the world really looks, nationalism is on the rise. Why, why do you, I'm just, it's very strange. I'm just, I just, I don't get it. And why do you have this kind of things, you know? You know, another thing I was just, I was really unhappy about is, is all the sports teams. I mean, China as a country, 1.4 billion people, kept losing its soccer game. I said, who cares? I mean, it's like in all the Olympic Games, you have a country like have 500 people and you are, let's say Iceland, you're trying to beat. But anyway, so we kept up with using those nonsensical things to do it. It's the same as pizza. But anyway. So I'm just really rambling about this kind of idea. So what are we doing, human beings? Tim, I hope, you know, what you can do is to help really schools think more about humanity.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's something there about the obsession with comparison, right? And the competition between. And actually, how do we avoid that dynamic when it's everywhere? It's in the sports and it's in everything. But I think it is really important. And I think How do we create the spaces where that is not the dynamic, right? Because we're surrounded by that. But actually, like, for example, the idea of, you know, building spaces within your school, like, you know, micro schools or schools within schools where you can actually create spaces that just have a different dynamic, right? It's not that, you know, everybody's doing it, so we just jump in and everybody carries on with the same dynamic. You know, it is possible to influence. It may be small and local, but create that small space where there's a different dynamic is a really important move, I think.

Well, you, you've— that captures the idea very well. I've been working with many schools in different countries— China, Australia, US— in, for example, in building school within a school, building programs within the program. And now I'm just working with a new center I just helped establish called the Center for Reimagining Education at University of Kansas. We're trying to meet with schools just to change schools with ideas from the schools. So like, you know, I give bigger context, but whenever you go to school, you work with school, you know, Tim Logan, I would say, what would you like to do? What would you like to change? And we work with them, but we do not try to impose the change on everybody because I think imposing change on everybody is huge mistake. I mean, you don't want to force changes, you want to invite changes. So that's where I think the, the future can be. Every teacher can change, every student can change, every school can change. It depends on how far you go. I think change starts with ourselves. What can we do to make the change?

But, but it, that's an interesting dynamic, isn't it? Because then if you impose the change, then you are just swapping out one for the other. You're not really taking diversity and pluralism seriously. You're actually just saying We didn't like that model. Let's impose a new model because this one's better and let's make everybody do this. It's like, no, if you really take diversity seriously, that means really connecting with the idea of pluralism and some of the things in that pluralistic landscape you may not like. It may be completely the opposite of what your educational values and model is. But if you take diversity and pluralism seriously, you've got to do that.

Absolutely. So Tim Logan, my last word, you know, I want to say is that, like, for example, the conservatives in education policy I wouldn't mind if they existed, but what I mind is they use our taxpayers' dollars to impose on all of us. That's the problem. That's exactly what you say. I mean, if you want to do that yourself, I don't really mind, but you're using our money to impose on us what we think is wrong. That's the imposition, right? Absolutely. I got it wrong, sir.

Thank you. No, thank you so much. Thank you so much. So lovely to see you again. And yeah, no, thank you for all the amazing work you do.

Thank you. You take care.

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