Misaligned Minds

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Full citations for all publications cited in Misaligned Minds appear in the References at misalignedminds.info/References.

  1. Ethnology is based on two Greek words: ethnos, nation, and logos, reason or discourse. Ethnologists use the research findings of anthropologists to compare parallel features of contrasting societies, paying particular attention to societal norms, values, habits of thought, and patterns of behavior. Don’t confuse ethnology with ethnography (participant observation), the principal research method of anthropologists. An even greater source of confusion is ethology, the study of the behavior of non-human animals.

  2. Forty-seven stories are found in Craig Ott’s Teaching and Learning Across Cultures: A Guide to Theory and Practice (2021). Craig Storti’s Cross-Cultural Dialogues (2017) includes seventy-four stories, but only some of them occur in educational settings. Storti makes no claim that his stories are derived from documented real-life events.

  3. I used phrases including “ethnology” to carry out searches on the websites of Barnes & Noble and Amazon (books). The most relevant book suggested was Transformative Ethnic Studies in Schools: Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Research. Others suggested included The Big Book of Texas Ghost Stories; Myopia: Causes, Prevention, and Treatment; and Psychology Tricks to Help You Become Successful.

  4. By “readily available research,” I refer to the fact that a veritably bottomless supply of research findings in all fields found in literally hundreds of academic and professional journals is available at scholar.google.com. A parallel source for books of all kinds is books.google.com. As someone who completed his doctoral dissertation largely by spending countless hours in libraries and their stacks (this was during the late 1970s), I can testify that finding source material has never been easier. In fact, it’s rare for me to need to leave my desk to acquire any type of source material. Be aware, however, a cost is usually involved.

  5. Few, if any, individuals of Asian descent appeared in the U.S. Southwest until, perhaps, the gold rush of 1849. Beginning around 1864, many more came to participate in the building of the transcontinental railroads. I am confident that any Asians who did appear would not have been referred to as “Anglo.”

  6. WEIRD was introduced to the social scientific world by a 2010 journal article, Henrich et al. Its goal was to draw attention to the fact that scholars routinely publish broad characterizations about “human” psychology and behavior based almost totally on research carried out among people living in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies. Actually, it’s worse: An unbelievably high proportion of social scientific research has been carried out on undergraduates at U.S. universities! So virtually all existing research should be regarded as little more than an ethnography of twentiety-century Westerners. The lead author of the 2010 journal article, Joseph Henrich of Harvard University, went on to write an award-winning scholarly book published in 2020 entitled The WEIRDest People in the World.

  7. TIMSS stands for Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study; information about TIMSS is available at https://nces.ed.gov/timss and other websites. PISA stands for Programme in International Student Assessment; information about PISA as available at https://oecd.org/en/about/programmes/pisa.html as well as other websites. On Wikipedia one can find easy-to-read PISA league tables going back to 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment.

  8. Participating nations included eight from Western Europe plus the U.S., Israel, Australia, and Japan. FIMS was a complex test. Test-takers’ scores and other data were analyzed in myriad ways, so that finding a straightforward reporting of comparative scores is virtually impossible. I based this paragraph on Komatsu & Rappleye, 802, as well as on a table of FIMS scores I located at https://familystudycompanion.com/wp-content/uploads/1964-1st-International-Math-Study-IEA-of-12-Countries.pdf.

  9. Here is a sampling of data taken from https://nces.ed.gov of how recent average mathematics proficiency scores of American students compare with the scores of their peers in East Asia and Singapore:

    On the 2019 TIMSS exam for 4th graders: U.S. 535, Singapore 625, Hong Kong (China) 602, Korea 600, Taiwan 599, Japan 593.

    On the 2019 TIMSS exam for 8th graders: U.S. 515, Singapore 616, Hong Kong (China) 578, Korea 607, Taiwan 612, Japan 594.

    On the 2018 PISA exam for 15-year-olds: U.S. 478, Singapore 569, Beijing at al. (China) 591, Korea 526, Taiwan 531, Japan 527.

    On the 2022 PISA exam for 15-year-olds: U.S. 465, Singapore 575, Hong Kong (China) 540, Korea 527, Taiwan 547, Japan 536.

  10. This is my estimate. I am not aware that anyone has actually tried to count all the resulting publications, to which new ones are still being added.

  11. Ripley, 19–24; edited excerpts; italics added. Note that the numerical value of π [pi: 3.14159] was supplied; test-takers were not expected to have memorized it.

  12. Ripley, 23–24; excerpts. Ripley’s research included interviewing the director of the Programme in International Student Assessment organization, Andreas Schleicher. See Ripley’s first chapter.

  13. The Dow-Jones indexes 30 stocks, the S&P indexes 500, and the Nasdaq indexes over 3000.

Chapter 1 of Misaligned Minds, together with all its endnotes, appears on this website at misalignedminds.info/ch1

Full citations for all publications cited in Misaligned Minds appear in the References at misalignedminds.info/References.

  1. Here’s a short passage that, for me, captures the essential meaning of “The West”:

    By the end of the twentieth century, the idea of “The West” as European civilization minus Russia plus British (and, arguably, Iberian) settler colonies had become well established. Most people agreed that it had grown out of classical antiquity and Latin Christianity, owed something to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and perhaps the Enlightenment, and stood for some version of liberalism. The opposite of “the West” was “the East” (including most of Eastern Europe) and the rest of the world not settled by Western Europeans. Slezkine, 52.

  2. I am borrowing the term “World Majority” from Helen Fox, author of Listening to the World (1994).
  3. For the section on Confucian philosophy, I relied on (a) Reagan, Chapter 5; (b) Kee; (c) notes that I received during 2016, while I was researching The Drive to Learn, from my private editor, Kay M. Jones, who is a multilingual specialist on Chinese and Japanese cultures; and (d) my research for A Mirror for Americans.
  4. Confucius. Book XIV, 27.
  5. Confucius. Book II, 1.
  6. For the section on the Dharmic philosophies, I relied on (a) Reagan, Chapter 6; (b) Thaker; (c) Shih; and (d) my research for Chapter 6 of How Other Children Learn, about traditional Hindu child socialization.
  7. One witty scholar summarized the process toward enlightenment by means of meditation as, “Don’t just do something, stand there.” Lowe et al., 309; in turn, they cite Siddiqui, 59.
  8. For the section on Islamic philosophy, I relied on (a) Reagan, Chapter 4; (b) Kamis & Muhammat, especially page 30; and (c) my research for Chapter 5 of How Other Children Learn, which discusses traditional child socialization among the village Arabs of the Levant. Thank you to my Muslim friend and colleague, Jo Ann Ross, for reviewing a draft of this section, and for putting me in touch with Amany Shalaby, a faculty member of the University of Sufism, who also reviewed a draft of this section. Thank you as well to my private editor, Kay M. Jones, who put me in touch with Lynn Witham, an interculturalist who has lived and worked for many years in the predominantly Muslim countries of Iran and Malaysia.
  9. In terms of our familiar Gregorian calendar, Ramadan (a 30-day span of fasting, community prayer, and reflection) shifts among a variety of dates during the first half of the year. Sometimes it begins as early as February; sometimes it ends as late as May.
  10. Qur’an, 20:114
  11. Attributed to Jāmi’ Bayān al-‘Ilm 423, available at: abuaminaelias.com/forty-hadith-on-knowledge, which was suggested to me by Amany Shalaby.
  12. Attributed to Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 74, available at: islamawareness.net/Knowledge/knowledge_article0001.html, which was suggested to me by Lynn Witham.
  13. Attributed to “the traditions of the Prophet,” available at: islamicity.org/6580/the-pleasures-of-seeking-knowledge.
  14. See the lengthy historical discussion about disputations at: encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/disputation.
  15. Grove (2013), 22.
  16. Kamis & Muhammad, 30.
  17. For the section on Native American tradition, I relied on (a) Reagan, Chapter 7; (b) Allen; and (c) my research for Chapter 4 of How Other Children Learn, which discusses traditional child socialization among the Navajo people of the U.S. Southwest.
  18. Allen, 42.
  19. The term LOPI was devised by Barbara Rogoff and her collaborators. Visit people.ucsc.edu/~brogoff. See also David F. Lancy (2024), Learning Without Lessons: Pedagogy in Indigenous Communities.
  20. For the section on indigenous African tradition, I relied on (a) Reagan, Chapter 3; (b) Ntseane; and (c) my research for Chapter 2 of How Other Children Learn, which discusses traditional child socialization among the Aka hunter-gatherers of Central Africa.
  21. Lancy (2024), 83–87, rearranged and lightly edited excerpts.
  22. The indigenous African society that I studied and wrote about in How Other Children Learn, the Aka, were an exception to this generalization. If it suited a youngster, he could pretty much ignore his parents.
  23. Lancy (2022b).
  24. For this section on indigenous Māori tradition, I relied on Reagan, Chapter 10; Findsen & Tamarua; Rameka; Kiro; Calman; and Opai.
  25. Joyce, xii, 22–23, shortened and edited. Joyce credits the ideas in the second paragraph to Alexander Chayanov, a Russian whose major work was Peasant Farm Organization (1925) but offers no specific citation.
  26. Cole et al., 46. The local schoolboy was a native Kpelle who spoke just enough English to interpret in ordinary daily situations. He told the anthropologist that the old man was speaking “deep Kpelle,” in other words, making extensive use of proverbs. As a young person, the schoolboy had not lived in his own society nearly long enough to recognize and gain fluency in the full range of Kpelle proverbs.
  27. Li, J. (2024), 141.
  28. Based in part on Reagan, 349.

Full citations for all publications cited in Misaligned Minds appear in the References at misalignedminds.info/References.

  1. The sociologist was Ferdinand Tönnies, and his 1887 book was Community and Society, originally published in German. English versions are still in print. Tönnies used German terms to name the two types of society. Gemeinschaft designated the small-scale neighborhood-based community. Gesellschaft designated the large-scale competitive market society.

  2. See, for example, Roland, 484, who attributes this conclusion to cross-cultural psychologists. Note, however, that economic and cultural historians increasingly are united in seeing the individualism–communitarianism divide as the fundamental behavior difference in human affairs. See, for example, the recent books by Greif, Mokyr, & Tabellini, and Henrich.

  3. Although I have been thinking and writing about individualism and communitarianism for decades, for this discussion I also drew on ideas in Al-Issa (2005), 152–53; Edwards, et al., 147–49, 151; and Keller & Lamm, 238–39. I also have two recommendations: Turner & Musick, especially Chapter 6, Problems of Education; and Gernhardt et al., especially the review of Western traditional research, 204–05.

  4. The idea for posing the “who-are-you?” question came from Henrich, 24.

  5. Some of the ideas in Box 1 are informed by Li, J. (2024), 4–8.

  6. Welch. The name of the survey instrument was “Values Bridge.” Professor Welch notes that a crucial feature of this research, unlike many other values surveys, was that the Values Bridge did not allow respondents to endorse multiple top values, requiring instead a clear ranking.

  7. Li, J. (2024), 185–93.

  8. Social scientists have customarily used the terms collectivist and collectivism to represent the same combination of values and norms that I am calling communitarian (which is not my original term). I avoid using collectivist because, during the Cold War, it became strongly associated with Communism and far left politics. The term communitarian has the advantage of being rooted in the word community and, for most readers, avoids leftist political associations.

    The term communitarian also was the name of a movement founded by the Israeli-American sociologist, Amitai Etzioni (1929–2024). He believed that people’s identity is derived from their place in a community, and that individuals have not merely rights but also obligations to family and country.

  9. My private editor, Kay M. Jones, an East Asian specialist (fluent in Mandarin and Japanese), reminds me that some communitarian folks admit privately that they chafe under their many on-going obligations toward the other members of their extended families. In our modern world, it’s possible to effortlessly acquire information about individualistic lifestyles; some communitarians find such lifestyles very attractive.

  10. Some of the ideas in Box 2 are informed by Li, J. (2024), 8–11, 14, 37–45, 142.

  11. Heath, 59–60; shortened, light editing.

  12. The norm of arranged marriages might be weakening as young people in communitarian societies become aware of the undeniable attractions of marrying someone whom you feel you cannot live without.

  13. The decline of arranged marriages is Europe has been attributed to the policies and practices of the Roman Catholic Church during the second millennium (1000–2000). For detailed explanations, see Chapter 5 of Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World and/or Greif, Mokyr, & Tabellini’s Two Paths to Prosperity, 10, 40, 58, 66, 73, 96, 99, 101, 103.

  14. Tocqueville, 560, slightly shortened.

  15. Greif, Mokyr, & Tabellini, 6, 70n1, 73, 77, 95–96.

  16. Enke, 136.

  17. For example, people in some cultures chew food with their mouth open, which generally is regarded as a social faux pas here in the U.S. If you see any new immigrant student doing that, take them aside and encourage them to adopt closed-mouth chewing while in the company of Americans.

  18. For example, an in-group member who accepts a promotion might find that the others in her group no longer respond to lunch-date invitations and no longer invite her to join their activities.

  19. This brief account of education reform in China is based on Tan, 241–42.

  20. For details and extensive bibliographies, consult Guthrie, G.

  21. The language of this first bullet point is guided by that of Tan et al., 310–13.

  22. The language of this second bullet point is guided by the revealing 2018 book by Gerard Guthrie, Classroom Change in Developing Countries. Guthrie documents and explains the failures of imported progressivism. In his chapter on China, he concludes that, “The evidence is that the effect of progressive policy elements has actually been to upgrade the level of formalism [traditional pedagogical approaches] rather than to adopt a progressive teaching style” (p. 97). For more detail, read my overview of Guthrie’s book at misalignedminds.info/Resources. With respect to the high-stakes exams, see the 2025 book by Ruixue Jia & Hongbin Li, The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China.

Chapter 4 of Misaligned Minds, together with all its endnotes, appears on this website at misalignedminds.info/ch4

Full citations for all publications cited in Misaligned Minds appear in the References at misalignedminds.info/References.

  1. In dividing U.S. history into these eras, I have been guided by Abramovitz.

  2. Collins, 11–12, 51.

  3. Bloch, 71.

  4. Moore, B., 12.

  5. Brady, n.p.

  6. Russell, n.p.; Bloch, 72.

  7. Alexander, 109.

  8. The “three Rs” is a traditional reference to the teaching of basic reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic.

  9. Jeynes, 38–43, 47–48.

  10. Moore, B., 36.

  11. Sigourney, 22, 26, 40.

  12. Bushnell, 167.

  13. ‘Errors of education’ (August 1850), 296; this article was not attributed to an author.

  14. Siogvolk, 489–90.

  15. Gallaudet, n.p.; as paraphrased by Wishy, 30.

  16. Mann, n.p.; as paraphrased by Wishy, 70-72.

  17. Alexander, 110.

  18. Cubberley, 167. Historians portray Horace Mann as advocating tax-supported schools that would educate children of all religious, social, and ethnic backgrounds. It is not known to me whether, in any of the early Mann-inspired schools, the children of free Blacks were welcomed or unwelcome.

  19. Jeynes, 146, 152.

  20. This entire section on Romantic Influences is based on my 2013 book, The Aptitude Myth, which discusses virtually every topic in this section in considerably more depth and detail.

  21. The Common Era – CE, also known as the Christian Era – is the time span formerly referred to as AD, Anno Domini, “in the year of our Lord.”

  22. Aristotle, Physics, Book II, chapter 8 (near end of 199a); chapter 8 (199b); and chapter 9 (end 200a, beginning 200b). In my 2013 book, The Aptitude Myth, the ideas of Plato and Aristotle are discussed in significantly more detail, and short passages from each one’s writings are quoted; see pages 14–17.

  23. The first sentence of Émile, or On Education, is often quoted. A typical translation reads, “Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.”

  24. “Palms” here means “a symbol of triumph.” You might have seen paintings or statues in which the winners of bygone athletic contests had leaves – palms – placed around their heads.

  25. Reese, 9. Reese cites Thoreau, 154; and, for Whitman, Murphy, “An Old Man’s Thought of School,” 416–19. For the full text of Whitman’s address at the inauguration of the school, see https://whitmanarchive.org/item/ppp.00707_00930.

  26. Karier, 223.

  27. Connell, 146-47, italics added.

  28. I first learned that Rousseau abandoned his children in Leo Damrosch’s Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius. More recently, I encountered this fact in Neil Postman’s The Disappearance of Childhood, 56.

  29. During the late 1500s, the Jesuits published a how-to manual for teachers called Ratio Atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis Jesu, usually shortened to Ratio Studiorum. It set forth an instructional approach that made use of lectures, dictations, disputations and debates, exercises, dramas including both tragedies and comedies, examinations, and demonstrations of public approval for the most accomplished learners. The Jesuits also had guidelines for student motivation, classroom presentation, assessment, punishment, practice, and the general treatment of learners. They made use of emulation and rivalry. They even planned for physical education and periods of relaxation; it’s said that the good fathers tolerated the young men’s pub visits and the occasional resulting disturbances. Grove (2013), 22–23.

  30. For this section covering the Civil War to World War One, I relied on my research findings for Part II of The Aptitude Myth (2013) as well as Abramovitz, 43–46; Reese, 1–24; Cremin (1960), 133–40; Cuban, chapter 1; Semel et al., 373–98; and Karier, 220–57.

  31. Wertheimer, n.p.

  32. Mintz & Kellogg, 88–104. They cite multiple sources for their comprehensive account of this period.

  33. Mintz & Kellogg, 94.

  34. Butts & Cremin, 308, Table 4; their source is not cited.

  35. Spring, 171; Spring credits Tyack, 230. The percentages had been determined by a Senate Immigration Commission.

  36. Cremin (1961), 4-5.

  37. Egan, 48.

  38. If Darwin were judged according to values held by many Americans today, he would be considered a racist. The complete title of his paradigm-shifting 1859 book is On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of the Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. In that book and another published in 1871, Descent of Man, Darwin stated his belief that whites were the superior race and that Black African tribes would eventually become extinct because they were inferior. These facts were forcefully brought to the public’s attention by Stephen Jay Gould during 1981 in The Mismeasure of Man. Jeynes, 254–55.

  39. The final twenty pages of Spencer’s Education comprise an eloquent plea for adults to not subject young people to mental overstrain due to study. Consider these sentences from the beginning of a long paragraph about girls:

    On women the effects of this forcing system are, if possible, even more injurious than on men. Being in great measure debarred from those vigorous and enjoyable exercises of body by which boys mitigate the evils of excessive study, girls feel these evils in their full intensity. Hence, the much smaller proportion of them who grow up well-made and healthy. In the pale, angular, flat-chested young ladies, so abundant in London drawing-rooms, we see the effect of merciless application, unrelieved by youthful sports. Mammas anxious to make their daughters attractive, could scarcely choose a course more fatal than this, which sacrifices the body to the mind. Spencer, 226.

  40. Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical. This small, 230-page book can be purchased at https://barnesandnoble.com/w/education-herbert-spencer/1100013440.

  41. Cuban, 38.

  42. The woman was Margaret Naumburg, founder of the Walden School.

  43. For details about individual private progressive schools, see Semel et al., 373–98; discussed are City and Country, the Dalton School, the Highlander Folk School, the Weekday School at Riverside Church, and the Laboratory School at the Institute of Child Study, among others.

  44. Naumburg, 121.

  45. The NEA’s Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education is considered by many to be a major inflection point for U.S. education. The seven principles were health; command of fundamental processes; worthy home-membership; vocation; citizenship; worthy use of leisure, and ethical character. For information about the trends and debates that led up to the Cardinal Principles, see chapter 14 of The Aptitude Myth.

  46. Cuban, 142–43.

  47. Cuban, 113; shortened. When Chapter 5 was read in draft by two of my friends who are classroom teachers, both responded to this quote. The secondary teacher wrote, “Still apt today.” The elementary teacher wrote, “Same struggle as today’s teachers. We are told to have our students ‘discover’ what we want them to learn through open-ended questions and group projects (which I am fully a fan of), but then we are held accountable by our students’ New York State Regents Examination scores.”

  48. Apparently, Soviet scientists were adept at reading French and German and were able to benefit from many technical papers written in those languages. Few U.S. scientists could read any language other than English.

  49. At my high school in Chattanooga, TN, after Sputnik 1, all outstanding students were assumed to be headed for careers in science and technology. In my senior year, I applied to M.I.T., Johns Hopkins, Rice, and the California Institute of Technology – that’s right, only four. Accepted at the first three, I chose Johns Hopkins. I did not pursue a career in science or technology.

  50. Abramovitz, 45–46.

  51. “Latch-key kids” designates children who return to an empty home after school and use a housekey, often hung around their necks on a lanyard, to open the door. The term is thought to have originated during World War Two when, for many families, the father was serving in the Armed Forces and the mother was working outside the home.

  52. The quintessential statement about the decline of communitarianism in the United States is Robert D. Putnam’s Bowling Alone, published in 2000. In July 2024, Putnam was interviewed for a news magazine article. He is quoted as observing, “What I wrote in Bowling Alone is even more relevant now. What we’ve seen over the last 25 years is a deepening and intensifying of that trend. Social isolation leads to lots of bad things. It’s bad for your health, but it’s really bad for the country because people who are isolated, and especially young men, are vulnerable to the appeals of some false community.” Garcia-Navarro, 12.

  53. For this portion of the section covering 1940–1970, I relied on Cuban, 153, 198–99; Jeynes, 260–65; Yturri, 2–4; and Conner & Bohan, n.p.

  54. Goodlad & Klein, 78–79, 81.

  55. This subsection is based on Watkins, 1, 13–19, 21–22, 27–29, 34–38, 44–45, 48–49, 55, 58, 60–61, 63. (Her 1997 publication, Project Follow Through, is still available on Amazon.) Watkins notes that her research was greatly aided by Elmore’s Harvard Ph.D. dissertation.

  56. The term “Direct Instruction” has survived Project Follow Through as the name of didactic or instructivist approach to instruction. Developed by Siegfried Engelmann (1931–2019), a professor of education at the University of Oregon, the term often is written with initial capitals because it originally was Engelmann’s intellectual property.

  57. Operant conditioning is a learning process where the subject’s voluntary behavior is modified by association with a reward or punishment. Desired behavior is rewarded or “reinforced,” leading to the subject’s repeating such behavior more and more often. Undesirable behavior is punished or discouraged somehow, leading to the subject’s repeating such behavior less and less often.

  58. Small tokens were awarded for correct responses and could be exchanged later for desirable objects or activities; this is a type of operant conditioning.

  59. Abt Associates eventually published a four-volume report: Stebbins et al.

  60. Rote memorization was explicitly denounced in the materials used with the Direct Instruction model.

  61. The three additional evaluations were House et al.; Bereiter & Kurland; and Kennedy.

  62. Watkins, 55; she cites Benjamin, R., 91, slightly edited. Quote attributed to Mary Kennedy.

  63. Wirtz & Advisory Panel.

  64. Wirtz & Advisory Panel, 34–35.

  65. Wirtz & Advisory Panel, 48, 35.

  66. Some of the statistics to which I have alluded became available after the College Board’s report (Wirtz & Advisory Panel) and substantiate its findings. Examples include the following: The percentage of parents who believed schools “were too lax” jumped from 39 percent in 1969 to 84 percent in 1978 (Roper Poll). People of color were more likely than whites to regard schools as “not strict enough” (Gallup Poll). The juvenile crime rate doubled from 1963 to 1980 (U.S. Department of Justice, 1983). Between 1963 and 1988, teenage pregnancy rose 553 percent (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1998). Jeynes, 369. My final quote from the Board’s report was edited; the exact quote referred to “the character of a period …, which has been an unusually hard one to grow up in.” Wirtz & Advisory Panel, 43.

  67. National Commission on Excellence in Education, opening sentence.

  68. Jeynes, 351–52, 367–69, 406–08; Cuban, 229–31. See also Reagan & Bennett, and Harman.

  69. Kamenetz, n.p. The education professor was James W. Guthrie; see Guthrie & Springer.

  70. Cuban, 265; shortened.

  71. Cuban, 264.

  72. Critics – and there were many – objected that the No Child Left Behind Act “punished” individual schools found to be underperforming (via standardized tests administered to its students) and required specific remedial measures to be carried out. If improvement was not forthcoming after several years, the school could be taken over or closed. Education policy expert Jack Jennings, looking back during 2024, observed that, “NCLB’s drafters placed on educators’ shoulders the full responsibility to raise student test scores and used penalties as the means to prod them.” Jennings, 28, 30.

  73. When he released the 2022 scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said the results constituted “an urgent call to action.” “Let’s be very clear here,” he continued. “The data prior to the pandemic did not reflect an education system that was on the right track.” Jennings, 30, italics added.

Full citations for all publications cited in Misaligned Minds appear in the References at misalignedminds.info/References.

  1. I’m aware that progressive educational thought has penetrated far beyond the boundaries of the United States. In most of the developing countries where a progressive classroom approach has been introduced, it has been met by pushback, not crowned with success. For an incisive, data-driven discussion of these matters, see Guthrie, G.

  2. The term “knowledge-focused” or “-centered” is rarely encountered. It does appear in a publication of the National Academy of Sciences, How Children Learn, which concerns teaching in the lower grades. In that book, knowledge-centered means “what is to be taught, why it is taught, and what mastery looks like.” Also, it’s one of four “lenses to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching and learning environments”: knowledge-centered, learner-centered, assessment-centered, and community-centered. National Research Council, (2004), 12–13.

  3. Grove (2006). My entire conference paper may be read by switching the Author page of this website and clicking on the conference paper’s title, which is “Understanding Instructional Style Prototypes.”

  4. “Culturally Responsive Pedagogy” in Encyclopedia of Intercultural Competence, published by Sage; Grove (2015). “Pedagogy Across Cultures,” International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication, published by Wiley-Blackwell; Grove (2017b). The latter encyclopedia entry may be read by switching the Author page of this website and clicking on the encyclopedia entry’s title, “Pedagogy across Cultures.”

  5. In spelling baseball, a simple baseball diamond is set up in the classroom and two teams are selected. Each “pitch” by the teacher is a word to be spelled. Correctly spelling an easy word gets the player to first base, a slightly more difficult word gets the player to second base, and so forth. Players who are “at bat” and can’t spell the word they’re “pitched” in three tries are “out.”

  6. Saying “thank you” to someone implies that he or she voluntarily did something helpful to you, i.e., that they were free to not do it. This sentiment is appropriate for people in a relationship governed by individualistic values. But when people are in a communitarian relationship (such as members of a close-knit family), activities that help and support each other are what they automatically do; it is who they are. They are not free to not do those things. “Thank you” is pointless – and potentially insulting because it implies that the other person is not an in-group member. Some authorities note that a tight-knit family exhibits characteristics similar to those of a superorganism, which in biology refers to a unit of animals or insects, e.g., bees, that act in concert to produce an outcome collectively intended by all its members.

  7. In East Asia (a largely communitarian region), the distinction Western educators make between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation is meaningless. In many families there, every member intends for the member who is a student to excel in school. The student, who is a family member, intends for himself or herself to excel in school. For him or her, the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is meaningless. Note, however, that the student will nevertheless be encouraged constantly to study hard by family members.

  8. Teachers are likely to react negatively to ideas contrary to theirs. A college student in Turkey recounted this story: In a class during the second year of college, she attempted to explain her view, which was different from the instructor’s. The instructor’s reaction to this attempt was extremely harsh. “It was so terrible that I cried in the class and then I never talked again in that class.” Cagiltay & Bichelmeyer, 14.

  9. The phrase academic mastery, in this usage, should be taken to imply “as appropriate in the culture of learning of this society, educational institution, and classroom.” In some settings, academic mastery will mean full conceptual understanding; in other settings, it will mean memorized by rote and recited orally or in writing. To attain either level of understanding, burning the midnight oil might be necessary.

  10. For example, a college student from Turkey reports that, in order to graduate, “you do not need to be very good. Because of the system, if you get 5 over 10 you can pass. So, many students like to study just to get 5.” Cagiltay & Bichelmeyer, 14.

  11. Dweck. Beginning with the publication of Mindset in 2006, Carol S. Dweck’s views have become widely known in U.S. educational circles through her numerous publications and personal appearances.

  12. In elementary and secondary schools of long ago, a frequent occurrence was for the teacher to call on a succession of students to stand up and recite some item of knowledge that previously had been assigned to be learned. A student might be called on to recite, for example, the Preamble to the Constitution or the 1 through 12 times table for the number 7 (“7 times 1 is 7, 7 times 2 is 14, … 7 times 12 is 84”).

  13. For example, see Feldman.

  14. For more details, see Grove (2017), 64, 128–29 note 15.

  15. Recently published is The Highest Exam, by Ruixue Jia & Hongbin Li (Belknap). This book, about the gāokăo, was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal: https://wsj.com/us-news/education/the-highest-exam-review-chinas-big-test-629571ae.

  16. Strickland, 79; Strickland cites Banks, n.p.

  17. In an individualistic society such as the U.S., one might hesitate to openly disagree with a particular person for all kinds of reasons. For example, one might refrain from disagreeing with one’s employer or manager, but that would likely be primarily for economic reasons. My point in the text is that our broad, national culture does not support the assumption that some people are deserving of deference because they are inherently superior.

  18. Bushweller, 21, shortened.

  19. An exception occurs in certain Protestant services (especially those that are evangelical or Pentecostal), during which it’s common for the attendees to call out “Amen!” and other words of encouragement while the officiant is delivering the sermon. These are not interruptions; the officiant is not expected to respond to any of them individually. The attendees are spurring him or her on to more eloquence and truth-telling.

  20. This extended quote was taken from two closely related sources: Rao et al. (2013a), 34, 36; and Rao et al. (2013b), 82–84, 85, 95. I selected, edited, and rearranged portions of the two accounts to reduce length and increase clarity. For a fuller discussion, visit amirrorforamericans.info/endnotes, Chapter 6, endnotes 10, 11, and 12.

  21. Campbell & Li, 388–89; lightly edited.

  22. This same female Chinese student also stated that, in the New Zealand learning environment, “I can do what I like, and I was confused; I didn’t know what to do! I was dumped!” She believed that teachers should take responsibility for controlling their students and not let them get loose and wild. Campbell & Li, 388; lightly edited. The New Zealand experiences of several other Chinese students are also discussed in this journal article.

  23. An exception in many indigenous and traditional societies was (and is) that children were expected to learn manners and morals at an accelerated pace. Therefore, these qualities were, and are, often intentionally taught and trained by parents and other extended family members. For more information, consult my 2023 book, How Other Children Learn.

Chapter 7 of Misaligned Minds, together with all its endnotes, appears on this website at misalignedminds.info/ch7

Full citations for all publications cited in Misaligned Minds appear in the References at misalignedminds.info/References.

  1. For this section, I relied on research I carried out for Chapter 11 of The Drive to Learn. I also revisited Niu & Sternberg as well as Morris & Leung.

  2. The ad, placed by River’s Edge, appeared in The New Yorker magazine of Sept. 23, 2024; Vol C (30).

  3. Wikipedia’s entry about Nobel Prizes lists the birth country of every Nobel laureate from every nation. The winners from the United States were not all born – nor wholly educated – in the United States.

  4. I am borrowing the term “World Majority” from Helen Fox, author of Listening to the World (1994). The term signals awareness that the West’s population is a small fraction of our earth’s total population.

  5. Keep in mind that down through many centuries, the Chinese have been responsible for technological inventions such as the compass, paper making, gun powder, and the seismograph to measure earthquakes. If you’re interested in historical contrasts between the West and China, find out more about Greif, Mokyr, & Tabellini (2025), Two Paths to Prosperity.

  6. My private editor, Kay M. Jones, is also an East Asian specialist. She reminds me that much current art in China is “out there,” especially in Shanghai and Beijing. However, the government does monitor and limit the political content of art.

  7. I argue throughout The Aptitude Myth that “potential” as applied to youth is a self-limiting concept, not an expansive one. Consult the entry for “potential” in that book’s Index, page 185.

  8. Winner, 47. This article includes many photographs of children’s art. Consult my summary at misalignedminds.info/Resources.

  9. Winner, 57.

  10. Gardner, 283, 304, both edited and shortened.

  11. This topic has interested me across decades, so I’ve been able to write this section with little additional input. In my experience, few scholars have broadly addressed students’ question-asking in global perspective. I did find two useful sources: Chu & Walters; and Frambach et al.

  12. For details, consult Kim & Markus as well as Azuma.

  13. For more on this topic, consult Tobin, Wu, & Davidson.

  14. Frambach et al., 1011.

  15. Kim (2002); Kim (2008). This paragraph greatly simplifies Kim’s research protocol and its findings. Physiological stress was gauged by measuring cortisol in saliva samples while the tasks were in progress. Cortisol findings for the East Asian-Americans were opposite from those of the Americans but statistically nonsignificant; Kim tentatively attributed the nonsignificance to the fact that these East Asian-American subjects were third generation, whereas in his previous research, East Asian-American subjects had been second generation (i.e., raised by immigrant parents).

  16. For an explanation of the concept of face, see ‘The Concept of “Face” in Chinese-American Interaction,’ found among my publications on ResearchGate.net. Or see Hu et al., Chapter 9, 99–111.

  17. Thank you to Kay M. Jones for sharing this example, which she was told by an acquaintance who grew up in Hong Kong.

  18. In some societies, teachers have no room within the school to call their own. They, not the students, switch from classroom to classroom during the day. Their desk, if they have one that uniquely belongs to them, is in a communal teachers’ room.

  19. East Asian students are careful to not take up any more of their respected professor’s time than necessary. The student who visited me in my Beijing hotel room arrived well in advance and departed at about the time he had been scheduled to arrive. I wondered whether, therefore, he believed he had not wasted any of my time at all.

  20. Bernstein, 28.

  21. Extensive research also was carried out in Hong Kong, which was under British authority when much of the research occurred. South Korea also is an East Asian society; however, relatively little research was carried out there.

  22. Damrow. Lakeview is a pseudonym.

  23. Tsuneyoshi, 50. Tsuneyoshi notes that when a private school serving affluent families abolished children’s cleaning, it was soon resumed. Soon after, a school document offered this rationale for “educational cleaning”:

    It is necessary for the children to experience that when everybody cooperates and works hard, the classroom becomes very clean, and it is easier to study. Repeating such experiences, the children learn the value of labor and will spontaneously want to cooperate on their own accord. (Tsuneyoshi, 41–42.)

  24. Damrow, 99.

  25. Damrow, 97–98. For more insight into Damrow’s findings, read my review at https://amirrorforamericans.info/annotated-bibliography/#annotations.

  26. See Chapter 2 of my book, A Mirror for Americans. Or see Lewis, Catherine (1995) or my annotation of Lewis’s book at https://amirrorforamericans.info/annotated-bibliography/#annotations.

  27. Tsuchida & Lewis, 211.

  28. The emphasis on standards and accountability began emerging strongly after the publication of A Nation at Risk, the 1983 report of President Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education. As related in Chapter 5, it began with this sobering sentence: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

  29. For this portion of the discussion, I have been informed by (a) Bacon (1991); (b) Null; and (c) Coffman. For a thoroughly depressing report on students’ responsibility for learning carried out via participant-observation research among California middle schoolers, see Bacon (1993).

  30. Bacon, 395.

  31. I realize teachers do not totally control students. Students are not products on an assembly line, but human beings with their own wills. Teachers control students in limited ways and have varying degrees of influence over them.

  32. Damrow, 100.

  33. Damrow, 96.

  34. For background to the large class sizes common throughout East Asia, see in Chapter 1 of A Mirror for Americans the section entitled ‘Why People in East Asia Aren’t Concerned about Large Class Sizes.’

  35. See my 2017 book, The Drive to Learn.

  36. For more about East Asian parents as academic learning coaches, see Chapter 9 of The Drive to Learn.

  37. This statement applies to elementary school teaching, but not necessarily to secondary school teaching. Two books that extensively compare Japanese and American elementary schooling are Tsuchida & Lewis, and Tsuneyoshi.

  38. Campbell & Li, 386; lightly edited.

  39. See also ‘How Do Other Children Learn Responsibility?’ in my How Other Children Learn.

  40. Berglund & Gent.

  41. Berglund & Gent, 130.

  42. Berglund & Gent, 131.

  43. Berglund & Gent, 133; edited and shortened, italics in original. Regarding the students’ views on how their mainstream education had impacted their Islamic learning, some suggested that learning a modern foreign language helped them learn Arabic. Others mentioned benefits such as learning about other belief systems, teamwork/working with other people, increased tolerance, and building up a good self-image (Berglund & Gent, 133–34).

  44. Available evidence suggests that educators in some knowledge-focused cultures of learning are not troubled by students’ rote memorizing instead of striving to understand. As an example, for insights into education in Turkey, see Cagiltay & Bichelmeyer, 8, 13, 16.

  45. As discussed in the Introduction, education in East Asia has been subject to sustained research scrutiny since around 1970. I estimate that over 1000 journal articles and books have emerged as a result. For these paragraphs, I have drawn on Kember (2016a); Kember (2016b); Dahlin & Watkins; Marton et al.; Biggs; Pilotti et al.; Watkins (2000); and perhaps the most compact yet comprehensive of these overviews, Li (2012), 73–76; and Wu et al.

  46. Data from nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2022/#/mathematics/international-comparisons. PISA is the acronym for Program on International Student Assessment. On the internet you can find a massive amount of information about the international tests. An excellent place to begin is on our government’s website https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/find-tables.asp. Near the top of that webpage, you’ll find the acronyms of eight international comparative tests, one of which is PISA. This is your gateway to current and historical data regarding each of the international tests.

  47. Kember & Gow, n.p. Found in Kember (2016a), 175.

  48. Li (2012), 138.

  49. The historical development of the belief in the powers of intuition and insight is traced in my 2013 book, The Aptitude Myth.

  50. British writer Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan – not along roads – during early 2002, hiking daily from one isolated village to the next. He reports this exchange with a 12-year-old named “Sheikh” who had claimed that the Prophet identified dogs as unclean animals. Stewart speaks first:

    ”Where is that in the Koran?”

    “I can’t remember exactly,” said Sheikh, “but it’s there.”

    < span style=”font-size: 16px;”>“I thought you had memorized the entire Koran.”

    < span style=”font-size: 16px;”>“I have memorized it,” Sheikh replied. “I can recite it in Arabic from end to end – more than one hundred thousand words. But I don’t speak Arabic, so I don’t understand precisely where the individual pieces are.” (Stewart, 130.)

     

  51. Boyle, 487–88.

  52. Nasrollahi-Mouziraji & Nasrollahi-Mouziraji, 873.

  53. Boyle, 488; she cites Wagner, n.p.

  54. National Research Council; the quote is from page 571. A subsection of this book entitled “Learning with Understanding” (559–60), which discusses “actually requiring students to think more deeply about the ways in which they have come to understand science concepts,” focuses solely on teacher-mediated learning in the classroom.

Full citations for all publications cited in Misaligned Minds appear in the References at misalignedminds.info/References.

  1. I have been aided in writing this section by the many examples at https://simplicable.com/en/analysis-examples.

  2. The Triad Task is discussed in two different sources. The one I relied on for this paragraph is Henrich, 53. See also the longer discussion in Nisbett, 139–42.

  3. My sources for the paragraph on Chinese and Western medicine are Nisbett et al., 294; Cheng, Kai-ming, 24, who in turn cites Liu, C., n.p.; and https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/chinese-medicine, from which I adapted the basic explanation of Chinese medicine.

  4. Moxibustion refers to the controlled burning of herbal leaves on or near the patient’s body.

  5. Cupping refers to the application of suction to small areas of the skin.

  6. Tài chí chuán, or as most people say, tai chi, refers to a series of low-impact exercises accompanied by slow breathing, the aim of which is to restore the balance of the body’s qì. Tai chi has been referred to as “meditation in motion.” Information about tai chi is abundant on the internet.

  7. My source for the paragraphs on the aquarium draws heavily, occasionally verbatim, on Nisbett, 89–90.

  8. WEIRD was explained in this book’s Introduction.

  9. For background on the phrase “booming, buzzing confusion,” see https://johnhawks.net/p/the-blooming-buzzing-confusion-of-william-james. For a brief summary of the characteristics of seven Homo species, see https://www.ancienthistorylists.com/people/7-homo-species-close-present-human-existed-earth.

  10. In his thought-provoking 2020 book, The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich explains his belief that at the beginning of the second millennium (~1000 C.E.) virtually everyone throughout Europe was living their lives holistically, i.e., relationally. By the end of the second millennium (~2000 C.E., within most of our lifetimes), most people throughout Europe and places colonized by Europeans were living their lives analytically. Much of Henrich’s book is devoted to a wide-ranging historical explanation for why this holistic-to-analytic shift – and the development of WEIRD psychological tendencies – gradually came about. He argues that the minds of human beings adapt over centuries via cultural evolution, to the changing institutional and technological worlds they are encountering. In Europe during the High and Late Middle Ages, a growing number of communities were rethinking how they regarded time and money, and how they felt about labor, work, and efficiency. In their world, cities were growing, markets were expanding, and voluntary associations were proliferating. The importance of kin-based (relational) institutions was in decline; the world of individualism was in ascendance. To better navigate this new world, Europeans increasingly adopted analytic patterns of perception, thought, and daily life. (See Henrich, 390, 396–97.) Henrich’s story resonates with the story I tell in Chapter 5 of this book.

  11. Analog (adj.): Of, relating to, or being a device in which data or a signal is represented by continuously variable, measurable, physical quantities, such as length, width, voltage, or pressure. The Free Dictionary, available at https://www.thefreedictionary.com/analog.

  12. Postman, 76–79, excerpts slightly edited and shortened; italics in original. Postman cites the quote as follows: From a chapter in an unpublished book by Reginald Damerall of the University of Massachusetts. For a capsule summary of Postman’s thinking, which focused on education, visit https://neilpostman.org.

  13. Shah, N., A1–A2.

  14. The author of the Wall Street Journal article analyzed the ways that Swift changed concerts forever under these eight headings: Next wave of acts; Super-long shows; What women want; Rise of DIY merch; Social-media age; The mini-residency; Music tourism; and Ticketmaster blame. Shah, N., A1–A2.

  15. Homans, 66–67; excerpts, rearranged and edited.

  16. Flynn.

  17. Cole et al., 185. The psychologist was Alexander R. Luria (1902–1977). Luria and Lev S. Vygotsky (1896–1934) founded the school of cultural–historical psychology, which emphasizes the mediatory role of culture in children’s learning and development of higher psychological functions.

  18. Cole et al., 195; shortened, lightly edited. This riddle was presented to the Kpelle by David Lancy, who became a professor (now emeritus) at Utah State University, and to whom I dedicated my 2023 book, How Other Children Learn.

  19. Cole et al., 185. The authors offer no information about whether or to what extent the progressive peasants had attended school. Most likely, they had had little or no schooling. Also not stated was the percentage of progressive peasants who responded correctly.

  20. Some argue that the unfamiliarity of Part A to the Kpelle – it was a feature not typical of their riddles, and it consisted of a stipulation contrary to their practice of assigning the kill to the hunter – invalidates this experiment. I believe Cole et al. would acknowledge these two factors as problems. But their focus is on the sharp difference between the nonliterate adults and the eighth graders: The adults paid no attention at all to Part A; in sharp contrast, the eighth graders all were guided by Part A in forming their answers. Cole et al., 196–97.

  21. The contents of the other two riddles were different and departed further from the Kpelles’ usual form. Both began “A match and a cigarette packet always go together.” In one, actual matches and cigarettes illustrated the riddle’s contents. In the other, the presentation was totally oral. Cole et al., 195–96.

  22. Cole et al., 195–96. The 10 percent, 50 percent, and 100 percent measures of correct responses are related to all three riddles.

  23. Gay & Cole, 1.

  24. Yerkes, 86, 154.

  25. Grove (2013), 144.

  26. For this discussion of nonverbal intelligence tests, my thinking has been guided by Cohen, entire article; Richardson, 14–20; Ott, 68–70; and Pewewardy, 28. Also, I drew on my research and writing of The Aptitude Myth, Chapter 16.

  27. Gottfredson, page unknown; shortened, slightly edited. Quoted by Richardson, xvii–xviii.

  28. Gay & Cole, 50. See also Denny, 69, for an interesting discussion of counting among the Inuit.

  29. Ott, 68–70, and Denny, 66.

  30. Thank you to Dr. Astrid Kainzbauer for bringing this alternative perspective to my attention.

  31. Starkey & Tempest, 578.

  32. Glen et al., 653; Owen, 27; and Faste, 1.

  33. Barry, title of his journal article. See also Brown.

  34. Astrid Kainzbauer and Sidney Lowe, the course instructors, credit the design of this workshop, including the idea to use Lego bricks, to Dunne & Martin.

  35. This overview of the workshop relies substantially on Kainzbauer & Lowe, 283–84.

  36. Kainzbauer & Lowe, 290; shortened and edited excerpts.

  37. The analytic and holistic patterns of time use I’m describing overlap well, but not perfectly, with time-use terms that scholars devised a few decades ago: “monochronic,” doing one thing at a time, and “polychronic,” doing several things at the same time. Some hold that these tendencies are inborn to some extent as well as culturally learned. For a discussion, visit https://nytimes.com/2025/07/25/well/live/time-personality-polychronic-monochronic.html.

  38. For an illustrated overview, visit the fascinating website intellspot.com/data-visualization-types.

  39. The best single source for becoming acquainted with, and gaining understanding of, the types of writing challenges faced by English-proficient but holistic university students entering U.S. universities is Helen Fox’s book entitled, Listening to the World: Cultural Issues in Academic Writing.

Chapter 10 of Misaligned Minds, together with all its endnotes, appears on this website at misalignedminds.info/ch10

Full citations for all publications cited in Misaligned Minds appear in the References at misalignedminds.info/References.

  1. I’m using the phrase “attracted to” because of scholarly findings presented in Chapter 5 concerning American teachers’ needing to “resolve the dilemma of wanting to embrace the values of progressive pedagogy while satisfying the social and organizational demands for children to acquire a common body of knowledge.” Cuban, 113. That scholar’s conclusion was that roughly two-thirds of teachers remained with the pedagogical style that he termed “teacher-centered.”

  2. Strickland, 88–90.

  3. Ott, 226, sidebar 10.8; Swisher & Deyhle, 3; Pewewardy, 35–36; and Cortazzi, 43.

  4. Ott, 129, sidebar 6.3; and Pewewardy, 38.

  5. McCroskey, et al., 388.

  6. Isaac, et al., 24.

  7. Nozaki, 376.

  8. Etta R. Hollins (2008), 2nd Edition. Her 3rd Edition (2015) includes an identically titled Chapter 4.

  9. Wolcott (1967/2003), 130.

  10. Picard et al., 253; Webb & Barrett, 11–12; Mahadeo & Nepal, n.p.; Allen & Friedman, n.p.

  11. I’ve borrowed report vs. rapport from the perceptive 2007 book by the linguist Deborah Tannen, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. (The other case of misaligned minds!)

  12. Mehrabian (1969); and Mehrabian (1971).

  13. From here on to the end of this subsection, my discussion draws variously from: Neuliep, 431–33, 441–42; Anderson; Frisby & Martin; Anderson & Anderson, 1–2; and Liu (2021), 2, 10.

  14. Limitations of teacher immediacy research in the U.S. include that most researchers (a) have relied on data supplied by questionnaires; (b) have relied on data from students far more than teachers; (c) have used nonexperimental, correlational designs; (d) were conducted in universities; (e) explored general education, slighting ESL and EFL classrooms; and (f) ignored situational variables like geographical location, student demographic characteristics, and teacher characteristics such as age, sex, ethnicity, years of experience, and academic degrees. Liu (2021), 10.

  15. Delpit, 114.

  16. Kleinfeld (1973); and Kleinfeld (1974). See also Swisher & Dehyle, 9, and Wax, Wax, & Dumont, 95.

  17. Neuliep, 433; Collier & Powell; Sanders & Wiseman; and Thompson, 132–87.

  18. Alabdali, 46.

  19. My sources for this and the next two paragraphs are Neuliep, 432–33, 447; Zhang & Oetzel, 219–20; McCroskey et al. (1996), 299–306; and Thompson, 132–87.

  20. Crabtree & Sapp, 119–23.

  21. This section on China is based mainly on Zhang & Oetzel, 222–24, 228–30, and Zhang, unpaginated.

  22. Zhang & Oetzel, 222.

  23. Grove (1978).

  24. The three requirements are based on Zhang & Oetzel, 228–30. At the end of their publication, see also their revealing 38-item “Chinese Teacher Immediacy Scale,” on which the top five characteristics are (1) is committed to teaching, (2) is lively in teaching, (3) is amiable, (4) links teaching with reality, and (5) is conscientious in teaching. See also the journal article by Zhang, in which “teacher credibility” is given the highest importance and “teacher clarity” is a close second.

  25. For a discussion of teacher–student rapport in Taiwan, which discusses ESL classrooms in grades 8–11 (and considers teacher immediacy as well), see Webb & Barrett (2014), ‘Instructor–Student Rapport in Taiwan ESL Classrooms.’ This insightful article is summarized by me at misalignedminds.info/Resources.

  26. Li, M., 4–12; Campbell & Li, 380–91.

  27. Li, M., 6.

  28. Campbell & Li, 386.

End of the Endnotes