I was shocked when I once asked a student to tell me his own opinion about an issue when he replied: please wait a moment; I have to Baidu it out. On the other hand, many studies found out that young Chinese outperform their American counterparts in math and that nonlogical Chinese tend to do better in math than Americans. A study showed that Chinese students don’t have trouble with formal logic, it finds them to be less likely to use it in everyday situations where experience or desire conflicts with it and they lack of concern about contradictions and emphasis on the Middle Way undoubtedly does result in logical errors.

Chinese math education is better because teachers have to spend much less time teaching than their American counterparts, and the techniques in common use is superior to those found in America. Children of China work much harder o math and science than Americans. The study showed that Chinese students believe that everyone under the right circumstances and with enough hard work can learn to do math while American students believe that skills are qualities you do or don’t have, so there is not much point in trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Chinese education encourages unity and harmony. Peer review and criticism are rare among Chinese students, where such things are considered rude and where there is not widespread acceptance of the role in clarifying and advancing thought about scientific matters in the classroom. The efficacy of debate for bringing out the truth or, at any rate, for keeping on the table hypotheses that maybe useful. Western debate style and the mental habits it encourages are important for keeping students open and open-minded. Debate also goes hand in hand with standard hypothesis-evidence-conclusion rhetoric, which science and mathematics rely on heavily. Physicist Alan Cromer once said " a geometric proof is the ultimate rhetorical form" .