Higher Test Scores = Less Entrepreneurship

• Chinese culture and education is such that if Steve Jobs had been born in China, he would not have become Steve Jobs, nor could he have created the miracles at Apple. While countries like China, Singapore, and other Asian countries score high on international tests, they score poorly on entrepreneurship. Yong presents data that shows the inverse relationship between test scores and entrepreneurship activities. Yong concludes from his data that standardized testing and a focus on rote memorization, for example, are perhaps the biggest enemies for the entrepreneurial capability.
• Finland is an exception as it has high test scores and higher entrepreneurial levels than the Asians. They also have no high-stakes standardized tests. (See my summary of Pasi Sahlberg’s Finnish Lessons.) It seems that the higher test scores a country achieves, the less likely their people believe they have the capability to succeed in entrepreneurship and people are more afraid of failure. Their traditional paradigm is also about finding instead of creating jobs.

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