It is seventeen years since I first formulated The paradox of the Chinese learner in a conference in Kathmandu, Nepal. My original formulation of the paradox was that westerners saw Chinese students as rote learning massive amounts of information in fierce exam-dominated classrooms yet in international comparisons, students in the Confucian heritage cla- rooms greatly outperformed western students learning in progressive western classrooms. This seeming paradox raised all sorts of questions to which many others have contributed important answers, especially that by Ference Marton on how...