Mangan notes that Hong Kong treats its best cram-school tutors as stars. They appear on billboards, have their own teams of stylists, and can earn an annual salary of HK$10 million (US$1 million). Mangan’s commentary:
For the situation here to become more like that in Hong Kong, we would need a powerful cultural change. The major media, including Hollywood, the music industry, and major league sports, would all need to become utterly different. It could be argued that these media outlets merely give the public what it wants, and I believe that that is the case.Certain large subgroups in America — and we know who they are — simply do not value education, though parts of them do, and larger numbers of them have valued it more in the past.
In my opinion, the catalyst for such a profound change will only be found in experience, namely the experience of poverty or falling behind. The people of Hong Kong, aside from the fact that their culture holds education and learning in great esteem, have the memory of poverty in their recent history, and can see it right across the border in China. We Americans, most of us anyway, have been on top of the heap for the past fifty tears or more, and we’re complacent. Until people decide that they’re sick of the cultural rot, nothing will change.