Down the middle path toward a great degree

Chinese way of teaching and learning - with both its strengths and weaknesses - is revealed on a BBC show.

The BBC's three-episode experiment with Chinese-style teaching did not so much set off the spark as fan the flame, which is the intermittent and often heated discourse on the merits, or more accurately lack thereof, of the traditional way of Chinese education.

There was the flashpoint four years ago of the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, whose central character, Amy Chua, used a typically Chinese approach to bring up her two daughters in the sharply contrasted learning environment of the United States.