“Better understanding between the US and China is important not only for both nations, but for the world. Having spent the first half of his life as a student and teacher in China, and the second half as a scholar and innovator in the US, Zhao is a unique interpreter of where China's educational system has come from and where it needs to go. It should be read by caring educators around the world creating schools for the future of an uncertain world.”
—MILTON CHEN, senior fellow, The George Lucas Educational Foundation; chairman, Panasonic Foundation
“Zhao's extraordinary book turns all the popular and politically hyped assumptions about East-West educational relations back to front and inside out. Asia's not an educational mirror for the West, but is actually a hall of mirrors that distorts the West's view of it. China's not an authoritative exemplar of high achievement, but is an authoritarian imposer of it. Unexpected and outrageous, this is the book that no one will ignore or want to.”
—ANDY HARGREAVES, Brennan Chair of Education, Boston College; coauthor, Uplifting Leadership
“Yong Zhao's new work analyzes the origins, strengths, and failings of China's authoritarian education system. It is an important work—timely and concise, well-researched and well-argued—that will positively influence the debate over education reform in both the United States and in China.”
—JIANG XUEQIN, Chinese education reformer; author, Creative China
“In Catching Up or Leading the Way, Zhao challenged Americans to play to their strength rather than chase the myth of foreign excellence. In Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?, he focuses on the US obsession with China—which he knows better than anyone writing on education policy today. Chapter 8 (“The Naked Emperor: Chinese Lessons for What Not to Do”) is a devastating unmasking of the China Superiority Myth that lays responsibility at the door of PISA and lazy journalists.”
—GENE V. GLASS, regents' professor emeritus, Arizona State University; research professor, University of Colorado at Boulder; coauthor, 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America's Public Schools