Small children who are taken abroad and placed in local schools almost always become fluent in a new language within a year. In contrast, the success of older youngsters in picking up a language depends to a much greater extent on personality: highly interactive teenagers master spoken language quickly, while reserved or shy teenagers take much longer, though the process is still faster than for university-aged adults. One year abroad in an exchange program that places a likable teenager with a foreign family is usually enough to bring him to a middling-to-high degree of fluency.

　　Some secondary schools in Beijing have active exchange programs with prominent, usually private, secondary schools abroad -- schools that, contrary to what many Chinese assume, are superb educational institutions. (One excellent non-profit organization involved in this work is the American Field Service, or AFS, which has decades of experience in placing students in good homes and good schools internationally.) America's secondary schools in general may be somewhat lackluster, but the best schools there put adolescents through a course of training far superior to that offered by any secondary school in Beijing. That is, of course, if "education" means unleashing the independent analytical and creative powers of a bright teenager's mind while challenging him to become more socially active as well. If, on the other hand, "education" means constant review of predetermined material to get a higher score on China's national university entrance exam, a purely bureaucratic objective, then it is less clear what the impact will be on the youth who goes abroad. My impression is that such a youngster may well do better OR worse on the gaokao than if he had stayed in China. The outcome is hard to foresee.

　　Most bright kids who go abroad are electrified by the stimulating nature of the education at a good Western secondary school. Their eyes and their minds open with a pop. Shortly after coming home, the dozen or so I've spoken with have all begun wondering how to return overseas for their undergraduate education. But notice what elements are essential for the success of a year abroad: first of all, one needs a full school year; second, the boy or girl must have a good, supportive temporary family, preferably with siblings; and finally, the child should be responsible, outgoing and emotionally stable. Shipping kids overseas for a month in the summer or putting them in a foreign school with lots of other Chinese students (even for a year) is simply not going to have the positive effect parents hope for.

　　But is it good for Chinese youngsters to go abroad on their own at this tender age, or as undergraduates? Or is it better, as Mr Yuan Yue opined in this column three weeks ago, for them to wait till they enter graduate school?

　　My response is categorical: provided the young person is intelligent and responsible, he should go sooner, not later. By the time young Chinese reach the age when they might enter graduate school, they have been put through 16 years of educational conditioning. They have learned masses of facts and several key patterns of behavior. But how to use those facts in new situations, how to observe the world penetratingly, how to explore and discover independently, how to approach unfamiliar types of problems, how to analyse rigorously and play creatively, how to organize themselves and others to achieve their goals? These things, the heart of high-quality Western education, are still largely slighted by schools in China -- and they are precisely the capacities that will be vital to China's economic and cultural development in 20 or 30 years.

　　As Chinese graduate students so often show when they go abroad, a lifetime of training in single-mindedness and compliance with teachers' demands is difficult to undo even in a new environment. Psychological gears cannot be reversed at a snap of the fingers. Students here really aren't given much encouragement to explore their own society. Why then should it surprise anyone that, abroad for the first time in their mid or late twenties, they fail to engage with North Americans or Europeans? Bright Chinese undergraduates abroad (as I know from my experience with those at Yale and other elite US universities) tend to do significantly better at exploring, both intellectually and socially.

　　Are they "less Chinese" as a result? Only if, God forbid①, being a well-educated Chinese means being intellectually narrow and afraid of unfamiliar challenges. They are Chinese of a cosmopolitan type, comfortable in dealing with the outside world, and people this country will have great need of in years to come. My hope is that they remain well rooted in China, so that they continue to draw on Chinese intellectual tradition as a source of inspiration. Paradoxically, a serious education abroad may actually help them to do that better.