On the elusive nature of high Chinese achievement

Abstract

Comments on an article by Lazar Stankov (see record 2010-11850-001). It is argued that Stankov's proposal to view unforgivingness as underlying the combination of high educational achievement, anxiety, and self-doubt is an original way of summarizing Confucian score patterns. However, it is argued that the proposal cannot explain why reading scores in Confucian countries are not higher than in other countries and that an empirical study to test the proposal is difficult to conduct as it would require the involvement of many different countries.