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Home » Game Theory #2: Why Schools Suck – Professor Jiang (Transcript)

Game Theory #2: Why Schools Suck – Professor Jiang (Transcript)

Editor’s Note: In this lecture, Professor Jiang uses game theory to analyze the structural flaws in modern education and explain why most schools fail to cultivate true literacy, creativity, and a lifelong love of learning. By drawing on his personal experience as a curriculum reformer in China, he breaks down how the conflicting motivations and power dynamics of various stakeholders—including parents, teachers, and administrators—converge to create a system that prioritizes easy grades, status, and compliance over actual education. Ultimately, the session demonstrates how societal superstructures and hidden incentives dictate the way the academic “game” is played. (January 8, 2026) 

TRANSCRIPT:

Introduction

PROFESSOR JIANG: Okay, so welcome back to Game Theory. And as I discussed last class, our goal is to use Game Theory to analyze global events, to understand why they’re happening, as well as make certain predictions about how they should develop. But to do that, I first need to train your mind in how to see the world using game theory.

So last class, in our first class, we discussed the example of the dating game, of why men and women are motivated to behave the way they do when they look for a mate. Today, I want to discuss the issue of school, okay?

The Purpose of School

PROFESSOR JIANG: School. So, for the first few classes, I’m going to use examples from your life that you know pretty well in order to develop the mindset for game theory. So school is something that you should know very, very well.

As you know, the purpose of school is to train you in a way that allows you to be functional in society as well as to be creative. Okay, so the goals are basically literacy, which means reading and writing. This is the primary purpose of school, because in order to function in modern society, you need to be able to absorb information and convey information.

Number two is basically what we call the core competencies. These are skills that you need to be successful in life, including the ability to think critically, to cooperate with others, to collaborate, to communicate, okay? You all know this.

The last thing is what we call lifelong learning. So in the age of AI, in the age of globalization, school is just a start of the learning process. Because every five years, the world changes. So you need to be in a constant process, a constant state of learning. So you have to actually love learning and you have to know how to learn for yourself.

So these are the three basic purposes of school, and that’s why you’re at the school.

Why Most Schools Are Failing

PROFESSOR JIANG: Unfortunately, what we know is that most schools — I’m not saying all schools, I’m saying that most schools — are pretty bad at these three things. In fact, you can make the argument that most schools not only do not teach you these skills, but they have the opposite effect. In fact, they make you hate learning, okay?

So let’s look at literacy. Today, in most schools, you’re not required to read books. In fact, when you go to university, the professors there are so shocked that you don’t read books, that instead they make you read paragraphs, or watch videos. So in terms of literacy, all around the world, people are losing the capacity to read and to write. And not only that, but people’s attention spans have decreased. It’s very hard for a professor to give you an hour lecture. People lose focus after about five minutes.

Another problem is that school is supposed to teach you creativity, critical thinking skills, collaboration, but it doesn’t do that. With the collaboration — in school, it’s a competition where you believe that it’s a zero-sum game, so for you to get ahead, you need to school over your classmate. So class ranking is very important. So that’s kind of odd.

And the last thing of course is lifelong learning, where school teaches you to hate school and therefore teaches you how to hate learning, especially in China. Especially in China, where you work hard until the National Entrance Examination, age 18, and then after the examination ends, what do you do? You burn your books!

That’s a great ceremony here in China, right? After the examination, you take your books, you read about the pages, and you throw it in the sky to signal your liberation, and you’re like, “I never ever want to read a book again, I never ever want to take a test again, I never want to learn again.”

So, all around the world, most schools — not all schools, there are some really good schools out there — but most schools are failing in their mission. School sucks. And so the question for us today is, why is this the case?

And so we’re going to use game theory to analyze why this is the case.

A Personal Story: Building a Program in Shenzhen

PROFESSOR JIANG: Alright, so what I’m going to do now is I’m going to tell you a story about myself. So the year is 2008. I went to Yale College, okay, in the United States. I was an English major. I did very well in school.

So I was hired in 2008 to go to Shenzhen, in South China, and help the school, Shenzhen Middle School, build an international program to send kids abroad. So this was 2008, which was a long time ago, and back then, not that many students wanted to go abroad. There were really few in national schools.

So the first thing I did was I looked at the situation at the school. And this is what I found. I found that students, even though they were going abroad — maybe about 10% of the students were planning to go abroad, so that’s about 80 students each year, that’s a lot — but the way they were going about the process of studying abroad was problematic.

So first of all, all they were doing was taking regular Chinese classes.