Illustration: Luo Xuan/GT

A recent story in Global Times (The talent gap, September 9) reported that there are not enough young Chinese people qualified to work at the United Nations (UN). Apparently, although the UN has a "desirable range" of 116-157 Chinese staff members, there are only 71 Chinese working as international civil servants there.

According to the article, a former intern explained the situation by stating that there are insufficient young Chinese people with the aptitude for the work because of a lack of "deep knowledge of the UN and international affairs."

Reading the intern's opinion reminded me of my own experiences with my students in Beijing. Last semester I conducted a general knowledge quiz with a couple of classes of graduate students as part of a speaking activity. One question was, "What is the capital of Kenya?"

To my astonishment, only one student out of 70 knew that it was Nairobi. In one class nobody at all got it, and I was met only with blank stares when I revealed the answer. A student asked me, "What is the city famous for?" as if to say "Why on earth would we need to know about this unimportant place?"

At the time I was too stunned to think of a succinct answer, but in the event that the student is reading this article, here it is, courtesy of an assist from the Internet:

Nairobi is one of the most important cities in Africa, home to over one hundred international businesses as well as a major stock market. It is also a major hub for UN operations in Africa and the Middle East.

Of course, one wouldn't expect everybody to know the answer to questions such as this. On the other hand, one would expect more than one out of 70 graduate students to know about the existence of a major African metropolis.

The point of this anecdote is to illustrate that indeed, most Chinese young people's lack of knowledge of the world outside China is fundamental and profound, which can be traced to China's national education system.

Nairobi and Kenya are clearly not on the syllabus for the national college entrance examinations. If they were, I'm sure that nearly every student would have known the answer to this question.

But there is an even "deeper" problem with the Chinese education system, which is that it does not encourage intellectual curiosity. Students simply are not interested in finding out new information unless they are to be tested on it. There is an attitude of "Why bother, when it's not in the exam?"

It is this last factor, I fear, that is mainly to blame for the lack of qualified candidates for the UN civil service. Every person has holes in their knowledge of the world, even university professors. The key, as both Socrates and Confucius pointed out, is to know what you do not know, and knowing this, to strive to know more.

If the Chinese education system can begin to encourage students to think and work things out for themselves, instead of waiting passively to be told the answer before committing it to memory, then there may be a chance of developing future generations that will be more than equipped to serve in the highest positions in the UN.

This article was published on the Global Times Metropolitan section Two Cents page, a space for reader submissions, including opinion, humor and satire. The ideas expressed are those of the author alone, and do not represent the position of the Global Times.