Do kids learn anything useful in Chinese schools?
I'm from Finland which, according to some people, has the best school system in the world. But even that was in my experience mostly waste of time. Nowadays it's even worse because we have internet. If I want to know something, I just google it.
Schools focus pretty much on one thing: they teach kids how to pass an exam. But who needs that kind of skill in the real world?
Schools don't teach anything really useful stuff, like creative problem solving. On the contrary, schools inhibit creativity by forcing everybody to sit quietly at their desks and obey the teacher.
I think it's safe to say that Chinese schools teach their kids to pass exams, and pass them very well. Whether or not they actually learn anything is another question. But an educated guess would be : not very much useful stuff at all. The problem is how the material is framed, it's not that it isn't useful or even important, it's that the purpose of learning is to pass exams.
You're right, Google and self learning is probably the best. It's just that the Chinese believe that they should steer their kids forcibly on what to learn and at what rate.
Creativity was never an agenda, and that's a serious problem too.