Improbable Probabilities: The Unlikely Journey of Yong Zhao co-authored by G. Williamson McDiarmid and Yong Zhao will be published by Solution Tree in November. Below is the preface.

Preface

Everyone is born with a probability for their future. Birth locations, family circumstances, and community resources shape the likelihood of a particular life in the future.1 For instance, a person born in a remote rural area is much less likely to work on Wall Street than a person born in a wealthy suburb of a big city. Similarly, a person born into a family with illiterate parents is much less likely to become a white-collar worker than a person born into a family with parents who hold doctoral degrees.2 

But probability is a likelihood—it is not a certainty. People born into disadvantaged families are not destined to fare worse than those born into advantaged families. Children from poor families can defy probability and enter worlds typically dominated by those born with more resources. Despite many initiatives to level the playing field for all children—such as Head Start, Child First, the Perry Preschool Project, and the Abecedarian Project, to name a few3—the reality is the divide between the haves and have-nots has grown.4 Education, the social tool many believe has the greatest power to equalize opportunities across social classes, has failed to do so for many students. Family income and parental background are still the most significant determiners of student achievement. Associate Professor Anna Chmielewski conducted a meta-analysis of thirty major research studies on the socioeconomic achievement gap and concluded that there is “. . . strong and robust evidence of increasing SES achievement gaps over the past 50 years across the majority of countries examined.”5 Societies should continue to strive for social, political, and socioeconomic equity with the goal of leveling the playing field for children everywhere, and teachers must work with students to improve the probabilities that their lives will be fulfilling and contributive. Evidence suggests that, despite the odds, education can change students’ life chances.6 Probabilities are not destiny—as my story illustrates. This book describes how I managed to defy the probabilities into which I was born. 

Given the circumstances of my birth, the probability that I would become a professor in the United States was roughly equal to the probability that I would win a Powerball jackpot. I was born into a family with two illiterate parents and three illiterate or semi-illiterate sisters in a small, remote rural village in China in 1965. I grew up in a China that was wracked by two major historical events: the Great Leap Forward and the Great Cultural Revolution. 

During this turmoil, China was isolated from the rest of the world. The imperialist United States was the number one enemy. The extreme remoteness of our village insulated us somewhat from the social and political turmoil that roiled urban areas during the Cultural Revolution. However, the devastating malnutrition and near starvation that tens of millions of Chinese suffered in the wake of the disastrous Great Leap Forward were commonplace in my village. Some days, we had only a thin broth made from a handful of rice and a few sweet potato slices; on other days, we had to make do with only the potato slices. Acute and constant hunger was the norm. As children, we were so accustomed to hunger that it didn’t warrant discussion. 

Despite the odds against me, I have worked as a professor at multiple universities in the United States and Australia since 1996. In so doing, I have defied the high probability of becoming another peasant farmer in China. My journey of defying probability is both random and complicated, involving interactions between me and my environment. The journey is replete with chance occurrences and unexpected events. Unforeseen meetings with talented and generous people influenced me greatly. My life seems ordinary in many ways, but in other ways is exceptional. From the day-to-day perspective, it seems normal, but over the scope of a lifetime, it appears highly improbable. 

How did I defy the probabilities that were my birthright? A conventional answer would be that I was exceptionally bright or talented. However, that is not true. I am no more intelligent or talented than my younger brother who became a truck driver. Another answer would be that I was just luckier than others in my village. Yet, no one in my village got lucky breaks, including my family members. 

No single factor defined how my life unfolded. I hope that analyzing my life, as this book attempts to do, can identify some of the factors that helped me defy the probabilities into which I was born. Although each person is unique, some universal themes can be drawn from our experiences. This book highlights the possibility of transcending probabilities assigned at birth as one such theme. Thus, I treat this memoir as a case study of the myriad factors that help people beat their probabilities. Although this is my story, I view my journey as a data set from which we can extract lessons that will be helpful to teachers, parents, and students. This requires viewing all children as capable of maximizing their potential, regardless of the circumstances into which they are born. Rather than assuming children have predefined and limited possibilities, supporting them as they explore, experiment, mind-wander, and find their own paths increases the likelihood that they will discover unforeseen opportunities that will allow them to defy their probabilities. 

As I considered how to approach my story, I realized it would benefit from a second perspective: I needed a collaborator. Such a collaborator would likely find significance in particular events or happenings that I might overlook. To borrow a phrase from art and anthropology, I needed someone who, in exploring my life, could make the familiar strange. 

The collaborator, I reasoned, should be someone who was born and raised in the United States and, thus, would tell my story from a Western perspective. The collaborator should also be someone with a great deal of global experience so my story can be analyzed from both a global and local viewpoint. I needed someone who had a grasp of modern Chinese history and Chinese education. More broadly, the collaborator should be an expert in educational research and thoroughly understand educational contexts and policies. 

I was fortunate to find Professor G. Williamson McDiarmid (better known as Bill), former dean of the school of education at the Univer-sity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Bill is a North Carolina native with an abiding connection to his family’s farm. In many ways, his life is similar to mine. He was born with little probability of becoming an accomplished scholar. He has lived and worked in different parts of the world, including Greece, Pakistan, and China, and has traveled throughout Europe, East Africa, and the Middle East. Bill is also a seasoned researcher with a solid grasp of educational issues. We originally met in passing at Michigan State University in 1996, and then again at East China Normal University in Shanghai in 2017. After we teamed up to write Learning for Uncertainty, I knew I’d found my collaborator.12 

Bill and I worked on this book for more than a year. We had weekly Zoom meetings, in which we talked about my life, educational issues in various countries, and the potential lessons my story offered that could help people defy their probabilities. After asking many questions to probe certain happenings or my thinking during past events, Bill completed the writing. He also researched the historical context as well as the analytical concepts we use to understand my story. I then read his drafts and made revisions that we discussed in subsequent Zoom meetings. 

As I’d hoped, this approach allowed me to examine my life through a more global and dispassionate lens. Sometimes a shift in perspective is exactly what we need to notice the significance of past events; an outside observer helps us to make the familiar strange. While this book tells my story, it is a co-construction. Had I written it by myself, I am not sure it would have the same appeal, nor would it have likely unpacked so many of my experiences in the way this book aims to. 

A brief account of Bill’s life and the experiences that led him to our collaboration appears in the epilogue. Our stories are unsurprisingly different, but they reveal unexpected parallels that have resulted in our arriving at similar places as scholars. Perhaps what is of greatest relevance to this book is the improbability that both of us have achieved what our origins in no way portended. I urge you to read his story.