Illustration: Chen Xia/GT

My mother recently told me about one of her friends who paid 900,000 yuan ($136,718) just to get her child into a popular international kindergarten in Hangzhou. This price didn't even include tuition; it was just an "entrance fee." That mother felt that the exorbitant cost was well-worth the opportunity to have her child educated in English by foreign teachers.

Many Chinese parents, especially those from the middle class, seem to believe that knowing English and studying foreign academia is some kind of magic ticket to a successful future for their child. Indeed, there were 524,000 Chinese students studying abroad in 2015, an increase of 14 percent year-on-year, statistics released by the Ministry of Education show. During the 2014-2015 academic year, there were 300,000 Chinese students studying in the US, a 10 percent increase over the previous year, making China the leading country of origin for international students in America.

Within the Chinese mainland, a rapidly rising number of local families are preferring to send their children to international kindergartens and high schools here, who only just last year started opening their gilded doors to Chinese. Boasting "non-Chinese" curriculum designed to get local students into overseas universities, middle-class and wealthy Chinese parents are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of yuan per semester, along with so-called entrance fees, that these elite schools extort.

Far from broadening their child's "global horizons," a popular catchphrase found on many mainland-based international school websites, what's in fact happening is that Chinese students taught by foreign educators are not learning anything about China's history or culture. Apparently, "international" means everywhere EXCEPT China. By the time they graduate and prepare to start college abroad, they are utterly oblivious of anything about their mother country.

I'm not just pointing my finger, I'm speaking from personal experience. As a Chinese student currently attending a university in the UK, I am a product of China's new obsession with foreign academics. Being surrounded by students from around the world who seem to know so much about their home-country's cultures and histories, I often feel embarrassed about how little I know about China. I could tell you many things about, say, the history of England or the politico-economic origins of the European Union. But ask me about the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) or the founding of the Communist Party of China and I'll draw a blank.

I'll never forget the shameful moment when one of my Western classmates in the UK asked me to tell him about the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), which he'd read about in a book. When I told him I'd never heard of such a thing, he laughed and said that he knew more about Chinese history than I did. I was deeply humiliated by his words. Up until that point I considered myself a good student and a good Chinese. As an ethnic Han, one of the most brilliant civilizations in the world, I didn't feel too brilliant about not being aware of a major sociopolitical event of China's modern history.

Chen Lai, dean of Tsinghua University's Department of Sinology, recently gave a speech on the importance of learning ancient Chinese history. Referencing two significant movements, in the 1870s and the 1910s, when Chinese students migrated to study abroad, Chen's summation was that Chinese who study abroad fail to obtain a deep understanding of China's culture and history. We are, he concluded, apt to lose our national identity, which in turn will have a negative impact on China's future advancement.

Back in Shanghai for the summer, I realize that despite the strong nationalistic attitudes held by my fellow Chinese, our fervor is based on a shallow understanding of our society. We think that what we know is all there is to know. This is especially true among returnees like myself, who can speak fluent English and recite from memory the Magna Carta Libertatum but have never read any of the Four Books and Five Classics. And yet we are surprised when locally educated Chinese are able to get more and better jobs in the local job market than we returnees are.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Times.