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Why America's School "Lag" Has Never Mattered
The Organization for Economic and Cooperation and Development (OECD), a forum of the top 34 developed economies, has released an annual education report, and guess what? The U.S. has once again ranked poorly in relation to many other developed countries. An article at TechCrunch argues that we needn't worry because it doesn't matter: "However, the report implies that education translates into gainful market skills, an assumption not found in the research. For instance, while Chinese students, on average, have twice the number of instructional hours as Americans, both countries have identical scores on tests of scientific reasoning.
'The results suggest that years of rigorous training of physics knowledge in middle and high schools have made significant impact on Chinese students’ ability in solving physics problems, while such training doesn’t seem to have direct effects on their general ability in scientific reasoning, which was measured to be at the same level as that of the students in USA,' wrote a team of researchers studying whether Chinese superiority in rote scientific knowledge translated into the kinds of creative thinking necessary for innovation."
Is that they report the mean result, when they really should focus on something like the mean of the uppermost quartile, or somesuch.
You don't need the whole herd to drive innovation - you need just need to make sure you have a critical mass of sufficiently creative and intelligent people.
What matters is not that we're the best, but that we're good enough - to maintain nutrition, health and shelter. Everything else can be done at leisure.
Was it Finland or some other Scandinavian country where the goal of their education system was sorta like that? Just teach the kids, let the kids be the kids and the learning will come.
As a result, not only do the kids actually learn but the kids are happier and more creative because they are allowed to let their minds roam and just be kids and NOT BE FUTURE WORKERS IN TRAINING.
School is to have an educated electorate: not for free training for business.
If businesses can't find people who are trained well enough for them, then they need to go all old school: train them. D'uh!
Again, socializing the costs (in this case job training) and privatizing the profits.
"I don't want America to be like Europe!"
Famous Presidential candidate.
Indeed.
The ratings you see in the OECD summary are averages. The thing is that the US has a much more diverse population and spread in economic status than most other, often much smaller countries in this measurement.
Results in US suburban schools are generally as good as the top rated countries, and the results of the top students in these schools ranks very highly indeed.
In any society you don't really need that many innovators to propel growth - and the US has a good population of high achievers due to the broadness of the distribution of educational results it gets.
The real problem with US society is the size of the tail on the other side of the curve. This represents a real drag on the US economy.
Isn't it odd how the most socially and economically advanced production powerhouses like Germany tend to have strong unions?
Isn't it interesting how desperate, fallen empires like the UK and the US are to demonstrate that unions don't work?
Also a union is not "about the students or about education", in the same way that you don't take your paycheque home at the end of the day "for your company". The purpose of a union is to address the interests of the workforce, not the customer / service user. It can do that well, by resolving differences between labour and management, or it can do that badly, running the organisation into the ground. IOW "power" is exactly what a union is about - strength in numbers.
So kick the asshole students out of public schools. They were the reason I hated school. Not only do they cost more to educate, but they drag down the other students. If they want to be janitors when they grow up, so be it, we could use more janitors, garbage men, and cotton pickers. Reform is always possible later in life, they can change later if they want to, but don't allow them to fuck everybody else early on.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
How about we roll back that premise first, because they don't.
Yes they do. And they don't. It all depends on how you interpret the statistics. Charter schools tend to be located in poor and minority areas (because there is more demand for them there), which lowers their average results. On the other hand, more motivated parents are likely to choose charter schools over public schools, which raises their results. By correcting for one of these factors, but not the other, it is easy to skew the results either way.
From what I can see, charter schools don't make much difference in student performance, but they do tend to give comparable results at significantly lower cost. So they still offer some advantages over traditional public schools.
They are more well-functioning than American unions, but it's nothing to do with their being altruistic - on the contrary, they give power to their members. Indeed, German unions are far more powerful than American ones. But German unions tend to handle themselves better, partly thanks to a government which understands the need for (i.e. provides law for) management and labour to cooperate for the good of both sides of industry.
Neither the UK nor the US get this - even though unions create a low-turnover workforce interested in productivity and self-improvement because workers know that, in return, they're going to enjoy better treatment and security of employment.
No, the US has pretty terrible standard of living: source. Americans tend to think about success as a checklist. The big house, the 3 cars, the 6 figures salary, the "good neighbourhood", etc. Those things are frequently impossible in Europe (no space for the big house, no such strong separation between rich and poor), but what Europeans consider a good life is similarly hard to impossible to get in the US: good public transport, guaranteed health care, holidays.
I am not convinced most American would in fact prefer the American way if given a choice.
America is a country of immigrants
Since its independence, the United States of America has been replenished with bright brains from abroad.
The fresh minds were either fresh from the boats (Example: Albert Einstein, Leon Chua ) or sons and daughters of those stepping down from the boats (Example: Thomas Edison).
In human society, it has always been the ones with brightest brains travel greater distance.
America has been the "land of choice" for those with bright ideas simply because they (those with brain ideas) are not appreciated, while on the other hand, in America they get more opportunities to try out their ideas.
If you go to any top research lab in America you will find 40% to 70% of the researchers were either fresh immigrants or sons and daughters of those who immigrated from foreign countries.
Without those imported brains, I am afraid the United States of America would fair no better than England, or Korea, or Italy, or Japan, or Spain, or China, or Poland, or India, or Russia.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !