New Education Performance Data Published: Asia Dominates

jones_supa writes "The latest PISA (Programme for International Assessment) results are out today. Since 2000, the OECD has attempted to evaluate the knowledge and skills of 15-year olds across the world through its PISA test. More than 510,000 students in 65 economies took part in the latest test, which covered math, reading and science, with the main focus on math — which the OECD state is a 'strong predictor of participation in post-secondary education and future success.' Asian countries outperform the rest of the world, according to the OECD, with Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Macau and Japan amongst the top performing countries and economies. Students in Shanghai performed so well in math that the OECD report compares their scoring to the equivalent of nearly three years of schooling above most OECD countries. The study shows also a slight gender cap: in all countries, boys generally perform a bit better than girls, but this applies only to math." Here's a spreadsheet listing each country's results. The U.S. ranked 26th in math (below average), 17th in reading (slightly above average), and 21st in science (slightly below average).

Comments

USA

[coinreturn]

USA is 36-24-28. Sounds about right - top-heavy.

Re:USA

[AioKits]

Only if she's 5'3".

Re:USA

[lagomorpha2]

According to the article they WERE testing 15 year olds.

Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[Anonymous Coward]

As Slate pointed out this morning (), the way that this study mixes data from individual urban areas with data from whole countries makes it impossible to perform fair comparisons. Note that 4 out of the 7 asian "countries" that the Slashdot summary refers to (Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau) are either city-states or aren't even countries at all!

Comparing non-countries (or city-states) with countries biases the results by comparing poorer, less educated rural areas with better educated cities.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot the URL: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/12/03/we_need_to_stop_letting_china_cheat_on_international_education_rankings.html

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, the countries at the top don't have to deal with the inner-city Gangbanger Central High Schools dragging down their average. Let's see how they compare to U.S. white suburbs!

As someone who came from a U.S. white suburb... yeah, let's just keep quiet and not make things worse, all right? Good. Fucking football school. Didn't help that the team sucked anyway.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the conclusion is flawed (if not all regions are included in the comparison, such as mainland china, maybe asia isn't doing so well) but of course you can compare a city with a rural area, why shouldn't you? If the average american child are worse at math than the average singaporian, of course Singapore deserves a higher ranking, why shouldn't it?

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[rahvin112]

I personally reject the assertion that math scores predict future success (there might be a small relationship in certain nations, but not worldwide), I also reject that cultural bias is being neglected.

I've met plenty of engineers from cultures where questioning and innovation are highly discouraged and they couldn't innovate their way out of a paper bag. Great at the book learning and can duplicate the solution to any problem they've seen but handling real world problems where the constraints don't match the book? They don't even reach the level of western high school students even when compared against PHD's. There is a real cultural bias, and ultimately that bias is going to handicap the advancement of every culture it infects.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[Sique]

Comparing non-countries (or city-states) with countries biases the results by comparing poorer, less educated rural areas with better educated cities.

And this is bad exactly why?

If it's true that in the U.S., the rural areas lack education and are less wealthy, when compared with urban areas, then it's a fact studies like this are pointing out. It's not that the results are biased. They just reflect reality. Obviously the U.S. misses a strategy to bring enough education to rural areas and less wealthy people.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[parkinglot777]

Singapore is a country even though it is a small island. Hong Kong & Macau could be counted as one country; however, I don't know how people in Hong Kong think whether they are in the same country. Only Shanghai is a CITY in China and cannot represent the whole country.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm not sure what you're referring to, but around here in Europe, city centers tend to be expensive, prestigious, and very well equipped with top schools. It's probably the poor suburbians who fare worse.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[ShanghaiBill]

in Europe, city centers tend to be expensive, prestigious, and very well equipped with top schools. It's probably the poor suburbians who fare worse.

In America it is exactly the opposite.

I lived in Shanghai for several years, and my kids attended school there. In American math class they say "show your work". In Chinese math classes they say "do it in your head". Chinese kids have to stand with their hands behind their backs, looking at a list of integers on the whiteboard, and add them up in their head. They do the same with subtraction, multiplication, and division. They drill until they get good at it. As an American, I never learned to do that. So when I need a list of numbers added, I just ask my Chinese educated daughter to do it. That is usually quicker than looking for a calculator.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[AthanasiusKircher]

Comparing non-countries (or city-states) with countries biases the results by comparing poorer, less educated rural areas with better educated cities.

And this is bad exactly why?

Because rankings can easily get messed up if there's some sort of confounding variable or factor. If education is generally poorer in rural areas worldwide (which is roughly true), then this ranking system may partially be measuring percentage of urban areas within a given country, rather than a meaningful comparison of educational performance.

Of course, it's probably more than that, but rigorous statistical comparisons need to take demographics into account to assert causality.

It's not that the results are biased. They just reflect reality. Obviously the U.S. misses a strategy to bring enough education to rural areas and less wealthy people.

No one's saying that the U.S. shouldn't invest more in rural education. But it is important to note when doing statistical rankings that countries that are 100% urban may get a "bonus" in the rankings simply for infrastructure reasons in cities, rather than overall quality of education in the entire region. There are plenty of rural regions in Asia where education is probably just as bad as it is in rural areas of the U.S.

It's not that the comparisons are completely invalid, but one can draw incorrect conclusions by misreading the data. If the lesson you take away is that the U.S. can invest more in rural education, since urban countries do better, that's a reasonable conclusion. But if you instead look at this study and said, "Gee whiz, the U.S. can't teach its kids anything, anywhere compared to Asia! The U.S. educational system as a whole must be flawed!"... well, that conclusion might be unjustified until you take into account demographic data.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[Olorion]

PISA does show how much U.S. schools suck, on average. I think that was the point of the test: to prove how rotten the inner cities are -- and how cold and heartless the average American is, that they can allow such rot to continue in the richest country in the world.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[ShanghaiBill]

The study is flawed because it takes into account the same crappy tests that utterly fail to test for any sort of understanding of the material. This is not "education," unless you consider pure rote memorization to be education.

Baloney. Have you even looked at the test? Here are some example questions. The questions involve a lot more than "rote memorization".

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[boristhespider]

Further to that,

Liechtenstein (8th): 35,000
Switzerland (9th): 8m
Estonia (11th): 1.3m
Finland (12th): 5.4m

Liechtenstein would be debatable to people who seem to think city states can't be nations, but I'm sure no-one would argue that Switzerland, Estonia and Finland aren't nations. Nations with fairly extensive rural and urban areas, too. Switzerland is roughly requivalent to Hong Kong and Estonia and Finland are rather smaller.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[boristhespider]

This is a totally fair point, so let's remove the Chinese cities and leave only genuinely independent states. City states count as independent states. Then we end up with

Singapore
Taiwan
South Korea
Japan
Liechtenstein
Switzerland
Netherlands
Estonia
Finland
Canada

If our pride is still hurt, and I note that Britain, Germany and Norway aren't on the list yet so mine certainly is, we can go further and decide that we won't count city states either (though that's a step that isn't really very well justified at all.) Then we're left with

Taiwan
South Korea
Japan
Switzerland
Netherlands
Estonia
Finland
Canada
Poland
Belgium

Alas, I'd have to find another reason to cut out a state before Germany finally popped into the top ten, and I'd have to cut out every single one of these somehow before the UK even came in at number 10. We'd have to lose all those *again* before the USA finally appears in the list.

The thing that gets me about people's responses to these lists is the air of hurt nationalism. It seems people will say "shitty inner-city areas in the USA are dragging down the average". That's totally true. But the USA is coming in below Slovakia, which has shitty inner-city areas, and Russia, which these days is very little *but* shitty inner-city areas once you're outside of Petersburg and Moscow. Most (indeed all) the European nations have some horrible shitty inner-city areas, too. Unfortunately for humanity, the USA does not hold a monopoly on shitty inner-city schools bringing down the averages.

The other point is that these tests are indicative, and not much more than that, and in nations with the populations of France, the UK and particularly the USA, you don't *need* an extremely highly-educated workforce to be more than able to keep an edge and keep ahead. You only need enough to fill positions needing high education and high skill, and otherwise people who may not do so well in these tests are more than capable enough to fill in the gaps. (Or, come to that, learn on the job anyway.) So the USA can still more than fill its various three-letter agencies and its universities and its technology firms, as can the UK, as can France. A nation like Liechtenstein, with its 35,000 inhabitants, is less likely to be able to rely on the long tail to do that.

None of this should be taken as an argument for complacence - Lord knows I'd like our education system(s) dramatically improved - but I don't think being "mid-table" (as the UK, the USA and France all are) is a cause for any new concern.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[St.Creed]

I'm going to quote the reply from ShanghaiBill to a similar comment in the thread above this one:

Baloney. Have you even looked at the test? Here are some example questions http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/03/are-you-smarter-than-a-15-year-old-oecd-pisa-questions [the guardian]. The questions involve a lot more than "rote memorization".

Unless you think solving logical puzzles and doing calculations is just "rote memorization". Because that would mean that all of science is based on that, which would also indicate that they're on to something there if they go for that as well.

As an aside: rote memorization is an important part of learning anyway, since if you don't *know* when stuff happened, or what the base formulas are for something that took us 2000 years to develop, you're not going to just deduce them from the basics when you need them. You're not even going to know what you don't know. So the basis of learning is knowing what there is - then applying that with skill, intelligence and creativity.

My in-laws are Chinese. And while their educational system is still geared towards suppressing deviating opinions, right up into university, their students are quite able to keep up with Western students when they come over here to study (we met quite a few over the last years). Here, they find the hard part is not the knowledge - they can learn - but the "intelligent application of learned skills". Once they learn that as well (it's a thing you can learn), they still have the advantage of a huge pool of knowledge they can draw from, as well as the creative bits. And since these students are slowly replacing the teachers in China as well, you can bet the Chinese system will change as well. The Dragon is still just gearing up...

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[stenvar]

Obviously the U.S. misses a strategy to bring enough education to rural areas and less wealthy people.

You got the causation backwards. It's not that Singapore causes its families to become educated, it's that families that value education and are looking for a place to succeed move to those places. And if you look at those nations, they actually spend far less per pupil than the US. They also have greater economic freedoms, less regulation, and far lower taxes than the US. Top income tax rates in Singapore and Hong Kong are 20% and 15% respectively, vs 55% in the US.

So, you're right, there are lessons we can learn from these studies, just not the lessons you seem to be implying.

http://www.heritage.org/index/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, our cities will reach parity with Europe's before you know it. Many European cities are already starting to fill up with dangerous minorities.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[boristhespider]

Certainly not saying it's not a problem that should be solved. Of course it damn well should, I absolutely agree with you. The attitudes of Western Europe to their inner cities is reprehensible, and so far as I can see (from a position of basically ignorance; I've spent some time in Chicago but am otherwise ignorant of American cities firsthand) the attitude of America is even worse. Given its GDP and its GDP per capita, the USA should be able to raise standards across the board and particularly in its cities. Thing is that really isn't very easy to do, and it takes more than just money. Even so, that's obviously not an excuse for not trying. The same statement applies to Britain, which is also very wealthy per capita, and to France and Germany, which are even more so.

My point is more that firstly we can't use "they chose city states to skew the averages" as an excuse, because removing the city states reveals they very clearly did not; but secondly that there's no new cause for panic. We already knew that inner cities are an issue. This merely confirms something we already knew. In the medium term, while (hopefully) the problems in our systems can start being addressed, we don't have to worry about the Far East suddenly devouring us or our civilisations collapsing, since we still produce more than enough highly-motivated, highly-educated people to keep the countries going, and even more than enough who may not have gone through the education system perfectly but who are more than capable of adapting to new challenges in jobs, retraining, or re-entering education later.

Also, the appearance of Canada so high in the list might give the rest of us English-speakers a measure of hope. Hell, they're basically a Frankenstein of the USA and the UK anyway, and they seem to be doing fine.

(Disclaimer: I've also spent quite a lot of time at Canadian universities from Toronto across to Halifax. I'm not all that impressed by their high school system so their results surprise me, and lead me to think I may have harshly judged it. I'm also quite a big fan of Canada. If it werent' so damned cold I'd be very happy to move there.)

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[AthanasiusKircher]

If in most of the rest of the world the best schools are in the cities and this is reflected in the test scores then it tells you that you need to do more about the quality of your inner city schools.

Umm, I think you're agreeing with my general point. We need to figure out exactly where and in what environments schools are performing better or worse. If they are performing worse in rural areas or inner cities or whatever, that needs to be the focus.

If demographic trends are actually well correlated with these sorts of things in other countries, it may turn out that we may not be ranking countries by educational performance, but rather by some demographic trend -- and that's important to know when judging what these rankings mean.

Or you could just whine about the test being unfair because all your better schools are in the rich feeder burbs and this should be the test standard after all its the American way.

Who is whining? Who said the test was unfair? Maybe other posts, but not mine. I was arguing that we need to try to understand the effect that demographics can have on educational statistics.

Personally, I think the U.S. educational system could use a LOT of improvement. But that's irrelevant to my argument. I don't give a crap about how the U.S. compares to other countries in this sort of test -- it could be #1, and I would still say that the U.S. system needs a LOT of improvement.

No one who is trying to learn something from a study like this should be concerned about stupidity like national pride being hurt. This is about trying to evaluate statistics in an unbiased way that allows us to learn something useful, rather than making meaningless comparisons.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[NickGnome]

"No one's saying that the U.S. shouldn't invest more in rural education."
...

I hereby am saying the USA should not expect spending more on education -- whether rural, suburban, city or slum -- to necessarily improve academic results. We already spend horrendous sums in some of the under-performing neighborhoods.

What works is when the locals value academic achievement, when these individuals and family heads see some pay-back coming to "their people" whom they know well. When the school admins, teachers, students and parents place a high priority on academic achievement, when they see that it is possible and that it pays -- both personally and generally -- higher academic achievement results.

In big parts of the USA, UK, and Europe that link between effort, academic achievement and proportional rewards, meritocracy on that basis, has been broken and people won't invest more effort when they see other accessible options.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[Taco Cowboy]

... In American math class they say "show your work". In Chinese math classes they say "do it in your head" ...

When I was growing up in China, they didn't even need to tell us to "do it in our head" --- ever since we were babies we were already trained to do many things in our head, to plan ahead, to look for alternatives, and so on, and so forth.

Even when we were playing games, as a child, back in China, we were already counting while jumping blocks or throwing stones.

Doing complex multiplication / division in our head is just a matter of fact - it's nothing fancy, actually, once you get your brain wired up you can pretty much do many things, without even reaching for a slide-rule and/or calculator.

No, this ain't bragging - if the same thing is happening to people all around you you will naturally pick it up as well.

As for your daughter, Shanghai Bill, don't let her get the habit to reach for the calculators. Keep her ability in doing things in her head alive, it would be very beneficial for her when she grows up.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[Darinbob]

I think for any result that shows the US as not being near the type will be cited as "flawed".

The problem in US is essentially that more effort is put into trying to get top students to excel while ignoring the students at the bottom (despite the badly named "no child left behind"). Figure out how to make the poorly performing students at the poor schools do better and the average will go way up, because that is a very large group of students.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[AthanasiusKircher]

Sorry, poor choice of words. When I said "invest," I did NOT necessarily mean money. I meant that we should invest time, energy, more effort, etc. into doing whatever is necessary to help improve schools where they need it. I absolutely agree with you that attitude and culture is a much bigger issue than money here.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[jma05]

> I personally reject the assertion that math scores predict future success

Who cares about your personal opinions? There is data to show that you are WRONG.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/early-spatial-reasoning-predicts-later-creativity-and-innovation-especially-in-stem-fields.html

> there might be a small relationship in certain nations, but not worldwide

Backup that claim... empirically.

> They don't even reach the level of western high school students even when compared against PHD's.

Nonsense. I know plenty of Asian PhDs. They are plenty creative. I schooled in Asia (Yes, they taught by rote... but education does not begin or end in school alone) and got a US PhD. My dissertation was considered fairly innovative by my mentors. My Asian friends in similar circumstances performed just as well. We got plenty of smart and creative American students as interns into our departments. But to compare the problem solving abilities of a trained researcher with a PhD against a high school student is just absurd.

Perhaps you are a programmer who has to deal with PhDs who reluctantly get programming jobs due to market and academia realities? They were not natural programmers and they were not particularly trained for the task in their PhD (even CS) and take quite a while to settle in. So you make these silly sweeping statements without any objective data to support it?

I could program better and better solve tech problems than the CS professor we worked with. That does not mean I was smarter or more creative than him. He was an award winning professor who forwarded CS theory. He just never bothered himself with low level tech stuff, while I needed to because that paid my bills.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

As an American, you were probably allowed only into the better schools. Who knows maybe you were looking at the Chinese equivalent of a magnet (if not necessarily a science/math) school. Imagine the bad press the Chinese would get if some true-blue American kids are allowed into one of their "shittier" schools. So your anecdote, even as anecdotes rarely count for good proof, doesn't count.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[TarPitt]

"They also have greater economic freedoms..."

At the expense of those freedoms that matter to most people:

The Economist Intelligence Unit classifies Singapore as a "hybrid" country, with authoritarian and democratic elements. Freedom House does not consider Singapore an "electoral democracy" and ranks the country as "partly free". Reporters Without Borders ranked Singapore 140th out of 167 countries in its 2005 Press Freedom Index.[2]

It has also been alleged that the PAP employs censorship, gerrymandering and the filing of civil suits against the opposition for libel or slander to impede their success. Several former and present members of the opposition, including Francis Seow, J.B. Jeyaretnam and Chee Soon Juan perceive the Singaporean courts as favourable towards the government and the PAP due to a lack of separation of powers. There are however three cases in which opposition leader Chiam See Tong sued PAP ministers for defamation and successfully obtained damages before trial.[3] ... ...the PAP has also consistently rejected liberal democratic values, which it typifies as Western and states that there should not be a 'one-size-fits-all' solution to a democracy. Laws restricting the freedom of speech are justified by claims that they are intended to prohibit speech that may breed ill will or cause disharmony within Singapore's multiracial, multi-religious society. For example, in September 2005, three bloggers were convicted of sedition for posting racist remarks targeting minorities.[7] Some offences can lead to heavy fines or caning and there are laws which allow capital punishment in Singapore for first-degree murder and drug trafficking. Amnesty International has criticised Singapore for having "possibly the highest execution rate in the world" per capita.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Singapore

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[ShanghaiBill]

As an American, you were probably allowed only into the better schools.

I lived in Gubei, which is a nice neighborhood in Puxi (western Shanghai), so the school was probably above average. It was the official public school for our area. There was nothing fancy about it. There was no heat or AC. Shanghai is hot and humid in the summer, and often below freezing in the winter. The kids use gloves with the fingertips removed, so they can keep their hands warm but still write. I have nieces and nephews in other parts of China, and while the facilities vary, the discipline and high expectations do not.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[stdarg]

I'm not sure what you mean by top vs bottom students, but for instance "special education" students get much more money than any other group.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[AIphaWolf_HK]

Garbage. Those questions hand you information on a silver platter. All you have to do is repeat information, follows certain patterns, or answer open-ended questions that have no real objective answers (even though the tests love to pretend they do). Creative thinking? Intelligence? Understanding? Doesn't test for any of those in any meaningful way. It's garbage.

rote memorization is an important part of learning anyway

No one is arguing that all forms of memorize are bad, so this is just nonsense.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[AIphaWolf_HK]

No one is arguing that all forms of memorize are bad, so this is just nonsense.

Still, much of the information people are often forced to memorize truly is useless.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[stenvar]

"They also have greater economic freedoms..." At the expense of those freedoms that matter to most people:

Hong Kong and Singapore have a large degree of economic freedom and low taxes despite being politically unfree, a pattern that is common also in Western history; the increasingly wealthy population then demands political freedoms and has the power to get it. If you look at the Index of Economic Freedom, you'll see that the countries after Hong Kong and Singapore are such "totalitarian hellholes" as Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, and Denmark. The US used to be right at the top of the Index of Economic Freedom. There simply is no tradeoff between economic freedom and political freedom. The degree of intellectual dishonesty and ignorance with which people like you defend failing economic policies is just astounding.

There is a relationship between totalitarian control and places like Singapore and Hong Kong: they still have government run social programs like singe payer health care and nationalized retirement plans. They can make those work because the government has enough power to force people to participate, and because their economy is working well enough that they can have those plans despite having low taxes.

History is fairly consistent: totalitarian nations become free nations by liberalizing the economy and getting wealthy; political freedoms follow. And generally, free nations become totalitarian nations by excessive taxation to finance welfare schemes, destroying their economies, and finally ending up in economic and political chaos. Singapore and Hong Kong are currently on the path to more political freedoms, while we (and much of the West) are at the declining stage. It's not historically inevitable if we choose to turn around, however.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[Roger W Moore]

I've met plenty of engineers from cultures where questioning and innovation are highly discouraged and they couldn't innovate their way out of a paper bag.

True and I believe that is why this discrepancy in knowledge has not had any real, noticeable impact yet because at university you have to question if you are going to learn anything. However this is not a static picture - standards in the west are dropping and at some point all the innovation in the world is not going to help us because our kids won't have enough background to be able to ask interesting questions or, to use your analogy, they will find the inside of the paper bag so new and exciting because they have not seen one before that they won't know why anyone would want to innovate their way out of it.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[N1AK]

You can certainly make a case for comparing a single city in a country against an entire country being misleading. However I really can't see the justification for trying to dismiss this because countries like Singapore are more urbanised. So what, it doesn't matter that Americans are crap at fundamental subjects like mathematics because some of them don't come from cities?

It might be easier to have a high standard of education in a more urbanised country but that doesn't stop it being a problem if you have a poor standard of education. Singapore is a country and has a population of over 5 million. Hong Kong is probably more a distinct country than Puerto Rico is and has a population of 7 million.

In general the view of UK schooling is that rural areas have better schools than most city areas. Getting good teachers into and improving schools in major cities like London and Birmingham has been an ongoing issue for government. That said rural areas in the UK are hardly remote by US standards.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[dunkelfalke]

Germany is, in fact, trying. The test results this year are somewhat better than in 2009 and way better than in 2001.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[N1AK]

The amount of people who dismiss these tests who have absolutely no idea what they are testing, the methods etc really is quite incredible. I actually find it quite comforting that in the UK our coverage of the results has largely been acceptance of the fact our relative performance has fallen and some soul searching about how we deal with that; do we learn from Germany and Poland and how they reform or from places like South Korea with amazing results but extremely unhappy children.

Countries that dismiss the tests (seemingly a more common response in America) can stick there heads in the sand but the problem won't go away. If they don't make improvements now then they will pay the price 10+ years from now when the kids leaving school can't get into top jobs, universities etc because graduates from other countries that have improved outclass them.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Doing complex multiplication / division in our head is just a matter of fact - it's nothing fancy, actually, once you get your brain wired up you can pretty much do many things, without even reaching for a slide-rule and/or calculator.

That's exactly what we were doing in two years of college physics. This being an EE faculty, you were given the problem and were expected to come up with an answer within a 20% tolerance off the top of your head. As I had been doing the same thing throughout high school (my own personal quirk, don't even ask), I was actually usually within 2-3%.

Re:Study is flawed -- compares cities to countries

[frank_adrian314159]

It seems people will say "shitty inner-city areas in the USA are dragging down the average". That's totally true.

And one must also remember that the US is doing little to actually improve the "shitty inner-city areas", anyway. You can bitch about the way that these tests are constructed and administered, or how our results really don't compare with those of other countries but, in the final analysis, these tests show that we're really not doing very well. If you think that the inner-city is what's not working, well, then we should do something about it.

Also note that because of our baroque, multi-stated "solutions" in education, anything we try to do at a national level is (by default) inefficient. We'd be better off with a national curriculum (that wasn't set by the textbook manufacturers sucking up to Texas and California).

Teach to the test

[TheCastro1689]

If countries want to score better they should teach to the test like the top countries usually do.

Re:Teach to the test

[TWiTfan]

No, you just find clever ways to eliminate all the poor people from your numbers--like defining Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Macau as separate countries so you don't have to count all the illiterate poor people out in the Chinese countryside.

Re:Teach to the test

[Korveck]

Based on my personal experience, students in those top ranking Asia Pacific area are taught at a faster pace and exposed to far more challenging questions in school. When I moved to Canada from Hong Kong, I didn't have to study Math for a year and a half because I learned almost everything already. The Asian students have far more homework. The more anxious parents send their kids to tutors, not necessarily because they are falling behind, but also to get ahead of the class. They don't need to "teach to the test" at all to get far better score. They simply know more and face difficult questions on a regular basis.

Re:Teach to the test

[N1AK]

Yeah. We should teach to the test like the South Koreans, I mean obviously we weren't teaching kids basic mathematics and problem solving skills before because who needs those right?

Re:Teach to the test

[N1AK]

I tell you what. America can ignore any district where the average household income is less than 1.5x the average household income in Shanghai? That would be ~$14,500 a year... Oh you mean you want to ignore American districts with vastly higher incomes than the highest income city in China because you see this as a competition to win, rather than a helpful warning that your education system isn't producing good results? Fine. You can just ignore it then, the rest of us will use it to work out how to improve our education systems and we'll see who made the right choice a decade from now.

Re:Teach to the test

[stymy]

It's not just like that in Asia. When I came to Canada from Argentina, I had just finished grade 3, and I was given a bunch of tests to see what my level was. In particular, I was tested at a Grade 9 level in Math, and I wasn't privately tutored or anything like that.

Of course, my parents could afford to send me to a good private school, where I worked very hard. Argentina as a whole did rather poorly on this test because those whose parents don't have money go to schools with no budget for anything and teachers that are on strike half the time.

That said, I never had any homework, and the school didn't filter incoming students with tests or whatever, anyone who could pay could get in. However, the work was rather hard. For example, in grade 3, one was expected to write 3-5 pages by hand for a 1-hour test. In Canada, I only started to see that kind of crunch in grade 10.

Asia Dominates in teach the test

[Joe_Dragon]

And not real real skill if they are not on the test.

Re:Asia Dominates in teach the test

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the fact that they're completely unable to play football at the collegiate level (e.g. what college is really all about).

Is this any real surprise?

[bazmail]

Students nowadays cannot be punished for any misbehavior or disruption, its all illegal. Its common sense that standards are in the toilet. Students who succeed in the US now are succeeding despite our system, not because of it.

Re:Is this any real surprise?

[mlts]

I'm not surprised. At first, I saw people home-schooling, and it was just the RW types. However, I'm seeing the same thing on the left as well, where parents are just getting tired of a broken education system.

How to fix? I have thought of vouchers as an idea, but my fear that it would trade failed public schools for failed schools owned by a private corporation. A national school system would not fly because of the history of state/local autonomy. Bashing unions are not going to help much, as non-union schools have as many problems as ones with teacher unions.

Probably the best way is from the ground up... get homeschooling parents to trade off, and form the old "one room schoolhouse" of yore.

Re:Is this any real surprise?

[X0563511]

The what types?

Re:Is this any real surprise?

[X0563511]

It always pisses me off when people toss around names like that. There's no fucking wings, there's idiots, assholes, and morons.

Re:Is this any real surprise?

[ebno-10db]

I have thought of vouchers as an idea, but my fear that it would trade failed public schools for failed schools owned by a private corporation.

Why? First, they needn't be owned by for-profit corporations. Traditionally private schools are not. I'd be happy with banning the use of the school vouchers for for-profit schools (if nothing else, the fireworks would be entertaining!). With vouchers you'd have a choice, and schools would have to compete with each other. I'm not a market fundamentalist, or even RW, but I am an empiricist. School vouchers are very popular and successful in an extreme right-wing bastion called Sweden.

Probably the best way is from the ground up... get homeschooling parents to trade off, and form the old "one room schoolhouse" of yore.

What makes you think they aren't? My neighbors are home schooling their daughter. Admittedly she's only in the first grade, but amongst other things kids go to some classes that are taught by various parents. BTW, politically they lean to the left a bit (mom's even a vegetarian!).

Re:Is this any real surprise?

[the eric conspiracy]

I agree - unions have nothing to do with it.

Finland, for example has an excellent education system. Their teachers are fully unionized. Likewise Massachusetts.

The US states that don't have unionized teachers are also the states that do the worst on measures of education.

Re:Is this any real surprise?

[ebno-10db]

You should put a warning on a comment like that. A sufficiently high level of cognitive dissonance has been known to make heads explode.

Re:Is this any real surprise?

[AIphaWolf_HK]

Finland, for example has an excellent education system.

I'm not so sure about that. I don't trust poorly-designed standardized tests to be able to measure things such as critical thinking skills and innovative thinking.

Re:Is this any real surprise?

[gl4ss]

PISA is for 15 year olds.

kids have not been separated into "lukio" and "ammattikoulu" yet then.

read the test, if you're finnish you should regard most of the questions as potential jokes. that might be a thing to ponder about with the scores too, there's no incentive for the kids to do their best in the test either. but it's the same test administered to the kids.. so dunno whats there to play about it.

Re:Is this any real surprise?

[dgr73]

Correlation does not equal causality. Just because Finnish teachers are unionized doesn't mean unionization is the reason for the good education system. Maybe you should start with a couple of facts omitted from your post: -In Finland, teacher is a very respected position. It's regarded as a calling -Teachers must have atleast a Master's degree -They have to go through rigorous training both in theory and on the job Nordic countries in general have very similar education systems. The wide variety comes from increased migration and non-assimilation of people from backwards countries. Finland has a small, but increasing number of these immigrants, so is slowly sliding down the PISA rankings. Sweden has a lot of these immigrants, so they are much further down. This is a sad state of affairs. As the education system that once guaranteed equal opportunity to everyone, no matter where in Finland you lived, now is slowly being divided into good and "ghetto" schools. /dotters from the US will probably find this very familiar. And at this point it becomes once again relevant to ask "Faced with a ghetto school, what good is a union?".

Re:Is this any real surprise?

[Jason Levine]

Sadly, what we're getting is a big push by politicians for Charter schools. These are schools owned by businesses which function like private schools (they get to set their teacher hiring requirements and can accept/reject students based on anything they like) but are funded from the public school budget. They wind up draining the public school coffers and funneling the money to businesses instead of to students (through a good education).

And yet politicians keep pushing for more of these. Lobbying dollars talk.

What country is Shanghai?

[ebno-10db]

Students in Shanghai performed so well in math that the OECD report compares their scoring to the equivalent of nearly three years of schooling above most OECD countries.

Not sure about math, reading and science, but clearly my geography is bad. I had no idea Shanghai was a country.

Re:What country is Shanghai?

[oodaloop]

I'm not sure about your reading either. It never said Shanghai is a country.

Re:What country is Shanghai?

[fiannaFailMan]

Students in Shanghai performed so well in math that the OECD report compares their scoring to the equivalent of nearly three years of schooling above most OECD countries.

Not sure about math, reading and science, but clearly my geography is bad. I had no idea Shanghai was a country.

Your reading doesn't seem to be up to much either. Nowhere in that sentence does it even imply that Shanghai is a country.

Re:What country is Shanghai?

[X0563511]

You are aware that contextual clues form a rather large part of reading comprehension?

Re:What country is Shanghai?

[oodaloop]

Good thing you didn't selectively quote, like leaving off 'and economies' from the end. That might have made you look stupid.

Re:What country is Shanghai?

[oodaloop]

Read it again for yourself. It says 'countries and economies' but the post you quoted left off 'and economies'. We know how to read just fine. You need some work.

Re:What country is Shanghai?

[X0563511]

So you believe comparing two different things on the same level is even approaching accuracy or responsible reporting?

Re:What country is Shanghai?

[oodaloop]

Wow, reading fail again. I never said, nor implied that. I merely stated that the fantastic summary never said that Shanghai was a country.

I would agree that comparing a city to a country is unfair, but that's not what this conversation started off as.

Re:What country is Shanghai?

[oodaloop]

Ironic? The only thing ironic is your inability to articulate what you mean clearly while accusing the summary of the same thing. Perhaps you meant sarcasm, and my detector failed.

Re:What country is Shanghai?

[fiannaFailMan]

Ah, the old "well actually I was only being ironic" defence. Nice try.

Re:What country is Shanghai?

[ebno-10db]

Perhaps you meant sarcasm

Perhaps you don't understand that irony is the device most commonly used in sarcasm, and that they're not entirely separate concepts. The distinction is a matter of tone, with sarcasm being very sharp or bitter. Hence the OP is not sarcastic. Despite being a product of the American public schools that are being so sharply criticized here, I learned such advanced literary and rhetorical concepts in an advanced setting call the 8th grade. Now that's sarcasm. See the difference?

Re:Asia Vs. America

[ebno-10db]

In Asia, they are teaching kids Math.

In America they are teaching kids (and their parents) that the American educational system sucks. This helps keep up the funding for the educational-industrial-congressional complex.

At What Cost

[EMG at MU]

South Korea has the highest suicide rate of any developed nation.

Japan is on track to experience negative population growth.

What do all these wonderfully educated youth have to look forward to besides leaving their native country to go find somewhere they can actually live

Re:At What Cost

[east coast]

Suicide rate I can understand but negative population growth means what to whom? Not to be rude but it seems to me that you're reaching at straws with that one but I would like to hear why you think that plays into this at all.

Re:At What Cost

[fiannaFailMan]

Fewer people of working age to fund the pensions of retired people. Kinda like the baby-boomer time bomb that's in the process of going off here.

Re:At What Cost

[east coast]

And that has what to do with "at what cost" when the question is education? Their education doesn't apprear to have anything to do with negative population growth. Don't point to the effect, show me how it is the cause.

Re:At What Cost

[EMG at MU]

Most people consider Japan's population growth to be an issue compromising their economic future. There is a fear that there will not be enough young workers to pay into the social safety net programs for the old. The growth problems are usually attributed to the pressures of Japanese society. There is a lot of pressure to study, get into a good school, study, get into a good university, study, and then get a good job then work your ass off. Where is there time to develop relationships and social skills? I have heard Japanese people say "There isn't time to have a relationship with someone from the opposite sex, we are working too much."

Lots of studying seems to pay off in terms of excellent test scores. Does it encourage personal happiness? What are the unintended effects of emphasizing academic performance so much?

Re:At What Cost

[EMG at MU]

The cause is that society emphasizes success in your career, whether it be academic or professional, over your personal relationships and life. The effect is that test scores are high and the amount of "scoring" is low.

Re:At What Cost

[fiannaFailMan]

They're not teaching them the joy of sex.

Re:At What Cost

[X0563511]

Have some reading. Yes, that is apparently a real thing over there.

Re:At What Cost

[rahvin112]

Negative population growth ends all growth.

You might think that is a good thing. Consider that once achieved no new home will ever need to be built (in the US the construction industry composes 10% of the workforce). In fact in full negative growth you actually have increasing vacancy.

No company with saturated sales will ever grow profit. This dries up investment income and moves it to countries where growth is occurring. Jobs stagnate, the younger people can't get jobs. This has occurred in Europe where much of the countries are also experiencing negative growth. 25% youth unemployment is not uncommon and countries in recession like Greece have nearly 70% youth unemployment. That means 70% of the people under 30 don't have a job and likely never have. This means they don't start families and they generally create massive unrest. This compounds the pension issue. Not only are the pension roles going up but the very people that could help fund them are in fact unemployed and have been for years.

Negative growth is a very bad thing economic wise.

Re:At What Cost

[AmiMoJo]

Lack of time for meeting people is only a small part of the problem. The major one is the cost of bringing up children. Japan is an expensive country anyway, and the days of one parent being able to support a family are coming to an end.

Women wanting careers is also a big issue. Of course there are laws protecting them if they need time off to have children, but they feel like they are letting their co-workers down and the bosses are often not very understanding.

In any case, there are plenty of European countries who don't have that kind of culture that are doing far far better than the UK and US, so it isn't necessary for academic excellence.

New country - does China know?

[unixisc]

From the people who yesterday gave us that Gothenburg is the capital of Sweden, now comes the news that Shanghai is a country.

I'm sure the PLA will be thrilled to know this, and can pull out troops in Tibet, or near the Taiwan Straits, and redirect them towards Shanghai!

Can PISA do an assessment test on /. editors & their geography?

Re:New country - does China know?

[St.Creed]

From the people who yesterday gave us that Gothenburg is the capital of Sweden, now comes the news that Shanghai is a country.

Knowing the Shanghai-na, I'm pretty sure they'd agree with this assessment :)

Re:Asia Vs. America

[Anonymous Coward]

In America, you teach that Intelligent Design is valid science.

In America, belief and opinion is weighed equal to facts and evidence.

That, in a nutshell, is what it wrong with the US educational system -- it has become a tool of drooling idiots who pass rules about things they don't even remotely understand, and act like their religion actually defines reality.

In some ways, and in some places, America is little better than the Taliban ever was. You just change the specifics of the religion, but the results are the same.

Massachusetts

[the eric conspiracy]

Results among the states varies a lot. For example Massachusetts is fully competitive with the Asian countries. On the TIMSS exam (generally thought to be more difficult than the PISA test) Massachusetts finished sixth in the world in mathematics, and second in the sciences for it's 8th grade students.

High levels of achievement ARE attainable in the US. It isn't a matter of cultural problems, or the society we live in. It's a matter of politicians and parents adopting the attitude that it can be done, and sticking to that idea. Effective reform though is not something that can be done overnight. Massachusetts has been at it for 20 years.

http://boston.com/community/blogs/rock_the_schoolhouse/2012/12/massachusetts_aces_internation.html

Massachusetts has shown how to do it. Now all it takes is realization of what can be done and applying it elsewhere.

Re:Massachusetts

[jandrese]

It helps when a lot of the parents are MIT grads and engineers as well. There is a cycle of ignorance where parents who are uneducated tend to have children who are uninterested in education. These kids end up squandering their school years and then have their own kids, who perpetuate the cycle.

I grew up in West Virginia, in a not particularly wealthy or prestigious part of the state. However, we did have a lot of local chemical plants, and thus lots of chemical engineers. When these sorts of tests came around, our local school districts would totally blow the curve for the state because of the local concentration of motivated kids from stable families. Only the elite prep schools tested higher, and then mostly because they were free to reject poorer performing kids. Incidentally, this is also why voucher programs are so pernicious, they suck all of the engaged students out of the system and leave the public schools with nothing but the dregs, causing them to fail and convincing lawmakers that they need to pursue more voucher programs.

Re:Massachusetts

[stenvar]

Massachusetts has shown how to do it. Now all it takes is realization of what can be done and applying it elsewhere.

That's no mystery: just attract a highly educated workforce, and education, health, income, life expectancy, etc. will all follow. Unfortunately, getting the top 5% of the population to move to your state is not something every state can do.

Re:Massachusetts

[Darinbob]

This is Massachusetts the state, not Boston or Cambridge area only. There are quite a lot of working class and low class regions in Boston too, it's not nearly the prestigious enclave you imply.

Re:Massachusetts

[Guy Harris]

Massachusetts has shown how to do it. Now all it takes is realization of what can be done and applying it elsewhere.

That's no mystery: just attract a highly educated workforce, and education, health, income, life expectancy, etc. will all follow. Unfortunately, getting the top 5% of the population to move to your state is not something every state can do.

And not something Massachusetts has done, given that, from the as-of-July 1, 2012 estimates on this Wikipedia page, Massachusetts' population is about 2.1% of the US population.

And, as another poster noted, it's not as if Massachusetts is completely filled with Harvard/MIT/Tufts/Wellesley/Northeastern/UMass/Amherst College/Simmons/Smith/WPI/etc. graduates.

Re:Massachusetts

[stenvar]

And not something Massachusetts has done

Let me spell it out for you since you seem to be too dumb to figure it out for yourself from my slightly sloppy formulation: places like Massachusetts do well on education because they successfully attract parents who themselves have high educational attainment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_educational_attainment

And, as another poster noted, it's not as if Massachusetts is completely filled with

Yeah, and it's not like the differences between the nations and states are that big either. What there is is more than adequately explained by differences in parental educational attainment.

I mean, are you seriously trying to claim that the differences in PISA study results between states are not caused by the differences in parental educational attainment? If not, what exactly is it you are trying to say?

Re:Asia Vs. America

[phantomfive]

In America they are teaching kids (and their parents) that the American educational system sucks. This helps keep up the funding for the educational-industrial-congressional complex.

That's an interesting thought. If you tell people that their education system is bad, it may turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the students fail to learn only because they've been told they will fail to learn.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[ebno-10db]

Much as I agree with you, that only affects the science part of the test (and then only the biology part). It has nothing to do with reading and math. I've never heard a fundamentalist preacher say that calculus is evil.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[phantomfive]

Either way, the end problem is that people in America view education as a propaganda system, rather than an education system, right?

Re:Former ESL teacher in Shanghai...

[sinij]

I agree with this being just a red herring. We are not teaching math to get universally good scores, we are teaching to produce educated, productive, and innovative population of adults. Where is innovation coming from these Asian countries? What about population-normalized number of scientific papers? What about population-normalized number of patents? They are still only known for cheaply manufacturing Western designs and innovations. Who cares how they do on math if these are the outcomes?

Cannot compare a city to a country

[Andover Chick]

You cannot pick-and-choose cities like Shanghai, Hong Kong or Singapore the put them against an entire country like USA. That is categorically absurd and looks the the results are being rigged to make a point instead of statistical validity. Instead compare Shanghai to say Boston.

Re:Cannot compare a city to a country

[the eric conspiracy]

That accounts for 4 of the 25 entries ahead of the US on this list. It really isn't that significant.

Re:Cannot compare a city to a country

[oodaloop]

Or perhaps, at best, an entire Chinese province to a US State. The results of this study only show that students in the best Chinese schools are only slightly above US with all of its good schools and bad averaged together.

Re:Cannot compare a city to a country

[kamapuaa]

More than that, Shanghai's hukou system ensures that the children of poor residents from other parts of China aren't even a part of the Shanghai school system. It's more than half the population, and probably more than that by children (poor people and ethnic minorities either aren't subject to, or ignore, the single-child rule). So this is comparing the wealthiest portion of a single city, the city with the best school system in China, to the population of the US as a whole.

Re:Cannot compare a city to a country

[the eric conspiracy]

Uh no. Drop the 4 cities and you still have COUNTRIES like Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Estonia, Taiwan, Ireland etc etc whupping the USA bad on this particular test.

It doesn't change the conclusion the we are getting fucked by our education system one teeny bit.

Re:Cannot compare a city to a country

[lowwave]

your information is not correct for Shanghai. Shanghai's policy is to allow all the kids below 10th grade to join local school regardless their hukou status. Beijin probably has more restrictive policy. For people not living in China, Shanghai is a city with population of 23 million. This is larger than population of a lot of countries. If Shanghai's system is good enough to get this kind of result, I think on state level, US should also be able to achieve better performance.
From local news, There are 6374 students from 155 school who took the test among population of over 90,000 15-year old.

Re:Cannot compare a city to a country

[kamapuaa]

Good points, but not quite 100% true - first of all, this was just recently implemented, before the testing time. Secondly, it's not as simple as "you don't need a hukou." There's a system of qualification where college graduates qualify, people working in certain vital industries may qualify, but the working man or the guy selling you noodles doesn't qualify.

highest suicide rate

[Dareth]

Only when they play Terran!

"While expendable, the massive losses of terran Marines during the Great War began to become cost prohibitive. The Medic's use of chemical modifiers has greatly enhanced the survival rate of UED forces, lengthening the expected battlefield life expectancy to over nine seconds."

Re:Asia Vs. America

[TWiTfan]

No, more like there are two types of school in America: the good schools out in the suburbs where the kids are doing just fine compared with the rest of the world, and the shithole schools in the inner city that have to spend all their energy dealing with discipline problems and can't keep decent teachers. I bet Switzerland has plenty of the former, but does it have to deal with the latter dragging down their average?

Take the test yourself

[Guillermito]

Here

http://www.oecd.org/pisa/test/

You can take a sample test yourself. See how basic the questions are and feel appalled to see the % of students in your country that managed to pass each level.

For example, only 11% of students in my country (Argentina) were able to reach level 3 (identify the smallest value in a table). Highest rank for that question was Shanghai-China (89%). USA was 48%.

Re:Take the test yourself

[lagomorpha2]

(identify the smallest value in a table). Highest rank for that question was Shanghai-China (89%). USA was 48%.

Thanks, before I was just disappointed with America, now I'm disappointed in the world!

Re:Take the test yourself

[bob_super]

Which gets us to the question: did the teenagers fail on purpose?

Re:Take the test yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who took this test (I believe, if not this exact one it was very similar) when I was in school, I can guarantee you people did. Once we were told it didn't have any impact on our grade, people just started marking down answers and either spent zero time thinking about it or specifically chose the wrong ones just to be defiant.

Believe it or not, teenagers by and large don't care how statistically valid someone's survey is when they feel like it has no impact on them.

Re:Take the test yourself

[lagomorpha2]

That's a really good point, most of them probably didn't care. They should have offered the kids some kind of incentive for doing well just to make sure they were paying attention.

Granted the same incentive doesn't really translate to the same motivation across cultures so that would skew the results a little but that's better than the current situation where the test merely measures the number of students who immediately pay attention to any arbitrary commands issued by an authority figure. And on that note, way to go China!

Re:Take the test yourself

[Clarious]

Took a look at some sample questions, they are similar to those taught for 12~13 years old kids here (Vietnam).

Re:Asia Vs. America

[serviscope_minor]

In some ways, and in some places, America is little better than the Taliban ever was.

Yep, because the Supreme Court will stone you to death if you try to teach the truth rather than creationism.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[Anonymous Coward]

Please note that the US numbers include ALL 15yr old students. In most of the Asian countries/cities, less intellectual students are shuffled out of the academic schools early on to different career paths. If you stacked private/gifted US school children against the Asians, you'd find no difference in performance. Apples to apples guys...please.

Re:Former ESL teacher in Shanghai...

[ebno-10db]

It's interesting to hear from someone who had boots on the ground (I made a comment above about being unaware that Shanghai was a country). As for "while we are at it see how well they do at independent problem solving and creative thinking", what do you think about the "'stuffing the duck" system? I've heard Chinese complain about it. How real is it?

Even though it's cherry picked and results in stressed out kids, I don't want to take anything away from the recognition of Shanghai's educational achievements. Nevertheless I do wonder about the (unfortunately difficult to objectively quantify) question that you raise. AFAIK someone like Richard Feynman didn't stay up until midnight every school day cramming. His mother was neither a "tiger mom" or a helicopter parent. From what I've heard, he still did ok academically. Possibly even some success later. Obviously this is an anecdote, but it make my (and your?) point. Studying hard and maintaining academic standards are one thing, but some of the East Asian countries (or at least some cities in them) seem to go nuts. It sure brings out the best puritanical sanctimony in Americans though.

Missing in action.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I did what every Indian (or Indian American) does. First see where India is ranked. Then where Pakistan is. Laugh at Pakistan when it is beaten. If either or both are missing bemoan the loss of another opportunity to laugh at Pakistan. (What if Pakistan wins, you ask? bah! that never happens )

Well, whole of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan ... Looks like the entire subcontinent is missing. China has a few urban centers represented. Africa is gone. So it falls into the bemoan the ... category.

Re:Missing in action.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Fellow alumni will know the college, but my classmates would even know my name ;-)

Re:Asia Vs. America

[Anonymous Coward]

In America, you teach that Intelligent Design is valid science.

In America, belief and opinion is weighed equal to facts and evidence.

No. Only in a few small isolated areas, and Texas, and on Fox news. Not in the vast majority of the country.

That, in a nutshell, is what it wrong with the US educational system -- it has become a tool of drooling idiots who pass rules about things they don't even remotely understand, and act like their religion actually defines reality.

In some ways, and in some places, America is little better than the Taliban ever was. You just change the specifics of the religion, but the results are the same.

Yes, because in America we typically leave school board meetings over science policy, and go to the homes of our opponents and murder them. I really don't think you understand anything about the Taliban. Your level of ignorance is actually physically painful. Yes there are problems with people misunderstanding science and religion and trying to combine them. Overall you don't seem to understand the problem any better than they do, and are just as far from helping to solve it.

"Asia dominates...."

[globaljustin]

In gaming out standardized tests...

that's all this is measuring...whose standardized test-prep is better...

this does not measure education level or mental ability

Re:"Asia dominates...."

[Jason Levine]

Exactly. Sadly, American politicians have fallen in love with standardized tests as a measure to "make sure teachers are teaching our kids well enough." So they mandate a bunch of tests (which funnels money to Pearson and other big educational companies/campaign contributors) and tie those test scores to the teachers' jobs. The result: Teaching to the test and ONLY teaching what is on the test. If it's not on the test, then the teacher is essentially risking their job teaching the kids that as it takes away from valuable test prep time.

Having two kids in NY elementary schools, we know this all too well. Thankfully, we also know we can refuse the tests. Unfortunately, now politicians are pushing back against people who refuse the tests saying things like the kids will still be given the tests against the parents' wishes. Some have even gone so far as to insinuate that parents who refuse the tests will get a visit from Child Protective Services. (Because protecting your child from abusive tests which don't benefit their education in any way is apparently considered child abuse now.)

Re:Asia Vs. America

[ebno-10db]

But it has the net effect of fundamentally undermining the ability to think critically about things, and evaluate evidence.

I agree, and in the real world that's important. However, it still has little to do with these tests. Reading tests are mostly about comprehension of what was written, not protracted thought or discussion about the material. That's also true of math, at least at that level. It teaches problem solving skills, which are important, but definitely not the same as the ability to think critically about things, and evaluate evidence.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[AIphaWolf_HK]

No, more like there are two types of school in America: the good schools out in the suburbs where the kids are doing just fine compared with the rest of the world

They're not doing just fine, just like the other kids probably aren't doing just fine. These schools don't actually focus on understanding.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[Joce640k]

In Asia, they are teaching kids Science.

In America, we are teaching them that as long as almost all the experts agree, the science doesn't matter.

Worse, they're teaching them their personal feelings and opinions are as good as any amount of reproducible experiments and data.

Gender gaps

[Samantha Wright]

TFS: "The study shows also a slight gender cap: in all countries, boys generally perform a bit better than girls, but this applies only to math."

PISA 2012 Overview: "Boys perform better than girls in mathematics in only 37 out of the 65 countries and economies that participated in PISA 2012, and girls outperform boys in five countries." (For the curious, they're Jordan, Qatar, Thailand, Malaysia and Iceland.)

The Guardian article didn't get this wrong. What the hell, submitter?

Re:Gender gaps

[NoImNotNineVolt]

I agree, I think the part of the PISA 2012 Overview that you quoted was terribly written. Boys outperform girls in "only" 37 out of 65 countries (57%), whereas girls outperform boys in 5 out of 65 (8%). It's clear that they put the "only" with the wrong statistic, unless the authors somehow believe that 8% > 57%.

Re:Gender gaps

[Samantha Wright]

No, that usage of "only" indicates that the result contravenes expectation or accepted belief. Example: "I only fell off the bike 25 times out of 26 attempts this time! That one other time, I managed to ride it for fifteen whole seconds!"

Re:Gender gaps

[NoImNotNineVolt]

So you're lamenting the fact that expectation or accepted belief are startlingly in line with the reality that boys outperform girls in math? And that the summary is accurate in its claim that boys are generally better at math than girls?

Or are you saying that it's wrong that public perception of math skills by gender is confirmed by this data?

I understand the desire to demonstrate gender equality. It serves to discourage gender discrimination, and that's good. But when a study confirms a claim, even if the claim is one of gender inequality, it's a disservice to everyone (women included) if we just ignore the facts and stay the course with some feel-good "everyone is identical" mentality.

The fact is that boys perform better than girls in mathematics in a whopping 37 out of 65 countries, and girls perform better than boys in only 5 out of 65. No amount of doublespeak will change that fact.

At this point, it would make sense to take a look at why this is true. Perhaps institutional discrimination denies girls opportunities for satisfactory education in mathematics. But no, you'd have us sit here and think that everything is fine. No, the result of this study (and many like it) is clearly being misrepresented. The data must be falsified. Girls are surely performing on par with boys when it comes to math, pay no heed to these test results. Let's just stick our collective head in the sand, ignore this clearly biased data set, and continue on with business as usual.

Feel free to claim that Hitler only killed two thirds of European Jews, since he was expected to kill them all. Oh, hello, Godwin.

Re:Gender gaps

[Samantha Wright]

The core issue I was trying to highlight is that the summary says "in all countries," which is misleading. It might be better to say "in a little over half of the countries" or even "in the majority of countries." The PISA 2012 results document uses the wording "many countries and economies" to describe the situation—never "all."

However, there's another problem with the summary sentence I quoted. The PISA 2012 results has this to say about reading:

By contrast, girls outperform boys in reading almost everywhere. This gender gap is particularly large in some high-performing countries, where almost all underperformance in reading is seen only among boys.

So the other part of that same sentence from TFS, "boys generally perform a bit better than girls, but this applies only to math," is extremely misleading due to its incompleteness, in addition to being horribly structured. (I trust you understand why this is a problem for journalistic honesty.)

You forgot to rant about

[DaveAtFraud]

You cannot flunk the dolts because, "it might damage their self-esteem."

Deal with it.

Cheers,
Dave

Intellectual wealth

[Reliable Windmill]

I hope they can keep more and more of this intellectual wealth in Asia, instead of having it usurped by the U.S. Asian governments and large corporations need to treat highly educated people to better job offerings.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[kamapuaa]

Do people in foreign countries actually believe this? It's hilarious how some foreigners go to US websites and absorb US culture, but believe the most ridiculous anti-US propaganda at face value.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[TWiTfan]

Yeah, they are. Here is an article on the subject. But this are the key quotes:

Among non-Hispanic white Americans, the average [PISA] score was 525 - not very different from Canada's 524, New Zealand's 521 or Australia's 515. All these countries are heavily white, and all ranked in the top 10 of the 65 participating school systems. The story is the same for Asian Americans. Their average score was 541 - somewhat below Shanghai, about even with South Korea and ahead of Hong Kong (533) and Japan. Again, all these other systems were in the top 10

. . . . . But the most glaring gap is well-known: the stubbornly low test scores of blacks and Hispanics. In the PISA study, their reading scores were 441 (blacks) and 466 (Hispanics).

So, yeah, the affluent white kids out in the suburbs and decent neighborhoods are apparently learning just fine.

Agreed, Asia rocks education

[Murdoch5]

My girl friend is Asian and she agrees that North America has an education system that is about as "good" as toilet paper. By the time my girl friend was in grade 3 she was doing grade 8 level north american math. She was only allowed to eat dinner when all her homework was done and she had HOURS of homework a night. She didn't get a lot of time off school and if her marks weren't in the high 80's and 90's she got punished. When she came to Canada in grade 4 she was shocked. She told me that until grade 10 she wasn't even challenged and frankly that even high school was easier then her grade 3. So don't be surprised.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[AIphaWolf_HK]

Only if you believe the tests test for anything important, which I don't.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem I have with these statements is that they do not resemble my (fairly recent, ending in 2004) American public education at all. I don't recall ever hearing the phrase "Intelligent Design," or the ideas encompassed by that term, ever in a classroom, period, let a lone a science classroom. I remember being taught the scientific method fairly early on and, though I was often encouraged to back up my opinions with evidence in all subjects, I have no recollection of being told that my opinion was "good enough."

Re:Asia Vs. America

[rs1n]

You're right -- but instead of preachers, we have a large number of Americans who proudly wear their mathematical ignorance as a badge of honor.

Demographic ($ and attitude) differences are key

[davidwr]

Take Mass. and throw in the kids aged 0-5 and their parents from the "bottom-10" US states together into a hypothetical state and initially keep everything else the same including the attitudes of policy-makers and educators and the attitudes of the "existing" Mass. parents and students.

The net result is that the average attitudes will initially drop, the average family income will initially drop, and the amount of state and local tax money available per student will initially drop.

Wait 10-15 years and see what happens to social attitudes towards education, what happens to average family income, and what happens to education spending from local and state taxes. Whatever the result, it will probably correlate with the scores these kids make 10-15 years down the road.

Odds are high that they will be somewhere below what Mass. is currently scoring but somewhat above where the "bottom 10" states are currently scoring.

Re:Former ESL teacher in Shanghai...

[the eric conspiracy]

Watch out. The US is losing ground in areas like scientific papers.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/mar/28/china-us-publisher-scientific-papers

In fact China may surpass the US this year.

Re:Whites need to stop being "White"

[Andover Chick]

I don't think this is a "white" issue. The USA has ~20% people of African descent. In fact, if you separate out just the whites of northern Euro descent then it'd be at the same historical levels. Fact is the poorer demographics have increased which pulls down averages. I also doubt whites ever took dominance for granted relative to east Asians. Asians were broadly admired by whites for exceptionally high intelligence in the media as far back as the 1930s with the Charley Chan detective series.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[sycodon]

We calls it likes we sees it.

Re:That's great!

[unixisc]

Education just makes poverty more expensive, since there are no guarantees that it will land you a job. Just ask the gazillions of people who post describing their degrees & experience, and how they are turned down for jobs they're perfectly qualified for, since they are pricier as well. Yeah, primary education is certainly valueable, but beyond a point, those degrees - be it a Bachelors or an MBA - hardly do much, other than sink one financially

I don't think so

[slashmydots]

Asian countries are known for lying about their test scores and faking them to make themselves look better. There are a couple others in there like Turkey that are infamous for doing the same. I don't believe one single word of this entire report.

Re:I don't think so

[Camembert]

You are very naive. I am European and lived recently in Singapore, now in Hong Kong and I notice that children in my family-in-law and of my friends have lots of challenging homework.
To be fair, it even goes too much, a little niece of my wife has to do an entry exam to go to a quality primary school. It is also common over here to get tutoring even if the kid scores say 85%, because (s)he should do better than that.
From direct observation this article did not surprise me at all.

Re:I don't think so

[xenobyte]

Homework is not that important! - I did very little homework in math during most of my regular school year except for stuff that needed to be handed in, and I still got the very top grade at the exams both orally and written. I learned by reading ahead in class and asking relevant questions when ever needed.

I know it helps your grade when you correct the problems posed by the teacher in addition to both answering the flawed problems and the problem the teacher usually intended to pose. Math always came very easily to me and I just did the first 11 problems of that test with no errors (took about 5 mins), even though I'm 47 now and thus left school quite a long time ago.

Apples to Oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

I always wonder about the validity of these tests. Looking at the Wikipedia entry there is a nice study that shows what happens when you segregate the US results by poverty level and then compare. For poverty level 10% USA ranks number 1. Continue down the list and poverty levels, USA consistently beats countries at similar levels. All of these studies suffer from the same problem, go to Asia and they don't test the rural poor, the USA tests everyone.

Apples to Oranges.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[St.Creed]

We believe it just as much as Americans believe that we routinely kill off the elderly in The Netherlands (*), smoke dope all day while walking around on wooden shoes, all while tending to our tulips :)

(*) We do, but only on special, state-appointed holidays.

Re:Demographic ($ and attitude) differences are ke

[Anonymous Coward]

The bottom 10 states are atrocious. They are permanently mired in poverty and elect corrupt and ineffective politicians to run their sad excuses for states. People born into these states have little hope of climbing out of poverty - the American social contract does work there.

http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/

Some sort of Federal minimum standard needs to be imposed on their education system to pull them into at least the 20th century if not the 21st. I'm hoping that the Common Core Curriculum will effectively be that. But I don't expect real results for quite a while. Even Massachusetts took 20 years to reach their current state of grace.

What I despair of is the current stagnation in this area. Repeating failed policies and expecting the same results is insanity. Even worse is the partisan gridlock that blocks almost all real reform in this country.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[Sarten-X]

Well done. You've completely missed my point.

How "parallel" do you think these schools will actually be? Of course, the best extracurricular programs and the best teachers will want to work with the well-behaved kids more, so they'll try to get into that one more heavily, giving those good students a better chance at a good education. The "bad" kids will be stuck with the worse programs and teachers, reinforcing that there is no escape from a life of crime and violence. Sure, we could legislate that programs and teachers are assigned randomly... but that doesn't change the fact that every day, the kid walks into school knowing he's "bad".

Separate is never equal, regardless of what criterion is used.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[pregister]

So not at all, then? Good.

On average

[Karmashock]

You have to take into consideration that US demographics are extremely diverse where as china's stats are pretty much uniform.

Point being... we have a lot of stupid people in the US. Just stupid. Not a lot to be done about it.

That said, we also have some of the smartest people in the world. And what is more, we draw smart people to the US from all around the world. And they come here and have children.

Are they massively outnumbered by the exceptionally stupid? Yes. But we have them all the same.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[CrimsonAvenger]

we have a large number of Americans who proudly wear their mathematical ignorance as a badge of honor.

And we have at least an equally large number who proudly wear their illiteracy as a badge of honor.

Many here on /.

How many people don't know the difference between loose/lose, there/they're/their, wait/weight (no, this one's not from /., saw it elsewhere on the web this AM), etc.?

Perspective from a Chinese American

[Taco Cowboy]

I was from China, and I am a naturalized citizen of the United States of America.

Regarding education - back when I escaped from China (that was some 40 odd years ago) the schools in East Asia (countries which were/are heavily influenced by the Confucianism school of thought such as China, Korea, Japan, Singapore ) were pretty much based on the top-down rote-learning mode - whereby the students have no say, and they must do EVERYTHING their teachers told them to do.

It operated that way because the basic tenet of the Confucianism teaching is that the young uns are SLAVES to their elders (it's pretty much based on the blind obedience mode).

When I reached the West I was totally astounded when my classmate actually questioned the teachers !

That was a super NO-NO in Asia.

Back then, even if the student asked a totally legitimate question to the teacher in class that student will be summoned to the headmaster and/or discipline master's office for punishment.

That was how the Asian school had operated back then.

Now ... except for Korea, which is still practicing strict Confucianism as what it has been doing for the past 2,000 years ... many schools in the East Asian countries (those populated by yellow-skin folks) have drastically improved their teaching method.

Nowadays students are encouraged to solve problems, rather than to remember the facts laid out by their teachers.

From Singapore to Tokyo to Hong Kong to Taiwan, everywhere I go I see great improvements.

As for the other East Asian countries, those which are being populated by the brown skin folks such as Indonesia or the Philippines or Thailand, their schools are still as sucks as 50 years ago.

I see that there are people here trying to justify their own country's failing by saying that the "comparison is not fair", that the comparison is comparing "cities to countries".

For those folks, what I see is nothing much but sour grapes.

Yes, comparing schools in Hong Kong or Singapore to schools in the United States of America is comparing schools in CITIES to a LARGE COUNTRY --- but so what ?

If the schools in the United States of America sux, it's STILL SUX, no matter if it's in the city of Detroit or if it's in the city of Little Rock.

How many of my fellow Americans have been to the public schools ? How many of you have seen the effect of gangsterism in the public schools in America ?

I have.

I have 2 friends who were teachers in public schools in America who were MURDERED by their students.

On the other hand, I have a lot of friends who teach in schools in Asia, and so far, none of them have been killed by their students yet.

When I asked my teacher friends in Asia about a recent news of a math teacher in Boston who got her throat slit by her student. all of them were horrified by that news.

But when I post that same news to my friends who used to teach (and some are STILL teaching) in American public schools, they just shrug.

This reflects how bad the American school system has become.

You guys may want to deny it as much as you can, but for one who was from afar (I am not a product of the American high school system), the American school system has failed.

Re:Perspective from a Chinese American

[Your.Master]

When were your peers trained?

The GP is talking about a transition from 40 years ago to now in public schooling. Odds are if you're working in Singapore, your colleagues came out ~20 years ago. The education system changing does not have immediate effect on the people educated under a worse system. Nor is it reasonable to compare a single individual against any aggregate group in a statistical study.

Note that I can't speak to the accuracy of the GP at all and don't claim to.

Re:Perspective from a Chinese American

[Taco Cowboy]

If you're an expat working in Singapore you are in your 30's, or older.

Assuming your colleagues are almost at your same age group, their years spent in their Primary and Secondary schooling were in the 1980's, 1990's and/or early 2000's.

The schools, even in Singapore, at that time, still operated under the "teacher talks, students listen" mode. Student/teacher interactions were still very much discouraged.

The real change didn't come until mid 2000's, where many Western techniques were "borrowed" (such as those from Ed Bono, and actually the Singaporean government invited Mr. Bono to Singapore many times to help them implement the creativity improvement program).

Schools in Singapore, in Hong Kong, in Tokyo are very much different from schools 20 years ago.

Hands on experimentations are very much the norm nowadays.

Re:Perspective from a Chinese American

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where you're getting this information on how all the "yellow-skin folk" countries have changed and stop forcing memorization on the students. I recently moved away from Tianjin but the students that I knew and taught all complained about the amount of information they were being forced to memorize.

Students are still doing everything their teachers tell them to. Including, apparently, committing suicide ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10419619/Chinese-boy-10-ordered-to-jump-from-building-by-teacher-after-talking-in-class.html ). A friend of mine was teaching young teenagers there. When he gave 5 of them an assignment to write a poem about anything of their choosing 3 of them wrote about killing themselves because of the amount of homework.

And what about the rampant, basically institutionalized, cheating? Remember when the small city of Zhongxiang kept having suspiciously high scores on the gaokao? So then teachers and administrators from outside of the area were brought in to watch over the students and prevent them from cheating? And then the students AND PARENTS started a riot ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10132391/Riot-after-Chinese-teachers-try-to-stop-pupils-cheating.html ) because it wasn't fair not to let these children cheat because everyone else in the country was going to.

And of course it's stupid to cherry pick high-achieving cities and then compare them to a whole country. I moved around a lot as a kid and saw many different school districts. If the tests were just administered to Northern Virginia and we had magnet schools like Thomas Jefferson skewing our scores upward it'd look pretty damn cheery in America. But if we're getting lumped together with creationists of course it's going to bring it all down. They should lump Shanghai back in with all the nongmins (rural farmers) and see where it's brought down to.

Re:Perspective from a Chinese American

[Taco Cowboy]

Did I say they "stop forcing students from memorizing" ?

Did I ?

I said, ~ and please read carefully, ~ that there has been a great deal of improvements on the way of teaching in many of the East Asian countries, especially those that have majority "Yellow-skin folks" such as Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, China.

Re:Perspective from a Chinese American

[Taco Cowboy]

Nice try.

In Korea the "women servant / male master" culture is still very much alive.

Your family may be one of those who decide to adopt the Western way of thought (gender equality and all that) but most of the Koreans that I know (and yes, I do go to Korea often and do speak Korean ~I am part Korean, for crying out loud~) still subscribe to that ancient culture.

As for the Korean Drama and K-pop, no, I do not waste my time watching or listening to those garbage. Sorry to say that, even when I am part Korean (1/16th of my genes), I gotta say most modern Korean movies/songs are not even worth mentioning.

Re: Sowell's "A Challenge to Our Beliefs" about ed

[NickGnome]

3 alternate links. Take your pick:

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell120313.php3

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2013/12/03/a-challenge-to-our-beliefs-n1756023/page/full

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-on-the-right/120213-681322-blacks-working-class-whites-were-similar-before.htm?p=full

Re: Study is flawed - compares cities to countries

[NickGnome]

"And this is bad exactly why?"
...

OK, let's do it this way, then; let's only test Americans in the poorest neighborhoods in which academic achievement is least valued, and test only the children in the wealthiest neighborhoods where academic achievement is most highly valued in China and see how the results come out.

Or we could test all of their students and all of our students and compare, examining the average, median, worst, best, standard deviations.

Or only test the top students in the top US schools and compare them with the top students in their top schools for a change.

Can you see the differences such selective testing produces from universal testing?

Does it do any good?

[dorpus]

While Asian countries are often accused of taking jobs from the West, the President of South Korea's Hyundai Motors visited factories in Russia and the Czech Republic. He said he was impressed by the quality of workers who were far superior to South Korean workers -- they never staged strikes and had far lower wages. While a South Korean factory takes 30 hours to make a car, the Czech factory takes 16. The visiting Korean managers could not keep up with the pace of production, so they received help from local secretaries in their 20's to fill their checklists. South Korean industry has been crippled by constant labor strikes demanding ever more wages and shorter working hours.

Do students who score high on achievement tests demand higher wages, cushy jobs, and become less internationally competitive?

http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20131203-00000030-xinhua-cn
http://japanese.joins.com/article/999/178999.html?servcode=300&sectcode=300

Re:Former ESL teacher in Shanghai...

[Copid]

The thing is, we should be losing ground by metrics like "absolute number of scientific papers produced." China has 4 times as many people as we do and is in the process of increasing the percentage of its population that gets advanced education and participates in the industrial economy. China surpassing the US in papers produced is inevitable. They'll do it as soon as they're 1/4th as academically productive per capita as we are. Or, stated differently, we would have to remain permanently 4x as productive as the Chinese to stay ahead forever. Not going to happen.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[Darinbob]

Overall I don't know if this has much of an effect on the average performance. Yes it hurts some students but this tends to be in lower population areas (barring Texas). However the performance in the very highly populated cities is also terrible; it's not necessarily because they don't teach science but because they bother teaching anything much of the time. Students who are seen as failing are routinely ignored. With No Child Left Behind which attempted to solve this most of the schools instead teach to the test which does not do a good job of teaching.

And science is just one part of the issue. If it was only about science then we'd expect to see low science scores buy high writing and mathematics scores, but instead it's bad across the board.

Despite good intentions over the last couple of decades we're still in the same old rut that student performance correlates to wealth.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[Darinbob]

These are often just typos here on forums. Basically spell checkers fixing up things without the writer bothering to proofread before hitting submit. It is relatively easy for touch typists to get there/their wrong because the word gets typed nearly automatically, it's only when going back to proofread that these sorts of errors can be spotted.

Overall I see the badge of honor for not knowing math or technical geeky stuff being more prevalent whereas pride in being illiterate or making grammar mistakes to be relatively small.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[Darinbob]

Naw, it's more like 20-30%, and even them most of them aren't hardcore believers in anti-science but instead are just following along after being whipped up into a frenzy.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[Darinbob]

We still have this system, it's just very informal and not discussed out loud. Rich schools have great student performance, poor schools have really lousy performance. It's been a standard for most of my life that once one is categorized in school that this will follow the student throughout the education. Student is seen as being a bad learner and the system stops trying to improve them; but when student is seen as smart and special then there may be enrichment programs to help even more.

One key thing in many of these countries is that they focus on making sure everyone is learning. Yes people will point out horror stories about endless homework and strict teachers in Asian countries while overlooking that the poorly performing students are not allowed to slip through the cracks or get shunted off to the dummies class.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[Darinbob]

If you refuse to see that a problem exists then there's no need to fix it.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[AIphaWolf_HK]

Which problem am I not seeing? I see lots of problems with our 'education' system. I'm not even impressed by the schools in these "decent neighborhoods."

Re:Former ESL teacher in Shanghai...

[the eric conspiracy]

Did you read the article? It isn't just the Chinese. R&D spending is growing. Other nations are increasing their R&D too. Except in the US R&D funding has been dropping as a percentage of GDP since 1985.

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/s2194/conten2a.htm#7

Re:Former ESL teacher in Shanghai...

[Copid]

I did read the article. I'm not sure how the point "The Chinese have a lot more people than we do" is negated by pointing out that the phenomenon is really, "The Chinese + the populations of a bunch of other nations." That just makes the point even more true. We can become marginally more productive or more educated than we are, but we're never going to do so as fast as country of uneducated farmers sending their first generation of kids to newly-built engineering schools. The bottom line is that we're about 4.5% of the world's population (and falling) and we're producing 21% of the academic papers. There's simply no possible way for that to continue while the rest of the world develops. Assuming our percentage of the world's population stays the same (and it won't), I'd expect us to asymptotically approach 4.5% of the world's papers even with top notch academics.

I'm all for more R&D funding as a percentage of GDP, but again, "growth in R&D funding as a percentage of GDP" is a questionable metric to compare to developing nations. What percentage of South Korea's GDP was spent on R&D 50 years ago compared to ours? What is it now compared to ours? Should ours have grown at the same rate as theirs? Probably not.

Re:That's great!

[Your.Master]

Baked in that argument is the assumption that the consequences of educating a society = the consequences of educating a single individual * the number of individuals. But there's reason to suspect that education carries a network effect on society.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[volmtech]

Then you get a young man beaten unconscious in a stairwell serving the same 5 day suspension as his attackers. Then after successfully defending himself a second time being ask to leave the school because he was a disruptive influence! The thugs could roam the halls freely. Very few student would need to be placed in the "motivation" school, to use a Marine term. Those who need to be are stealing the others chance for an education. I had technical school in the Navy. Those foolish enough to disrupt the class found themselves on a bus back to the fleet to spend the rest of their hitch swabbing decks.

Where are your colleagues from ?

[Taco Cowboy]

Since you mentioned that you are an American expat working in Singapore, it won't be too far fetch to say that you are NOT the only "expat" working in the firm.

You are surrounded by colleagues who are NOT from Singapore - and many of them are from neighboring countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Vietnam and Malaysia.

Those colleagues are yours might be ethnic Chinese, but if they came from Indonesia or Malaysia or the Philippines, they were taught in school systems that, as I outlined in my original message regarding countries with "brown skin folks", are in really terrible state.

Coupled with the religion problem - Malaysia and Indonesia being majority of the people are of the Islamic faith, their school curricula were/are routinely tempered with by the authority, for "religious reason" (to dumb down the students instead of making them brighter) so that when they grow up they wouldn't know how to question the authority.

I have companies set up in that region as well and I have co-workers from those places. I know the way they think (very narrow) and their timidity (never question authority) seriously damn down their real potential.

They are products of the environment they grew up in - like me, I grew up in China, but luckily for me, I escaped China when I was still in my teens and got the chance to learn from both the East and the West.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[Jason Levine]

It's worse than that, even. In a claimed attempt to "catch up", politicians and business leaders developed "Common Core" - a set a principals that all schools should go by. Notice I didn't say educators. They weren't allowed to work on this. After all, this would kill the "teachers are to blame" notion that politicians/business leaders have been pushing for years.

Now, with Common Core, we are paying big companies like Pearson millions of dollars to design curriculum that teachers MUST adhere to and paying them millions more to give horrible standardized tests to our kids. Normally, tests help teachers gauge how good students are doing and where they need help. These tests, however, are sealed. Neither teachers nor parents are allowed to see them. Results are posted the following year (after the kids are with different teachers) but the results dictate whether the teachers get to keep their jobs. So teachers have a strong incentive to teach ONLY what is on the test and focus on test preparation. If it's not on the test (Math and English), it doesn't get taught or somehow gets "folded" into Math and English. (History has become a side-topic to teach during English. Science is a side-topic during Math.)

What if the schools keep failing? (As they likely will given that kids aren't really being taught anything well.) Well, businesses have an answer for that also: Charter schools. These are schools run by businesses, for profit, but using public school money. So the businesses open charter schools, get to choose which students they accept, get to hire anybody as their teachers (no degree or background in education required), and don't need to take those tests I mentioned before. Meanwhile, the public schools have LESS money, need to focus on tests MORE, and are left with all of the kids with special needs. So the public schools fail more and more charter schools take over. It's a win-win... for businesses and the politicians who get their lobbying money - not for the kids.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[frank_adrian314159]

These are often just typos here on forums. Basically spell checkers fixing up things without the writer bothering to proofread before hitting submit.

Writing is writing and publishing (even on the web) is publishing. If one doesn't care enough about what one publishes to proofread a post before hitting send, one probably doesn't care enough to do a good job at anything - autocorrect or not.

Re:Former ESL teacher in Shanghai...

[frank_adrian314159]

Numbers? Yes. Quality? No. Look at the recent scandals about selling co-authorship of pre-written scientific papers to boost one's publication count. Many horror stories about scientific publishing in China can be found here.

Re:Demographic ($ and attitude) differences are ke

[davidwr]

They are permanently mired in poverty

Oh ye of little faith.

There is a big difference between "permanently" and "probably for the lifetime of anyone alive today and possibly the lifetimes of their children and grandchildren."

Odds are at least one of these states will have greatly improved socioeconomic status relative to the rest of America within, oh, 100-200 years.

Re:Asia Vs. America

[hawkfish]

In some ways, and in some places, America is little better than the Taliban ever was.

Yep, because the Supreme Court will stone you to death if you try to teach the truth rather than creationism.

You know, my initial reaction to this was "Yeah, probably." It actually took me a moment to realise that things are not quite that bad - at least not yet.

Re:That's great!

[FilmedInNoir]

Sorry, my sarcasm sounded in earnest. I should of used a ;) at the end.

Apples and orange groves

[Modern Primate]

It's beyond absurd to compare the performance of single cities to the performance of entire nations. There's so much money riding on making US schools look bad so that they can be privatized. It's unfortunate people keep falling for these bullshit statistics.