Oh, crap...

[DSynger]

It would help to understand how the Japanese education system differs from the U.S.'s. For one, kids compete to enter good high schools. Those aren't inclined to higher learning go the votech route. The normal schools don't really focus on academia, they are more for social education and basics. To pass the many entrance exams that students face they are subjected to cram schools at night and overbearing parents that can push kids to suicide.

My theory is that the U.S. education system is so open that the good students get countered by the huge number of poor to mediocre students, that wouldn't even be in the Japanese education system.

[Benja455]

It would help to understand how the Japanese education system differs from the U.S.'s. For one, kids compete to enter good high schools. Those aren't inclined to higher learning go the votech route. The normal schools don't really focus on academia, they are more for social education and basics. To pass the many entrance exams that students face they are subjected to cram schools at night and overbearing parents that can push kids to suicide.

True...and South Korea has also had issues with cram schools and suicidal students. I'm not saying those systems are perfect...but their outcomes are better than ours based on a number of metrics. And for that matter, our system is struggling with suicidal kids...and we are still getting shitty academic results.

[kf7mjf]

It would help to understand how the Japanese education system differs from the U.S.'s. For one, kids compete to enter good high schools. Those aren't inclined to higher learning go the votech route. The normal schools don't really focus on academia, they are more for social education and basics. To pass the many entrance exams that students face they are subjected to cram schools at night and overbearing parents that can push kids to suicide.

True...and South Korea has also had issues with cram schools and suicidal students. I'm not saying those systems are perfect...but their outcomes are better than ours based on a number of metrics. And for that matter, our system is struggling with suicidal kids...and we are still getting shitty academic results.

Somebody in my history class today was talking about how African Americans were enslaved in the country of Africa by European colonialists... I'm scared.

[CurtisLemansky]

Common Core to the rescue!!!


Sent from my UAV using Disposition Matrix 2.0

[corpsman]

Looks to me like what we have here is significant empirical evidence that American education has been dumbed down. This is nothing new. Been going on so long, I suspect it is deliberate.

[Benja455]

Looks to me like what we have here is significant empirical evidence that American education has been dumbed down. This is nothing new. Been going on so long, I suspect it is deliberate.

I wouldn't say it's been dumbed down...but there's been a lot of budget cuts and the priorities have changed both of which were championed at one time or another by Democrats and Republicans - so there's plenty of blame to go around. The biggest problem of our education system (and our nation) is that we don't agree on the purpose of education.

If we want a globally competitive education system that emphasizes math, science and technology - we're going to make some serious changes and it will require a lot of money and long-term accountability from parents and politicans. If we want to create an education system which generates critical thinkers and well-trained citizens for a vibrant republic/Western democracy, it will require a lot less standardized testing and a collective will to ignore our results on international tests that simply focus on math & science.

If we want both - which is challenging - we're really going to need to completely restructure our entire education system and reevaluate how K-12 works (and college as well). This all ignores the sticky issues of art, music and physical education...not to mention all the time and money we spend on high school athletics (especially football) - which I personally think are extremely valuable - but have little/no impact on our nation's international competitiveness in the global market place (nor does it make young people better citizens).

EDIT: But to be clear - there's zero political urgency for any of this. Education is a massive business and the players (private/for profit curriculum and test companies, teachers unions, text book publishers, major non-profits like Teach for America, private/for profit charter schools, along with tech firms like MSFT, Dell & Apple) will not like anyone messing around with this cash cow (and some would argue it's also a very convenient form of social/political control...and artificial suppressor of unemployment once you hit college/graduate school).

[solyanik]

...not to mention all the time and money we spend on high school athletics (especially football)

This is the part that I completely not get about 'murican "education" system - is this idea of "collegiate athletics". I think back in the day it, when normal people played soccer, or lacrosse, or participated in the rowing team, this actually helped their physical fitness, furthered team spirit, etc etc etc.

But now we get essentially professional players with absolutely ZERO academic value, and who are nothing but entertainers, and we have them take space in places such as Harvard, Stanford, etc - and the only thing this furthers for everyone else is drinking, guzzling unhealthy food, and sitting on your ass.

IMHO, it's just super retarded. And it also underscores the value that society places on academics and science (which is somewhat below zero - which then results on more Americans believing in virgin birth than in science).

- which I personally think are extremely valuable -

What on motherfucking earth can be valuable about it?

[Benja455]

...not to mention all the time and money we spend on high school athletics (especially football)

This is the part that I completely not get about 'murican "education" system - is this idea of "collegiate athletics". I think back in the day it, when normal people played soccer, or lacrosse, or participated in the rowing team, this actually helped their physical fitness, furthered team spirit, etc etc etc.

But now we get essentially professional players with absolutely ZERO academic value, and who are nothing but entertainers, and we have them take space in places such as Harvard, Stanford, etc - and the only thing this furthers for everyone else is drinking, guzzling unhealthy food, and sitting on your ass.

IMHO, it's just super retarded. And it also underscores the value that society places on academics and science (which is somewhat below zero - which then results on more Americans believing in virgin birth than in science).

Indeed...bread and circuses, my friend...bread and circuses (although for the record, I love professional football - it's an amazing game ). And as I said before...it's all about priorities and the purpose of education - we emphasize full contact sports and cramming for standardized exams but then we wonder why reports like this pop up.

- which I personally think are extremely valuable -

What on motherfucking earth can be valuable about it?

Physical fitness, working on a team, character development, good sportsmanship. Education is not all about crunching numbers and memorizing the periodic table. Don't get me wrong - college sports are a fucking disaster and a half...but on the high school level - there's an argument to be made for sports teams. If not as organized/competitive team sports, physical education and health classes need to be taken more seriously - but again...there's that pesky purpose of education coming back to haunt us. Do schools exist only to train/mold the mind but not the body? And let's not get started on abstinence only sex education - holy shit, the data on that stuff is worse than any dumbass AWB or magazine capacity limit. And sweet baby Jesus - someone please tell the .gov to just let the DARE program die.

[DSynger]

It's not that our education system is being dumbed down. The numbers are averages. They are good for identifying issues, but there is more to it than just the numbers. After all the debate we've had with the anti-gunners in this country, we can't just swallow some averages on education and be good with it.

But... then again...
"One possible explanation: Unlike the state standardized tests most American teens are accustomed to, the PISA tests include open-response questions designed to measure critical thinking and problem-solving."

I just pulled this together from google before jumping into work, so it's not entirely vetted....

I was looking for a quick visual to aid my point.
http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/cccr13/performance3.html


The kids are changing too.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2011/02/07-population-frey


[url][/http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/education-international-test-results-100575.htmlurl]
Wealthy schools, by contrast, did very well on all three tests. Students in the most affluent U.S. schools — where fewer than 10 percent of children are eligible for subsidized lunches — scored so highly that if treated as a separate jurisdiction, they would have placed second only to Shanghai in science and reading and would have ranked sixth in the world in math.

Schools where low-income teens made up 10 percent to 25 percent of the student body also turned in a very solid performance; ranked on their own, they would have placed in the top eight in the world in reading and science and 17th in math.

But poverty alone does not explain the lagging results in the U.S. Vietnam is a poor nation, yet it outscored the U.S. significantly in math and science. And on all three tests, students from the U.S. were far less likely to score advanced than their peers in high-flying countries such as Shanghai, Finland and Canada.



Martin Carnoy, a professor of education at Stanford, said he was struck by how Estonian educators approached the PISA: They told each 15-year-old who had been randomly chosen to take the test that it was a great honor for them to represent their country and emphasized how crucial it was that they do their very best on the arduous exam.
“Whereas American kids, they could care less,” Carnoy said. “It’s just one more test.”

[joao01]

IMO, education is only part of the problem. The real problem is when kids look at what they have to look forward to. They feel the American Dream is dying or dead. Go to school, get a good education so you can work in a cubicle for XYZ company, never see your kids, never make enough for a good vacation, etc etc.

Why study when that is what we give them to look forward to?

Education = Education. One should learn for self betterment, but let us not be naive enough to think that education equals success. A students work for C students. B students work for the government.

Yes, that is a massive generalization, but please remind me where Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, et al got their degrees from? Oh, they all thought college was silly so they left and started companies that turned into cash cows.

[glockgirl]

This is why all three of my sons are in a Spanish Immersion programme. The teachers in the programme come from Spain and all over Latin America. In these countries, you are expected to do exactly what the teacher says to do, and to do it immediately; none of this back-and-forth, "soft" teaching. Students are taught from kindergarten on that if a teacher says something, they are expected to do it, and right away. A key part of this expectation, this lack of "soft" teaching, is that most if not all of the teachers come from countries where they were taught themselves in Catholic schools, and/or attending school at all is considered a privilege, not a right.

For example, if Sra. Colyer (Roald's 3rd grade teacher) says "Siéntate, clase", twenty-three 8-9 year olds scramble to get their butts into their chairs. There is no dilly-dallying, no continuing to do whatever they're doing--she says it, they do it. End of story. In all the years that I've had children in the ISA (Spanish Immersion) programme, I have never, ever heard a teacher raise his or her voice, nor ever heard any student talk back to a teacher. It is a completely different way of learning from that learned in English-only schools in the Bellevue School District or any other district (right now, BSD #405 is the only district with ISA endorsement and financial support from the government of Spain).

Interestingly, now that Sam, my oldest, is in a middle school that both Puesta del Sol and multiple English-only elementary schools feed into, he has expressed his disappointment in how much latitude the English-only teachers give to students (three of his seven classes per day are taught in solely in Spanish: Social Studies, Physics, and--no kidding--English Literature).

I am sure that it will come as a shock to all of them when they see how much latitude is given at the university level, but I'm equally certain that they will receive an excellent education, because it is ingrained in them to do what the teacher/professor tells them to do, and to do it as soon and as well as humanly possible.

[solyanik]

I had a German teacher in my MBA program who told us that in Germany the job of the teacher was to prove to the students that they are morons unworthy of being near the walls of the exalted institution that the university is; in USA his job is to entertain students.

In reality though, selective programs in US are tough. No BS. I have seen what CompSci in CMU did to my daughter, and I've been in PhD program at UPenn. On the other hand, I did an MBA @ UW, and MS in CompSci @ UPenn, and both were mostly good for entertainment.

So the best we have is really world class, but the average appears to be well below... average.

[rayjax82]

It would be interesting to see how much money per student/year those countries spend compared to ours. There's some evidence, in the us, that "throw money at the problem," makes very little difference in outcome. Our cultural diversity plays a huge part, especially considering how homogenous those other countries are.

In essence a one size fits all education plan is a fucking disaster in the United states.

[solyanik]

Why should cultural diversity play any role in the quality of education? Why is economic diversity not a much easier way to explain the problem?

[rayjax82]

Why should cultural diversity play any role in the quality of education? Why is economic diversity not a much easier way to explain the problem?

It plays a huge role in how people learn. Especially in cases where English is the second language.I'm not going to argue that economic diversity doesn't play a role, because it does.

That isn't a hugely controversial statement. There are three main types of learning, auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. While people usually do best with all 3, everyone is different. Meaning that you will likely get better results with an education tailored to an individual's learning style. I would imagine that a child's background would influence how he/she learns.

I don't know if your kids go to public school, you're fairly well off so I doubt it(which is a good thing). In the public school system they try more of a one size fits all approach with varying degrees of success. My child does well because of the extra support he gets at home. I would imagine in private school, a child gets much more individual attention.

I did happen to find an answer to my question in regards to education spending.

Japan and South Korea, both of which regularly outscore the US in reading, science, math, etc spend far less than the US does on a per student basis. Japan spends 8500ish per student, South Korea spends 6500ish per student. The US averages over 11k per student. Clearly there is much more to the problem than not enough money being spent.

As far as teacher salaries, US teacher salaries are very competitive with the rest of the world.

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/2 ... 96875.html