Comments on: China, our model for education reform

By: David

David — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:36:03 +0000

I hate these discussions because they never bring up the issues that matter. First, why are we comparing our education system with China’s? Last time I checked China was still WAY behind us in science and technology. That would be like comparing an NFL team to a junior high football team because the junior high team scored more touchdowns. It doesn’t matter that most Chinese kids can read better than most American kids can. In almost any acedemic field it is ONLY the exceptional people that make the real gains and America is doing just fine. Second, you can’t make legislation that will force kids to learn or force parents to care about their child’s education. All you do with added legislation is give teachers bigger headaches, and less time to teach. Third, the “achievement gap” is ridiculous. You can’t expect equal outcomes for different groups of people. Are black and hispanic people as smart as white or asian people? Probably, I don’t know though because nobody in their right mind would do that research and publish the findings unless the results were PC, and it wouldn’t matter anyway because on an individual basis the statistics would be meaningless and probably harmful. Assuming they are equally intelligent, nothing the government could do would matter anyway, because as I’ve already said you can’t force people to learn. The US is suffering from a God complex that doesn’t make sense to me. It seems like we are obsessed with equality but the world isn’t fair, and we seem to want to fix things that aren’t broken even more. You wan’t to help with education? Fine, vote for more funding for education and just as important MAKE SURE that the money they are getting is going to the classrooms, because I’m sure if you checked, you will find that most of it isn’t. Get active in your childs education because you as a parent are the only person that can make sure that he or she takes it seriously. Think of it this way, if a teacher gives a test and five people out of thirty ace it, does that mean that the test was flawed or that the teacher wasn’t doing his or her job? No, it means that five kids really paid attention and did the work. If I passed a law saying that every kid had to pass that test or the teacher would be blamed what do you think the teacher would do? Probably teach the test instead of the subject. That wouldn’t benefit the kids, but after the short term improvements (in test scores only) it would definitely benifit the politicians who passed the law. I could go on but I just remembered that most people are stupid and I don’t care anyway. My kid is doing just fine in school.

By: Education initiative widens funding gap - Homeland Stupidity

Education initiative widens funding gap - Homeland Stupidity — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 08:50:44 +0000

[...] One of the many goals of No Child Left Behind is to decrease the “achievement gap” between rich and poor, white and minority. We already know that isn’t happening. At the center of the debate is often money. If these schools only had more of it, they could solve all their problems. In fact, the states themselves seem to generally favor NCLB if only they got a larger portion of the taxpayers’ income. [...]

By: Closing the achievement gap - Homeland Stupidity

Closing the achievement gap - Homeland Stupidity — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 16:45:55 +0000

[...] I’ve already addressed how the achievement gap isn’t really closing and how the measures within NCLB actually make the problem worse. If our politicians were truly interested in improving the status of public education, particularly for the most disadvantaged in our society, they would do better to look at real numbers from real research and attempt to discern what really works. In What it Takes to Make a Student, Paul Tough of the New York Times takes a look at some of these issues affecting our achievement gap and the need for reform. [...]

By: Dana

Dana — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 03:34:54 +0000

There is no real comparison between the Chinese and American systems. We
are completely different cultures. Education is not the means to an
economic end…it is the means to a political end. Nowhere is this clearer
than in China, but it is increasingly clear in the United States.

I don’t know how much tariffs will do for anything. I’ll leave the debate on
that topic to people who have followed it for longer than I, but it seems
to me that we have had a history of promoting free trade throughout the
world, with our first ambassadors (Jefferson and Adams in particular) quite
concerned with issues of free trade.

And seeing as our unemployment rate is lower than the more realistic estimates
of China’s unemployment rates, I don’t know if the argument that the curren
trade sanctions or lack thereof are doing us any particular harm.

By: Anne

Anne — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 23:28:29 +0000

Hi:
I am a middle school mathematics teacher. Since the TIMMS math testing
results threw educators and politicians into a panic, we have been
endlessly analyzing our curricula and teachers, but have we really
looked at the Chinese system of education? From the information I
have been able to obtain, Chinese students are only required to complete
9 years of school. A sizable percentage of them choose to attend a
vocational school rather than pursue a college prep course of classes.
Of course, since our leaders allowed American corporations to take both
skilled and unskilled manufacturing jobs out of the country without
penalty, those jobs, still available to the Chinese, are not available
to our kids. Instead, we are telling our kids that they will not
survive unless they can compete with the best and brightest of the
Chinese and Indian students. The problem is that not all of our kids can
compete with the best and the brightest from other countries, and it is
an unreasonable expectation that they should. Think back to when you
were in grade school. Do you think every kid in your school could have
earned a college degree? Of course not. This is just Bush’s justification
for why Americans can’t find work, and it’s a lie. Manufacturing and
service jobs still exist–just not in our country. The fix is to
re-instate import duties/tariffs and taxes (disappeared during Reagan’s
tour) on goods manufactured in other countries so that it is no longer
cheaper to take the work overseas. It’s not that I don’t think we should
work to improve our education system–that should be a constant ongoing
process. But we shouldn’t be lying to these kids. Not every single one
of them is capable of completing college prep math and earning post-
secondary degrees in math or science. And the fact of the matter is
that every single one of them could have an engineering degree
but if an Indian or Chinese Engineer will work for less, that is where
the work will go. We need to start demanding that our government protect
the interests of its citizens instead of the interests of its corporations.

By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 04:14:07 +0000

The proof about quality teachers is more common sense than not. If you don’t believe me, take a look at college professors. Noone is denying that they are intelligent human beings(for the most part) but being intelligent doesn’t make you a good teacher. I have had many adjunct professors(usually high school teachers that teach at a university for extra money) that have been profoundly better teachers in the respect they actually taught me. They weren’t the brightest professors I had by any means but they knew how to teach.
I have done countless hours of research into why schools are performing worse and it all involves national and local policy and is usually based on a comparison next to other countries that perform better than we do.It doesn’t help that education is not properly funded.
NCLB is an ideal policy that looks good on paper but when actually applied “throws a wrench into the works” whcih is left for the next generation to clean up. It actually is just a 20 year old policy given a new name to help revitalize it and get it going. It didn’t work then and from what we see right now, it is going to be a repeat of when it first when initiated 20 years ago.
State and Federal legislators need to be aware of WHY schools are failing not WHERE, or WHO, or WHAT subject. Understanding why a school is failing will lead to better legislation(hopefully if those legislators can think as well as they swoon voters) and improvement in schools will most likely go up. But, legislators need to be aware that postive results are not imminent. When policy changes it does take time for things to settle and work efficiently.
Education is for students to learn, think critically, and comprehensively and letting them be aware of all the potential careers out there even if the majority will end up working in an office setting.

By: Spellings plan to prepare us for the “new flat world” - Homeland Stupidity

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 18:43:50 +0000

[...] Most of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings’ speeches and editorials run along the same theme. The speech she delivered at the DePauw Discourse 2006 is no different. I find it interesting that she brings up India and China, the two countries President Bush feels we must compete with. Her speech focuses more on the economy and employment, and she notes that college graduates have an unemployment rate of 2% as compared to an overall unemployment rate of 4.6%. [...]

By: Dana

Dana — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 01:22:40 +0000

Q, I think at one time there was greater respect and appreciation for education here, as well. It is interesting to note the cultural difference between China and America…I hadn’t thought much about it. I did find it interesting that China’s improvements in education seem to have occured since Deng Xiaoping (sp?) decided that decentralization of education was an important aspect of modernizing China. Of course, his decentralization left a system far more centralized than our own, but I did find it interesting. That and his predecessor had so completely transformed education into a vehicle solely for the purpose of indoctrinating the youth with communist ideology, making party loyalty more important for advancement than achievement.

That is all from Wikipedia, and I don’t know enough about the system to really speak on it, but those were two contributing factors to China’s improvements in education I found interesting.

By: Michael Hampton

Michael Hampton — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 18:58:23 +0000

jtg, you should stick around for a while. We all know about that already.

By: jtg

jtg — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 18:36:05 +0000

The Underground History of American Education

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm