Re:Ways to save American education
by tokenadult on Wednesday December 14, 2011 @09:20PM
(#3354763)
The one thing I always wonder about these stories is if they are true why haven't we in the United States been surpassed?
The United States has been surpassed in economic growth rate by many countries. The United States continues to gain by admitting as immigrants many highly capable persons who received their primary and secondary educations in other countries, and there are whole industries in the United States where much of the innovation and high quality comes from people with educational backgrounds like that.
> The one thing I always wonder about these stories is if they are true why haven't we in the United States been surpassed?
According to one of my college professors (back in the '90s), the simple answer is "our colleges are better." He told us that primary schooling in many countries have long been superior to ours, but our colleges are better and that's been keeping us ahead.
I don't mean to bash Finland which is a truly amazing place (no sarcasm, it really is). But at the same time a big problem in education is the scale tends to get clouded. No Child Left Behind's epic failure is a testament to that. Isn't it at least possible that Finish schools also "teach to the test" especially considering they test their students so rarely?
Before we increase class size, abandon charter schools and slow down efforts to integrate more technology into classrooms in favor of higher teacher salaries I'd like to see much more research done in this area.