Education: Which Country is Best?
February 21st, 2008
Submitted By: Shasta Palmer
Education is a hot topic amongst the nations. Who has the best, who will become the best, and where should parents send their children? The article Losing an Edge, Japanese Envy India’s Schools states that the Japanese are worried about their educational system, and are trying to put their children in Indian schools. The idea is that Indian schools teach the children more at a younger age.
Japan sees India as an emerging country to, “Beat in a more benign rivalry over education”. Tokyo, which has the two largest Indian schools, is receiving large quantities of inquiries from Japanese parents about admitting their children. According to the article, “Japan once turned out students who consistently ranked top of international tests, but that is no longer the case.” This just goes to show that things can change quickly. Just because a nation is the best at one point, doesn’t mean it will always be the best. This is something we should consider with the schools in the United States.
The article Study: Foreign Students Added to the Economy states that 14.5 billion came from international students home countries to fund tuition housing etc in 2006. Overall, the students spent 20 billion dollars here in the U.S. (including the 14.5 billion from their own countries). Indian and Chinese students account for a quarter of all 2006 international enrollments; however, Japanese students declined by 9%. Americans can brag about having the “best” school system, but how long will it last? Far more money is being put into the military than into our education system, yet these systems seem to been one the things we do well here in the U.S.
Lastly, something I have noticed reading these articles, and watching the blog video The William Jefferson Clinton Science & Technology Center, is the attitude of students abroad vs. here in the U.S. The video mentioned above shows Indian children who want to go to school. They feel lucky to be in school and are willing to try hard. They see it as a privilege, but here in the U.S. I think this is taken for granted. How many college students do you know that are in school because they want to be? I’ve met a lot who are there because they think they have to be, not because they want to be. True, most students agree college will benefit them, but the same privileged outlook doesn’t seem to be as predominate here in the U.S. as overseas.
These articles bring up interesting questions.
Who is the new leader in education?
Who will be the next leader, and why?
Entry Filed under: Pre-Departure, China, India, New Delhi, Pre-Departure
7 Comments Add your own
1. Chris Carr | February 23rd, 2008 at 9:24 am
[Same comment that I made to Jeff's post above.]
The answer to many of these questions really depends how one defines loaded terms such as “innovation” and “creativity”. If defined as people with discretionary time on their hands to come up with cool ideas being able to tap into VC capital (or a bank credit line or angel investors) quickly to start the next Google and world’s leading company, then the answer is very different than if one frames the question along the lines of, “what country, with 20 percent of the world’s population and only 6 percent of its arable land, has ‘innovated’ its way into the modern era just 25 years?; then you get two vastly different answers.
Here is a good post by the This is China blog, with some good insight from the comment thread, for further reading: Are We Innovative Yet? The China Challenge.
The This is China blogger seems to have hit the mark in terms of identifying the things that help hold down one definition of “innovation”, in China, but if so, China’s increased wealth will in time, in my view, change things like IP protection, quality of education at all levels, parenting methods and the like and things that are held in esteem, etc. Keep in mind that this cycle is nothing terribly new. This same economic cycle of development already happened in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
As an aside but related note, I recently heard Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun speak and he was excellent. He generally pulls no punches. He put an interesting twist to the “merits of online education debate” that relates to some of the issues that Jeff and Shasta raise in their posts. He said education should be much more open source, as Sun has been doing with its software (and which, by the way, Microsoft said it would start to do with part of its source code this week!).
He took a stats course, online, at Harvard a long time ago. He is a Harvard undergrad and Stanford MBA. They guy is not a dummy. He completed his stats course at Harvard in 48 hours (he stayed up for two days straight doing it). He got one of the few As awarded in the course.
He said, in effect (I am paraphrasing here), “Harvard failed students like me. If it had allowed me to take more of my Harvard coursework like I took my stats class, I could have got going on life and finished Harvard in a year, instead of 4, and then I could have moved on and would not have been so far behind in trying to catch up with the likes of Gates/Microsoft and Ellison/Oracle”.
The remainder of his message?
He took all of us in the audience to task (the audience was all academics) by in effect saying (again, I am paraphrasing), “you have all meant well to create a system that ‘leaves no child behind’ in how you build your institutions and educational systems and teach people, but in your attempt to leave no child behind, you have set up obstacles to change and moving society moving forward and have forgotten the many, many, many folks like me who you were holding back because of the traditional way you teach students and capture them, what else you required me to do that may not be value added, etc. Please stop doing this and get your crap together.”
The audience was dead silent. We had collectively been busted.
One way he suggested we might do this is to make much more education open source, and online where people are given feedback immediately how they are doing, they can learn at their own pace (fast like him or slow if they choose, etc.), they take greater responsibility for their own learning, in doing so you can pull from quality resources around the world, etc.
I am sure that most folks at Cal Poly would love McNealy and what he was suggesting.
And hey, don’t shoot me, the messenger …
2. Simeon Trieu | February 25th, 2008 at 8:58 am
China has their own share of problems in education, just like the US. I wouldn’t generalize any particular country on the quality of the students. I know many students in the US who work hard (if not harder) than Chinese students (or Japanese students, German students, etc.). We just have to measure an individual’s performance and go from there. The truth of the matter is that it’s not a society’s fault that a student does poorly. If you love learning, then it will come out naturally, no matter where you are. As long as you have books (or the internet and eBooks these days..) and a good mentor, you can always achieve your dreams. Here is an inspiring video lecture delivered by Dr. Randy Pausch, if you haven’t heard it already. The man has already passed on, but at the time, he was suffering from pancreatic cancer with only 3 months left to live. Instead of talking about suffering or religiosity, he talked about achieving your childhood dreams. Very inspiring. If there’s anything you can do to well in school, it was said in this lecture.
3. Nick Miura | February 27th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Man, where to start. The future of education is such a loaded issue. First, it’s hard to define what a good education is, or even what the point of education is. I’ve seen answers such as you need a good education to get a good job, or you need to go to school so you can do better than your parents. Regardless of why you go to school, the main theme is improvement on a personal level. School then, should be an area where one can improve themselves. By this logic, better schools should provide students access to better improvement opportunities.
I think Dr. Carr hit the nail on the head when he quoted that the system in the U.S., in its attempts to leave no child left behind, inhibits self improvement. What’s worse, is the system does not motivated student to learn for themselves - to learn for learning’s sake. In fact, I find it hard to believe that any school, anywhere in the world has it exactly right. What is different then, is the culture of learning. As a culture, the United States has a terrible history of education - immigrants came to America not to get educated, but to get rich. Education is now a means to an end. Compare this with Hindu India or Confucian Asia, which both put premiums on learning and improvement since before common era.
So here’s where I stand. I think American has the best secondary education system in the world - because the system is based on free market economics - both students and professors can choose what college is best for their individual needs and will pay(sacrifice) to attend. This does not necessarily mean the best individual schools, as many all over the world are very good, but the best overall system. Elementary education on the other hand, relies more on the culture than individual schools. The U.S. does not have a free market system and thus it will never be a leader because there will be too many hurdles and too much bureaucracy, and we as a culture don’t care enough to make a change. I’m not sure who will be the next leader; however, I think it will be in a culture that puts a premium on education, and keeps education local instead of national. Keeping education local lets people who can make the best decisions have the power to make change.
4. Simone Michel | February 27th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I have to agree with Nick on the point of secondary education. I think the USA has a very good secondary education system. Where we are still a step behind from my point of view is on the elementary and high school level. After a certain age children develop their own ways of learning and also their own paces. I think if you would split up each grade into different levels, say after 6th grade, you would be able to promote the brighter and faster learning kids while children that need more time are in a lower level. Education would be much more tailored to a specific learning type and the brighter kids could benefit from extra work. I know many people look at this kind of system as unethical because you seperate the children and label them as brighter and not but I look at it from an educational point of view. I also really like what Europeans are doing. After High School the majority of young adults start apprenticeships instead of college and go to school 1-2 days a week and work on their job the rest of the week. This way people that prefer practical work and on the job training are more motivated and also earn some money besides their education. They are also more likely to get a good job later on since they already bring experience with them. As we all know, it’s all about the customer and we want to make him happy!
5. Andrew Steen | March 17th, 2008 at 10:16 am
“Ordinary village schools were uninspiring places, with teachers who lacked motivation and interest.” This quote from the video pretty much sums up my experience from forth grade on. Most teachers are only there to satisfy a power trip. And a stack of dittos is not inspiring. Nor is a history book with page after page of “important dates.” When I am required to read something like that I just laugh and throw it away. Because if the school can’t put in the effort to find an inspiring and insightful book, then I’m not going to put in my time to read it.
I was very rarely required to critically think about anything until college, and even there, I felt unmotivated. Fact: I accomplished 95% of my learning outside of the classroom, and only showed up to class because of participation points. So in conclusion, I am very, very, very motivated to learn about everything under the sun, but I am not motivated to waste my time learning in an uninspiring and inefficient way.
6. Andrew Steen | March 17th, 2008 at 10:20 am
There are so many learning resources available to students in America, that of course a boring classroom with an unmotivated teacher is not going to be as appreciated as in someplace without the outside sources which we have at our fingertips.
7. David Dougherty | March 21st, 2008 at 11:30 am
I agree that it is difficult to generalize an entire country’s education system. If China and Japan are anything like the United States, then the quality of education really varies by location. I went to a public high school that outperformed many private ones, but I cannot say this is the case everywhere. I think that the quality of education is really based on two main factors, the student’s attitude, and the ability of teachers to meet the needs of their students.
The attitude of education varies vastly from student to student. There are a lot of American students today that are just plain lazy, and want everything to be given to them on a plate (the little emperors). I think these students represent a vast majority of the American education system. These kids have successful parents and think they can just ride their success for the rest of their lives. In contrast, I went to school with some of the hardest working kids I have seen. These students really saw the value in an education and wanted to do everything they could to benefit from what they were given. This attitude is much more likely to result in long term success.
Another key point in education is the ability of a teacher to meet the needs of the student. When I was younger, I got in a lot of trouble in school. I would be reprimanded for disrupting other students and causing a disturbance, yet still got straight A’s. I can attribute this to the “no student left behind” model. The teachers were dumbing down the curriculum to make sure no student felt inferior, but in turn made it so students who “got it” resort to other things with their new founded amount of free time. Had the teacher been giving the students who excel extra work, everyone could have benefited more (and I would have pissed off a lot less teachers). I think this model should be done away with. Teachers should move at a face pace in class, and then give those who can’t keep up the opportunity to meet outside of class for extra help. We are never going to progress in education if we cant set the bar high enough to compete.
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