[Drew]

But it also depends on how those stats are being measured... Sure, kids in China and India may be scoring higher on standardized tests and doing algebra in 3rd grade, and sure we should be concerned about that.

But those stats only reflect half the picture. Kids in many of these countries are being taught to execute, but they're not being taught to think or to reason. My roommate taught english for a number of years in Korea and Mexico, and her experiences line up with mine - the (very young, maybe 3rd-5th grade) kids in her classes were able to do middle school and sometimes even high school level math, but as soon as she asked them to do anything requiring creativity ("write a story about anything" or the like), they'd freeze up. As soon as it required more than deciding which formula they'd memorized needed to be used, and which peice of data should be which variable, they suddenly fell WAY behind american standards.

Education is about more than data processing, or at least it should be. I'm not saying we don't need to fix our public schools, and in fact I'm a huge advocate of this, but it's also worth noting that the American school system may be falling behind the world in many areas, but it's also the best in the world in others.

[drshock]

I really dont think we being told to think and reason. Completly the opposite. Watch 5 minutes of tv and you see why. Our minds arent being educated, they are being entertained to keep us asleep to whats really happening.

From what I can see all anyone is being taught is ignorance.

[Drew]

TV has fuck all to do with school, though.

Maybe your educational experience was different from mine, then, but I went to a small public high school in the middle of nowhere, and while they churned out their fair share of idiots, the system was at least robust enough that any student willing to challenge themselves came out much stronger for it. We may not do as well on standardized tests as all of Asia, but our curriculum is focused more solidly on logical thought and reasoning skills, which are I would argue at least as if not more valuable.

[drshock]

(this is a serious question) if you dont mind me asking drew how old are you?

[Drew]

Fair enough.

26, coming up fast on 27. I grant you that my favorable high school experience (though I was miserable at the time ) could have been due to a rare excellent school system, or it could have changed since I left. I'll also admit that I'm not 100% sure how to turn on the TV in my apartment, I watch it so little.

There's a fuck of a lot wrong with american culture at the moment, but I think the greatest problem with the school systems we have are twofold - first, of course, that they're badly underfunded, but more dangerously that children are rarely given a reason to push themselves anymore. If you just sit back and regurgitate passively, then you're not going to take anything away from it that you couldn't learn from a book or the net, as you pointed out (assuming the student would bother to read).

However, the academic dialogue, forming and defending points of view, learning to read critically and argue critically, and engaging in discourse with your peers and learning from the process is the real strength of the American educational system. done right, it's a powerful tool. Not done at all, and you get students like the ones I was working with in India, who can execute processes beautifully, but not until I demonstrate how to do it first (and let's not even talk about the why...)

So, old enough to be a bit cynical, but young enough to still believe in the possibility...

[drshock]

haha ok, well I'll agree with you on that. The thing is I'm 18 years of age! Most people my age are idiots that never look beyond what the news tells them let alone look at the news period. It's kind of disturbing because I consider myself a lazy underachieving musician, and society would view me that way as well.

However, I consider myself WAY more intelligent than a lot of people my age who are getting good grades in college going out to be an engineer of some sort just because my mind isnt so closed to what the media says it needs to be.

[Drew]

Well, there are many forms of intelligence, so I try to never rate one against the other...

...but I agree, it wasn't until really the 2000 presiidential race (when I was about your age) and then the Iraq war that I even really began to consider that just maybe the media wasn't giving me the full story...

Also, you owe it to yourself to check out the OSI debut, if you're anti-media. The opener, "The New Math (what he said)" has some absolutely scary Dan Rather quotes.

[drshock]

I'll look into it then.

[Jongpil Yun]

Originally Posted by Drew

But it also depends on how those stats are being measured... Sure, kids in China and India may be scoring higher on standardized tests and doing algebra in 3rd grade, and sure we should be concerned about that.

But those stats only reflect half the picture. Kids in many of these countries are being taught to execute, but they're not being taught to think or to reason. My roommate taught english for a number of years in Korea and Mexico, and her experiences line up with mine - the (very young, maybe 3rd-5th grade) kids in her classes were able to do middle school and sometimes even high school level math, but as soon as she asked them to do anything requiring creativity ("write a story about anything" or the like), they'd freeze up. As soon as it required more than deciding which formula they'd memorized needed to be used, and which peice of data should be which variable, they suddenly fell WAY behind american standards.

Education is about more than data processing, or at least it should be. I'm not saying we don't need to fix our public schools, and in fact I'm a huge advocate of this, but it's also worth noting that the American school system may be falling behind the world in many areas, but it's also the best in the world in others.

Sorry dude, but that's one of the biggest BS stereotypes I've run across -- the Asian who can calculate but can't create. That shit goes all the way back to the 1700s, when Asians were said to possess incredible imitating ability as an explanation for the advanced Chinese culture when it was generally accepted at the time that everyone but Whites were intellectually inferior. Read the story about "Mongolian Idiocy" (now known as Down's Syndrome or trisomy 21) to see what I mean. It's right up there with the old myth about how Asians have a higher mean but lower variance in the population of IQs.

They ARE being taught analytical and critical thinking skills. One of the reasons that Asians outperform most other countries (Finland, Canada, Norway a few exceptions) is that schools throughout Asia are just longer, and more rigorous than in the US.

Also, the problem is NOT that schools in the US are underfunded. Schools in the rest of the world get much less money in terms of PPP than in the US.

I've bitched about the education system in the US before, and I won't repeat myself hear just because I'm too lazy, but I'll just say that the education system in the US blows, and education systems throughout the world are not built for people like me, who are, forgive my ego, brilliant.

TIME Magazine Cover: The Genius Problem - Aug. 27, 2007 - schools - education - children

[The Dark Wolf]

Originally Posted by Jongpil Yun

I've bitched about the education system in the US before, and I won't repeat myself hear just because I'm too lazy, but I'll just say that the education system in the US blows, and education systems throughout the world are not built for people like me, who are, forgive my ego, brilliant.

Hmmm. I would've expected someone of true brilliance to use the proper term in this 'here' statement.