Thread: United States/Western Education System

Recently I saw an article stating that the United States ranks 24th in Math 21st in Science out of 29 developed countries. This ranking does not include developing countries such as China (PRC). Chinese Students stay in school from 6AM to 5PM. Their equivalent of the SAT is called the Gao Kao...is an exam spanning all 12 years of their education and the grade from that test is the only thing which determines which colleges they're eligible to attend. Using the SAT as an equivalent, that's like saying if you get a 2400, you can attend all colleges. If you get 2200 you may be able to attend NYU or Rutgers. Below 1800 is no college or community. It is only administered once a year for 2 days straight.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/world/asia/13exam.html (Gao Kao New York Times Article)



What do you think is wrong with the United States' educational system if there is anything wrong at all and what do you think we should do to improve our system? Do you think we should adopt other country's policies on education?

I am a American Born Chinese (ABC) so I'm interested in your views on the subject.

There are several things wrong with the U.S education system:

A. parents don't take an active role in the mis-education of their kids.
B. teachers are not well trained to handle the adhd and violent kids of today
C. Schools are inundated with drugs, gangs, and teen pregnancy
D. Half the kids in US schools who do graduate are illiterate

The Chinese system may be flawed in some areas but it gets major points in other areas. Like keeping kids in school for long hours. The US school system needs to adopt strategies from other countries and maybe our kids will have a chance.

I agree with you first A point Monet, can't say for B,C,D, however I don't agree with your view on the Chinese system, as I don't think keeping kids in school for long hours is very productive.
Yes it brings results, like taking a kids from this parent when he is 5 yo and train him 12 hours a day to make an Olympic Games champion, but school is not the only important thing in the world, one must also have hobbies, culture and a social life in order to be a valuable human being an not just a box of knowledge.

Several Europe countries, (not the France :)), like Denmark, Germany, Sweden, etc., keeps the kids few hours a day and still have a great educational system. The school system have to be comprehensive, and molded around the kids, not the contrary...

Average scores include people who are destined to work at McDonald's all their lives or as taxi drivers. I don't think anyone's demonstrated even a correlation of the scientific aptitude of a country and its actually scientific productivity. In fact, 90% of people are in occupations that don't require science/math skills. As long as the top 10% are smart, everybody else will be taken care of.

The system in America is broken. It simply starts at home with the parents though. WHen I was growing up, if I did something wrong I got my but busted. However now a days if you spank you child in public now you have a chance of getting child services called on you. And schools are even worse. If a child acts up and a teacher even touches them to get them to quit they are put under investigation. So children nowadays are free to act up and do what they want with out proper disipline.

Also starting right out from k up the kids are taught to pass a test, and not really taought like we used to be to actually learn and use the skills that were taught.

Well I will have to do a little research before I post any strong case here. But I wanted to comment on Jmissle's post.

I do not think that our physical disciplinary restrictions play any role whatsoever in how well our students stack up to other students internationally. If anything I would say it helps our children learn. A student who acts out and has his hand slapped by a ruler (or any other physical discipline) learns nothing other than if he acts out he will receive pain. However, because we have restrictions against this the teacher now is forced to think up a more suitable punishment. Instead of slapping the student with a ruler the instructor can force the student to stay in for lunch and have him drill his grammar. The student learns that not only if he acts out will he miss his recreational period but he also learns his grammar in the proccess.

This topic was brought up in Letters From Iwo Jima (a wonderful movie). A private misses his targets while firing. The captain then punishes him by assigning him to clean the squads boots. The Commander see's this and scorns the disciplinary measures commenting that the poor marksmen should learn to clean his and his squads gun's properly rather than their boots. Another similar case also occurs during the movie that refers more directly to physical beating as well.

I recently read a book by Malcolm Gladwell (I can't remember if it was Outliers or Tipping Point). In it he discusses the American school system and how it differs from other school systems around the world. He also compares schools in "good" schools and "bad" schools in the U.S.A. What he found was that our American school system is based off of an agricultural calendar which gives kids summers off so they can help out on the farm. This is the primary difference between schools around the world that have school year-round which means they learn more and retain more. Also, he found that kids that spend time reading and doing educational things during the summer retained more come the next school year than kids that didn't. This was the primary difference between kids from "good" schools, who are typically also from well to-do families that give their kids constructive things to do over the summer and kids from "bad" schools who are typically from families who do not have time to dedicate to their kids during the summer.

I like the idea that was proposed to extend the school year to year-round, giving the occasional week off instead of the 3 month summer. Assuming the cause and effect behind Malcolm's findings are accurate, this single step would go a long way to helping kids from good and bad schools to retain more of what they learn each school year. Additionally I think schools should make more extracurricular learning activities available after-school for younger elementary kids. This would set a great foundation and encourage a mindset of learning that kids would carry with them all the way through post-secondary school.

is it hard to get a student loan that pays for your living costs as well?

Originally Posted by voltor

is it hard to get a student loan that pays for your living costs as well?

I don't think it's hard at all. I couple of my friends go to Full Sail in Orlando, FL and they have loans that pay for their rent ($1000ish/mo) and living expenses ($500ish/mo) on top of tuition. That said, I don't highly recommend this strategy, at least not when going to a very expensive school. You'll end up w/ a huge 6-figure debt when you graduate, which can lead to loan payments upwards of $600/mo. One of my friends is going through this now. She makes too much for gov't assistance, but cannot make ends meet without help from someone else because of all her loan payments.