America's Problem: The World is Beating Us in a Battle We Don't Want to Win

Ah... trying to apply entrepreneur spirit everywhere, how could it go wrong?<p>Okay so let's recap, we are shown a table showing the PISA score of a lot of countries and we see the US in a very bad position. Great. Now let's look at the countries which are at the top, and weirdly these countries apply principles that are totally the opposite to what the author is trying to propose. China, France ( where I come from), Korea, Taiwan propose heavily standardized education. Specialization and choice comes very very late in education in the countries at the top. The best results on these tests should not be the ultimate goal of education in a country but they are an indicator of deep issues in the system.<p>I think one the problem in the US is the perception of education and the bad reputation is gaining over the years is not helping it: paradoxically by pointing out the real of imagined flaws of the system, you discredit it and lower the test scores because parents are blaming the system rather than the kids. HN is a great example with every week yet another "I was too smart for school, so they crushed me".<p>Please stop trying to fix it with entrepreneurial methods, it's an over simplified solution to a huge problem with many factors: financial, sociological, historical.<p>Oh and if we want to emulate the spirit in the silicon valley we have to remember that the vast, vast majority of projects FAIL. So maybe it's not so ideal.

So I get that American education tends to create "interchangeable cogs", but I'm dubious that "applying the Lean Startup methods will fix it". America doesn't just dominate the web just because of Silicon Valley - giant corporations like Microsoft and IBM and the baby Bells had a great part in it as well (and still do).<p>Does individualized attention towards each student's strength and passion scale to a nation? Shouldn't the focus of a national education system be to provide everyone with a solid base and then from there allow them to explore and develop their dreams?<p>I'm quite biased towards incrementalism, but I think the problem (defined as Americans emerging from the education system with no passion or creativity) would be better addressed by decreasing or removing the incredible burden it takes to get specialized, formal training in graduate school not by trying to get the Department of Education to attempt to pivot (expensively) towards focusing on each individual in an already chronically underfunded industry.

There's a lot of high minded stuff getting bandied about these days in regard to education. I agree so much with the idea that Americas public schools are no place for kids that my wife and I juggle our careers so that we can homeschool.<p>But here's the thing. None of this matters if we fail to teach basic literacy and numeracy. Spend a day at the DMV. People can't read. They can't add or round numbers. Simple statistics? Forget about it.<p>Public school should be a place where even the poorest, most disadvantaged kids can get these basic survival skills for the civilized world. To be blunt, to both public and private thinkers, if your plan doesn't address this as it's primary feature, sit down and shut up, we've got bigger problems to fix first.

When this issue comes up, I often hear the somewhat apologetic excuse that the countries at the top are there because of some combination of 1) rote memorization, 2) teaching to the test, 3) highly standardized systems which generally don't apply to the U.S. systems. Since my children were educated in the French system (in the US), I know there is some truth to these assertions. But, while it may be true in some or most countries that perform well in tests, I have read much about Finland's system that suggests in many ways the opposite approach is taken and yet with obviously good results (e.g. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8601207.stm" rel="nofollow">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/860...</a>).<p>I'd be interested in hearing from Finnish HNers on their impressions of their educational system.

"Men have votes, so women must soon have votes; poor children are taught by force, so they must soon be fed by force; the police shut public houses by twelve o’clock, so soon they must shut them by eleven o’clock; children stop at school till they are fourteen, so soon they will stop till they are forty. No gleam of reason, no momentary return to first principles, no abstract asking of any obvious question, can interrupt this mad and monotonous gallop of mere progress by precedent. It is a good way to prevent real revolution."

Among dogs, some breeds are considered "smarter" than others. However, when people talk about their dogs being smart, what they most often really mean is, "my dog is able to understand and follow my orders". While that is one way to measure intelligence, it is an extremely one-sided and perhaps somewhat dishonest approach (only those behavioral traits are called "intelligent" that are good for us, dog masters). Breeds of dogs that are genetically close to wolves, for example, are considered by some as less intelligent than other, more malleable breeds. However, as this experiment shows (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls3ZmwtaosY&#38;t=23m22s" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls3ZmwtaosY&#38;t=23m22s</a>) (video in German), actual domesticated wolves are quicker at solving some types of problems on their own, while dogs will give up after a few poor tries and/or turn to humans for help.

I think this method of teaching cannot succeed without some dramatic shift in the education system, which given its sheer size is nearly impossible. Furthermore, it may not even be optimal. The basis of this change is individualized education. Yet how can we teach students individually when there are millions of kids that have to be taught? Where are the teachers to facilitate this form of delivery? Who will pay for the increased cost in education? How will we even classify children? It has been demonstrated that children do better in school when they are placed in higher performing groups. Should we put all of the underperforming kids in a class where they see no one superior to them? Finally, I think there is a certain set of knowledge that everyone should know and K-12 does a decent job of teaching that. We can certainly improve the system without replacing it outright.

I was first put off by the talk of what “we” do, and “our” successes, which is the usually way of talking from someone who wants to make big pronouncements but doesn't know enough to say anything. Then was put off by the shiny chain of platitudes he offers in exchange for control over the education of “our” children ( “...following orders, obeying protocol...”; <i>thats</i> what they're “training” them to do? <i>That</i>'s the problem in schools? Has he been in a public school lately?). And the solution to the failure of American students to meet undemanding standards on basic literacy is to drop testing altogether?<p>“Entrepreneurship! That's the answer! I'm so excited about it that I can't be wrong!”<p>Then again, perhaps the article is more subtle than that. Perhaps it's an attempt to demonstrate how far our standards have fallen by showing what pap some people will accept as proposals for school reform.

It's funny no one ever mentions the fairly recent trend to tie driver's licenses with school attendance.<p>When i was in school I knew many kids who kept attending just so they could drive, and many of them never graduated, despite attending for 4 years.<p>I was in honors and AP classes, so I never had general education classes with these students, but on the occasion when I had elective classes with them, they were <i>very</i> disruptive.<p>I'm also sure they lowered our overall average scores as well.

A pity the Silicon Valley view is not the path to happiness, as far as I know.<p>Teach the children to be able to be really free. This means: reading and writing and the five rules above all.<p>BUT (big but): writing is NOT just being able to write down a dictation. Reading is NOT just reading aloud.<p>The rest is mostly crap. [OK I may be biased because I am a maths professor, so the five rules might be reduced to the four ones, just in case].

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.<p>This programming mantra is applicable to a much wider range of problems -- or rather, proposed solutions -- than just optimization because what it is really saying is, <i>don't try to solve a problem without first understanding what that problem is.</i><p>Education reform is lousy with this. There are probably more armchair education reformers than armchair generals, prescribing sweeping changes to our education system based on their own narrow prejudices. I myself am not qualified to diagnose the various problems we face, but I'm pretty sure that most of our proto-innovators are making it out of high school without being soul-crushed into little automatons. If anything, putting in the minimal effort to excel in a boring environment while doing more interesting things in your copious free time -- which is I'm pretty sure how most of us spent K-12 -- is great preparation for doing the same thing in the real world.

The reason the US always ranks at the bottom of standardized test scores has nothing to do with <i>how</i> our education system works and everything to do with <i>who</i> it educates.<p>In virtually every other industrialized country, students are split into two educational tracks, one vocational and one for "real education" which roughly corresponds to the split in the US between kids who go to college and those who don't.<p>Standardized tests (like the ones whose scores are reported on here) are only given to the kids on the "real educational" track in other countries, while in the US they're given to everyone, and the inevitable result is that scores from the US take a big hit because of the non-college bound kids.<p>Once in a while you see a report where someone filters the test results for only honors or AP students in the United States before comparison, and in these comparisons US scores are pretty much the same as other industrialized countries.

When reading the part about how standardized and identical schooling is, I had this weird vision related to how some RPGs work. 4-5 years focused on the basics, reading, writing, PE (really necessary now that kids spend all their time in front of a screen), and math (elementary math needs a lot of updating but that's another issue). Then splitting into just a few different focus areas, maybe 3-4 like technical, communication, business, arts, etc., that still enhance those basics but in a way that orients around the student's strengths and interests.<p>High school is already more flexible and college is of course wide open so it would basically change the flexibility-vs-time curve from something of a trumpet shape now to something more like a cone.<p>In an ideal world this make school more relevant and interesting for the students and businesses alike. But I have to admit Morloks and Eloi are a distinct possibility.

It's interesting that the title is actually ambiguous.<p>The "battle we don't want to win" could be read as a race to the bottom, as the writer means it, but it can also be read as "America doesn't <i>really</i> want to win" or "America doesn't really believe in education". I was sort of expecting the latter meanings when I went into the article.

In Opera I only see this <a href="http://i.imgur.com/o3O8K.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/o3O8K.png</a>

"We are moving into a future where entrepreneurial minded people will be the only kind of worker that have Real Value."<p>I certainly hope so. It is so excruciatingly frustrating to go to a job everyday where that trait is inhibited by a 'just do your job and shut up' environment.

I absolutely love this vision. I'm curious about what happens when you have a workforce made up of leaders though. My first thought was that it couldn't be practical, surely we need some people to be led. But then, working in an information age why not? A workforce that can dynamically reorganise itself down to the level of individuals could be extremely successful.

In summary "This is a problem. Somebody out there should figure out some way to fix it." No insights here.

Why does no one ever state the real facts on this issue? (Well, that is obvious, the truth is censored, oops, I mean politically incorrect.)<p>American's score better than everyone else, or at worst, second or so. What am I talking about?<p>...<p>To appreciate how an average can obscure huge variations in academic performance, just subdivide US test scores by race and ethnicity (for these data, see here). In the 2009 PISA reading scores for fifteen year olds from 65 nations and regions the average score is 500. The United States as a nation scored 500, a result hardly befitting a world power committed to educational excellence. The top scores come from Shanghai, China (556). But in second place are American students of Asian ancestry (541) who even out-perform students in Korea, Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong. In 7th place are US whites whose test scores exceed those in every European nation except Finland! Far down the ranking list are Hispanics (466) and near the bottom are US blacks (441). The 2007 TIMMS math results show nearly the identical pattern. Here in both 4th and 8th grade, US students of Asian ancestry cluster near the top together with Asians in Asia but close by are white Americans and further below are Hispanics and, near the bottom, American blacks.<p><a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/academic_excellence_and_the_mi.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/academic_excellence_a...</a>

Spot on. I really can't think of anything to add; I agree with every word.