Yong Zhao, Associate Dean for Global Education at the University of Oregon wonders what all the brouhaha is about the state of US education. He feels it is not nearly as gloom and doom as many people would make it. While I think that there many areas of US education that are in need of improvement I tend to agree with him. The US is still the largest manufacturer in the world. It is just that the rest of the world and China in particular is starting to catch up with us. Are jobs draining to places like China, India, Mexico and other countries because they have surpassed us in math and science. I don't think so. They have made such remarkable gains for one reason, cheap labor. We are the hot bed of innovation. We design and innovate, we just export the manufacture because we can't compete with their low cost of labor. Think about the biggest leaps in technology over the last couple of decades and you'll find American names on the majority of them.
Yong has done some interesting homework that I think reinforces my comments. Check out his observations HERE.
I have a lot of opinions regarding education but high on my list is the belief that we have to stop expecting ALL students to be good in ALL subjects. It reminds me of the story of the animal school where all the animals had to take the same classes. "The duck was very good at swimming, better than the teacher, in fact. He received passing grades in running and flying, but was hopeless in climbing, so they made him drop swimming so that he could practice climbing. After a while he was only average at swimming, but average is still acceptable, at least in school, and nobody worried much about it except the duck." The valedictorian was was, "an abnormal eel that could swim exceedingly well and also run, climb and fly a little had the highest average and was valedictorian." Go Figure!
Yong has done some interesting homework that I think reinforces my comments. Check out his observations HERE.
I have a lot of opinions regarding education but high on my list is the belief that we have to stop expecting ALL students to be good in ALL subjects. It reminds me of the story of the animal school where all the animals had to take the same classes. "The duck was very good at swimming, better than the teacher, in fact. He received passing grades in running and flying, but was hopeless in climbing, so they made him drop swimming so that he could practice climbing. After a while he was only average at swimming, but average is still acceptable, at least in school, and nobody worried much about it except the duck." The valedictorian was was, "an abnormal eel that could swim exceedingly well and also run, climb and fly a little had the highest average and was valedictorian." Go Figure!
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