It is a rare day that I am ashamed of America, but today is such a day. Britain's Financial Times called America's educational system "third rate" and the numbers bear them out. The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) finds that America's slide down the educational ladder of industrialized nations continues. Moreover, our consistently poor scores are not simply relative; in absolute terms as well, American students are getting dumber. A few years ago, when I heard about such numbers I was disinclined to believe them. Now that I work at a major state university, and see the products of Texas high schools, I find it all too believable.
Social and cultural factors doubtless play a big role in all this. Schools alone are not to blame. But the evidence is clear that what happens in the classroom matters, and that underperforming schools are contributing hugely to the problem.
The Financial Times clearly articulated the two things American education needs: "accountability and competition." What does accountability demand? "Firing the worst teachers and shutting the worst schools." And competition? "School vouchers if you want to be radical, or the faster expansion of self-governing charter schools if you do not." The answers are obvious enough.
But will it happen? Don't count on it. "Teachers' unions have a death grip on the system and are having none of it." Let me be more specific: the National Education Association, with its 3.2 million members and $300 million annual lobbying budget is the single biggest obstacle to good schools in America. Members of the NEA: YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. Abandon your union and the job security of your failing colleagues and try actually putting the interests of America's children first.
And lest you think that this is just my right-wing, small-government, anti-union rant, let me point out that the poor and minorities suffer most in America's schools. Al Sharpton - who recently called school reform "the civil rights challenge of our time" - agrees with me on this one.
And I will now step down from my soapbox...
5 comments:
I've heard from various relatives who have worked as TA's that you first realize how little the average student learns in high school when you try to teach him at the college level--it just doesn't work. Grading papers is torture when most students can't put together a coherent, grammatically correct sentence.
Another, at least tangentially related, problem (under the general rubric of "cultural factors") is that many students just don't understand certain basic rules of behavior. One classic story I heard in my family involved a freshman writing an e-mail to his TA and asking for an extension of the deadline of his paper because he was "really hungover on Saturday." He was surprised to learn that being hungover was not an acceptable excuse. How can someone like that learn at the college level?
I too will now step down from my soap box.
My experience of living in Lebanon for two years (technically a "developing" country) gives ample evidence of the depravity of the American educational system. I was third in my high school class at what has been named an "excelling school" every year since that ranking system began in Arizona. It is a charter school (good old great books curriculum)
Now don't get me wrong, I do think it an excellent school. I'm glad I went there, and it is I might add radically different from most American schools.
I attended the American University of Beirut for two years where I was, with a lot of hard work and study, just barely above average. The typical student entering university there knew more than most who graduate from University in the States, and incomparably more than your average American High School grad.
It is, in a large part, non-nationals who are sustaining the high standards in the American Higher Education system. It can be slightly embarrassing living over-seas with how dumb many of my countrymen are.
I digress
For a year after college, I taught English at a high school in Germany, and soon saw some of the deficiencies of American high schools. I particularly remember how one girl, who had spent a year at an American high school, told me quite plainly that the typical graduate from a German Gymnasium ("college prep" there) knew more than most American university graduates. And, after a year of daily contact with German high school students, I came to the conclusion that she wasn't far off the mark.
There were lots of moments when people were surprised that I, an American, knew certain things. I learned Latin in high school? I can speak a foreign language? I know some European history? I know a little about philosophy? Amazing. At first, I thought it was incredibly insulting and condescending, but after meeting up with some other Americans there, I realized that their low expectations of American students were legitimate.
In fairness, I must say that even at a state school such as mine, I do have some fine students, folks who are thoughtful, hard working, interesting, articulate. There are some real gems. But they are hardly the norm. And remember, this is the top 40% of high school graduates at whom I'm looking; the 60% who didn't go to college are probably even less inspiring.
Sadly, the problems in our primary and secondary schools (and I do think that's where they are principally located) trickle up into high education as well. I had a class this semester with a PhD student from another department who clearly was not prepared for the work he was doing. One got the impression no one ever told him in all his years that, "This is an ok paper, but your thesis is weak: what are you arguing?" If kids can avoid failing too badly and don't violate a few behavioral taboos, they get passed on to the next level. "I'm just thankful they're learning something," is a comment I've heard from elementary school teachers and professors as well. The standard should not be so low...
I agree the standard is very low in American elementary and often high schools. But I am not sure Germany (I don't know the Lebanese school system) has the right answer - after all they divide their students into intelligent, average, and not-intelligent before the fifth grade. The result is three social classes, the higher looking down on the lower, and usually perpetuating into further generations. This would hardly give us the democracy of "aristocrats" that Thomas Jefferson saw America needs. A class filled only with smart students learns quickly and therefore Germany has a much easier time of educating its Gymnasium students beyond American levels, but I'm sure that if we examine their Real and Hauptschule students, the result would be quite different. Since most of our schools are stuck with a mix, American teachers will undoubtedly aim for some sort of happy medium. To push that medium upwards would take quite a bit of revision, starting in the elementary grades.
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