7 ms·

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

56 points by noble12 14y ago

macavity23 14y ago
Spot on. I really can't think of anything to add; I agree with every word.
yread 14y ago
In Opera I only see this http://i.imgur.com/o3O8K.png http://i.imgur.com/o3O8K.png
- rwmj 14y ago
  Indeed -- the page seems broken even when I enable top-level Javascript. Whatever happened to just using HTML to present your ideas?
- sgift 14y ago
  Works if you mask Opera as IE for the website. Shitty coding gone bad.
MetricMike 14y ago
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). 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? 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.
- jcromartie 14y ago
  It's not just "American education", it's almost all education systems around the world.
- wpietri 14y ago
  Yeah, as a Lean Startup advocate from before the term was coined, I think the LS angle here is purest bullshit. The Lean Startup methods are not a magic potion that you can pour all over everything that you think sucks. It's a very specific toolkit for a very specific problem space. In particular it requires a reasonably short feedback loop and the ability to minimize consequences of mistakes. Neither is true for education, which is a 10- to 20-year process, and in which failure can harm a person for life. And as long as I'm on the topic of Lean Startup bullshit, everybody please keep an eye out for the oxymoronic "Lean Startup for the Enterprise". Consultants have discovered there's no money in selling to startups, so they're packaging the new hotness for their best clients: people with more money than sense.
- SamuelMulder 14y ago
  He actually starts out by pointing out that the American education system is not very good at creating "interchangeable cogs".
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  Aargh. Microsoft didn't become Microsoft because of cogs. Microsoft is DYING because of cogs.
  - rgraham 14y ago
    How exactly is the $263 billion dollar market cap company that pays dividends and has $2 earnings per share with millions of customers dying? Slowed growth at that scale is an artifact of size relative to market potential. It doesn't mean the company is dying. Not even if you really dislike it.
    - guard-of-terra 14y ago
      I used to dislike it, but now I don't care. That's the "dying" part. But you can just read Paul Graham - he's the thinker.
ollysb 14y ago
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.
- ori_b 14y ago
  The cynic in me says that you will never have a shortage of people who are willing to be led. It's less work, less responsibility, and less blame when things go wrong. All other things being equal, there will be plenty of people willing to take the path of least resistance.
  - shmageggy 14y ago
    If you are right, and I'm inclined to believe that you are, the problem then becomes how to educate such people so that they are useful in an increasingly high-tech world. Anyone who is content doing the low-responsibility grind is very unlikely to take entrepreneurial-level initiative in their own education, so the best method of training them really is the cog-in-the-machine style system that we have in place. The problem is not the existence of our meat grinder education, but the lack of existence of any alternative for people who don't fit in it (entrepreneurs, the terminally curious, smart people in general). Ironically, the author bemoans our one-size-fits-all approach and then proposes replacing it with another of the same characteristic. Really, we need both.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    I think part of that is due to education. If you spend 12 years getting trained to sit there and do what others say, it's not surprising that you have that as your default. It could be sample bias, but the friends I have who went to Montessori school, which trains people in self-direction and independence, seem to be much more willing to try things and to take responsibility for outcomes.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    I have many coworkers (as an engineer) who would refuse (and in some cases, have refused in the past) a chance to have others working under them. They're just satisfied being told what to do, then doing it the best they know how.
ryangallen 14y ago
"We are moving into a future where entrepreneurial minded people will be the only kind of worker that have Real Value." 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.
- Spooky23 14y ago
  That extreme is frustrating. Working with a bunch of characters who all want to be in charge and change the world is irritating as well.
  - ryangallen 14y ago
    I agree, there has to be a balance in any work atmosphere. I just think individuals with ideas for improving a company should not be resisted, but valued and encouraged to share their thoughts. In my opinion, a good business should be thought of as a team of professionals operating harmoniously, not a monarchial society where leadership makes the decisions for everyone and there is a constant 'climb the ladder to the top' philosophy. I suppose it's essentially a debate of forms of government.
victork2 14y ago
Ah... trying to apply entrepreneur spirit everywhere, how could it go wrong? 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. 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". 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. 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.
- xanmas 14y ago
  Beyond this, I would argue that the good schools in rich areas aren't the problem. I went grew up in the shadows of NASA and my schools were all excellent -- my teachers all had masters degrees in what they were teaching, they loved their job, and they were well compensated for it. The issue is one of this achievement gap between the well funded suburban schools (my HS marching band had a budget ~500k/yr) and impoverished schools (both inner city and elsewhere). For those on the other end of the achievement gap, having a standard set that roughly equates to what is required to be an educated member of society seems entirely appropriate. Keep in mind that standards, at least in my experience, don't fetter education. For example, when I was in school, it was generally understood that if you were in calculus as a junior, you could probably pass your algebra I based exit exams so we spent our time on calculus. Also, keep in mind that school is intended to teach you more than just history, math, etc. This is also where we learn to socialize. I guarantee you that my introverted self wouldn't have kissed a girl as early as I did if I wasn't forced to socialize with people for 170 school days a year. I learned how to make friends and how to balance my need for solitude with deeply fulfilling relationships -- something that would have taken much longer has I not been in school. This isn't to say that my experience is biased towards the upper end of the achievement gap. In fact, while I'm in grad school in Boston, I'm volunteering at a charter school in its inner city and trust me, there are many problems with inner city education but the least of which is standardized testing. Traumatic home lives, poor materials, no cultural understanding of the value of education, etc represent far larger hurdles. Indeed, I believe we should quibble about the standards and have a national discussion about what an educated member of society should know instead of debating the value of a standard at all. I believe that these standard have gone too far (plumbers probably don't need calculus, for example) but having a base-line of education is never a bad thing.
ckayatek 14y ago
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.
- wpietri 14y ago
  I really don't like arguments of the form "It's hard and I can raise some questions, so we should stop thinking about it." Also, it's generally unhelpful to say "solution X is totally wrong" without then offering a concrete solution yourself. Poking holes is certainly fun and satisfying on some level, but really, the status quo doesn't need a lot of help.
ZENmotherfucker 14y ago
"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."
pfortuny 14y ago
A pity the Silicon Valley view is not the path to happiness, as far as I know. Teach the children to be able to be really free. This means: reading and writing and the five rules above all. BUT (big but): writing is NOT just being able to write down a dictation. Reading is NOT just reading aloud. 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].
- snogglethorpe 14y ago
  "The five rules" ?
ArbitraryLimits 14y ago
The reason the US always ranks at the bottom of standardized test scores has nothing to do with how our education system works and everything to do with who it educates. 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. 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. 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.
- streptomycin 14y ago
  > the US always ranks at the bottom of standardized test scores We don't, we rank about in the middle when compared to other Western countries. > 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. Or when you filter by race: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...
- grego 14y ago
  Beep, wrong answer. The PISA test the article quoted is given to 15-16 year olds. Those kids have not yet taken the vocational track, at least not in Finland. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/faqoecdpisa.htm#The_Test_and_Questionnaires http://www.oecd.org/pisa/faqoecdpisa.htm#The_Test_and_Questi... Pisa tests measure and rank average. Finland for example can keep the average high, which is generally good for the nation. But average alone does not tell the whole picture. I think the original articles only merit was in raising the discussion about education, which is always good. It did not convey any profound knowledge of education and the problem space, not to me at least.
noonespecial 14y ago
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. 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. 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.
- knowaveragejoe 14y ago
  > 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. It really depends on where you live. I will concede the vast majority are likely no place for kids, but there are noteworthy exceptions. My personal experience with being amazed by what public schooling can do is from both attending and observing school in Howard County, Maryland. They have incredible opportunities for kids to get engaged in STEM fields and otherwise customize their public school experience away from the "standard" curricula, and those opportunities aren't extra-curricular activities either. They're as much part of the schooling as "standard" subjects and factor into graduation requirements just as much. I'd argue that unless you've got a good amount of money and time to invest in setting up a warehouse full of equipment and hiring knowledgeable industry veterans just for your kid(s), homeschooling can't come close to what a program like the ARL can offer to kids. http://arl.hcpss.org/ http://arl.hcpss.org/
  - tokenadult 14y ago
    I know homeschoolers from Howard County, Maryland who are still far exceeding the public school graduates in their achievement in higher education and careers. Thinking just about the "M" (mathematics) part of STEM, I'm pretty sure that in Maryland most of the county winners each year in the state mathematics contest for high school students, and also the MATHCOUNTS winners among middle school students, come out of an informal coaching program that is run by a homeschooling parent. Maryland devotes an exceptional amount of money (including federal money) to its public school systems, and has some great public schools by the meager standards of the United States, but even at that there are families that still find homeschooling a more challenging academic choice for their children.
numeromancer 14y ago
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...”; thats what they're “training” them to do? That'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? “Entrepreneurship! That's the answer! I'm so excited about it that I can't be wrong!” 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.
bluekeybox 14y ago
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 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls3ZmwtaosY&t=23m22s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls3ZmwtaosY&t=23m22s) (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.
bwanab 14y ago
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. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8601207.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/860...). I'd be interested in hearing from Finnish HNers on their impressions of their educational system.
- grego 14y ago
  Well, the teachers usually have a masters degree and it is quite a popular profession, so it is somewhat hard to get into the University to be a teacher. Finland is also very egalitarian, or socialist if you will. This means that there are not so many good or bad schools, all schools have pretty much the same resources. Of course there are differences, but nothing as flagrant as in the US. Private schools are practically non-existent (less than 2%). So while the Finnish system lifts the average, I'm not sure how much the top performers benefit from it.
svachalek 14y ago
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. 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. 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.
learc83 14y ago
It's funny no one ever mentions the fairly recent trend to tie driver's licenses with school attendance. 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. 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 very disruptive. I'm also sure they lowered our overall average scores as well.
thuffy 14y ago
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.) American's score better than everyone else, or at worst, second or so. What am I talking about? ... 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. http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/academic_excellence_and_the_mi.html http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/academic_excellence_a...
- saraid216 14y ago
  I'm on record saying that I'm willing to ignore every last ed reform effort if it means we can actually fix poverty decisively. As I said, "You'd still have all the problems I like to complain about, but they'd be way less important."
- tokenadult 14y ago
  I call this out as a crap link because the Hacker News welcome letter specifically says, "Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads." http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html Not to be rude, I'll assume that you are posting that link in good faith. Now I will discuss for you and for onlookers why I don't think that link is a thoughtful comment on school performance in the United States. The link is full of logical errors. First, the categories "Asian" and "black" in the United States do not have the same composition of persons from varying ethnic and language backgrounds as the categories "from an Asian country" or "from an African country." The Census Bureau says "The U.S. Census Bureau collects race data in accordance with guidelines provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and these data are based on self-identification. The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups. People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as 'American Indian' and 'White.' People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race." http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_RHI525211.htm http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_RHI525211.htm A similar statement is found as footnote 7 in the Census Brief 2010 "Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010" http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf "The race categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and are not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race question include race and national origin or sociocultural groups." Second, anyone who thinks that United States "black" persons in general receive a primary and secondary education just like United States "white" persons is profoundly ignorant of life in the United States. Mathematician Patricia Kenschaft's article from the Notices of the American Mathematical Society "Racial Equity Requires Teaching Elementary School Teachers More Mathematics," http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf reports on her work in teacher training programs for in-service teachers in New Jersey. "The understanding of the area of a rectangle and its relationship to multiplication underlies an understanding not only of the multiplication algorithm but also of the commutative law of multiplication, the distributive law, and the many more complicated area formulas. Yet in my first visit in 1986 to a K-6 elementary school, I discovered that not a single teacher knew how to find the area of a rectangle. "In those innocent days, I thought that the teachers might be interested in the geometric interpretation of (x + y)^2. I drew a square with (x + y) on a side and showed the squares of size x^2 and y^2. Then I pointed to one of the remaining rectangles. 'What is the area of a rectangle that is x high and y wide?' I asked. . . . . "The teachers were very friendly people, and they know how frustrating it can be when no student answers a question. 'x plus y?' said two in the front simultaneously. "'What?!!!' I said, horrified." Until provision of primary education is brought up to the best standard achieved anywhere in the United States for ALL pupils in the United States, of course there is more to do to improve schools here. And no one who is knowledgeable about schools in the United States claims that all teachers teach effectively in the core subjects of primary schooling. Third, the statement in the link ignores the better performance of several other countries by comparing only population means rather than comparing national score distributions with interquartile ranges. That how-to-lie-with-statistics trick doesn't fool me, because I have seen the national score distributions. http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.... (See Exhibit 1.1 for country distributions of scores in mathematics.) Although the United States is above the international average score among the countries surveyed, as we would expect from the level of economic development in the United States, the United States is well below the top country listed, which is Singapore. An average United States student is at the bottom quartile level for Singapore, or from another point of view, a top quartile student in the United States is only at the level of an average student in Singapore. I've been curious about mathematics education in Singapore ever since I heard of these results from an earlier TIMSS sample in the 1990s. The article "The Singaporean Mathematics Curriculum: Connections to TIMSS" http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf by a Singaporean author explains some of the background to the Singapore mathematics materials and how they approach topics that are foundational for later mathematics study. I am amazed that persons from Singapore in my generation (born in the late 1950s) grew up in a country that was extremely poor (it's hard to remember that about Singapore, but until the 1970s Singapore was definitely part of the Third World) and were educated in a foreign language (the language of schooling in Singapore has long been English, but the home languages of most Singaporeans are south Chinese languages like my wife's native Hokkien or Austronesian languages like Malay or Indian languages like Tamil) and yet received very thorough instruction in mathematics. It would be good for the United States to take advantage of its greater degree of linguistic unity and childhood wealth to reach the educational standard of the top-performing countries in other parts of the world. http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/50/9/49685503.pdf http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/50/9/49685503.pdf http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/26/48165173.pdf http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/26/48165173.pdf Specifically, the idea that we do well by able students is directly disagreed with by scholars who have spent years studying the issue. http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/ http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/ "Unfortunately, we found that the percentage of students in the U.S. Class of 2009 who were highly accomplished in math is well below that of most countries with which the United States generally compares itself. No fewer than 30 of the 56 other countries that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) math test, including most of the world’s industrialized nations, had a larger percentage of students who scored at the international equivalent of the advanced level on our own National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests." Fourth, the statement that the United States does as well as any country of the world, ancestry group by ancestry group, is blatantly false on its face, as I know from my own experience. I run an ongoing course in advanced mathematics (prealgebra mathematics for elementary age pupils) that draws clients from throughout the native-born and immigrant community in Minnesota, a state with strong public schools. My course location is in one of the very best school districts in Minnesota. But parents who are American-born and graduates of MIT, and first-generation immigrant parents from China, from India, from Poland, from Romania, from Ghana, from Korea, from Pakistan, from the Philippines, from Egypt, and from other countries I may have forgotten sign up their children for my courses, even though they already live in school districts that are considered good school districts, because they know very well that American schools don't do as good a job teaching foundational mathematics as schools in many other countries. http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf I learned this in Taiwan, where the school system in general does better at lest cost than in the United States. It is the basis of my current occupation that people living in the United States who are actually aware of the situation in other countries seek mathematics education besides that which is poorly provided by United States public schools.
saalweachter 14y ago
Premature optimization is the root of all evil. 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, don't try to solve a problem without first understanding what that problem is. 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.
ilkandi 14y ago
In summary "This is a problem. Somebody out there should figure out some way to fix it." No insights here.
saraid216 14y ago
It's interesting that the title is actually ambiguous. 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 really 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.

56 points by noble12 14y ago

macavity23 14y ago

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

yread 14y ago

In Opera I only see this http://i.imgur.com/o3O8K.png http://i.imgur.com/o3O8K.png

rwmj 14y ago
Indeed -- the page seems broken even when I enable top-level Javascript. Whatever happened to just using HTML to present your ideas?
sgift 14y ago
Works if you mask Opera as IE for the website. Shitty coding gone bad.

MetricMike 14y ago

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). 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? 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.

jcromartie 14y ago
It's not just "American education", it's almost all education systems around the world.
wpietri 14y ago
Yeah, as a Lean Startup advocate from before the term was coined, I think the LS angle here is purest bullshit. The Lean Startup methods are not a magic potion that you can pour all over everything that you think sucks. It's a very specific toolkit for a very specific problem space. In particular it requires a reasonably short feedback loop and the ability to minimize consequences of mistakes. Neither is true for education, which is a 10- to 20-year process, and in which failure can harm a person for life. And as long as I'm on the topic of Lean Startup bullshit, everybody please keep an eye out for the oxymoronic "Lean Startup for the Enterprise". Consultants have discovered there's no money in selling to startups, so they're packaging the new hotness for their best clients: people with more money than sense.
SamuelMulder 14y ago
He actually starts out by pointing out that the American education system is not very good at creating "interchangeable cogs".
guard-of-terra 14y ago
Aargh. Microsoft didn't become Microsoft because of cogs. Microsoft is DYING because of cogs.
- rgraham 14y ago
  How exactly is the $263 billion dollar market cap company that pays dividends and has $2 earnings per share with millions of customers dying? Slowed growth at that scale is an artifact of size relative to market potential. It doesn't mean the company is dying. Not even if you really dislike it.
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    I used to dislike it, but now I don't care. That's the "dying" part. But you can just read Paul Graham - he's the thinker.

ollysb 14y ago

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.

ori_b 14y ago
The cynic in me says that you will never have a shortage of people who are willing to be led. It's less work, less responsibility, and less blame when things go wrong. All other things being equal, there will be plenty of people willing to take the path of least resistance.
- shmageggy 14y ago
  If you are right, and I'm inclined to believe that you are, the problem then becomes how to educate such people so that they are useful in an increasingly high-tech world. Anyone who is content doing the low-responsibility grind is very unlikely to take entrepreneurial-level initiative in their own education, so the best method of training them really is the cog-in-the-machine style system that we have in place. The problem is not the existence of our meat grinder education, but the lack of existence of any alternative for people who don't fit in it (entrepreneurs, the terminally curious, smart people in general). Ironically, the author bemoans our one-size-fits-all approach and then proposes replacing it with another of the same characteristic. Really, we need both.
- wpietri 14y ago
  I think part of that is due to education. If you spend 12 years getting trained to sit there and do what others say, it's not surprising that you have that as your default. It could be sample bias, but the friends I have who went to Montessori school, which trains people in self-direction and independence, seem to be much more willing to try things and to take responsibility for outcomes.
- freehunter 14y ago
  I have many coworkers (as an engineer) who would refuse (and in some cases, have refused in the past) a chance to have others working under them. They're just satisfied being told what to do, then doing it the best they know how.

ryangallen 14y ago

"We are moving into a future where entrepreneurial minded people will be the only kind of worker that have Real Value." 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.

Spooky23 14y ago
That extreme is frustrating. Working with a bunch of characters who all want to be in charge and change the world is irritating as well.
- ryangallen 14y ago
  I agree, there has to be a balance in any work atmosphere. I just think individuals with ideas for improving a company should not be resisted, but valued and encouraged to share their thoughts. In my opinion, a good business should be thought of as a team of professionals operating harmoniously, not a monarchial society where leadership makes the decisions for everyone and there is a constant 'climb the ladder to the top' philosophy. I suppose it's essentially a debate of forms of government.

victork2 14y ago

Ah... trying to apply entrepreneur spirit everywhere, how could it go wrong? 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. 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". 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. 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.

xanmas 14y ago
Beyond this, I would argue that the good schools in rich areas aren't the problem. I went grew up in the shadows of NASA and my schools were all excellent -- my teachers all had masters degrees in what they were teaching, they loved their job, and they were well compensated for it. The issue is one of this achievement gap between the well funded suburban schools (my HS marching band had a budget ~500k/yr) and impoverished schools (both inner city and elsewhere). For those on the other end of the achievement gap, having a standard set that roughly equates to what is required to be an educated member of society seems entirely appropriate. Keep in mind that standards, at least in my experience, don't fetter education. For example, when I was in school, it was generally understood that if you were in calculus as a junior, you could probably pass your algebra I based exit exams so we spent our time on calculus. Also, keep in mind that school is intended to teach you more than just history, math, etc. This is also where we learn to socialize. I guarantee you that my introverted self wouldn't have kissed a girl as early as I did if I wasn't forced to socialize with people for 170 school days a year. I learned how to make friends and how to balance my need for solitude with deeply fulfilling relationships -- something that would have taken much longer has I not been in school. This isn't to say that my experience is biased towards the upper end of the achievement gap. In fact, while I'm in grad school in Boston, I'm volunteering at a charter school in its inner city and trust me, there are many problems with inner city education but the least of which is standardized testing. Traumatic home lives, poor materials, no cultural understanding of the value of education, etc represent far larger hurdles. Indeed, I believe we should quibble about the standards and have a national discussion about what an educated member of society should know instead of debating the value of a standard at all. I believe that these standard have gone too far (plumbers probably don't need calculus, for example) but having a base-line of education is never a bad thing.

ckayatek 14y ago

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.

wpietri 14y ago
I really don't like arguments of the form "It's hard and I can raise some questions, so we should stop thinking about it." Also, it's generally unhelpful to say "solution X is totally wrong" without then offering a concrete solution yourself. Poking holes is certainly fun and satisfying on some level, but really, the status quo doesn't need a lot of help.

ZENmotherfucker 14y ago

"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."

pfortuny 14y ago

A pity the Silicon Valley view is not the path to happiness, as far as I know. Teach the children to be able to be really free. This means: reading and writing and the five rules above all. BUT (big but): writing is NOT just being able to write down a dictation. Reading is NOT just reading aloud. 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].

snogglethorpe 14y ago
"The five rules" ?

ArbitraryLimits 14y ago

The reason the US always ranks at the bottom of standardized test scores has nothing to do with how our education system works and everything to do with who it educates. 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. 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. 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.

streptomycin 14y ago
> the US always ranks at the bottom of standardized test scores We don't, we rank about in the middle when compared to other Western countries. > 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. Or when you filter by race: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...
grego 14y ago
Beep, wrong answer. The PISA test the article quoted is given to 15-16 year olds. Those kids have not yet taken the vocational track, at least not in Finland. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/faqoecdpisa.htm#The_Test_and_Questionnaires http://www.oecd.org/pisa/faqoecdpisa.htm#The_Test_and_Questi... Pisa tests measure and rank average. Finland for example can keep the average high, which is generally good for the nation. But average alone does not tell the whole picture. I think the original articles only merit was in raising the discussion about education, which is always good. It did not convey any profound knowledge of education and the problem space, not to me at least.

noonespecial 14y ago

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. 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. 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.

knowaveragejoe 14y ago
> 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. It really depends on where you live. I will concede the vast majority are likely no place for kids, but there are noteworthy exceptions. My personal experience with being amazed by what public schooling can do is from both attending and observing school in Howard County, Maryland. They have incredible opportunities for kids to get engaged in STEM fields and otherwise customize their public school experience away from the "standard" curricula, and those opportunities aren't extra-curricular activities either. They're as much part of the schooling as "standard" subjects and factor into graduation requirements just as much. I'd argue that unless you've got a good amount of money and time to invest in setting up a warehouse full of equipment and hiring knowledgeable industry veterans just for your kid(s), homeschooling can't come close to what a program like the ARL can offer to kids. http://arl.hcpss.org/ http://arl.hcpss.org/
- tokenadult 14y ago
  I know homeschoolers from Howard County, Maryland who are still far exceeding the public school graduates in their achievement in higher education and careers. Thinking just about the "M" (mathematics) part of STEM, I'm pretty sure that in Maryland most of the county winners each year in the state mathematics contest for high school students, and also the MATHCOUNTS winners among middle school students, come out of an informal coaching program that is run by a homeschooling parent. Maryland devotes an exceptional amount of money (including federal money) to its public school systems, and has some great public schools by the meager standards of the United States, but even at that there are families that still find homeschooling a more challenging academic choice for their children.

numeromancer 14y ago

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...”; thats what they're “training” them to do? That'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? “Entrepreneurship! That's the answer! I'm so excited about it that I can't be wrong!” 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.

bluekeybox 14y ago

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 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls3ZmwtaosY&t=23m22s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls3ZmwtaosY&t=23m22s) (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.

bwanab 14y ago

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. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8601207.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/860...). I'd be interested in hearing from Finnish HNers on their impressions of their educational system.

grego 14y ago
Well, the teachers usually have a masters degree and it is quite a popular profession, so it is somewhat hard to get into the University to be a teacher. Finland is also very egalitarian, or socialist if you will. This means that there are not so many good or bad schools, all schools have pretty much the same resources. Of course there are differences, but nothing as flagrant as in the US. Private schools are practically non-existent (less than 2%). So while the Finnish system lifts the average, I'm not sure how much the top performers benefit from it.

svachalek 14y ago

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. 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. 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.

learc83 14y ago

It's funny no one ever mentions the fairly recent trend to tie driver's licenses with school attendance. 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. 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 very disruptive. I'm also sure they lowered our overall average scores as well.

thuffy 14y ago

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.) American's score better than everyone else, or at worst, second or so. What am I talking about? ... 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. http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/academic_excellence_and_the_mi.html http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/academic_excellence_a...

saraid216 14y ago
I'm on record saying that I'm willing to ignore every last ed reform effort if it means we can actually fix poverty decisively. As I said, "You'd still have all the problems I like to complain about, but they'd be way less important."
tokenadult 14y ago
I call this out as a crap link because the Hacker News welcome letter specifically says, "Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads." http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html Not to be rude, I'll assume that you are posting that link in good faith. Now I will discuss for you and for onlookers why I don't think that link is a thoughtful comment on school performance in the United States. The link is full of logical errors. First, the categories "Asian" and "black" in the United States do not have the same composition of persons from varying ethnic and language backgrounds as the categories "from an Asian country" or "from an African country." The Census Bureau says "The U.S. Census Bureau collects race data in accordance with guidelines provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and these data are based on self-identification. The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups. People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as 'American Indian' and 'White.' People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race." http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_RHI525211.htm http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_RHI525211.htm A similar statement is found as footnote 7 in the Census Brief 2010 "Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010" http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf "The race categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and are not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race question include race and national origin or sociocultural groups." Second, anyone who thinks that United States "black" persons in general receive a primary and secondary education just like United States "white" persons is profoundly ignorant of life in the United States. Mathematician Patricia Kenschaft's article from the Notices of the American Mathematical Society "Racial Equity Requires Teaching Elementary School Teachers More Mathematics," http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf reports on her work in teacher training programs for in-service teachers in New Jersey. "The understanding of the area of a rectangle and its relationship to multiplication underlies an understanding not only of the multiplication algorithm but also of the commutative law of multiplication, the distributive law, and the many more complicated area formulas. Yet in my first visit in 1986 to a K-6 elementary school, I discovered that not a single teacher knew how to find the area of a rectangle. "In those innocent days, I thought that the teachers might be interested in the geometric interpretation of (x + y)^2. I drew a square with (x + y) on a side and showed the squares of size x^2 and y^2. Then I pointed to one of the remaining rectangles. 'What is the area of a rectangle that is x high and y wide?' I asked. . . . . "The teachers were very friendly people, and they know how frustrating it can be when no student answers a question. 'x plus y?' said two in the front simultaneously. "'What?!!!' I said, horrified." Until provision of primary education is brought up to the best standard achieved anywhere in the United States for ALL pupils in the United States, of course there is more to do to improve schools here. And no one who is knowledgeable about schools in the United States claims that all teachers teach effectively in the core subjects of primary schooling. Third, the statement in the link ignores the better performance of several other countries by comparing only population means rather than comparing national score distributions with interquartile ranges. That how-to-lie-with-statistics trick doesn't fool me, because I have seen the national score distributions. http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.... (See Exhibit 1.1 for country distributions of scores in mathematics.) Although the United States is above the international average score among the countries surveyed, as we would expect from the level of economic development in the United States, the United States is well below the top country listed, which is Singapore. An average United States student is at the bottom quartile level for Singapore, or from another point of view, a top quartile student in the United States is only at the level of an average student in Singapore. I've been curious about mathematics education in Singapore ever since I heard of these results from an earlier TIMSS sample in the 1990s. The article "The Singaporean Mathematics Curriculum: Connections to TIMSS" http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf by a Singaporean author explains some of the background to the Singapore mathematics materials and how they approach topics that are foundational for later mathematics study. I am amazed that persons from Singapore in my generation (born in the late 1950s) grew up in a country that was extremely poor (it's hard to remember that about Singapore, but until the 1970s Singapore was definitely part of the Third World) and were educated in a foreign language (the language of schooling in Singapore has long been English, but the home languages of most Singaporeans are south Chinese languages like my wife's native Hokkien or Austronesian languages like Malay or Indian languages like Tamil) and yet received very thorough instruction in mathematics. It would be good for the United States to take advantage of its greater degree of linguistic unity and childhood wealth to reach the educational standard of the top-performing countries in other parts of the world. http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/50/9/49685503.pdf http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/50/9/49685503.pdf http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/26/48165173.pdf http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/26/48165173.pdf Specifically, the idea that we do well by able students is directly disagreed with by scholars who have spent years studying the issue. http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/ http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/ "Unfortunately, we found that the percentage of students in the U.S. Class of 2009 who were highly accomplished in math is well below that of most countries with which the United States generally compares itself. No fewer than 30 of the 56 other countries that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) math test, including most of the world’s industrialized nations, had a larger percentage of students who scored at the international equivalent of the advanced level on our own National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests." Fourth, the statement that the United States does as well as any country of the world, ancestry group by ancestry group, is blatantly false on its face, as I know from my own experience. I run an ongoing course in advanced mathematics (prealgebra mathematics for elementary age pupils) that draws clients from throughout the native-born and immigrant community in Minnesota, a state with strong public schools. My course location is in one of the very best school districts in Minnesota. But parents who are American-born and graduates of MIT, and first-generation immigrant parents from China, from India, from Poland, from Romania, from Ghana, from Korea, from Pakistan, from the Philippines, from Egypt, and from other countries I may have forgotten sign up their children for my courses, even though they already live in school districts that are considered good school districts, because they know very well that American schools don't do as good a job teaching foundational mathematics as schools in many other countries. http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf I learned this in Taiwan, where the school system in general does better at lest cost than in the United States. It is the basis of my current occupation that people living in the United States who are actually aware of the situation in other countries seek mathematics education besides that which is poorly provided by United States public schools.

saalweachter 14y ago

Premature optimization is the root of all evil. 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, don't try to solve a problem without first understanding what that problem is. 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.

ilkandi 14y ago

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

saraid216 14y ago

It's interesting that the title is actually ambiguous. 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 really 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.