American Students Score Pathetically Against Chinese on 2009 PISA Test
In math, Shanghai, China placed at the top with a 600 PSI score, while the United States placed 487 score, below the average of 497.
Anne of Carversville is not challenging the notion that America is the divine-right nation of the world and that God will take care of us. The majority of Americans, especially American women, believe that God will prevail on our side because we are the greatest nation ever in the history of time. But should we call in the Mama Grizzlies and the home schoolers (some of whom might be great), the Texas Board of Education, America’s teacher’s unions talk show hosts and review these scores together? Is anybody worried about the fact that American kids have sub-average math scores? We are goin’ down, my friends.
What if God gets totally pissed off and says “You guys got really lazy and just assumed that I would bail you out of your problems. I never promised you a rose garden. I gave you brains and intelligence and science, but you chose not to use it. Knowledge is not a sin. Whoever told you that I said science, math and studying hard — even if you question me as part of your learning— is sinful is totally wrong! Intelligence is not a bad, bad word and you Americans had better start using the brains that I gave you. I mean NOW!” Anne
via NY Times
Anne
Share Article Tue, December 7, 2010 2 Comments in America, World Events tagged American education, education, global surveys, kids, parenting, teachers
Reader Comments (2)
This report is disturbing, but no great mystery. It is not so hard to understand how this came to pass. It is a catechism, an article of faith, a mantra of the American culture that it is education's sacred duty to universally enable and empower, to elevate the competence of every individual to the highest degree possible. That is after all educations prime purpose, is it not? To prepare the children to be successful adults in the world they'll inherit? Most would say yes, of course, that is educations proper function. But that is not proven, not a fact, it is in fact no more than an erroneous assumption of convenience.
To understand education one must look at society for what it is, an entity in its own right apart and beyond of the individuals defined within it. That entity depends on education to produce not the most competent individuals possible, but the correct degree of competence to match the load demand of its' metabolism, the economy of the nation. All the expectations of our culture involving education derive from the days when America needed every possible competence to be found, the needs of a young nation growing exponentially in both technology and production. It is a sad fact that America is no longer that nation. There was a time America earned a living producing for the world. Now it can't even produce for itself, all it can do is wander in medicated confusion turning small and politically correct circles saying it is serving itself, a service based economy, and that demands a quite different mix of individuals.
Since a service based economy is predicated on doing for others what they cannot or will not do for themselves what a service based economy needs is a rather high degree of incompetence in most things. If American public education were to produce one full generation educated to the same degree of competence as was seen in say 1950 the results would be catastrophic, utterly destructive to the status quo.
The Chinese need all the competences they can find, and they are producing what they need. We Americans cannot tolerate any great degree of competence, and our education system, just like the Chinese system, is producing exactly what the society needs. Open bet: I'll bet the Chinese kids get to play dodge-ball, when they get to play at all. Any takers? If you understand what this means you'll understand how our children are being sabotaged. (people are so blind as to how social tyranny actually works... oh well, 'tiss the only place I'll agree ignorance just might be bliss...)
You have superbly articulated the nature of the current American condition. I will quote this comment widely and hope that you will contribute further on this topic. Thank you so much.