Dave has seen our future, and it's dim.... witted
http://www.consumptionjunction.com/home.asp
Some scary but true observations...
It's not just the USA either, I'm sure we can add Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK to the list....
(Link to the Editorials - if you're reading this post after it's gone from the front page)
http://www.consumptionjunction.com/content/home_browse.asp
The author of that article hits on a very valid point. The school systems of the "industrialized nations" are turning out kids who are "book smart", but they're neglecting to make them "world-smart". If I may fall back to my D&D days... the kids have high intelligence, but low wisdom.
For example: I know a woman who has a Master's Degree in speech pathology. She can rattle off the mandibular fossa, and read the phonetic alphabets with out even thinking about it. However, when she was getting her car ready for a long trip, her (then) boyfriend asked if she had been sure to replace the winter air in her tires with summer air, and if she had checked the level of her blinker fluid. She actually believed him. :D
The emphasis in the idustrialized world (and, I'm sure, the US in particular) has become focused on standardized tests. Lessons are about facts and figures, processes and formulae--things that are easy to measure on a standardized test. This comes at the expense of the more "essoteric" and hard-to-measure qualities such as "understanding", "extrapolation", and "creativity". But it's these very qualities that make for a superior worker.
I'll refrain from starting in on the whole "polite behavior" aspect of the original article. It would take me a few hours of typing to exhaust my opinions on that topic. :)
The emphasis in the idustrialized world (and, I'm sure, the US in particular) has become focused on standardized tests. Lessons are about facts and figures, processes and formulae--things that are easy to measure on a standardized test. This comes at the expense of the more "essoteric" and hard-to-measure qualities such as "understanding", "extrapolation", and "creativity". But it's these very qualities that make for a superior worker.
As far as the "US in particular" comment, and I haven't read the article yet, but after spending some time being exposed to the education system here in Korea, all I can say is that North American education seems to be very, *VERY* far from having no emphasis in creativity or extrapolation (the spelling of "esoteric" on the other hand... :wink: ). Here, people are trained to succeed by memorizing the answer to as many questions as possible. That way, when they run into those problems, they already know the answer. The downside is that when people run into a problem that they've never seen before, there is an automatic assumption that since the problem is a new one and they've never seen the answer before, they must not be able to solve it. Problem solving is not something that's taught here, or, to the best of my experience, known of. It shows up in almost every aspect of daily interaction with either the kids that we're teaching or the people that we're otherwise exposed to.
With the kids that we teach, when they're reading a passage and come across a word that they've never seen before, even if they posess the phonetic knowledge to sound out the word and read it perfectly, will simply stop, or sometimes skip it entirely, leaving gaps in their reading. Only after being pressured and having it made abundantly clear to them that I won't provide them with the answer will they make any attempt to figure out how to read the word by themselves.
Another example that I personally believe is linked to this general societal attitude towards problem solving in education is how rigid they are in their understanding of other people trying to speak Korean. If your pronunciation is off by even one iota, the Korean in question (moreso with the older generation, but it still applies to all ages in a generalized way) will simply look at you with an exceptionally confused look on their face and not make any attempt to decipher what it is that you're trying to communicate. It's actually quite aggravating. Now, there are other schools of thought (doesn't that make this whole thing sound really official and formalized?) on the nature of this problem, but I prefer to think that mine's the right one, for obvious reasons.
Anyway, at one point I definitely thought that the North American education system was dangerously close to soon becoming nothing more than a robot factory with standardized testing being god, but now that I've seen what a real robot factory looks like, I'm much more impressed with the flexibility and problem solving skills taught, even passively, in the school system back home.
I should also note that having never been to school in the US, I'm only really able to talk about the Canadian school system, but I'd be incredibly surprised if the same didn't apply to American schools, at least on a basic level.
I completely agree with Haddock Boy. The reason the woman can recite the 'mandibular fossa' but doesn't have street-sense is not a lack of creativity or freedom to learn, but a surfeit of the same freedom. Students in industrialized nations are allowed to specialize so much so that they see no need to learn 'other stuff'.
I've had a few of my American friends who hate Math ask me one good reason to learn Trigonometry and Calculus. When I try to tell them it gives them a comprehensive idea of how things work, all I get as a reply is that they 'won't need it ever'.
These previous two quotes are among the most interesting I have seen so far. As an engineer, I have always had the stereotypical skeptism of the value of an arts degree. I have since learned though that there is great value in being taught to question, to evaluate, and to choose, which is, I think, the purpose of education. I am wise enough to know, now, that a lack of specialization is no reason to dismiss an education's worth. The purpose of learning any subject is not only to understand specifics, but also to strengthen the thought process.
Having spent time teaching 3rd year engineering university classes with a high ratio of Asian visa students I can completely agree with HB. The foreign students were very focused on getting specific details of any example problem laid out for them. They did not seem to be interested in grasping the overall purpose of a design. As a result, if exam questions strayed too far from example proplems they would visibly panic.
Joined: 2006-05-20