By Rick

April 22, 2008 6:21 PM | Link to this

Jay Mathews paints too rosy a picture, IMHO, although he is not some ideologue that ignores facts. American education collapsed in many ways due to a myriad of reasons. We wasted several generations trying to teach children to read using the “whole word” method. The experts kept insisting it was the best way. Experience demonstrated them wrong, yet they still stuck to their “true belief.” Anyway, he has given us something to think about. I will reread his article again because it does have some good things to say. One indicia of the devolution of American education was the necessity to “revise” the SAT scoring, i.e., to artificially raise the scores because they kept declining. That was not due to poor comparison methodologies.

By Rich

April 18, 2008 9:35 AM | Link to this

There’s one fact (and I believe it IS a fact) that seems to get little play in discussions like this — and also addresses concerns about how much money we spend here that were expressed by Mary in the first comment. The U.S. educational system is unique in the industrialized world in one respect: we offer universal instruction to ALL students through 12th grade. While other countries “track” their students based on aptitude or performance, moving only the most advanced into the elite track for the best high schools, then on to the best universities, we in the U.S. have traditionally held to a model based on providing the opportunity to all for a full high school education. The genius behind this model was almost certainly a major factor in integrating immigrants into our society over the decades — the “great equalizer”, as some have put it. Of course, this system hasn’t worked perfectly for everyone, and these days is only limping along in many areas. But it’s certainly specious to compare a system that takes in EVERYONE with other systems that don’t. This kind of apples-and-oranges comparison will obviously tend to favor the more selective educational system.

By Mary

April 18, 2008 7:04 AM | Link to this

Nothing in the Jay Matthews article surprises me. However, I think he misses the mark on some things, as well. A big issue he really did not address is how much more money we have invested in our education system versus other countries - and we still do not get the relative results we should. His article fails to take into account the transient nature of what is working and what is not working in large bureaucratic and complex systems. I think we are currently coasting (downhill)on our ancestors creativity and hard work. Look at warning indicators such as our debt to China, the falling dollar, the mortgage and financial crisis, our overcompensated executives. Getting back to education issues, I do not agree our schools are mainly problems in just urban and rural areas. As far as engineers being educated here from other countries, I have seen shows like “60 minutes” or “20-20” that claim India’s best engineering talent is educated in India’s schools and their “rejects” come here. I think visiting foreigners might be coming here for ideas, but also to observe mistakes. They are probably being polite adn cunning to their hosts with compliments. I think the U.S. dollar and U.S dominance for so many years has given us momentum that makes us look better and more productive than we really are. The H1B visa issue on CNN’s Lou Dobbs this week claimed we actually have an overage of engineers, and that Bill Gates and others, particularly India owned companies in the U.S., are the ones lobbying successfully for more H1B visas to import cheaper engineering and other labor. Even the sound bites on these issues are contradictory. All I know for sure is our educational, political, cultural, and leadership systems are generally anti-intellectual and short term focussed, and I do not have a warm fuzzy feeling we are going the right direction.