A great post by the Conversable Economist:
Everyone knows that the future of the U.S. economy and standard of living is tied up with how well Americans are educated. Everyone is right! But the U.S. education system has been stuck in neutral for decades, while other countries have been moving ahead. Martin West summarizes some of the evidence in “Global Lessons for Improving U.S. Education”, which appears in the Spring 2012 edition of Issues in Science and Technology.The questions that follow are mine: the answers are excerpted from the article. I add a few remarks at the end.
Read the rest here.
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The whole article is a worthy read. Thanks for posting it, Woodshedder. I’m taking the liberty of reproducing the takeaway quote for truth:
“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”
My problem with the quote isn’t that it’s true. It’s that it was from 1983, back when we still cared about our competitiveness.
Back in the day, it was the Japanese who were going to clean our economic clocks. Deming taught them TQM after WW2, and after they’d kicked our ass in the automotive sector, they taught it back to us!
Today, it’s the Chinese we’re worried about. The thing that bugs me about the 2013 version of “ZOMG AZNS TAKE OVER WURLD!” is that in 1983, the zeitgeist was that we had to make radical change in our educational and manufacturing business paradigms if we were to outcompete the Japanese. In 2013, the two predominant worldviews appear to be one of resignation that we’ve been soundly outcompeted when it comes to manufacturing, or one of blissful denial that manufacturing matters, and that landing a gig on reality TV, or clicking on little red and green stock symbols (I’m part of the problem here too, kids!) is a more productive endeavor.
The kids of ’83 grew up with the expectation that STEM led to the “good jobs”. It didn’t always work out that way, but whether you wound up building video games, skyscrapers, or financial models, it was a pretty good bet. The present generation, not so much.
STEM jobs are still the most abundant, and highest paying (on average). Going STEM is still the best way to get a job, university-training-wise.
That said, there was corruption introduced via “unfriendly foreign powers” through two separate “Progessive” movements, the first emigrating from Bismark’s bureaucratized Germany in the late 19th century, and the second a product of Marxist/Fabianist/Eugenics movement made popular by the early 20th century Fascist movement in Europe and the “new Progressive” movements here in the U.S. (some of whose groups were actively infiltrated by foreign agents seeking to destabilize the U.S.)
These ideas were first disseminated at the University level, and later, via the training of “educators,” to the elementary and secondary levels.
Does anyone think it odd that Civics and History are mere afterthoughts in modern public education?
“Not a bug, but a feature!”
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Shed — get that comment out of “moderation,” oui?
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Good posts, guys.
I had a second one, but it’s being held in moderation.
Or was…
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