DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Religious Dick on December 28, 2010, 12:30:45 PM
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Who Owns the Future?
?That speaks about who is going to be leading tomorrow.?
So said Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Every three years, the Paris-based OECD holds its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests of the reading, math and science skills of 15-year-olds in developing and developed countries. Gurria was talking of the results of the 2009 tests.
Sixty-five nations competed. The Chinese swept the board.
The schools of Shanghai-China finished first in math, reading and science. Hong Kong-China was third in math and science. Singapore, a city-state dominated by overseas Chinese, was second in math, fourth in science.
Only Korea, Japan and Finland were in the hunt.
And the U.S.A.? America ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math, producing the familiar quack-quack.
?This is an absolute wake-up call for America,? said Education Secretary Arne Duncan. ?We have to face the brutal truth. We have to get much more serious about investment in education.?
But the ?brutal truth? is that we invest more per pupil than any other country save Luxembourg, and we are broke. And a closer look at the PISA scores reveals some unacknowledged truths.
True, East Asians?Chinese, Koreans, Japanese?are turning in the top scores in all three categories, followed by the Europeans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders.
But, looking down the New York Times list of the top 30 nations, one finds not a single Latin American nation, not a single African nation, not a single Muslim nation, not a single South or Southeast Asian nation (save Singapore), not a single nation of the old Soviet Union except Latvia and Estonia.
And in Europe as in Asia, the northern countries (Finland, Norway, Belgium, Iceland, Austria, Germany) outscore the southern (Greece, Italy, Portugal). Slovenia and Croatia, formerly of the Habsburg Empire, outperformed Albania and Serbia, which spent centuries under Turkish rule.
Among the OECD members, the most developed 34 nations on earth, Mexico, principal feeder nation for U.S. schools, came in dead last in reading.
Steve Sailer on VDARE.com got the full list of 65 nations, broke down U.S. reading scores by race, then measured Americans with the countries and continents whence their families originated. What he found was surprising.
Asian-Americans outperform all Asian students except for Shanghai-Chinese. White Americans outperform students from all 37 predominantly white nations except Finns, and U.S. Hispanics outperformed the students of all eight Latin American countries that participated in the tests.
African-American kids would have outscored the students of any sub-Saharan African country that took the test (none did) and did outperform the only black country to participate, Trinidad and Tobago, by 25 points.
America?s public schools, then, are not abject failures.
They are educating immigrants and their descendants to outperform the kinfolk their parents or ancestors left behind when they came to America. America?s schools are improving the academic performance of all Americans above what it would have been had they not come to America.
What American schools are failing at, despite the trillions poured into schools since the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is closing the racial divide.
We do not know how to close the gap in reading, science and math between Anglo and Asian students and black and Hispanic students.
And from the PISA tests, neither does any other country on earth.
The gap between the test scores of East Asian and European nations and those of Latin America and African nations mirrors the gap between Asian and white students in the U.S. and black and Hispanic students in the U.S.
Which brings us to ?Bad Students, Not Bad Schools,? a new book in which Dr. Robert Weissberg contends that U.S. educational experts deliberately ?refuse to confront the obvious truth.?
?America?s educational woes reflect our demographic mix of students. Today?s schools are filled with millions of youngsters, many of whom are Hispanic immigrants struggling with English plus millions of others of mediocre intellectual ability disdaining academic achievement.?
In the public and parochial schools of the 1940s and 1950s, kids were pushed to the limits of their ability, then pushed harder. And when they stopped learning, they were pushed out the door.
Writes Weissberg: ?To be grossly politically incorrect, most of America?s educational woes vanish if these indifferent, troublesome students left when they had absorbed as much as they were going to learn and were replaced by learning-hungry students from Korea, Japan, India, Russia, Africa and the Caribbean.?
Weissberg contends that 80 percent of a school?s success depends on two factors: the cognitive ability of the child and the disposition he brings to class?not on texts, teachers or classroom size.
If the brains and the will to learn are absent, no amount of spending on schools, teacher salaries, educational consultants or new texts will matter.
A nation weary of wasting billions on unctuous educators who never deliver what they promise may be ready to hear some hard truths.
http://takimag.com/article/who_owns_the_future (http://takimag.com/article/who_owns_the_future)
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American culture is anti-intellectual and always has been. The culture sends the message that money is more important than intellect.
Latin American culture is divided. The intellectuals generally stay home.
So the message that all students get from TV is mostly anti-intellectual.
After 40 years teaching, I can tell you that the reason student do poorly is that they are lazy and do not study.
Shanghai-China in this poll is a very select group, comparable to "US private boarding schools".
Punishing the teachers will not solve this problem, and will probably make it worse.
There needs to be a massive effort to present the problem, examine how other nations have succeeded, and adapt what can be adapted, and get feedback from teachers, parents and others here and abroad. Parents must be involved.
The usual US solution is to panic and then hurriedly enact a watered down program.
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uhm
money is more important than intellect, but you need intellect to make money.
Ever since I started teching myself philosophy I now understand how incredibly important it is to study literature. communication is alot harder than people think.
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Dr. Robert Weissberg is known to attend attend American Renaissance meetings on a fairly regular basis.
About American Renaissance:
http://www.adl.org/Learn/Ext_US/jared_taylor/default.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=taylor (http://www.adl.org/Learn/Ext_US/jared_taylor/default.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=taylor)
bsb
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Taylor promotes the idea that racial segregation is “natural” and society is best organized along racially homogenous lines.
???????????
doesn`t homogenous mean mix to the point of complete dilution?
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If this were true, then how can we explain that most of the Nobel Prize winners of Chinese extraction won their prizes after work in the US and I think, Canada, other than in China, Taiwan or Singapore?
Original thinkers tend to think outside the box. Many, if not most of them seem to do best when they live outside the boxes of their own native cultures.
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I said this often here The one factor that ties all growth to civilization is exposure to other cultures. People exposed to other concepts tend come up with innovations.
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If this were true, then how can we explain that most of the Nobel Prize winners of Chinese extraction won their prizes after work in the US and I think, Canada, other than in China, Taiwan or Singapore?
Original thinkers tend to think outside the box. Many, if not most of them seem to do best when they live outside the boxes of their own native cultures.
Posted by: kimba1
Insert Quote
I said this often here The one factor that ties all growth to civilization is exposure to other cultures. People exposed to other concepts tend come up with innovations.
Yes!
Yes , plus....
Intellect is important , Money is important , bringing them together lubricates innovation.
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Dr. Robert Weissberg is known to attend attend American Renaissance meetings on a fairly regular basis.
About American Renaissance:
http://www.adl.org/Learn/Ext_US/jared_taylor/default.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=taylor (http://www.adl.org/Learn/Ext_US/jared_taylor/default.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=taylor)
bsb
Yeah? And?
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And.......... the guy has a racist agenda and he goes around lookng for trumpded up evidence to support it. It's like people that need the bible to be the truth. They turn themselves inside out to make it look like the truth.
bsb
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America's educational woes reflect our demographic mix of students. Today's schools are
filled with millions of youngsters, many of whom are Hispanic immigrants struggling with
English plus millions of others of mediocre intellectual ability disdaining academic
achievement."
BINGO!
But hey.....wave millions more in.....3rd World Heres We Comes!
(http://www.anunews.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/aa-Dees-Mexican-invasion-of-US1.jpg)
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After over forty years in education in the US, I can say that I see little difference between Hispanic students and the average White students in my classes. There is a clear divide between men and women with regard to Black students. There are many more Black male students who do not study because they do not wish to be accused of "acting White" than among female students, who as a group tend to have problems with trying to raise young children and study. There are a number of White male students who also seem to believe that intellectual activity is for sissies, and spend most of their spare time discussing women and sports.
Mexico and Latin America are divided into a small intellectual class and a huge unintellectual class. There are no anti-intellectuals to any great degree in Latin America as there are here (like George Wallace, who was always complaining about 'pointy-headed intelecktuls': but there are a lot of people who are simply uncurious and uninterested in any intellectual pursuit beyond their own daily lives. Such people do not generally attend college in the US. I have met on long bus journeys in Mexico, Uruguay and Argentina, several people who worked as mechanics and technicians who never attended any university, but who were extremely well read in Spanish and World literature and philosophy. Women are rarely intellectually curious in Latin America, except among the first and second generation immigrants from Europe, notably Jewish and Ukranian immigrants.
The best students as a group have been from the English-speaking Caribbean: Trinidadians, Antiguans, St. Lucians, Virgin Islanders, Bahamians, Jamaicans. But I have had many excellent students from everywhere.
I did my BA at New Mexico State University, which had more Chicano students than any other state university as a percentage, at that time around 15%, now over 60%. It seems to me that students in the early 1960's studied much more seriously everywhere than students do now. The textbooks and resources were very inferior. The sort of literary research that took me to three libraries in Mexico and took me a week to do, I could do in an afternoon on the Internet.
Asian students, most of which have been of Japanese, Korean and Singaporean parentage in my classes, have been excellent at doing term papers, passing tests, and everything other than class participation. Any discussion involving personal opinions will not elicit much participation from them beyond yes, no and I am not sure.
I have not had an assortment that is typical of American university and secondary students, but that is what I have noticed.
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And.......... the guy has a racist agenda and he goes around lookng for trumpded up evidence to support it. It's like people that need the bible to be the truth. They turn themselves inside out to make it look like the truth.
bsb
I fail to see where he turned himself inside out. His methodology was explained, and his results are corroborated by over a century's worth of data gathered from standardized IQ tests, academic records and economic performance.
In other words, his results are exactly what anyone familiar with the accumulation of data would have predicted.
I care not if an assertion could be construed as "racist". I care only if it can be demonstrated to be true. If you can refute his results with another body of evidence, please, be my guest.
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Asian-Americans outperform all Asian students except for Shanghai-Chinese. White Americans outperform students from all 37 predominantly white nations except Finns, and U.S. Hispanics outperformed the students of all eight Latin American countries that participated in the tests.
uhm I actually know some folks who used to work at harvard and the top students are by a good percent asians(not asian_americans). Judging from all the talk of american education, I don`t recall americans faring well against europeon education generally speaking. the white on white topic is very questionable.the hispanic one is viable since it did mention it`s incomplete
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It's not up to me to refute the results. It's up to you to prove they have any significance or that they're even accurate. For example show me the 100 year IQ data supporting the concept that Africans, South East Asians, and Central Americans have a lower IQ then white Europeans. And, if they do, by how much? 1 point, 2 points, what? Then show me how that point difference is significant and by what meassure?
bsb
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It's not up to me to refute the results. It's up to you to prove they have any significance or that they're even accurate. For example show me the 100 year IQ data supporting the concept that Africans, South East Asians, and Central Americans have a lower IQ then white Europeans. And, if they do, by how much? 1 point, 2 points, what? Then show me how that point difference is significant and by what meassure?
bsb
You could start here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence), and if you want an exhaustive treatment, you can continue here (http://www.amazon.com/Factor-Science-Evolution-Behavior-Intelligence/dp/0275961036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293679990&sr=8-1).
These aren't exactly deep, dark secrets. This is well researched.
btw, East Asians have a *higher* average IQ than white Europeans. 107 average for East Asians vs. 100 average for whites.
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Chinese Top In Tests, But Educators Call For Reform
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/29/132416889/chinese-top-in-tests-but-still-have-lots-to-learn (http://www.npr.org/2010/12/29/132416889/chinese-top-in-tests-but-still-have-lots-to-learn)
Chinese academic Zhang Minxuan is a happy man. The jovial administrator has just learned that the Shanghai school system he oversees has topped the global PISA tests.
"All Chinese people, no matter poor or rich, they have very high expectations in education. That kind of culture pushes people to study and study and study. I think this is very important," Zhang says.
Limitations Of The System
At the Zhabei No. 8 Middle School in the northern part of Shanghai, it's business as usual.
The teacher teaches, the students repeat, and even the principal admits the feared final high school exam that gets you into college — known as the gaokao — is all simply about memorization and rote learning. That principal, Liu Jinghai, though he is proud of his students for testing well, says the West shouldn't worry about the PISA results.
"Developed countries like the U.S. shouldn't be too surprised by these results. They're just one index, one measure that shows off the good points of Shanghai's and China's education system. But the results can't cover up our problems," he says.
Liu is very frank about those problems — the continuing reliance on rote learning, the lack of analysis or critical thinking — and he says the system is in dire need of reform.
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I honestly don`t put much into IQ. Give Me 1 year with any 5 people of your choosing I know I can get them to be on par with anyone in asia. I used to be a supervisor and I really find it super easy to motivate people to learn. I got alot of people to go college.
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Ok RD, I've seen those results before but I asked for a measurement on how big a difference it makes. Secondly, if East Asians have an average IQ of 107 and white Europeans of 100, neither, on average, is particularly bright. In fact the average East Asian, according to that test result, couldn't even qualify for OCS in the US Army. I think when I was in you had to have an IQ of 116 or 117. Even that isn't exactly in giant brain territory.
So, again, what difference does it make and how is that being measured? Frankly if I had to chose between someone with an IQ of 107 and someone with an IQ of 100 to work for me, I wouldn't take either one of them. I'd wait until I had some more choices.
bsb
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I maybe wrong but 100 IQ means average, in fact 100 was meant to be the average. Meaning a very large misunderstanding to the scoring system. 117 is actually quite high
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I had alot of paintchips in my youth, i`m shooting for 98
Over 140 - Genius or near genius
120 - 140 - Very superior intelligence
110 - 119 - Superior intelligence
90 - 109 - Normal or average intelligence
80 - 89 - Dullness
70 - 79 - Borderline deficiency