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Asus (I think) put out those 99$ laptops back when, and they were for meant for Chinese kids. Every kid in China got one. You'd think we could do that in this country, but no.
What is your deal, anyway? My original post specifically listed a bunch of things that render any comparison between Singapore and the U.S. moot. We will never be a small, wealthy, homogenous city-state.
You chose to read the single word "homogenous" as some sort of racial trigger.
After reading all your ranting replies, I'm not surprised it went over your head.
Basically everyone who disagrees with him is a "racist". I've reported it on the grounds that it is a needless personal insult. I suggest you do the same and ignore his future posts.
Asian people beat white people at something, and right away, it's, "Well, Asian people didn't actually do better, because we're arbitrarily going with stereotypes that say that we're still better. Hurr hurr."
It actually has way more to do with the system of government in Asian countries which leans toward authoritarian communism. The Russians were great at turning out the same kinds of students in the heyday of the U.S.S.R.
Well, on the other hand, Singapore has a very examination-driven education system - very competitive. And they have very early tracking between a university style track and the more vocational track.
I don't know if that would fly in the States.
Also, a critique of the Singapore education system and perhaps the society, is that it doesn't encourage people to take risks. High emphasis on paper qualifications. They make good and excellent managers, but you don't see many local entrepeneurs (except for mom and pop shops). There's a joke in acronym-mad Singapore that there are MNCs (multinational corporations), GLCs (government linked corporations, like SingTel and Singapore Airlines) and PLCs (poor local companies).
It wouldn't fly here. That's why it makes no sense to compare ourselves to Singapore. We don't have their attitude and we won't do what they do. We would NEVER hold a student accountable for learning. It's ALWAYS the school/teacher's fault when a student does not learn. We won't track our kids. We live under the delusion that ALL children are college material and IF ONLY the education system would get fixed they'd all have PhD's in rocket science.
I can't comment on their society and whether they encourage risk taking as we use the term but I've seen how they teach math and students will work at the board until they get a problem right no matter how many times they get it wrong and the class will comment on the progress being made. That is a kind of risk taking in that they'll stand in front of a group and work through a problem. Our kids won't do that. In fact I'd be accused of embarrassing them if I tried to do that.
Whether you think they are risk takers or not they are successful in preparing kids for college and beyond and they have to economy to show for it. If they are like other Asian countries they make up for lack of risk taking through expertise. I still remember my first introduction to the Japanese engineering culture. The young Japanese engineers never said a word. They just did what the older engineers told them to do. You see in their culture age implies wisdom they do not question their elders but rather learn from them. While they didn't take risks like our younger engineers in the end they developed much more expertise. That may be changing given the number of recalls on vehicles designed by Asian countries lately. My engineering experience is a decade old here.
Here most businesses starts fail. While it's true that those who win did take risks many more lost who took risks. Risk taking isn't always a good thing. Sometimes mastery is better.
Aaaaaaand there's the other familiar racist chestnut that people love to bring out when talking about education and race.
Asian people beat white people at something, and right away, it's, "Well, Asian people didn't actually do better, because we're arbitrarily going with stereotypes that say that we're still better. Hurr hurr."
See that, people? Both of the usual backwards conservative racist views.
View #1: "America is being dragged down by those black and hispanic people, because they aren't as smart as us white people."
View #2: "Well, white people are the smartest because we get better test scores than black people, but wait, Asian people get better test scores than we do? Well, that's because they're just robots."
See, according to the racist conservative narrative, white people are smarter than black people because white people get better test scores, and white people are smarter than Asian people because Asian people get better test scores.
It's not about race. It's about attitude. I teach high school and it's rare to see someone of Asian or Indian (India) heritage who doesn't work hard to learn and succeed (I've only had one Asian student who acted like most of my white students...entitled and lazy). In my school there is a fair number of white kids who do as well but there are plenty of white kids who sit on their hands and blame everyone else too. Sadly their parents blame everyone else too. Acorns usually don't fall too far from the tree.
It's not about race. It's about shared attitudes. I wish my non Asian students had the attitude and work ethic of most of my Asian students. It's no surprise to me that they succeed. They work to succeed. As Einstein said "Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.". Hard work can overcome a lot of obstacles. Most of my white students don't work hard. Most of my black students don't work at all. They seem to think education is a white thing. It's not about race. It's about attitude but often people of the same race seem to share their attitudes.
ETA: I am not saying that all white kids or all black kids behave thus. I'm just stating my observations working with the limited number of kids I've worked with.
Just read an interesting article. Why Singapore has the smartest kids in the world - CNN.com Singapore has the world-renowned Singapore Math. In America, "4 out of 3" proudly claim they suck math. We spend boat of money on special (aka dumb) education, but very little on gifted education. What can we learn from Singapore?
Singapore is a combination of American professionalism and Japanese work ethic. No wonder their kids are like that.
Usually in asian countries, by the age of 5 the kids develop proficiency in numbers and have already started arithmetic.
want to stop racism, its easy, first is respect, start acting like one group. quit trying to be different, pull up your pants, quit with the individual idea. have moral, have responsibilities.
Remember the will smith movies, cant think of the name, happy something, he plays a wall street broker. if you want to be rich, act like the rich people, wear a suit, appearance, education, how you act is how you become successful. not covering yourselves with tattoos and have earring holes size of silver dollars in your head.
want to stop racist, quit acting like a gangster.
but that just my opinion, it doesn't matter
Want to stop racism, start judging people as individuals, and let stupid people sort themselves out. You don't tell individuals who already have their act together to "get their act together".
I wish people would stop trying to blame ethnic diversity for everything from educational issues to crime.
Diversity isn't the problem. The problem is (structural) racism. Let's be honest about that.
No, diversity IS the problem. Diversity leads to societal tension and social problems. Diversity leads to the development of factions competing for public resources. Diversity can lead to sectarianism. Diversity sometimes leads to the forced inclusion of people with cultural practices that the majority finds abhorrent.
The data is very clear that certain groups are more prone to crime, poverty, lack of educational and professional achievement, etc. And that isn't just in the US, that is everywhere in the world whether there was slavery or not. It's not institutional racism; rather, it's a reflection that the notion that we are all biologically equal and simply have different melanin levels is an idealistic fairy tale.
That diversity and multiculturalism are beneficial to society is a flat-out lie. The social democratic governments and economies the left points to as ideal only work in homogeneous countries. The states where people rave about the education and quality of life tend to be lily-white. The red states that the left points to as being bastions of social problems tend to be highly diverse. We have been lied to and Western civilization continues to weaken because of the lie.
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