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American students do not care that they are behind the rest of the world. It is a symptom of our attitude of entitlement.
I think there is one pretty big factor that contribute to the downfall - the fake self esteem build in kids.
Teachers are not allowed to criticize pupils - everything and everyone is great, did a terrific job, outstanding performance.
Kids are praised just for showing up in the school. Focusing on self-esteem and confidence building is doing kids more harm than good. A false confidence " I can do it" is often a surprising failure, failure that can be devastating and confusing for a student whose confidence is based on an inflated ego.
That " you/we are #1" is pathetic and does not reflect the real achievements.
Kids should be allowed to fail, with the expectation that trying and failing is how you learn. That's how it was where I come from. Even a good achievements were criticized, in order to enforce ambition and will to do better. Good grades and good behavior was not universally praised/celebrated each school quarter. This was expected. Great and extraordinary effort was noted.
It is because the in the US, we do not teach our students to learn, we teach them so that they can pass the test. Also, American kids are bad at math b/c they learn it later than kids in other countries ( I wasn't taught fractions until middle school, sad sad sad). This is why you have so many kids in remedial math classes in college. By college, they expect you to go immediately into pre-calc or calc, but most students can't do it b/c instead of being taught how to solve problems, they are taught tricks to help them pass tests!
I remember when I was in high school (2003-2007) and every other word out of the teacher's mouth was "this will be on the test", "remember the end of year test", "test, test, test". Of course, it wasn't their fault for this. Admin and the gov't keeps threatening them that they will be in trouble if those darn kids can't pass the test! Oh, and the kicker. To make sure we passed the test, the teachers would skip over certain parts of the texts so to only teach what would be on the test. But, in the next semester, the teacher in the next scheduled class would be pissed that we didn't know how to do such and such (which the previous teacher passed over).
I love America, but goodness! I can see why we are behind.
in america they are failing because they are unrealistic. they tell every kid that he can be anything he dreams or wants to be and that is simply untrue. not everyone can be whatever they want unless their natural abilities whether physical or mental warrant it.
other countries are just more realistic about who can or cannot do whatever and those that excel will excel and those that don't can do other trades. they don't "dumb" down the education or lower standards to artificially pass everybody etc
^^^ I can vouch for that. Whenever I went into my university libraries at the weekend I'd be the only white person there and all the others would be Chinese/Indians all doing their PhDs in finance, engineering, IT and the like. You never saw any Asians in the pubs or societies/sports teams etc. You know what they say about all work and no play though.
in america they are failing because they are unrealistic. they tell every kid that he can be anything he dreams or wants to be and that is simply untrue. not everyone can be whatever they want unless their natural abilities whether physical or mental warrant it.
other countries are just more realistic about who can or cannot do whatever and those that excel will excel and those that don't can do other trades. they don't "dumb" down the education or lower standards to artificially pass everybody etc
As a person who has lived in Asia for a decade...and been teaching here the entire time....a few more related to that:
In Asia, especially in Korea & Japan, ENGINEERING and other very practical fields are very popular. WIth India, it is medicine and computer programming. They approach education in very practical means.
In the U.S., it is more like 'get any degree, as long as you like it'.
There is a reason that the U.S. domestically produces very very few doctors, nurses, scientists, engineers, etc.
People don't understand grades don't mean everything. There is book smart and street smart (common sense). Americans perform much worse than many countries around the world academically. China for example has brilliant students when it comes to math and science, but ask them to create a business proposal or anything creative without structure and that is where American students excel, creativity and innovation. Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, Google etc... I do think American students need to pick it up, but there is no reason to bash them while we are still coming out with innovations.
It is because the in the US, we do not teach our students to learn, we teach them so that they can pass the test.
Actually I think that is more the case in Asian countries. They study hard and they study a lot but they are not very good at solving problems by themselves. I've heard that China will have the most engineers in the future but 90% of them will be of no use by Western standards because while they are good at what they do they lack creativity and are helpless if encountering something they don't know. Just something I've heard, I can't judge the educational system over there. But just look at the numerous Asian students at American universities. They had to pass language tests to enroll. Yet, many of them don't speak a very good English at all.
I think people often don't factor in how large the U.S. is in comparison to Europe for example.
It is a country with 50 different educational systems and standards. I would bet if the scores for the U.S. were broken down to states that the higher scoring states will be in the upper echelons. You'll always have poor performing states like Arkansas, Mississippi that would drag down the averages. This is the same reason that comparatively rich Shanghai has so high scores, but if you took China as a whole with the poorer provinces, it might not even make it to the average scores.
For example, a few years ago, Massachusetts was broken down as a separate entity in TIMSS (Trends in International Math and Science Study) and its 4th graders ranked 2nd in the world behind Singapore in Science and tied for 3rd in Math.
Just keep in mind that these results may not be black and white as it seems.
People don't understand grades don't mean everything. There is book smart and street smart (common sense). Americans perform much worse than many countries around the world academically. China for example has brilliant students when it comes to math and science, but ask them to create a business proposal or anything creative without structure and that is where American students excel, creativity and innovation. Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, Google etc... I do think American students need to pick it up, but there is no reason to bash them while we are still coming out with innovations.
Americans are good business people with a talent to make profits.
A few years ago I work for a courier service. The owner grew up in rural Kentucky, started with one car and a friend as driver. In less than 10 years he owned a fleet of 135 cars, many drivers, and plenty of business. He was very good at business relations, in spite of his lack of speaking english correctly (inarticulate, grammar).
Self-made business people can become what they are by using their talents.
But many professions require much more than people and natural business skills. In this category American kids are trailing.
Being smart in America is not admired. When I went to elementary school the smart kids were labeled as 'eggheads'. One girl in my glass (of Polish parents) excelled at math, usually always outscoring all the boys, and she was mercilessly ridiculed for this.
I think people often don't factor in how large the U.S. is in comparison to Europe for example.
I don't have a good opinion about PISA anyway... you can't even compare European countries. The UK has more than 10 times the population of Finland and a totally different social structure. Germany has 16 states and educational standards differ from state to state. Probably PISA asks things that are not dealt with at a certain grade in a certain country but perhaps later. Other countries might train their students so they pass the PISA exams while others don't. Is PISA really the gold standard when it comes to education?
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