I read a great editorial in the NY Times about a man from India, and how when he arrived in America he became instantly smart – the best in his class at math.
American education takes a good bit of bashing. But the bashing is too general. We excel in several ways and fail in others. Math and science are our big failures. The left bears some blame for this, but most of the blame is the refusal to invest in the public good from the right.
Here is the strange thing about education in the US. From k-12 the entire focus on training is on the pedagogy. After 12, the entire focus is on the content. It turns out that this works wonderfully after 12 (we do have the greatest university system on the globe, no contest) and before 3rd grade. But rather than have a slow increase, so that the high school teacher has a balance of content and pedagogy, we have almost zero content to grade 12.
“The second section of the report presents a survey of middle school math teachers, focusing on their educational background and professional development. A significant number of math teachers at this level lack formal undergraduate training in mathematics, and the professional development they are receiving appears to be inadequate to remedy the problem.”
http://www.brookings.edu/gs/brown/bc_report/2004/2004report.htm
From k-3 teachers achieve the most amazing results. Homeless children, children who speak no english, hungry children all show up. By 3rd grade they are the equal of every class in the world, even those which only take the best and brightest. By the 9th grade they are behind.
People are comfortable in American being innumerate. Many people don’t even know what numeracy implies, believing themselves numerate because they can balance a checking account. Social Security? Taxes? Projections and stats – the numbers are ignored.
A discussion about education needs to break education down:
k -3
3-6
6-9
9-12
We have an immense step function at 12 rather than a upward slope from 3-12 that nicely jumps at the university level. Democrats will be again in power. Once the Dems are at the Federal level we can rewrite the No Child Left a Dime. How could it be improved?
I propose the following:
- content knowledge increasing from 3 – > 12
- better pay for k-3
- competitive pay for math, science, business, shop etc. teachers
- mechanisms to rotate teachers to prevent burnout (time off in industry, rotation of administrative centralized tasks, research time, …?)
- ability to bring in content expertise at the higher level w/o sacrificing the amazing results in k-3
At the same time we can celebrate what is great. In every quintile Americans SAT scores have been increasing for decades.
We need more math and more science to maintain a modern democracy. Intelligent design would be a joke and not a political issue in a well educated population. How do we get there?