IP: Re: "We don't have the raw talent we need to be on the cutting edge"

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>
>Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:16:36 +0100
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>From: Jean Camp <jean_camp@harvard.edu>
>
>
>For the elite who make it to US schools, the education system for those 
>foreign countries offers:
>algebra in jr high
>"advanced" calculus in high school
>music in high school
>decent foreign language instruction through school.
>We have raw talent. We just don't prepare it.
>
>The crisis is not in universities. The crisis is less evident in 
>elementary schools, where little equipment and less investment in current 
>knowledge is required. The crisis is in high schools, and to a lesser 
>degree jr high schools. High schools that have active booster clubs for 
>the _sports_ _teams_ and nothing for the chess team. Where science fair 
>happens once a year and football games every Saturday. Read voices from 
>Hellmouth on slashdot if you think smart kids get too many resources. 
>American high school teaches to the lowest common denominator, in a 
>sometimes violently anti-intellectual environment.  When America cares to 
>educate kids, as opposed to being entertained by them in contests of 
>sports, then we can have talent.
>
>At the higher levels where skills teaching is essential our current 
>education system fails.  We have a educational funding system that was 
>built to appease anti-Catholic, nativist, and racist opponents of public 
>schooling.We have an ed training system built to remove the placing of 
>teachers based on religious affiliation -- but not designed to educate 
>kids for the 21st century.   We refuse to increase funding by factors of 3 
>or 5 or 10 (as has been done with medicine as boomers age).
>
>The only significant increase in funding at the K-12 level has been for 
>the learning disabled (in part by cutting services for the intellectually 
>talented because the law requires access to the learning disabled but 
>doesn't fund it). Amazingly, learning by the disabled has significantly 
>increased! In the educational system we all decry as 
>fundamentally  broken! Wow! Almost as if investment paid off! Imagine if 
>we made the _same_ investment in _every_ child.
>
>Any comparison which shows US spending equal to that in the developed 
>world includes university spending. We have great universities because we 
>pay for them. The US spends less on education in music in k-12 than on 
>military bands. We don't educate our kids. That is why they don't learn, 
>and don't learn to enjoy intellectual challenges.
>
>WE HAVE AN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION EDUCATION SYSTEM FUNDED AND TAUGHT FOR 
>INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION FACTORY EMPLOYEES. WHAT DO WE EXPECT AS AN OUTCOME?
>
>Enjoy your tax cut. We're all paying for the investment option declined.
>
>-Jean



For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/