My only question would relate to something mentioned towards the end, about how the US rates second to last in a collection of polled countries. Does anyone know which those countries were? Any third world or Muslim countries? (Not drawing a comparison between the two, just examples.) I know most of the population of Turkey is Muslim, but I was thinking about countries more in the Middle East. How about in Africa?
Mods when you get around to it can you fix my title to reflect the actual column. I forgot I was starting a thread and not just posting on one and I was mocking the reminder message I got when I tried to submit it without a title.
I’m not sure if this is from the same study Cecil cites, but here’s this page that has a link to a chart of responses in 34 countries. It’s about two-thirds of the way down on the left.
Somehow, I think that debate over a scientific idea has less to do with poor performance in math and science than wishy-washy presentation and an aversion to any memorization in the American school system. But hey, screw logic when there is a rhetorical point to make, right?
The symptom the US suffers from, in technical education, is students deciding (for whatever reason: There’s much debate on that) to leave the program before they’re finished. But those that do make it through are by and large the best in the world. This success is largely because of our de-emphasis on memorization: Students from other countries often know all of the formulae by heart, but have no clue as to how to use them. Much better, the student who has to look something up, but knows what to do once e has.