I agree 100%. Any time I see these assessments which claim that the United States is lagging in science or math, it seems that they are going by average scores. Or by percentage of students who exceed some threshold.
The fact is that only a small percentage of jobs require strong math skills. And a large percentage of jobs require minimal math skills.
Obviously it would be nice if all americans were fully literate and numerate, but in terms of filling jobs in engineering etc., there are plenty of people. Important scientific work continues to be done in the United States. etc.
I would say that it depends on your point of reference. From the sun’s perspective, the earth is going around it. From the Earth’s perspective, the sun is going around us. Or am I missing something?
I guess I wasn’t clear in my reply, though these responses sort of enhance my argument, but the point I was trying to make wasn’t that the test was somehow wrong, but that the answers are debatable.
Though I don’t really have any evidence to back it up, I’m pretty sure that if you approached people on the street and had a conversation about astronomy with them, or somehow extracted information about what they know in a non-standardized-test context, you’d discover that a lot less than 25% don’t know that the sun is basically stationary with respect to the Earth which flies through space around the former. I feel like most people know this.
On the other hand, how many people would say that the earth orbits the sun once per year? I bet a lot, but that answer’s not quite right! Even people who know that it’s closer to 365 and a quarter days (hence leap years) aren’t exactly right.
So I think what I’m trying to express is that the level of scientific competence of the American populace is a kind of nebulous thing, due to both the inherent depth of certain scientific questions and the problems associated with testing against these questions.
I get what you are saying, but there should be two things we can measure to tell us how our education system is doing: a) how ready are students entering math and science programs(which these studies do not address) and b) how science literate is the general population? I agree that my accountant doesn’t need to know the orbital speed of the Earth, but I do want him to know how enough to understand that the fact that it got cold last winter does not disprove the idea of global climate change, or that the government is not wasting its money funding fruit fly and bacterial evolution because God created everything the way we see it now 6000 years ago.
Anxieties about the state of education in the United States versus other countries almost always ignore differences in the populations represented.
You cannot paste education on everyone equally. If average differences in innate ability exist between populations, you must also look at the populations represented in two different countries before you decide the primary problem is the educational system. It may be the protoplasm being educated.
Asians score higher than whites who score higher than blacks on IQ tests (as examples of commonly-used cohorts) . It follows that countries with a higher percentage of asians and a lower percentage of blacks will be able to educate their populations better.
Education does make a difference, of course. But you could not educate me into a math whiz. I don’t have the intellectual capacity for it. Educational efforts can lift the performance of everyone, and even lift measured IQ of everyone. It has never been able to close gaps among populations even when the populations represented are exposed to the exact same education.
If you don’t take into account differences in the baseline IQ of a population, blaming differences on the educational system alone misses the most basic reason.
We continue to insist (or pretend) that there are no differences among populations in average ability. I understand the political and social sensitivity of insisting otherwise. But wishing something were true or ignoring evidence that it’s true does not make it true.
Paradoxically, I think college campuses are intellectual wastelands, regardless of the field of study. High GPA=intelligence? My ass. High GPA=reasonably good short-term memory. Memorize a chapter and take a multiple-choice test on the matter a week later. How is that intelligence? Knowledge is not intelligence. Using knowledge in an intellectual way is intelligence. The fact that you think a high GPA makes you smart, or intelligent, indicates you are not so. The bell curve? WTF!? Why are you raising poor grades? I don’t take a class to get a good grade, I take a class to learn something, as do, presumably, all of the other students…with exceptions, of course. If they earn a D on a test or in the class, obviously they’ve not learned much; therefore, they do not warrant a grade that indicates they have learned the subject matter. Try talking to a senior or grad student (mostly adults over the age of 22). In many cases you will hear “like” every third word and experience very shallow, uninformed conversation. (Yes, there was actually one girl in a class who thought Russia had recently attacked Georgia—The Peach State. I am not kidding. I didn’t think these people existed, but they do). And these are the “educated” adults, not exceptions, but norms
Paranoia? Anxiety? I don’t think so; not if your field experience indicates otherwise.
The biggest problem with education in America is that a bachelor’s is virtually required to land a decent job pushing paper somewhere. This leads to rampant grade inflation where a B+ is the new C and students spend four years halfheartedly going through the motions to learn information they won’t ever use to get that coveted piece of paper.
For what it’s worth, from a completely anecdotal standpoint, it’s very difficult to distinguish the gifted from the average when showing up to class every day is enough to earn you 85%. I’d really like to see a return to Gaussian grade distributions where merit is earned relative to your peers, and a resurgence of vocational schools.
My generation (I’m 24) was told at birth that we could be astronauts, vets, and cowboy-rockstar-surgeons. We were told the same in grade school, and in middle school, and in high school. Everybody was special, everybody was smart, and by the time we figured out that it was a load of shit, we were typing quarterly reports into Excel after the morning coffee break, pissed off because the five years of higher education taught us absolutely nothing of remote use.
I guess, then, so many people choose to work as menial laborers for meager income. It’s a good thing, too, because if everyone were millionaires, who dispose of our trash, make our clothing, prepare our Big Mac?
I don’t think you can rag on America 'till you’ve seen what the rest of the world has to offer. American educators abroad pretty much universally agree that Americans kick ass when it comes to critical thinking, problem solving and general know how.
Let’s put it this way. Look at my location. Just last Saturday I taught some college seniors and discovered they had nothing more than a vague idea what happened during the holocaust. When I asked them how many people died, they ventured it was probably around 3,000. This wasn’t because of revisionism, they just had no clue. So let’s not get too rosy eyed about the greatness of other people’s education systems.
Anyway, the American education system has a different goal than most. The goal is to teach people HOW to think and how to find answers when they don’t have them. Most other educations systems teach how to follow, and how to memorize. America’s system doesn’t work great, but for critical thinking purposes it works a hell of a lot better than most other countries. And this is what makes America great- our willingness to question, our practicality, our flexibility. Hell, we’ve already learned we can outsource raw smarts. But we keep being the ones to profit off it, because we are the ones who learn how to come up with ideas.
I think this really depends on the level of classes you are taking. Sure, I’ve had my share of memorize/regurgitate introductory classes (i.e. architectural history: What’s this building’s name, who designed it, when was it built, where is it, x1000). But if it’s a good school by the time you’re into your 3 & 4th years you’re being asked to use your knowledge to: create something, solve something, espouse a coherent theory on what would happen in this hypothetical situation, etc. It’s not all just a memory game at that point.
The issue in the OP is not so much how to measure intelligence, or whether grades correlate with learning. It’s asking whether our schools impart learning as well as the schools of other countries. The teaching side must be considered, but results should be compared only with similar populations in both countries (US Chinese versus Chinese in China, for example). If one measures only gross results, the variable of population type is not controlled for and therefore one cannot reach the conclusion that differences are necessarily from the overall quality of teaching–it could be the overall quality of students (or both).