
Global '100-year gap' in education standards - tokenadult
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32397212
======
vanderZwan
> _But the real question is what can be done to close the gap? Can some of the
> evolutionary steps be skipped to make more rapid progress? Can there be
> entirely different models that would accelerate change?_

When I travelled through Ghana a few years back, the teaching _methods_ struck
me as being a hundred years out of date. Oversized classes where most learning
happens through droning repetition and where corporal punishment is still the
norm - you can see the historical origins of the Prussian military who wanted
to create obedient citizens.

The developing countries could in theory learn from our mistakes and train
their educators to use better teaching methods while skipping most of the
trial and error.

So in that sense I expect them to be able to catch up much quicker.

~~~
shas3
> The developing countries could in theory learn from our mistakes and train
> their educators to use better teaching methods while skipping most of the
> trial and error.

Are you suggesting that there aren't people in developing countries who know
about these mistakes?!

It is not a trial-and-error evolution that's going on. There are systemic
problems that prevent the implementation of education best practices. It is
more a case of steering a huge ship [1] than ignorance about 'best practices.'
Some of these systemic problems were never present in the developed world to
learn from, in the first place.

Honestly, the trivially easiest part is 'learning from the developed world's
mistakes'. The real problem is in fixing systemic issues.

It is funny to see commenters on online-forums swooping in with simplistic
solutions. There are respectable and rigorous, evidence-driven efforts to
address problems in education [2]. Guess what? It's a hard problem.

[1] J. Dreze, A. Sen, "Putting Growth in its Place,"
[http://www.outlookindia.com/article/putting-growth-in-its-
pl...](http://www.outlookindia.com/article/putting-growth-in-its-place/278843)
[2] Annual State of Education Report:
[http://img.asercentre.org/docs/Publications/ASER%20Reports/A...](http://img.asercentre.org/docs/Publications/ASER%20Reports/ASER%202014/National%20PPTs/aser2014indiaenglish.pdf)

~~~
vanderZwan
> Are you suggesting that there aren't people in developing countries who know
> about these mistakes?!

Given your use of interrobang I guess you are offended by my earlier post, but
I think you are reading something between the lines that I did not write.

You're citing an article that rails against "growth-mediated development"
which has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm talking about, other than
"are there economic means available to re-educate our teachers", which is also
not something I'm talking about. I'm talking about how teachers teach. Your
second source comes closer to this point but is more focused on the _goals_
than the _means_.

I'm probably biased, being an educator myself who spends a lot of time trying
to come up with better ways of teaching my classes, but _how_ you are being
taught is just as important as _how long_. And a lot of that depends on the
ideas teachers have about how education works. We know a lot more know about
how the mind learns than we did a hundred years ago, and what makes a good
educator. For example, the need to be unconditionally respectful [0].

I'm not "suggesting that there aren't people in developing countries who know
about these mistakes", I'm sharing my own observation that the majority of
teachers I met in Ghana follow a model of how to educate children that is a
century out of date.

So I'll just cite my finishing sentence again, emphasizing the delimiting part
that you seem to have missed the first time:

> So _in that sense_ I expect them to be able to catch up much quicker.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvgbvtxYRX4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvgbvtxYRX4)

------
snowy
Obviously in terms of quality of education there is a huge gap between
developing and developed counties. But I wonder can you measure this gap in
terms of the number of years spent in education?

~~~
IkmoIkmo
No, not quality, quantity. Quality is a lot more tricky to measure, and while
a lot can be said about it, making broad statements like 'x year gap' aren't
super meaningful.

But quantity, sure. And that's kind of what the article gets at. Universal and
free public school for example isn't all that old, and while it's fortunately
present almost everywhere on the planet today, the average length of studying
differs a lot.

Kids in low-income countries current go to school between the ages of about 5
to 11, and then quit. Whereas in OECD countries, kids are generally obligated
by law to stay in school until age 18 or so (used to be 16-17 but it's
shifting up a bit nowadays).

That's a 7 or so year gap of teenage education that's completely missing for
the vast majority of kids in low-income countries.

The 100 year gap in the article concerns the notion that in the year 2100,
kids in low-income countries will have bridged this gap. By then, even today's
low-income country kids will get more than 10 years of education, which
developed countries get today, bridging the gap.

Graph from the article explaining what they mean by the gap:

[http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/media/images/82466000/png/_...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/media/images/82466000/png/_82466268_schoolyears.png)

~~~
ido

        Kids in low-income countries current go to school 
        between the ages of about 5 to 11, and then quit.
        Whereas in OECD countries, kids are generally obligated
        by law to stay in school until age 18 or so (used to be
        16-17 but it's shifting up a bit nowadays).
    

How recently do you mean by "nowadays"? At least in Israel I'm pretty sure
school till 18 has been the "default" for 50+ years and I was under the
impression this is not unusual for a western country (I've been living in
Austria and Germany for almost a decade now & I don't believe I know anyone
who spent less than 12 years in school).

~~~
IkmoIkmo
In the UK for example in 1880 it was compulsory until age 10, and by 1996 by
age 16. It's relatively recent that it's shifting to 18. [0]

In the largest EU countries like Germany, France, it's still 6-16, UK up to
17. Wiki may already be outdated and it may already be 18, but that goes to
show that compulsory education to 18 is a pretty new phenomenon.

For example, the UK said 17 by 2013, and 18 by 2015, up from 16 less than a
decade earlier.

As for France, as I mentioned it's 16, but it can be as little as 14 if you
take up apprenticeship or work in your parents' company, there are exceptions
that exist.

In Germany 18 is the default if you go and do your abitur, sure (probably
everyone among your friends with whom you talk to about their studies has done
it.) but if you get your Hauptschulabschluss you can be done at 16 or even 15.
Again this is likely changing and may already have, but quite recently so.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education)

As for Israel, as far as I know it's been age 5 to 15 (k10) since 1949, and
this was amended as recently as 2009 for k12.

~~~
ido
I stand corrected!

------
gerbal
Three generations to move a population of 1.6 billion from 4 to 11 years of
schooling?

That doesn't seem all that bad. Rapid development is great, but development
generally over the course multiple generations.

------
danieltillett
I am wondering what is the cause and what is the effect here. Do people become
more educated because they become wealthier or do they become wealthier as
they become more educated?

~~~
bsbechtel
I took a class on international economic development when in grad school. The
class spent some time going through the various theories of economic
development, and what has and hasn't worked in terms of aid programs. One of
the surprises in the class I learned was that education isn't a big driver for
economic development. That's not to say education isn't important, but that if
you make a huge effort to education your population, the payoff isn't going to
be that great, other factors need to be considered.

~~~
tormeh
This always frustrates me with the debate around how to help developing
economies. Widespread education isn't really needed until pretty late in an
economy's development. Widespread education is only necessary in a post-
industrialized economy. Developing nations will do fine with basic
literacy/numeracy until their economies are sufficiently advanced as to
require higher levels of education to advance.

~~~
albemuth
How does a developing nation become post-industrialized with basic
literacy/numeracy. Honest question.

~~~
tormeh
Foreign investments + a small elite that can order people around. The
education level in Britain during the industrial revolution was pretty low,
and it follows that any higher would be unnecessary for a developing country.

It would be different if you wanted to skip the sweatshop-stage, but I don't
think any country of any size really has.

Making use of higher education requires an economy in which they are useful,
and to build such an economy requires enormous capital expenditures in
infrastructure, manufacturing goods etc. What good are skills, if you have
neither the tools of the trade nor the problems to apply them to?

~~~
bsbechtel
I would add to that the majority of citizens in the US were illiterate up
until the early 1900s. The country was pretty deep into the industrial
revolution at that point.

------
MichaelMoser123
now what were the giant advances in education attained during the last hundred
years? Can anyone explain that?

~~~
barry-cotter
Mass universal literacy. The first society with close with that was Puritan
New England in the 1600s. Now the only parts of the world that don't have mass
literacy are the Bottom Billion countries, shitholes like Afghanistan or most
of Africa.

Also, abstract thought more generally. The Flynn Effect (secular increases in
unnormed IQ scores) is basically what happens when everyone gets to Piaget's
Formal Operations stage.

~~~
MichaelMoser123
Thank you. i thought that a hundred years ago basic literacy was already a
solved problem (at least in the US and Europe).

Now you mentioned the Flynn Effect; are there any studies that do check if the
improvement in IQ scores is correlated with an improvement in performance of
piagetian tasks?

However you are right that now there is a higher percentage of people who
finish high school and college.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_U...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States)

------
Lancey
Hopefully as more developing nations gain access to the internet, our global
education standards improve with the new technological access those countries
get. The ability to provide education to parts of the world that might not
have access to high quality teachers or schools via Skype or other programs
will allow for rapid advancements worldwide in education.

~~~
speeder
Unfortunately things don't work that way.

I am from Brazil for example, here the education laws are extremely rigid:
Homeschooling is a crime (literally, if you try to homeschool your kids you
are sent to jail), and the curriculum is defined by law and extremely rigid.

No matter how much internet you stuff here, as long those laws are enforced,
people are forced to have crap education.

Feynman article about that (written in the 50s by the way, things got worse
since the article was written, not better): [http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-
brazil-education](http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education)

~~~
IkmoIkmo
The notion that education reform can't ever happen in Brazil, or that no
education is allowed outside of the classroom as long as it's in addition to
(rather than replacing) the regular classroom, are both false. In fact, that
reform is already at play and it's been a big topic in Brazilian media the
past years. It's no longer banned, although you still need to put your kid in
an accredited school, which means that homeschooling is legal, but forgoing
'regular' education is not. It may not practically change anything, but it
shows things are already slowly shifting.

For example I've personally ran a modestly successful software business and
never took a CS class in school. I'll never consider myself an actual software
engineer but I've built, sold and shipped software products to large companies
with self-taught skills, and could have become a full fledged software
engineer if I delved deeper. And those skills cost me absolutely nothing, were
attained completely through the internet and were in addition to a college
degree in a completely different field.

I don't see how Brazilians don't have and can't have similar experiences.

Anyway I appreciate your frustrations and internet education is still really
nascent, I agree it's not a suitable replacement today for classroom
education. But let's be fair here, we're talking about an article here that
expects the education gap to be bridged by the year 2100, so the notion that
internet education can accelerate that (not to 2016, but say to 2050) is
entirely feasible in my opinion.

And that'd be gigantic, two whole generations earlier? If you're wondering how
significant a single generation can be, a generation is about 25 years, and
every year 130 million kids are born. Two generations of kids having improved
education is literally empowering over 6 billion people who have had access to
improved education. One of the big hopes of the 21st century are the
inventions of the billions of people who'll be empowered by that. Look how far
we've gotten with a few hundred million educated people.

Anyway I'm hopeful :)

------
jkot
I think it is not that bad. Article measures standard as "years of study"
which is irelevant. Western school system also has lot of problems (drug
medication abuse, criminalizing children for normal behavior, teaching
irelevant stuff), it is not that hard to provide better average quality of
education.

~~~
dragonwriter
Actually, no, the article refers both to years of study and skill measures,
and notes that both are low in the developing world.

If it was just years of study that were low, you'd perhaps have a point;
perhaps you were confused by not reading the article and only looking at the
graphic.

