

US adults score below average on worldwide test - Kilo-byte
http://news.yahoo.com/us-adults-score-below-average-worldwide-test-090114407.html

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BlobbleBlab
Quote from the article:

"America's school kids have historically scored low on international
assessment tests compared to other countries, which is often blamed on the
diversity of the population and the high number of immigrants."

America's diversity is a creation myth. Outside of New York, it isn't very
diverse at all, and compared to Western Europe it doesn't have a very high
number of immigrants.

Or does the American definition of 'diversity' only refer to the number of
black people? In that case, blaming their numbers for lower test scores is
kind of ... racist, isn't it?

~~~
jeltz
> compared to Western Europe it doesn't have a very high number of immigrants.

This is true. America has an immigrant population of about the same size as
Germany or Sweden (at about 12-13% of the population).

> Or does the American definition of 'diversity' only refer to the number of
> black people? In that case, blaming their numbers for lower test scores is
> kind of ... racist, isn't it?

I believe that is the main demographic difference between western Europe and
America. We do not have a large population of former salves who historically
have suffered heavy discrimination. Pointing out the results of historical
(and current) racism is not racist.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It is racist if the meaning is "we'd be scoring fine if it wasn't for them
dragging us down with their genetic inferiority about which nothing can be
done" rather than taken as a reason for improving schooling for the poor and
otherwise disadvantaged.

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tzs
> The findings were equally grim for many European countries — Italy and
> Spain, among the hardest hit by the recession and debt crisis, ranked at the
> bottom across generations. Unemployment is well over 25 percent in Spain and
> over 12 percent in Italy. Spain has drastically cut education spending,
> drawing student street protests.

I'm not sure what they are getting at here. High unemployment, being hard hit
by the recession and debt crisis, and recently cutting education would not
affect adult reading, math, and problem solving skills, so I don't think they
are offering those as an explanation for those countries doing poorly on these
tests.

Are they implying that because Spanish and Italian results are not as good as
their neighbors they were not as capable as handling the recession and debt
crisis, and so were hit harder?

~~~
pjmlp
Where you would find money to spend on books, time to spend on reading, when
all you care about is how to get money not to starve?

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
"Where you would find money to spend on books, time to spend on reading, when
all you care about is how to get money not to starve?"

Oh man, I am from Spain. I believe you need to get out of your country for a
while.

There are few places in which I had seen more misery than in the US of
America, India comes to mind. There some people live very well, the rest very
bad.

Spain is somewhat a socialist country, you are paid for not working, with lots
of subsidies, like PER or paro, education and healthcare for the poor are
free. Also lots of taxes.

Spain exports food, there is plenty of it. If you are poor there are lots of
rural places where you are given land free if you want to work it(as small
villages get empty when population gets older).

In Spain(and Italy) family is much more important than in the US, so it has a
wide social net.

~~~
pjmlp
Maybe you need to travel more around in your own country.

Not everyone has a family to fall on or gets the expected help from the social
institutions.

I travel regularly in Spain and am aware of such situations.

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Deestan
> It's long been known that America's school kids haven't measured well
> compared with international peers. Now, there's a new twist: Adults don't
> either.

That's not a twist. It's the _exact same statement_ just 10 years later.

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DominikR
The strength of an economy rarely depends on the education or knowledge of the
masses.

Often it's just access to natural resources or the ability to get access by
force. (otherwise I would have to assume that neolithic societies like those
we find in Saudi Arabia or Qatar would have one of the best educated
populations out there)

As long as the US is able to sustain its military apparatus and educate the
top 1% well enough so they can innovate on technology they'll do fine.

It's not as if no one knew that US education for the masses is average at
best, but it didn't matter in the last decades, and it probably wont matter in
the future.

~~~
ig1
You realize that the majority of Engineering Phds in the US are foreign born ?
- the US heavily relies on being able to attract international talent to
maintain its advantage.

~~~
vixen99
"Its advantage". You (not ig1) can get away with this if you're a typical HN
reader but ignoring the rules of grammar is not advised for those alluded to
in the article. Mistakes like that are likely to merely compound your
problems.

Sadly the rather smart folk who evidently inhabit these columns (and are
meticulous when instructing their computers) sometimes don't set good examples
for you. They really should, should they not?

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w3dt
This isn't surprising since in US, you get what you pay for. In Sweden for
example everyone gets the same treatment in school, healthcare etc. Sure would
you only count the top 1% Sweden would probably fall below US. But without
that the rest of the 99% gets an higher rate.

~~~
bjrnjs
Well, that's not completely true. In Sweden we have private schools just as
they do in the US.

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cLeEOGPw
I don't live in US, but I think it's not very fair to measure US with separate
countries. It would make more sense to measure separate states. Because if you
take EU as a whole you would get worse result too.

~~~
nextw33k
That doesn't make sense. They are measuring countries, the EU is not a
country. In theory the USA could join the EU.

The point is to measure how government policy affects education.

~~~
Jach
Yet another reason to break down the US into States, where local policies
dominate.

I glanced at the 466 page report for this and couldn't grep a US state...
Someone should sell the OECD on an OLAP system so they can easily find this
stuff out and publish it. (Or even let journalists and/or the public have
direct access...)

~~~
trailfox
Local policies also affect other countries. Different provinces, different
cities, different schools, different policies...

~~~
Jach
Sure, and if we had the data broken down we could determine how much variance
is within each country and how valid a country-wide report is for each
country. Somehow I think France's partitions would be a lot more uniform than
the US's partitions for this study, but without the data I can't be sure.

~~~
BlobbleBlab
I can absolutely guarantee that this is not the case in France. Try comparing
Île-de-France and similarly sized Limousin for example.

I spend a lot of time both in the EU and the US, and find the US remarkably
culturally homogeneous compared to Europe. In a country the size of a
continent, from coast to coast, you find the same dominant language,
traditions, politics, religion, holidays, sports, restaurant chains and
stores.

What is the case I imagine, is that one is trained from birth to differentiate
the tiny differences within one's own culture and values those so highly, that
they look like remarkable diversity, while one doesn't recognize the
differences between strangers, and automatically doesn't value them very
highly. Can you tell a significant difference between a Slovene and a
Hungarian, for example?

This is how 'latin americans' seem like one uniform group, or even 'sub
saharan africans' or 'asians', while objectively Amhara from Ethiopia, Hausa
from Nigeria and San from South Africa differ far more from each other than
say Americans, Italians and Danes differ from each other.

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dwaltrip
It would be nice if they explained how "scoring below average" results in "an
underclass that is basically unemployable". The absolute measurements are what
matter most. Everything else is pride, folly, and excessive nationalism.
Although I suppose healthy competition could occasionally help us move further
along the right path.

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Samuel_Michon
Lately, I have noticed several US news publications referring to the
Netherlands and Belgium as being situated in Northern Europe. That bugs me,
they’re actually in Western Europe.

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

From Brussels to the nearest Scandinavian country, Denmark, is a 10 hour
drive.

Here’s the paragraph I’m referring to: _“But in the northern European
countries that have fared better, the picture was brighter — and the study
credits continuing education. In Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands, more
than 60 percent of adults took part in either job training or continuing
education.”_

(I’ll refrain from making the obvious jokes about Americans being bad at
general geography.)

~~~
BlobbleBlab
It is absolutely wrong, ignorant and probably fascist to include Belgium and
the Netherlands in the same geographic subdivision. The line between Northern
and Southern Europe is somewhere between Rotterdam and Antwerp. Belgium is on
the northern outskirts of the Mediterranean region.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
I understand it was an attempt at humor, but there is no line that divides
Northern and Southern Europe. Western Europe is in between both (like Central
America is in between North and South America).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_subregion_map_UN_ge...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_subregion_map_UN_geoschme.svg)

Also, ‘the Mediterranean’ is not the same as Southern Europe. For instance,
France, Monaco, and Corsica are not part of Southern Europe, even though they
are in the Mediterranean. Portugal is in Southern Europe, but it isn’t in the
Mediterranean.

~~~
V-2
This post-Cold War classification is somewhat oversimplified.. The category of
Central Europe (or Middle Europe) is more helpful in understanding the
divisions. Vide "The stolen West..." by Kundera, for example

~~~
Samuel_Michon
I’m not sure what you mean by that. Central Europe (or Middle Europe) doesn’t
include the Netherlands or Belgium.

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

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rob_mccann
Measured reading, maths & problem solving.

What about, creativity, critical thinking and arts? Harder to quantify, but
just as important.

~~~
maxerickson
A decent test for problem solving will measure creativity and critical
thinking. Synthesis isn't always particularly aesthetic, but it does generally
involve quite some creativity.

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ChrisAntaki
It's interesting that American adults are ranking 17th in problem solving on
these tests. Still, I wonder... how much bearing does a problem solving test
question have on actual, modern day problems?

George Carlin's thoughts:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jQT7_rVxAE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jQT7_rVxAE)

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hacknat
_Sigh_ Yet another US Education hit piece. I love reading these because they
all have the same myopic trope:

1\. Other countries score better on subject tests than the US on average.

2\. This has traditionally been blamed on the USA's high diversity and
immigrant population.

3\. Cue policy expert giving us a dire warning about how there are no
politically tenable solutions to the US education crisis.

4\. Cue 2nd policy expert talking about how devastating the skills gap will be
on the economy.

Can someone give us a different angle?

~~~
RyanZAG
I get that it makes you uncomfortable, but it feels like you're asking for
someone to give you the ability to stick your head in the sand and excuse the
problem.

The problem is real and will likely manifest itself dramatically over the next
century.

~~~
sliverstorm
Your parent is unhappy with these articles because they are basically doomsday
proclamations. "Uncomfortable" doesn't even enter into it, because the message
is simply "welp, we're fucked". That's why new angles would be interesting.

~~~
furyg3
But other countries aren't fucked. They did well on the test, so why can't the
solution be to do what those other countries are doing?

Flanders and Australia are every bit as 'incomparable' as Finland and the US,
so let's just compare anyway. It turns out there are major consequences for
income inequality, and most of the countries listed in the top categories have
worked aggressively to reduce it and to alleviate it's consequences through
social programs.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
What those other countries are doing is not having many Africans. But this is
not a problem, and would be difficult to fix even if it were.

Income inequality is a major goal of American politics. The poverty oligarchs
farm the poor for votes. This will continue for as long as Americans practice
the perversion known as democracy.

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jdimov
This is only news if you live in America, I guess :) It's common knowledge
around the rest of the world. In fact, it has become somewhat of a defining
characteristic of what it means to be american.

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stuaxo
It would be interesting to see that list, against the amount each govt spends
on health, education etc...

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onion2k
Was the test in Japanese? That would explain the results. :)

