
Only a few countries are teaching children how to think - benfreu
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21583609-only-few-countries-are-teaching-children-how-think-best-and-brightest
======
sillysaurus2
Growing up, I declined to participate in the educational system (primarily to
avoid harassment at school) and instead spent all of my time learning to
program video games at home. So I would sleep through class, go home, and try
to write Pong. My academic performance was nonexistent, but I came out of it
with a career. I was wondering, was anyone else's childhood experience
similar?

Highschool felt at best a dungeon, and at worst a torture chamber. That was
primarily due to my mindset. I didn't really know how the world worked, and it
seemed to me like the system had been designed for the purpose of dragging me
down to the level of the brutes around me. But unfortunately the experience
killed my interest in wanting to strive to attend a good (or any) university,
which I now deeply regret. Not due to loss of credentials, but rather due to
missing out on the social experience of uni.

If it were explained to me that the reason I was in school was because an
industrialized society needs a place to put children for 8 hours each day so
their parents can work, it would've made so much more sense than trying to
believe the lie that we were there to learn. It felt so obvious that we
weren't there to learn anything substantial. By learning to program video
games I'd gotten a taste of the amount of effort real learning took, and
memorizing historical dates or doing trivial math problems definitely wasn't
any effort. So maybe one solution to "How do we cultivate the desire to
learn?" is to relax on the idea that school is even supposed to be a place for
kids to learn.

~~~
kevincrane
I feel like I'm in the minority here (backed up by a similar discussion on
reddit today), but I really enjoyed high school. I liked the classes, I felt
like I knew what I was doing with life when I graduated and went on to
college, and then there's the whole social thing that people seem hit/miss on.
I made a ton of lifelong friends in high school, played on sports teams all 4
years, and evolved from a shy little kid to a reasonably social adult by the
end as I gradually learned to come out of my shell.

Maybe it's just the people who comment on these types of articles are the
kinds of people who also didn't like school, but I personally wouldn't change
my high school or college experiences for the world.

~~~
dnautics
I liked my high school experience as well, but I went to this school:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-B_Woodlawn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-B_Woodlawn)

But I did attend elementary school in Japan (and had cousins who went to high
school there at the same time I was) and while they may have achieved a
proficiency higher than most americans, the freedom granted to me at my high
school allowed me to do even better - and I was given a decidedly non-standard
education emphasizing critical thinking and questioning of authority.

This served me exceptionally well in college, and on through grad school and
postdoctoral studies. Perhaps this is a bit of an overgeneralization, but
almost all of the East Asian postdocs that I encountered did not, outwardly,
exhibit as critical a stance towards data and evidence as did american
postdocs - with the generalizeable exception of the East Asian postdocs who
did their grad school in the States.

------
jwr
I am Polish, I live in Poland, and I found the article's praise for our
education system strange. My opinion of it is much lower. I regularly worry
about teaching my children to think for themselves — because I believe this is
something the schooling system actively discourages. I also don't think that
recent reforms did much to improve education, and I don't see why anyone could
think they did.

I would approach this book very, very sceptically.

~~~
collyw
I have a number of good friends who are teachers, including maths, and they
talk about it a lot. While you may not think your system is good, it sounds
like the UK system is encouraging mediocrity.

For example, when I was at school 20 years ago, we had to memorise formulas
for common thing ( speed = distance over time, and similar). Apparently the
kids are given the formulas in exams now. There doesn't appear to be such a
thing as a "fail" these days, just a "foundation level pass".

As such, I can see where the UK is failing, and see positive things mentioned
about Poland in the article.

~~~
peteretep
I have also memorised the formulas for d/s/t and f/a/p but struggle to see how
these translate in to academic excellence of any type, or even why giving them
to someone is encouraging mediocrity.

There is (imho) nothing of value in memorizing simple formulas, and everything
in the value of knowing how and when to apply those formulas, or where to
Google for them.

~~~
jacques_chester
The presumption that students have memorised the formulae allows you to build
more complex tests with confidence that they will tease out _understanding_
and not just computation.

In my highschool physics exam, about 2/3rds was of questions based on
memorised formulae. For example, the bouncing ball problem, with a series of
questions to tease out our application of calculus, memorisation of
compression rules and so on.

Then comes the final question. I remember it well because at first, I did not
know which formula to apply. Water wells into a pool at rate X per hour, falls
over a waterfall into a second pool below, which drains at rate Y per hour.
When it falls over the edge of the waterfall, the water is at temperature A;
at the start of the problem the temperature in the bottom pool is C.

After an hour, what will the temperature in the second pool be?

To solve this problem you actually need to consider the thermic effect of
water falling. You need to build a single equation to accounts for
acceleration due to gravity and the beginning temperatures of each pool. Then
you need some calculus to transform it into an equation that will spit out the
final numerical answer.

The only reason I was able to attempt and solve this problem was _because I
had memorised the equations_. There simply would not have been enough time to
try to reverse-engineer a bunch of anonymous letters in-flight.

Similarly, when I studied law, all exams were open-book. This is because, as a
law professor told me, "it lets us ask harder questions". There's simply no
way to synthesise thousands of pages of material in an exam setting. Either
you learnt it beforehand, including a whole bunch of flat out memorisation of
details of cases, or you didn't. Having your casebooks for reference is
useful, but only to check a detail or reuse a quote.

~~~
foobarqux
> To solve this problem you actually need to consider the thermic effect of
> water falling.

I suspect you got this question wrong.

~~~
jacques_chester
Suspect away.

~~~
foobarqux
Maybe I just misunderstood you. What do you mean by "thermic effect of water
falling"?

------
einhverfr
Over here in Indonesia, most of the more prestigious schools follow the
Singapore model. Kids do end up studying a lot, but on the whole it doesn't
seem more than I did as a kid (in rural America). They tend to be pretty well-
rounded, teach three languages (English, Bahasa, and Mandarin), and follow
roughly the math courses I remember as a child though perhaps a year advanced
by 4th grade.

In the US, schools seem to be succumming to two very serious trends. The
first, and most basic, is in the school attempting to replace rather than
support the family as the basic unit of education. You can't do this though.
Education begins and ends at home, and what schools offer is largely a
supplement for the home.

This leads directly to the second problem which is the worship of innovation.
I get told by friends in the US about how math classes are teaching Fibonacci
parlor tricks for multiplication (like lattice multiplication, which I know
enough math to understand but only because I know a lot more math than the
average parent). This joins the high tech toys in the idea that gadgets and
trinkets can teach our youth but parents cannot. The innovation focus further
devalues the home as the center of learning, and it leads to a highly
institutional, almost assembly-line view of learning.

In the end, I don't see how American higher education can survive another
generation without some major adjustments to our public school system (and
probably society as a whole, to be honest).

~~~
joshuaheard
"Education begins and ends at home, and what schools offer is largely a
supplement for the home."

I think it is the opposite. I pay the school to teach my kid. I don't expect
to have them come home and require me to finish the job. Can you imagine if
you went to a restaurant and they said, we prepared the food, but you must
cook it.

I work every day with my child on her homework, but it is not to teach her
what she learned at school, it is to supplement her teaching with things you
won't learn in the classroom.

~~~
einhverfr
But before your kid ever goes to school, there are habits regarding learning
that are picked up. These begin at home. For kids of below-school-age this is
the place where most learning takes place.

The question is whether learning is something that is to be compartmentalized
off into school work, or whether it is something we weave into every aspect of
life. If the former, one will never become very smart or very skilled. If the
latter, then all school offers is an opportunity to learn, something that kids
take advantage of based on habits acquired at home.

------
kubov
Well, reading that as a 22 years old Polish male gives me mixed feelings. I
was living in Poland and studying there for my whole life and basically I have
experience basically in whole educational process here (preschool, elementary,
gymnasium, high school and now pursuing BS degree at polytechnic) I can
definitely say that polish educational system is not that great. Of course we
have a lot of people contesting in computer science /maths /physical national
Olympic which are very hard contests but it is still very small factor, those
kids are often struggling with the same problems you would expect they have
(harassment, bullying etc).

Polish educational system (especially nation wide maturity exams after high
school and college education) are in my opinion decreasing. The maturity exam
is getting easier and easier each year to allow more people just to pass.
Sure, life is going to verify that somehow, but it also diminish value of this
exam.

In my opinion people that are successful in polish school are only those who
decide to not follow teaching process given at school but they work very hard
on they own, in my opinion the main problem that is present here (and probably
worldwide) is students assessment process, every student is taken to the
lowest common denominator when it comes giving grades. People that (in scope
of the class room) are doing fine, let's say B grade students think they are
doing just fine and there are only few things to improve, similarly A students
- they generally tends to think they have already reached the peak, when there
is still unbelievable much things to learn.

~~~
CrankyPants
Thanks for the insight.

Every major publication runs a piece just like this every few years. The
exotic countries and methods always differ somewhat, but the formula is always
the same. It's the pseudo-intellectual version of the filler/cover-baitait
articles on new ways to become heart healthy, or inventions that will change
the world, usually done well in advance and saved for slow news-weeks.

Not that the subject matter isn't of value, but it's always oversimplified,
and oversold.

~~~
CrankyPants
Sorry, typed that one out on a touchscreen and blew it. "baitait" = "bait"

------
rquirk
Oh come on! It's a classic case of out-sourcing, isn't it? Workers in Poland
get paid a lot less. The min wage in Poland is €384 per month
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_count...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country))
or $525 at current rates, while the minimum wage in the US is $7.25/hr
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_Sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States))
- or for a 40 hour week that'd be $1160. I don't know what taxes would do to
that, but we're looking at double the rate in the US.

If on top of that Poles are better educated, that's great. Plus Europe needs
jobs. But I'm sure the primary concern is the bottom line. BAMA could staff
the factories in Oklahoma if they could get away with paying the workers
$4/hr.

------
clavalle
> the company is struggling to find Okies with the skills to fill even its
> most basic factory jobs. Such posts require workers to think critically

Perhaps those educated enough to think critically put that skill to work
before accepting a factory job making mass produced biscuits. My critical
thinking skills lead me to guess that is not the most fulfilling, high paying,
or upwardly mobile job even for Oklahoma.

~~~
aspensmonster
>Such posts require workers to think critically, yet graduates of local
schools are often unable to read or do simple maths. This is why the company
recently decided to open a new factory in Poland...

This was the solution? Seriously? Going through the hassle of opening up a
factory on the other side of the planet across language and legal barriers all
because the local population in Oklahoma didn't come shrink-wrapped precisely
as ordered? Seems to me that a far more simple solution would be to train your
work force, rather than externalize that responsibility. If the problems are
really so systemic as they are claimed, then demonstrate some civic
responsibility and see to it that your community gets its act together.

~~~
westicle
I fail to see how that is a more simple solution. Teaching people how to think
is both an educational and cultural challenge which far exceeds the trivial
challenge of outsourcing work.

People have a wide range of different responsibilities (self, family, local
community, humankind etc). I don't see why Polish people are morally any less
deserving of jobs than Oklahomans. This company clearly thinks the Polish are
more capable of doing the job. Who are we to say otherwise?

~~~
eru
But don't you see, the Poles sit on the other side of the fence!

(Yes, this kind of nationalism bothers me no end.)

------
grn
I live in Poland, went to school here, and definitely cannot confirm the
claims made in the article. Half of my education happened in the reform school
system that the article mentions and almost everyone agrees that it's much
worse that the previous one.

High school in Poland used to be a preparation for further education at
university. It ends with a nation-wide exam called matura. The reform greatly
reduced the number of other types of schools. It has two effects. First, it's
much harder to find a skilled worker because there are much less workers
trained. Second, the general level of education at high schools dropped
significantly. It had to drop because otherwise many of the new pupils
wouldn't pass the matura. Notions of a logarithm, exponential, prime
decomposition has become foreign to pupils. No one has heard about a
derivative or an integral for more than a decade.

Of course all the above is a generalisation. There are some great schools with
teachers who really want to teach their subjects instead of just formally
completing stages of the government-mandated education program. Unfortunately
they are in minority. I'm really concerned about quality of education that my
children will get in this country. Home schooling is an option though an
expensive one.

------
dnautics
Was I the only one who found no evidence in this article about 'teaching
children to think'? There was some discussion about metrics (such as PISA) but
that is not, to me, any sort of evidence about the ability to think.

~~~
davidvaughan
No, you weren't the only one.

The only reality-based test mentioned in this review was whether Okies could
get a "basic" job in a factory, and an assertion that this would require
critical thinking skills (with the implication that such skills would be of
the sort taught at school).

However, I think Ripley may give more in her book. An NYT review suggests she
discusses how American school-leavers "lack the knowledge and skill to compete
in the global economy". It's all a bit vague, I admit.

"Teaching children to think" is a much-used phrase. It could mean a great many
things.

~~~
notahacker
Anyone with any critical thinking skills should question the example of
outsourcing manufacturing to Poland as an endorsement of Poles' critical
thinking skills.

The alternate hypothesis - that the Polish education system is much more
effective at producing drones who are efficient and motivated when performing
menial tasks for low pay - has much to recommend it.

------
Ras_
History proves some interesting insight to education.

Take for example literacy. There are Finnish/Swedish parochial records/church
examination registries dating back to 17th century down to a level of
individual families. This is important due to Charles XI's Swedish Church Law
of 1686 stating that everyone had to be able to read bible. So you can follow
how that emergent Lutheran essence actually turned into literacy. From an
individual perspective it was necessary to learn because you weren't allowed
to take holy communion, be confirmed and later wed without reading ability. By
1750 some parishes started to have 90% reading ability. What is surprising is
the writing ability. It achieved same levels only around 1900 (1920 in
Finland). So that is clearly connected to industrial reform rather than spirit
of protestantism. At least my initial assumption that reading/writing go hand
in hand was proven wrong. In light of this long history of literacy in Nordic
countries I tend to value the South Korean jump in literacy from previous
generation more highly, even if it was achieved through “culture of
educational masochism”.

Book about this: Understanding Literacy in Its Historical Contexts: Socio-
cultural History and the Legacy of Egil Johansson.

Take a look at pg. 47 at Google Books and see how incredibly detailed those
church examination registries in 1688-91 could be (pg. 56 has a nice graph
differentiating the development of reading and writing ability):
[http://books.google.fi/books?id=WBLOVq4ocLEC&printsec=frontc...](http://books.google.fi/books?id=WBLOVq4ocLEC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fi#v=onepage&q&f=false)

------
pavlov
My opinion and anecdotal experience is that the first priority in teaching
children should be foreign languages. The younger you start, the easier it is
to learn to speak and think in a foreign language. Almost everything else of
any relevance can be taught basically as a side effect of language immersion.

I'm Finnish and went to a French-speaking school. I didn't understand any
French going in, but at the age of 6, you pick it up quickly as long as it's a
friendly environment. Later during the standard 12-year education, I had
English as a third language, then Swedish (it's obligatory in Finland) and
also German.

All the other stuff taught in school is such that a reasonably smart kid can
learn it on her own as needed. But foreign languages are not like that. Thanks
to computer games, I was somewhat fluent in reading English even before the
classes started in school, but I couldn't speak a word -- you just don't learn
pronounciation and conversation from games and TV shows, you need to have a
real teacher.

------
gambiting
As a Pole, I find it unbelivable. The system is incredibly strict, there is
absolutely no place for free-thinking, I have never seen their archaic methods
applied to real-world usage in a classroom, and all universities have very low
funding,which means that most experiments are ran on ancient machines. There
is no budget for buying tools or documentation. My girlfriend was told in
front of the class by the professor that she should not be studying
engineering because it's not an industry for women. It would be completely
unacceptable at a university in the UK or in the States. In Poland she went to
see the head of the university and was told that "she probably misunderstood
what the professor meant". Obviously every one knows that that these two
people are good friends so it's impossible to do anything about the situation.

If the Polish education system taught me anything, it is that free thinking is
a bad thing,and you are punished for it on every step of your education.

------
zmk_
Having grown in Poland, I have to say I was very lucky to be born in 1985
which was the cut-off year for the reformed educational system. I managed to
escape it. It is widely agreed that the system brought nothing but
deterioration in the level of education students receive pre-univeristy, esp.
in maths/physics/chemistry. So much so that when I was still studying in
Poland, I often heard that "new" students are at a level comparable to "old"
part-time students.

> He decided to keep all Polish children in the same schools until they were
> 16, delaying the moment when some would have entered vocational tracks.

This is misleading. First of all, education is obligatory until one is 18
years old in Poland. There is no such thing as dropping out of school before
that age. The previous educational system was two-tier, with primary school
lasting until 15 years old, and high school lasting the remainder 4 years (5
years for vocational high school, AFAIR). There were no electives in primary
school, so the first real sorting of students based on ability was taking
place at entrance exams to high schools (which had no obligation to accept a
student based on their geographical location). What the reform implemented is
it created a third tier in between primary (shortened by 2 years) and high
schools (shortened by 1 year), the gymnasium. Gymnasiums do not have the
sorting ability of high schools. With the end result being that what high
schools were previously struggling to teach in 4 years now they have to
condense into 3 years. So a lot of things are left out now. Plus the students
they get at entry are also of lower quality -- I remember browsing through the
first set of chemistry textbooks for gymnasium and being shocked that what the
"old" system primary school students had to cover in two years was supposed to
be covered in a lesser form in 3 years of gymnasium. So yes, the reform
postponed the division of students into university/vocational tracks by one
year, but at the cost of overall quality of education.

~~~
Marwy
> First of all, education is obligatory until one is 18 years old in Poland.

I was about to point out your mistake, but decided to actually check that
fact, and you're absolutely right.

> There is no such thing as dropping out of school before that age.

I must have slipped through the government's fingers. I'm not sure if it's a
bad or a good thing.

------
yeellow
This article is really funny for somebody living in Poland. It is totally
opposite to what you hear in Poland about our educational system. I am really
worried about other countries if Poland works as an example in education. The
reform mentioned in the article has a very bad reputation here and most
experts, citizens and politicians would like to take back the changes.
Education standards declined rapidly as it become more egalitarian. I am
laughing at the level of mathematics when I compare it to what I learned at
school (in late 80s) and back than it was already a joke comparing to 70s. The
most often repeated argument is that our schools do not teach pupils how to
think. I don't really want to go further as it is somehow nice that The
Economist, being so wrong, is giving us so much undeserved credit.

------
sloth0000
I was born in Poland and lived there until I turned 24 (I am 35 now). Now
living in Australia and having previously lived in other countries, mainly US
, contrary to others who comment on the quality of Polish education, I can
confirm that thanks to the fact I received it in Poland I am much better off
compared to my peers in AU or US. I work in IT now but previously got a
teaching degree here in AU and worked in education (high schools) for 3 years.
To put it in a nutshell, AU education (probably along with other westernized
countries) is an utter joke compared to Polish. What AU kids do at school,
irrespective of the level they are in is 3-4 years behind Europe. AU is going
strong thanks to its migrants coming mainly from Asia who are slowly replacing
typical Australians in high paying white collar jobs. Any kid educated in Asia
can run circles around top students here and that is particularly evident
during students exchange programs where newcomers cannot believe that learning
about fractions and watching cartoons to write compositions or essays is a
standard curricular approach. The reason I do not work in education anymore is
precisely because I could not stand myself to watch how AU curriculum with a
plethora of mickey mouse subjects is dumbbing this generations down (and
probably others before it). I am not saying that Polish education was the
highlight of my youth and that as a student I didn't hate every day of my life
while at school, spent cramming Math and English and many other, seemingly
useless subjects. However, seeing what I see now, in hindsight I am so
grateful for the fact that it was so bloody hard to be even average student at
my school and now that I have 2 kids on my own I feel sorry for the fact that
unless I pay premium from the start for a private school, they will never have
the same opportunity as I did.

------
aresant
A must read corollary to this is PG's "why are nerds unpopular"

[http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html)

------
qwerta
I am from Czech Republic, which has educational system similar to celebrated
Poland. "The holly cow" of reforms is to increase number of university
graduates, if possible without spending extra money. On technical universities
it means rationalizing and streamlining (for example before reforms to study
IT I would also have to learn technical drawing). Also three years bachelor
degree was practically non-existent.

In reality this eroded university degrees by one level down. Also unemployment
rate among university graduates is rising. On other side unemployment rate
among younger people is lower, since most of them are studying until 25.

There is shortage of qualified workers such as plumbers, electricians and
welders. Those professions can easily make more money than software
developers.

~~~
mtts
You actually touch on a good point: because educational success of a country
is measured in the number of university* graduates, governments incentivize
universities to, well, produce more graduates, which they do both by lowering
standards for existing fields of study and by creating new fields that attract
a lot of students but which don't really teach anything worthwhile.

The result is graduates are far, far less well educated than their
predecessors but on paper (including, I would presume, PISA) a much larger
proportion of the population is "highly educated", making the government look
good.

To give an example of lowered standards everyone here can probably relate to:
up until about five years ago, students at the school for applied information
science where I work were required to learn (a bit of) assembly so they
understood how computers work at the CPU level. This requirement has now been
scrapped, resulting in applied information science graduates who don't know
the first thing about how computers actually work. On paper, however, our
school looks very good, because, after all, it is producing a larger number of
"knowledge workers" than before.

* this goes for schools for higher vocational training as well

------
casca
For a more detailed understanding of the PISA system, there was a recent
Econtalk podcast -
[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/08/hanushek_on_edu_3.h...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/08/hanushek_on_edu_3.html)

------
patrikr
Supplemental reading: Linus Torvalds's (from Finland) opinion of American
schools:
[https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/J1NCgKQi55X](https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/J1NCgKQi55X)

------
lists
>>Yet international rankings now put the country’s students well ahead of
America’s in science and maths (the strongest predictor of future earnings),
even as the country spends far less per pupil.<<

This sentence is exemplary of most, if not all, of the discussion about
education reform. Another cue are the explicit goals of the Common Core
standards, expressly designed to further economic competitiveness of America's
youth.

But what about our children's ability to _make informed decisions using
qualified evidence_?

This is different from so-called 'critical thinking', which is so vaguely
defined whenever it comes up, or 'creativity', which lacks a rigorous method
to appreciate its application.

These informed decisions I'm talking about not only affect our youth's ability
to make decisions about their own lives (because no matter your education
system, practical experience is other than doing well in school), but also
their ability to make decisions about the state we live in collectively.
There's little out there teaching people how to make informed decisions about
areas they have no expertise in, and yet, must make a decision.

Politicians are voted in for dubious populism rather than the sensibility of
their policy programme. Most responses to social issues continue to spiral
around ideology and prejudice. America needs a lot more than just an effective
STEM education regime.

------
rustynails77
This year, I've engaged schools at length to discuss computer based systems.
There are a few recurring threads that I have seen that would support this
article.

* Real-world examples are not favoured. I'd go as far to say they are unpopular. There is an over emphasis on theory and rote learning, without providing context. This may be a result of "stove piping" mathematics to be "pure math only", rather than having "real-world applications".

* Children are shoe-horned and given little opportunity to pace themselves and their learning. The theory may be that kids that progress quickly may become bored.

* Technology is praised/shunned in the wrong ways. Tablets are generally praised, and in my view, offer limited opportunity and creativity. PCs are shunned, or treated as "toys".

* Over emphasis on rewards. There seems to be a common thread that kids continually need to be bribed. Avatars/humourous or cute animations/etc. There may be a good reason for this, but I find that it actually distracts students rather than helps.

I could list other things that have concerned me, but these are the first ones
that come to mind.

Edited to add comments about "rewards".

~~~
Joakal
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori)
?

------
hawkharris
In this article the journalist associates critical thinking with economic
abilities. In other words, the local factory can't find laborers because
children in the area lack reading and math skills. The author then goes on to
argue that standardized testing is partially to blame for this phenomenon.

While journalists commonly make this leap, it's not necessarily an accurate
one. In other words, standardized testing is not always at odds with critical
thinking.

For example, South Korea, a nation with a very strong emphasis on standardized
testing, consistently ranks in the world's top 5 universities, according to
Pearson. Its students have strong reading and math skills, which prepare them
to meet the challenges of many jobs.

We should question the myth that standardized testing always harms critical
thinking. In some cases, I think, this argument is used as an excuse to
justify American children's increasingly awful test scores.

------
Semaphor
2 anecdotes:

We had a guy from Poland living with us in Germany for 6 months. I think it
was around 2003/2004 when I was still in school. His math skills were
absolutely impressive but he still had to study a lot to keep up (he was
living in Germany due to some excellency initiative, so this is a slightly
skewed sample). When he showed me some of their lessons it was way beyond what
we had to do in school.

In 9th grade I took part in an exchange program with the UK. As they lacked
exchange partners , I got matched up with a guy from 10th or 11th grade (can't
remember). The school was supposedly one of the better ones. I wasn't very
good in math (usually hovered around grade 3 [1 - 6 with 1 being the best
grade and 4.0 the worst passing grade]) but I was pretty much the best in
their class. Wasn't very impressed by them.

------
kenster07
Worse yet, the standard education indirectly discourages independent thought.
It is difficult to reconcile the standardization of education with the wide
diversity of students. There is simply no way everyone's intellect can
flourish under a one-size-fits-all system.

------
consultant23522
I'm an American so I'm probably biased.. but what I've found is that in most
school districts you can get as good of an education as you want. I grew up in
South Carolina and went to high/secondary school in Florida.. two states with
relatively poor education records.

However, by staying on the "right" path I was able to get in advanced
programs, programs for students with high IQs that taught critical thinking
skills.. I graduated high school with over 30 college credit hours and had
completed Physics 1, Calc 1, 2, and 3, and a hand full of other electives...
all in high school.

Other students in the same exact schools I attended had equal and opposite
educational experiences/success.

------
nawitus
>Students forego calculators, having learned how to manipulate numbers in
their heads.

Not true in Finland.

------
Surio
> The argument about knowing how and when to apply formulas misses the fact
> that practice in applying those formulas is essential to competence.

>

I am coming late to this topic, and I wanted to make exactly this point that
@kaitai made in a thread, in one of the many threads about memorisation vs.
critical understanding.... This is the (moot) point that people seem to be
missing here, which is surprising, because most of us here do seem to think
highly about "code katas" or the "10,000 hour rule" or "immersion into
code/algorithms" which is all about the above.

------
tokenadult
The review of Amanda Ripley's new book _Smartest Kids in the World_ by Annie
Murphy Paul in the _New York Times_ [1] is a good reality check on the review
from _The Economist_ kindly posted here. The book is in hot demand in my
county library system, so my request for the book hasn't been filled yet. The
other excerpts from the book I have seen online have been very good.

I have lived overseas and observed the effect of another school system, and
indeed education reform is the issue that drew me to participate here on
Hacker News,[2] so I am always interested in discussing education policy here.
Based on the different country I have observed, I think the book's account is
largely correct. Americans underestimate how much young people can learn.
School programs in the United States, according to federal sample surveys, are
so underchallenging that many school pupils, not just the "gifted" pupils,
find school too easy and boring.[3] Mathematics lessons in the United States
are especially notorious for emphasizing the mechanical aspects of calculation
--thus expecting students to bring electronic calculators to class--and
underemphasizing the thinking involved in mathematical problem-solving.[4]

Let's discuss what makes sense in education policy on the basis of facts from
more than one place. It's significant that we are discussing education policy
around the world here in English, as very few Americans could discuss
education policy in Korean, Polish, or Finnish, the languages of the countries
profiled in the new book. (I could discuss education policy in Chinese, the
language I learned as a second language, but that is not the usual experience
of Americans.) The new book's encouragement to do that is a good contribution
to better education policy.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/books/review/amanda-
ripley...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/books/review/amanda-ripleys-
smartest-kids-in-the-world.html)

[2]
[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123)

[3]
[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-07-...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-07-09/school-
too-easy/56120106/1)

[http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/z_Personal/G...](http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/z_Personal/Gold/CAP_state_of_education.pdf)

[4]
[http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/articles.php?pa...](http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/articles.php?page=calculustrap)

~~~
Jd
I don't see why Americans should be able to discuss education policy in
Polish. Seems a non sequitur. I don't think the author of the book claimed to
be able to do such anyways.

As for technological over-reliance, I take that as given.

I'm surprised that you agree w/ the conclusion of the review that segregating
talent into higher and lower achieving groups is bad. To me this is one of the
strengths of the US system. Even if the high achieving groups are not
stimulating enough for high achievers, it seems to provide some sort of
positive stimulus that otherwise would be lacking in the system.

~~~
smtddr
_> I'm surprised that you agree w/ the conclusion of the review that
segregating talent into higher and lower achieving groups is bad._

I think it's bad too, and here's why: The teachers & staff in charge of the
less-performers will do less to help them. Won't push them as hard. Generally
just not care(as much). I think it's better for the under-performers to see
the strong-performers and understand those kids are not magically-smarter,
they just work hard and it's completely possible for the under-performers to
be like them if they try to mimic their study habits.

Once you divide a group between the "desired" and "non-desired" traits,
there's no way the less desired people will get the same quality attention as
the desired. It pretty much will turn into: Group them all together, then
systematically eliminate them, condemn them or make them irrelevant.
Basically, that segregation will become the solution itself:

 _" We need to get class-A performance up to get more funding or raise our GPA
average so our Class-A looks better to those affluent parents to send their
kids to! Hmm, billy & mandy aren't too bright and are lowering the average. We
could help them to be better, or we could just move them to the Class-C group;
thus eliminating their scores from Class-A's GPA average." _

~~~
Jd
So do you think that the US higher-ed system is inherently flawed also, with
competition between high achievers (i.e. Harvard) and schools that anyone can
get into? It's true that there are more resources associated with success, but
doesn't that also incentivize people to work harder to end up in the higher
bracket? I don't see the "Class-C" problem as necessarily a problem, so long
as the person in "Class-C" has the opportunity to get back to Class-A by
putting in the appropriate work.

My own feeling (having also observed higher ed in Europe and Asia and other
places) is that the US system works better for cultivating high achievement,
but less well at making sure that lower achievers maintain a certain level of
quality. This means that there is more spread over the bell curve and less in
the center. Europeans, on the other hand, seem to prefer more clustering in
the center of the bell curve.

This is equally true for wealth acquisition, btw, with Europeans generally
preferring not to have extremes (i.e. extremely high wage earners or extremely
low wage earners).

~~~
smtddr
_> > So do you think that the US higher-ed system is inherently flawed also,
with competition between high achievers (i.e. Harvard) and schools that anyone
can get into?_

Yes, I do think there's a flaw there too. But the paid schools' issue is more
complicated because of the "private" money involved. "Private" in that,
students are paying directly out of pocket rather than the taxes that go into
public high-schools that's less visible to people. What I'd like to see there,
is that people who go to the cheaper & less "high society" schools get a
chance to take maybe 1 or 2 classes a year at the Havards/Stanfords/Yales/etc
just to see what it's like on those campuses. No segregation either; there
should not be any way to tell which students are exclusively attending
Harvard/Stanford versus the ones on the "visitor" program unless the student
him/herself chooses to disclose that info.

------
arbutus
From the outside, the state of education in the US seems really worrying. Hard
to see the wage gap closing any time soon with the way it sounds like their
kids are being educated.

------
yeukhon
I disagree the norm that we don't teach kids to think or our American
education sucks. I want to stop comparing education with other countries if
possible, but we do this every day anyway. We do teach kids think. I am a
Chinese immigrant. I came to US when I was 12 and I am 22 now. I have to say
that the American education is quite liberal and most classes I take do ask
students to think more critically.

The thing about American classroom is that overall classroom interaction is
more decentralized than the Chinese's. In China (specifically HK), you sit in
the same classroom with 30-40 people for many years. For example, I can sit
with 80% of the people for 6 years during my elementary school (in China,
elementary school is 6 years, age 6 to age 12). So you build a strong
friendship with a lot of people. You work like a team and solve things like a
team for many years. Usually with team effort and strong friendship, students
are more likely to produce something interesting - everyone can be honest to
each other. You are not shy to tell others your opinion.

This is quite true for school up to junior high in America as one spends every
day with students in their homeroom. When you enter HS, you usually don't have
that kind of classroom model anymore. You usually see different people in
different classes; it's like a college experience to me. For a school with
3000 students, 20/30 people will not appear in my next class.

Now you can still do teamwork, except, team work is with different group of
people each time. This has an advantage though: you hear more different
opinions. Except people can be shy and skeptical so it's harder to work with.

To me, education is not about score. Sure Russian and Chinese are scoring 98%
and Americans are scoring 50%. So what? I don't go to MIT and people around me
are genius in their own way. I can't make a good joke and people I know can.
Every one has their own strength and own creativity. Teaching children how to
think is like making everyone to do the same thing: get 100 on your next math
competition.

That's stupid. If you make fewer exams and more on spreading knowledge, let
students have more time to rest and play, eventually students will happier and
will have more time to think.

When you put emphasis on testing knowledge, you stress students out. I am not
saying you don't stress them from time to time - you know, because stress can
produce new ideas (think agile and get shit done), but we need to put less on
scores. This is why group activity is important. Students in group
competitions like sports and robotics (FIRST) are happier. This is why we
should go back to HS and help students to organize clubs and events. Or mentor
people to do things.

Eventually, kids will figure out. Each of us can come up with some crazy ideas
for the next biggest startup. It is just a matter of time.

Inventions don't come in a day. It takes idea, time, dedication, group effort
and knowledge.

------
dancecodes
Smarter kids where good education and good relations and good social
communicate but it not fifth element and it is insufficient. Kids everywhere
are smart but env may stop evolution. Lets kids thinking. Kids needs in
protect always.

------
xux
Most people don't need to think. Thinking isn't necessary to live in today's
world.

~~~
usernew1817
right, that makes sense....

~~~
Ygg2
Well thinking, allows people to see things under a different light. Under
different light you look at state and say - What a piece of shit!

Tell me who is gonna call out governments on the stupid shit they do? The
stupid? No, they are too busy drooling. It's the thinkers. They are always
troublesome. The less of them, the better /devil advocate.

------
TausAmmer
Does smart child earns a lot of money and stupid one does not?

------
lucraft
Slightly ominous headline, perhaps?

