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Personally, I don't think the situation is nearly as gloomy in the US as a lot of my fellows seem to. It's a characteristic of nation citizens to be over hard on certain aspects of their community.

As a matter of fact, if the US school system is partly or significantly responsible for the productivity and creativity of adult residents, I'm pretty satisfied with it on the whole. I'm not sure studying to tests produces the best outcomes. I'm more interested in novel problem solving, invention, and innovation, and typical international standardized tests don't suss that out especially well, do they?

Moreover, it's hard to know what to infer when comparing a giant, multicultural country with a small, much more homogeneous one such as Singapore. It makes sense that some small countries might outperform the US at testing in the same way that you expect some small countries to have a higher per capita gdp. Unless I miss my guess, we could cherry pick some communities in the US that do better on either than Singapore.

This article about US test scores, after adjusting for demographics, was discussed on HN before, although I can't find the link just now:

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...

It's extremely interesting, and I haven't seen anything that impeaches it.

That's not to say that I think the US school system does not have huge room for improvement. That's clear, and I'm hopeful that continued technological development and research will provide amazing breakthroughs. Moreover, we're not even using some of the best methods that are already available; research suggests the Montessorri method is advantageous, and indeed my own son was trained at one, and we were much happier with the result in comparison to his time at a public elementary school.

But it's not necessary to down talk where we're at to motivate improvement. What I don't want to see is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. US schools get some things right. Students come out believing they can do anything. They're not afraid to try new approaches. I'd rather not end up with test taking automatons who are mainly expert at memorization and thoughtless skills drills.

Just a couple of quibbles:

> But it's not necessary to down talk where we're at to motivate improvement.

It is necessary if the general perception of where we're at is much better than where we're actually at. I think the U.S. still has a very strong cultural air of superiority which perhaps is no longer justified (if it ever was). The first step to solving a problem is to realize that it exists, and the U.S. educational system is only recently coming under scrutiny because of repeated criticisms of it.

> Students come out believing they can do anything.

I'm uncertain about this -- both whether it's true, and whether it's beneficial if true.

> They're not afraid to try new approaches.

Actually, there's a growing murmur of dissent that, at least in the special case of "gifted" children, the constant praise of their intelligence leads to a fear of failure which, in turn, leads to a fear of trying things which others might try without hesitation.

>Actually, there's a growing murmur of dissent that, at least in the special case of "gifted" children, the constant praise of their intelligence leads to a fear of failure which, in turn, leads to a fear of trying things which others might try without hesitation.

Citation needed. Speaking as a giftie myself, and someone who has many friends who went through various gifted programs, this is not my impression.

Back in the day, I was also in my school's gifted programs and I had a fear of failure. But, it was because my family was poor. I knew that I was solely responsible for my attendance at college and that academic scholarships were my "golden ticket" for that. Similarly, some of my friends feared sports injuries because athletic prowess was their ticket to college.

Citation needed.

Citation given:

http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/feat...

I am also very familiar with the gifted education community and numerous families of people who have been identified as gifted learners, and the research finding reported in the article submitted to open this thread rings true, based on my experience.

http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

Googling for "praise effort not intelligence" will turn up a bunch more references, but most of them (at a glance) are referencing the same work by the same individual(s) (Dweck, et al). I didn't have this saved in my pinboard, so I had to go find it again.

I have to snark a little about a giftie not investigating this for themselves. (snark snark snark) :-)

> I have to snark a little about a giftie not investigating this for themselves. (snark snark snark) :-)

Hah. well, you are the one talking about effort being more important than intelligence. I, on the other hand, have always been lazy. I was in the program through ability alone.[1]

I mean, clearly effort matters. But ability matters, too. Otherwise I'd be working at the 7-11 like my parents said I would if I didn't go to college.[2] Of course, if you can't do anything about innate ability and you can do something about effort, "praise effort not ability" makes sense, as you should try to improve the thing that can be improved, right?

On the other hand, I think effort has limitations, too. As a kid, I was pulled out of the "gifted" class one hour a day to work in the "special ed" room. Handwriting. My stepmother made me spend probably five hours a week practicing my handwriting at home on top of that. To this day I can't write a legible sentence.

I think key is to put effort in to areas where that effort makes a difference. Consume all the low hanging fruit before you start scaling a sequoia looking for pine nuts.

[1] the ability to do well on standardized tests, that is. I've never had to learn to work a cash register, so it's gotta correlate to something useful, but I'm first to say that I'm really not all that bright.

[2] Actually, considering my schedule variance, I wonder if I could hold down a job where the primary performance metric was "did the guy show up on time?"

Sorry that this is off-topic, but what the hell is a 'giftie'?

What defines a 'gifted child' in this context? I'm interested to know.

someone who was put into a "gifted and talented" program at a public school. Usually the entrance criteria is based on how you do on a G-correlated standardized test. "Giftie" was the traditional derogatory term for those students.

Thanks - this is something I've not come across before. Looking on wikipedia it seems to be pre-dominantly US based.

People who are gifted and talented get a derogatory term? Poor kids.

Agree, I have two kids in public elementary school and have no complaints about what and how they learn math. I think the problem in the US is the huge difference between schools. I happen to live close to a very good school but not everyone is as privileged. From what I've heard the difference in school quality goes up in the higher grades, which I can easily believe.

>it's hard to know what to infer when comparing a giant, multicultural country with a small, much more homogeneous one such as Singapore.

That's nothing. I remember a few years ago at this forum someone put forward a report that compared the US with a list of contries with the Vatican at the top.

And the US was found lacking in the Pope per Capita ranking?

I wrote: (the language of schooling in Singapore has long been English, but the home languages of most Singaporeans are south Chinese languages like my wife's native Hokkien or Malay or Indian languages like Tamil)

And then you replied: it's hard to know what to infer when comparing a giant, multicultural country with a small, much more homogeneous one such as Singapore.

I especially noted the language diversity of Singapore to respond to something I have read over and over and over throughout the years when Singapore is mentioned in discussions of educational comparisons, namely the false idea that Singapore is "homogeneous" in any meaningful sense for the provision of primary education. It is not. Singapore is, as far as I know, the only country in the world with four different official languages (Modern Standard Chinese, Bahasa Malay, Tamil, and English) from different language families (Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Dravidian, and Indo-European) and surely one of the very few countries during my lifetime in which the typical person grew up in a home in which NONE of the official languages were spoken at home. Since before independence, the primary language of school instruction in Singapore has been the official language, English, that was at the beginning LEAST likely to be spoken by any school pupil at home. School officials in the United States whine about a minority of pupils who speak Spanish at home, even though they surely also speak English in the broader community (as my neighbors from Spanish-speaking households do). Try to imagine the United States and its level of educational achievement if most school pupils had first of all, when entering school, to learn a new language that they don't speak at home to their parents and rarely speak to classmates when outside of school. That is the amazing achievement of Singapore. (Something similar and only a bit less amazing happened in Taiwan over a just slightly longer time span, when a majority population that spoke Taiwanese or Hakka watched a younger generation grow up as Mandarin-speakers.)

That's not to say that I think the US school system does not have huge room for improvement. That's clear, and I'm hopeful that continued technological development and research will provide amazing breakthroughs. Moreover, we're not even using some of the best methods that are already available

We largely agree on these statements of yours. On my part, I think "research" (on educational methods that already work in other places) are like to have more impact on primary education than "technological development," but I'll take improvements however they come.

I see I omitted to mention in my first post here, an omission I will now correct, a link to a study of PISA results

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG10-19_Hanushe...

showing that advantaged pupils with highly educated parents in the United States fare particularly poorly in comparison with pupils enjoying similar advantages in other countries. What's really shocking about international educational comparisons is how badly the top-end students in the United States do, as was also shown in the data graphs linked to in my first post,

http://pirls.bc.edu/timss2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf

which provide an excellent example of correct use of what are sometimes called "box and whisker" plots.

It is not. Singapore is, as far as I know, the only country in the world with four different official languages...School officials in the United States whine about a minority of pupils who speak Spanish at home...

This is a somewhat disingenuous comparison. A fair comparison would be to compare Indian Americans who speak {Konkani, Hindi, Marathi, etc} at home to a similar Indian Singaporean. Similarly, one should compare Chinese Americans who speak {Chinese language} at home to Chinese Singaporeans.

The vast majority (about 4/5) of the gap between the US and Singapore is well explained by race. Asians (100% of Singapore, 4.8% of the US) tend to significantly outperform others (0% of Singapore, 95.2% of the US).

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-well-do-above-...

If you want to look at top schools, we should look not at Singapore, but at Texas and Connecticut. After all, Asians from Texas and Connecticut outperform Asians in Singapore (by roughly the same gap that Singapore outperforms the Asian American average).

I've pointed this out to you a number of times. Why do you continue to ignore it?

Here's his response

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2550979

It's a non-response. All it does is asserts that the reader will find flaws in the blog post I cited if they go read a dozen unspecified books.

I have no doubt that math teaching methods in the US are terrible, in general. And I am very open to the possibility that Singapore does it much better. But however poor Singapore was in the past, it is now 3rd in the world in per-capita PPP GDP while the US is 7th (according to the IMF; $56,522 vs. $47,284).

Furthermore we should always expect the top countries to be small ones; if each state in the US (pop. ~300m) was considered individually, it seems very likely that several would be more highly ranked than Singapore (pop. ~5m). Seeing as that those states are much more alike to the rest of the US--in terms of culture, government, etc.--than is Singapore, shouldn't we be looking to them for guidance on how to improve the rest of the US?

Actually, if you read http://pirls.bc.edu/timss2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf , Massachusetts and Minnesota are also benchmarked independently, Massachusetts is #4 globally (page 4 of the pdf, 34 of the document). Also, the level is slowly increasing in the US and slowly decreasing in Singapore. Finally, a lot of countries are missing in these rankings, so these are not true global results.

Interesting. Mind if I e-mail you with some questions about schools adopting some of these techniques, and about gifted programs, and homeschooling? I'm hugely interested in all this and you seem to be very informed here.

I am thankful for these links as well given that I am attending my local school district's "Parents Math Night" tonight. It's a presentation about the K-12 math curriculum. Sadly, I suspect that any points of contention will be between alternatives which I will consider to all be lacking in some fundamental way. After seeing what's happening in my ostensibly excellent public school system, I want to compare it with the Montessori school up the street.

Just because the average quartile in the US falls in the bottom quartile in Singapore doesn't mean that the top quartile falls into the average quartile in Singapore.

While on average here the system is pretty bad, the US also tends to produce the people that end up making some of the largest contributions to science and math.

There is very good education available here, it simply isn't available to everyone. The outliers are still performing on a very high level.

To summarize a few of the articles you linked: Students do better at math in East Asia than in the US because East Asian math teachers know math and American math teachers don't.

My own experience bears this out. I once taught in a program to help public school teachers get certified to teach mathematics. I simply couldn't believe these teachers had college degrees. I was teaching geometry, and none of them could go to the board, draw a circle with a compass and label the center point A. It took them two weeks to learn that the center of a circle is in the middle, not on the circumference -- and, believe me, I tried to explain it. Of course, none of the teachers could add fractions either. These teachers were impressive people -- it's not easy to play parent, social worker, and cop to fifty teenagers at a time -- but they were absolutely uneducated. It seems that education majors aren't taught the rudiments of the subjects they're meant to teach. Teachers wish they knew math and they're grateful to anyone who will teach them -- they were so grateful to me that I was terribly embarrassed. I don't know what's going on in education departments, but it's a real disservice to teachers and students.

I would be interested to know where in the US this was. I was once in a Statistics program in Ohio with a bunch of students who were working towards their Masters in Education, and they were solidly in the middle-lower end of the class but the upper end was taken up by dept. students anyway.

Chicago.

What I find interesting here is that you focus a lot on mathematics instruction in your comment. In my opinion there's much more that influences learning outcomes and outcomes on test results than math instruction techniques, namely student self-theories and various systems having to do with the existing educational paradigm. I believe those factors are involved and a culprit for sub-average results equally much if not more.

He focused on mathematics because that's his current field of expertise.

I'm not sure what you mean by "student self-theories and various systems having to do with the existing educational paradigm", but axiomatic mathematics instruction leads directly into analysis, problem solving, and general logic; while that doesn't justify an educational curriculum consisting solely of mathematics, it does make it very important.

I agree that mathematics in general leads to what you say (instructional techniques aside), but I'm rather arguing that it's not necessarily the mathematical techniques that are the primary thing at fault (however I do agree that it is massively lacking and misguided, as he is saying), but rather that more generalized instructional techniques and learning environments and structures are equally at fault. Students don't test poorly solely because the math instruction was that much poorer than elsewhere, but rather that the student, to due a good number of factors, wasn't inclined to learn, and rather "get by through whatever means" (or whatever other reason), as is so common in our society. That doesn't lead to exceptional skills in analysis, problem solving, or general logic.

Lastly, judging by his HN about page I wouldn't say his field of expertise is specifically mathematics, but rather that he has much broader educational expertise.

IMO, the biggest problem with education is how crackpot the teacher teaching system is. They seem to have no more scientific basis than Postmodernism, despite the fact that they actually research something that can be research.

There's a book called "Why Don't Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom". The author explains (more or less) why Direct Instruction is so much more successful than other, newer, faddish techniques. Actually, Direct Instruction is also a bit faddish, and could certainly be improved by a more scientific approach.

Unfortunately, teacher trainers think that drill work is boring, and anything that recommends drill work must be wrong, because it is (to them) unpleasant. Maybe not as unpleasant as studying stuff you don't understand (which is what happens if you don't drill), but they don't have to accept reality.

The problem with school education is that it isn't aware of the moral context in which it operates. Herding children into classrooms and telling them what to learn is a horrible thing to do.

And, under threat of punishment, once can't learn efficiently, anyhow.

Yes, and not only the moral context. A school's job is to help turn little animals into citizens by introducing them to the broader world. How does shoving them in a box for 8 hours a day where they have to sit in one place make any sense if that's your goal.

For a fantastic critique of institutionalized schooling, check out Paul Goodman's Compulsory Mis-Education. http://www.amazon.com/Compulsory-Mis-Education-Community-Sch...

Interesting. Would you say that this book argues similar things that John Taylor Gatto's books do (ie. Weapons of Mass Instruction, Dumbing Us Down)?

I doubt it. It's about how badly formal education is implemented, not why it's a bad idea in the first place.

Interesting. Just purchased that book. I imagine I will be able to answer some of the below questions after I read it, but as of now I am wondering the following:

Recently I have heard that "Direct Instruction" is very effective, but I'm very skeptical as to what it is effective for. What exactly can you teach through that method, and what can you not? What does that method absolutely skip over? For example, through it, can you learn critical thinking, rhetoric/debate skills, rationality & logic, philosophy? Does it help students learn about themselves (self-discovery) -- how they think, learn, what their interests/passions are, what drives them? Does it help them find truth for themselves? Or, does it ignore all these and even more than our system today try to fit every personality into the standard box?

Does it at all care for each individual student or is it comprehensively uni-directional, from instructor to student?

DI is not a perfect method. It's a little crackpot itself. But it's both empirically better than all the other fads and as sexy as Bush in a bikini, so it more or less killed empirical study of education. Now there's a bit of a revival of quantitative education studies, but it's too short term in it's scope (a good teacher doesn't just help the students pass the next test).

IIRC, studies showed that DI did actually help the good students, the bad students, the mediocre students, the rich students and the poor students.

It also helped "higher order" skills.

I think that from a cognitive psychology perspective (though I'm not an expert), this is because the brain needs to learn fundamentals before it can work through more advanced things.

As for "self discovery", I think students are pretty good at that themselves. Current fads just pile on the homework though (because "testing doesn't teach anything"), which in my view is a big development killer.

I'm not a DI fan. I'm not a fan of capitalism either. But if you don't know why something works, you shouldn't just dismiss it for being unattractive.