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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.

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.

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?"

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.

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.

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?