What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools?
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Americans are under the misapprehension that all of their school woes stem from poor teachers. But even in poor districts like the one my spouse teaches in, which have accumulated a whole layer of apathetic teachers, the impact of both poor and excellent teachers is way overestimated, and the impact of poor and excellent administrations (both the school principal and the district leadership) is tremendously underestimated. A good principal, particularly one with strong school board backing, can almost single-handedly turn an entire school around (I've seen this happen twice now). An excellent teacher with a poor principal and negligent school board can do very little other than provide a strong role model for the most promising students, and (with great effort) pull a handful more of failing students up to the barely passing level than their less talented peers.
Primarily, good principals act just like good engineer managers in corporations. Just as good managers keep engineers isolated from the bullshit of upper management and adjacent managers, and give good engineers space to do their jobs, so do good principals let their good teachers do their job, and intervene when poor teachers fail to meet expectations.
Regarding the other factors mentioned, I do think poverty is a major hurdle, and the author of this piece rightly underlines its importance in poor school performance, but poverty is primarily an issue in that high-levels of poverty correlate strongly with lack of parental support and engagement (and not always due to a lack of care; often it's because these are single-parent households where that one parent is working all the time). But here an excellent principal can also make a major impact by rallying formerly disengaged parents around their kids and their kids' teachers, and supporting single-parent households where the parent is working multiple jobs.
It makes me sad to see all this rhetoric around teachers in the U.S., not only because it's depressing for my spouse to be so unappreciated by people outside the teaching profession, but also because I know it will do little to fix the main problem: school poor administrations. Nor will it address any of the other major contributing factors, like poverty and the lack of respect in high school academic excellent so prevalent in our culture, rich and poor alike.
> the impact of both poor and excellent teachers is way overestimated, and the impact of poor and excellent administrations (both the school principal and the district leadership) is tremendously underestimated.
Why do you think this happens?
I'll speculate: most people form their opinion about what's important in a school by reflecting on their experience as a student.
Most students attend only one school of each kind (e.g. elementary, junior, and high school), so they don't have a great frame of reference about the results of different school administrations.
But everyone experiences many different teachers, and as a student, you really perceive the differences between the better ones and the worse ones.
I bet if you reflect on your own experience as a student, leaving aside the context of your spouse's experience as a teacher, you will have much more vivid memories and opinions about teachers than administrators.
I totally agree that it's likely to be much more effective to try to create environments that help all teachers do their jobs more effectively than it is to try to change who we're hiring. I wonder what the best way is to make people "feel" the difference between good administrators and bad ones like they "feel" the difference between their favorite teachers and their least favorite ones.
When I went to college, I took notice of what people did when their chosen majors were too difficult or they washed out. I didn't know anyone who washed out of liberal arts. Curiously, I didn't know anyone who washed out of math or sciences either, but I didn't know many math or sciences majors, at least until I was taking high-level-enough classes with them that they hadn't washed out. In the more career-oriented majors, engineering majors washed out and became business majors, and business majors washed out and became education majors.
I'm not saying there aren't any good teachers. There are plenty of good teachers. There are also plenty of bad teachers. Fundamentally, the Finnish approach would take a generation to solve that problem because even if you raised standards to become a teacher now, you have a backlog of teachers of uneven quality and little clear way to sort the good from the bad.
I think the way you’ve stated this somewhat misattributes the improvement in schools after the administration changes.
The culture of a school is set by the whole community, including the teachers, the parents, and the students. While a dysfunctional administration can absolutely wreck the school culture and stifle the teachers, it’s not like any principal who turns a school around is really acting “single-handedly”. More realistically, the teachers at such schools are (at least in cases where I’ve known such teachers) champing at the bit to try new things and bring excitement to their classrooms, but get blocked at every turn by petty bureaucrats in administration and forced to endure all sorts of bullshit, and then when the administration changes to be more accommodating and progressive, it’s like the gate lifts and the teachers can run free.
As an example of the opposite, my elementary school was an amazing and wonderful place, with a strong and dedicated teaching staff, and a strong sense of collective purpose. When I was in first grade, the principal left, and the new principal came to the school with rigid ideas about structure and organization, and struggled continuously with several of the more passionate teachers for the first several years (to the point that a couple of them left). But by being surrounded by the culture of the school (teachers, staff, parents, the community at large), over the course of four or five years the new principal became slowly indoctrinated, and learned to appreciate the way the school operated and support the teachers and their methods. By the time I was in 6th grade, and for the following 10 years or so he was principal there, he was one of the strongest advocates and defenders of the school’s unique culture and value system.
In other words, I think your comment places an excessive emphasis on the principal and administration per se, sort of like Carlyle’s “great man” theory of history applied to schools.
Maybe this is one of the reasons the Finnish education system works so well. If teaching is an occupation that is culturally considered in high esteem, then it probably follows that schools are considered an important aspect of a child's life. Children are therefore encouraged to do well in schools.
In PNG, students had to pay to go to school. Often a single child was supported through their education by their extended family. Some villages could only afford to send a few students to school. Those students worked exceptionally hard, knowing that it was incumbent upon them to achieve, and eventually payback their family from the proceeds of their future careers.
When working in rural schools in the UK I have encountered many students whose parents, and therefore their children, place little value on education. Often the attitude comes down to the single phrase "I've managed and I did badly at school". Regardless of whether the parent's are rich or poor, the children of these parents often struggle, and achieve below expected results in national examinations.
If we want to raise standards in our schools (both in the UK and in the USA) I think the key is in changing cultural attitudes towards education. This means that we need to stop heaping blame on teachers, administrators, schools and local authorities for perceived inadequacies. We need to make sure that our children value the free education they are receiving.
edit - for clarity of country name
+100
> This means that we need to stop heaping blame on teachers, administrators, schools and local authorities for perceived inadequacies.
Well sometimes authorities are to blame. Look, in my country,being a teacher used to be like being a lawyer or a doctor.
It used to be a prestigious profession.
Then some politicians,influencial thinkers came in and said,"we need to focus on children,they have special needs,they are always right and if they cant learn properly it's the adults fault". 30 years forward and the education here is totally broken,teachers are despised both by students and parents who want instant gratification no matter how dumb their offspring is.
But hey,they cant be wrong,they've been told all their life they are "special" and always right ...
> Regardless of whether the parent's are rich or poor, the children of these parents often struggle, and achieve below expected results in national examinations.
The big difference is rich people can literally buy a career for their offspring even if they perform poorly at school. At worse, they'll have a job at mom and pop's business.
Details? Where do I go to buy a career? I'm not being sarcastic, I actually want to know.
Or "if you give my kid an internship then I'll give you the keys to my ski lodge for this season"
> rich people can literally buy a career
I'm not being sarcastic here. It used to be possible to purchase a commission in the military. That is speaking historically.
I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't careers today you can literally purchase. Franchising comes kind of close, and running a taxi in NYC comes close. In ancient times, you could purchase the position of tax collector.
Anyway, that person should not have said "literally" unless he meant it.
I won't be falling for this again and replying to you further in the future.
I hope it feels good to be "right" all the time.
If you want evidence that I'm an honest person, look at my comment history. I don't go around tricking people and trying to win arguments by deception. In fact, I frequently call people out for being nasty in various ways, much like you are doing here.
I can understand why you think I'm trying to trick people and I was worried that would happen. That's why I talked about historical and quasi-examples of people buying careers. I didn't want you to think or feel that I was playing a trick.
Clearly, money/power/fame/beauty can "buy" things even if there is no currency changing hands. That is the point the previous poster was making. Wealth is influence, and influence gets you favors, like a foot into a career.
If it had been the original poster making the clarification then moaning about 'literally' would have been pedantic, but it was not, and so therefore it was justified - it was making the point that the interpretation given by jackvalentine did not actually clarify the statement as made, and that Javert had assumed something else, more interesting was being said. At that point the conversation depressingly quickly devolves into name calling, threats and patronisation.
> Clearly, money/power/fame/beauty can "buy" things even if there is no currency changing hands. That is the point the previous poster was making.
According to you. Javert was actually using a charitable interpretation when he assumed that the original maker of the statement meant what they had said.
As far as I can tell this entire subthread consists of people uncharitably failing to spot that Javert was not in fact trying to score points, (or believes that language is a program to be compiled, or would benefit from a list of topics to meditate on about the evolution of language) and was merely asking for more detail, and getting upset that he is skeptical their trivial 'explanations' actually explain what was originally meant.
It's mainly a lot of people freaking out about their hot button topics without actually spending any brain power on understanding what the other person is saying and why.
He did, but not from you, since you don't know what Aikah actually meant. Regardless, your freakout is unseemly.
Even someone who thinks that language should not be rule-based still should not use it, if their goal is to communicate clearly and concisely---since it does not achieve that.
So ultimately, it is incorrect regardless of your views on rules of language.
"Literally" has been debased by overuse for emphasis, and now it no longer means what it used to mean.
See e.g. https://nowtoronto.com/news/in-defence-of-the-figurative-and... and http://www.theguardian.com/science/shortcuts/2013/aug/14/lan... for more discussion.
> it is incorrect regardless of your views on rules of
> language
However, regarding:
> That isn't correct usage
It's also incorrect to use wood to build a house that is twice the thickness needed.
It's also incorrect to build a rocket that uses an inferior type of fuel.
These are not matters of social dictat.
We don't need an Academie francaise for English because we should be taught the above principle in school and we should correct others when they make mistakes, in appropriate circumstances.
Another principle: We should change the language to improve it when it is trivial to do so; so even if "literal" were well-established in the opposite meaning, we now know better and should stop doing it. But I do not believe it is well-established, despite the article you linked.
You talk about language as being "confusing" or "inferior". You clearly have strongly held criteria for those. Where have they come from?
Has the English language changed in the last 1,000 years? How have you decided which of those changes to adopt? Were all those changes improvements, given your strongly held criteria? What about in the last 500 years? Which year did the version of English that you believe is most "correct" or "superior" occur? Are we currently at "peak" English?
What improvement would modifying the meaning of "literal" bring? Do you know what the word etymology means? Does the etymology of "literal" support your desire to change its meaning? If the root of a word has subtly changed between its Classical roots and emergence in Anglo-Norman French, Middle English, or whatever, which of these is superior? If the root is unclear, and could be Latin or Greek, and has subtly different meanings, which is the right one to use? What about modern English words that have been adopted from - say - Hindi?
...
Having pondered those, perhaps you could examine the rest of your comment. In the phrase "the thickness needed", what criteria define 'needed'? Cost? Durability? Ability to restrict noise? Foundation strength? Could these criteria change from house to house? Could people hold different opinions on those subjects, and both be right? In the phrase "inferior type of fuel", what constitutes 'inferior'? Could safety margins vs cost lead two experts to come up with different opinions on which fuel was superior?
What would be helpful would be a counter-argument, if you have one.
For a long time, teaching was one of the few professions allowed to women. Thus, the best women became teachers, if they wanted jobs.
When you have the choice of becoming a teacher or: a doctor, investment banker, scientist, lawyer, etc., it isn't much of a choice.
So much this... my parents were both teachers. They both agree the single biggest factor in a child's success is their parents involvement.
This image is 100% accurate: http://i.imgur.com/LglSapk.jpg
The problem is that a large percentage of the stuff that's taught in schools in fact IS more or less useless in later life, except for very specific career paths. Parents know this and pass on this to their kids.
You say useless later in "life", but then mention specific career paths. Is education useless if it isn't directly applicable to a currently occupied career? What if they change careers?
It takes a lot more than career specific education to mould a good member of society.
Classic example of what most students think as "unneeded" is chemistry, physics and mathematics - while a solid knowledge foundation is certainly required in later life, more detailed knowledge (i'm looking at you, mathematical analysis) may be entirely unneeded if one decides to pursue a career in e.g. history, social studies or other non-math/tech-oriented courses.
On one side we Germans split up our students way too soon (after 4th grade in Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium), but on the other side we split them up too late... it's a highly complex issue.
> The problem is that a large percentage of the stuff
> that's taught in schools in fact IS more or less useless
> in later life
And thereby perpetuating our current way of life. What a fucking waste of potential imho.
No it's not. In fact it's pretty much the opposite.
http://www.greatschools.org/improvement/international-compar...
(A finnish father here - my son started first grade).
I really need to stress one thing finnish system does differently when compared to UK or france for instance (based on a low anecdotal sample size from families moved from there to here):
The kids do considerably less work and the formal stuff kicks in far more later. The learning is structured so most kids enjoy it.
A quote from the article:
"We believe it is important that learning should be enjoyable. And all kids should be happy to go to school."
This!
For us valuing education does not mean watching over homework, pushing long hours or anything like that.
We expect homework gets done and trust teacher administers enough of them.
Valuing education means we value the work the school does and take all school-home interactions seriously but we do not push kids beyond what they can naturally absorb.
Yeah, this would be very weird attitude in finland (where I'm at). Not unheard of but very rare.
Of authorities (and just anecdotal commentary):
Please correct me if I'm wrong but in the practical side one of the biggest differences in the finnish school system when compared to UK is that the formal education seems to kick in later (as I understand it) and with less work load. I.e. the kids are not expected to start doing any homework until they are 7 and the workloads are quite light.
This has been the case for over 30 years. Perhaps this also affects attitudes - the workload is not overbearing and no-one gets left behind.
1. Being there. With both parents working --a lot, more often than not, kids are left to their own devices, and those devices are the new baby sitter. Games, media, Internet, etc...
While these are not bad things, they do not replace seat time and face time.
Technology can enable, but it takes people to understand people, and we are set with the task of making great people.
Hold that thought...
2. Access to resources.
Kids need a diverse set of experiences to self-identify well enough to understand how to learn how to learn and how they personally can thrive. This varies considerably among people. Parents who bring experiences, tools, mentors, their own time and expertise to the table very significantly augment the work of educators.
3. Learning with your kids.
Learning is infectious. When parents are able to be engaged, participate with their kids, everybody bonds well and everybody gets the benefit of a shared effort to improve. This sets good norms, in terms of growth, etc...
Compare and contrast Dad coming home to down a 40 after doing a 60 hour week, mom doing a 40 herself, and they are tired, checked out, managing the kids, but not investing in those kids. I'm not blaming parents here, just citing an example and it's impacts.
With:
Dad who worked an ordinary 40, mom working part time for "mad money", both of whom have energy sufficient to play with the kids, learn with them, explore hobbies, and pursue their own personal development, sharing that too.
(On a side note here, how we value labor very seriously impacts our education burden)
4. Participation in the school
Where parents can be a part of the program, there are many gains to be had. Volunteer work, kid sports, clubs, tutoring, working with educators for special needs kids, all augment the education investment.
I personally did a lot of this, due to being an adoptive foster parent. The kids needed work, and they had some special needs. Teachers were hungry for help, tips, advice. They wanted to be effective, but the personal research burden for them was high. Teaming up was magic.
One of many examples:
I attended "computer class" at a middle school, where introductory computer literacy was being taught by the "business teacher", and the school thought, business equals computers, so there you go. The introductory material was incomplete, riddled with errors, and I could go on and on.
Frankly, I rewrote a lot of that material and offered to clarify anything that educator needed. We had a few sessions and they helped a lot. Again, good educator, they just needed stuff. Stuff the school wasn't really sourcing for them as they could have. Parents can help identify these things just as much as a school can, and everybody should.
These kids will care for us in our old age. Think about that.
5. Community / peer review of student progress.
What is the goal of education?
When I ask this, I get all sorts of answers, ranging from making kids job ready, to "literacy", etc...
I submit these are the goals:
a. Building good people.
Each of these kids has some potential and it's up to us to tease it out of them. We can do that with diverse experiences, collaboration between educators and parents, and by offering a wide range of possible education options for them.
Some kids are going to be academic, headed for higher education. Some are going to be tactile, or mechanical, and we need those people too. Some will be empathetic, and could be care givers, or performers. Whatever it is, they need to self-identify, and we need to prod them in various ways to tease it out and help them maximize it.
b. Maximize who they are
People are who they are. We can influence this, but to expect everybody to fall into some cookie cutter box or other is nuts! We are much better off keeping their options open, and when they grab hold of something, help them to take for the best ride they can.
c. Good citizens
Our future leaders need to understand government, civics in general, and be critical thinkers. We don't do anywhere near enough here in the US, and there are lot of political reasons for that I'm not going to touch on, but being a good human, and a good citizen is part of education.
d. Learn how to learn and grow to thrive.
These are in no particular order. But the ability to self-learn is so damn empowering we can't afford to miss out on the benefits of it. Not every student will be able to maximize themselves in this way, but a lot of them can, and should.
6. Parents need to get real about the politics of education.
Education in the US is hosed. We've got way too many people flirting with, or in poverty, forcing more labor than is appropriate for parenting, conflicting requirements, standardized tests that hobble good educators while pushing along marginal to poor ones, and we don't even talk much about the educators who just need help!
Funding is at issue, public vs private, "maybe I can get MY kid into a good school, screw everybody else..." Yes, that goes on, and should it really?
We all have to live under the product of our politics here. So why don't we get along and recognize the education debt we are accumulating and it's impact on our future?
None of those goals are partisan things. They are all focused right on the kids and their potential. And they are appropriate for everybody, business, our future leaders, parents, home makers, etc...
And it's more than attitude. Parents can't just trust the system, and the system can't just do the right thing either.
If we want to maximize our young people, and we should, then it's in all our interests to get the raising of them done proper. Blaming won't cut it.
The cost of failures here will accrue. We will pay them, and it won't be pretty, and we could very well have made the right investments early on to avoid the big balloon payments coming due very soon.
While I wait:
I got most of the things I put above, and as a parent, was able to supply most of the above, both to pretty great effect.
For what it's worth, taking blame off the table is rarely popular. Why?
Because then we realize we aren't so exceptional, and that we really should be doing something together on this, and that it's going to involve some real work in the form of face time and seat time.
You will find in your life that is true whether or not it appeals.
Carry on though, but don't think that goes without notice.
:)
Very large numbers of us are not equipped to perform the task well. Of those who are, some challenges, such as socialization, special needs, learning issues, subject matter coverage, all could require considerable involvement with public schools.
Education isn't a trivial investment. I did write a lot about face time and seat time, and the parent working alone, or perhaps in a small group, will find their own time, personal growth, career opportunities, and more strained or blunted due to the real investment required.
Often, it's the kid who suffers where those gaps exist. Secondly, when the kids are suffering, or are abused, say in a religious extreme home school type setting, there is a very real potential for bad outcomes.
Lots more to say here, but I'll just say "do it yourself" isn't a slam dunk, and it's no meaningful option where the greater scope of getting our education back on track is concerned. Point, niche solution at best.
These days, where more and more families have both parents working, sometimes even in multiple jobs, homeschooling is only viable for the upper middle class or above.
The large government run National Household Education Survery which is the best data available shows little difference in homeschool and public income demographics. Over the last 4 surveys('99,'03,'07,'11) homeschoolers have had ~20% in poverty and 50+% within 200% of poverty.
http://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org/homeschooling-101/ho... is a decent summary of the data with links to the most recent Department of Education surveys.
http://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org/wp-content/uploads/2... is a single graph of the above data from 2003
Maybe this would be different in some other country. But I think parents in the US who expect the school to educate their kids with no oversight or intervention, are leaving too much to chance. Short of homeschooling, there are some specific issues that could fall directly on the shoulders of parents:
1. Preparation of kids starting at age zero.
2. Gauging if your kids are doing well enough by your standards.
3. What happens when things go wrong, e.g., when a kid falls behind or runs into disciplinary problems? So called "involved" parents will either draw on their own instincts, or learn from the network of involved parents, how to guide the school towards a resolution that doesn't involve a lowering of expectations.
Great teachers will do a lot but great teachers don't scale.
It is the parents involvement in their kids education, their insisting on them to do well and to always be on the teachers side rather than on their kids.
I would claim government policies scale up to the limit within the borders of the said country. What effect they may have depends, but most good stuff in the daily lives of ordinary people in industrialized countries owes quite a lot to government policies (public schools, no child labour, etc).
Great teacher don't scale but improving teachers education thus moving the average more towards "great" does.
The sad fact is that the vast majority of individuals and families in the UK are entire reliant on the state. If you pay a marginal tax of about GBP 20,000 pa you still likely receive more than that in direct value of services. I think the value is much higher, both of services delivered to those in lower tax brackets or lower net tax payers, and the rate of earnings required to net contribute in taxes is much higher also. It's entirely possible that the only net contributors are the maligned "one percenters".
The numbers are subject to wild variation, how you calculate them. But you can pick out anecdotal evidence that is significant. In much of central London, family homes are housing association (QUANGO) or local authority owned, and rents are typically below GBP 100 pwk, I hear 70 or 80 wish, commonly, and less. Whereas the market rental for equivalent homes, is approaching four times that. That's one massive distortion in housing supply. In the extreme, I know of one person who was "forcibly downsized" to a slightly smaller home, still with more bedrooms than they, a single man, needs, caused by need to structurally refurbish the building where he lived, where he was relocated around the corner into a newly refurbished and appointed home, paid GBP 5000 for inconvenience, cost and arrangement of moving all provided, an the market rental value of this man's 78 pound a week hone is over six hundred a week.
It's true, also, there are some really appalling failures in social systems for housing and support, but I live and grew up in a "deprived" area, where I enormous resources are almost thrown at those eligible for public support.
The problem is, that not nay in many cases, is there no viable exist from public support, because low wage earners are able to claim top ups for low or i'd argue illegally poor pay, and many can legally stay īn subsidized housing all their lives, whilst earning market salaries, but I believe the situation is so politicized as to permit no rational debate or discussion. I have been verbally threatened for the very fact I live in a private dwelling, by complete strangers, visitors to neighbors in the same building, such is the actually false politicization of "have and have not" "society".
When I was at prep school, about nine, we had a support math teacher, who regaled us mainly with stories of his time n the Military Police. That was actually good education, but we were flunking any math we didn't study n our own, that year. This teacher also told us of his time in teaching for the ILEA, he Inner London Education Authority, in the mid seventies, not long before he was teaching us. We laughed in disbelief how exams or exam results were banned, for "creating hostility towards the children of the better off families", who, one might surmise, did put a value on their children's education.
Like most so called socialist systems, there has been a enforcement of the lowest common denominator, not a enforcement of what the LCD should be. In result: no self respect, c.f. the quote which spurred my reply here today. That result, no self respect, is the death knell of civilization and yet the panacea to becalm nervous politicians queasy their unsupportable, inept, uneducated, policies risk challenge.
'I was skint, I couldn't get a job and I hadn't paid my tax,' adds Winstone, who declared himself bankrupt in 1988 and 1993.
'I had two choices. I could either go and sign on and get my flat paid for or go to work.
'I chose to go to work and I paid all my debts off.'
....
[sic] "I could sign on and get my flat paid for"
The DM is known for right wing bias, but Winstone is known for left wing support, and you can make of the whole thing wherever you like, but the truth remains much the same today: you can go and sign on for benefits, and get your rent paid for. That's a amazing thing, if your life falls through the cracks. But it is a way of life. I have had friends explain to me how they chose to "go on the sick", one after a epileptic fit. That person does suffer epilepsy, or something similar, but the fits I witnessed coincided with being involved in a frightening relationship based as far as I could tell, on access to a boyfriend's money to indulge a long term heroin habit. I'd in ten years not seen or known of a fit, before that abusive blow out, and meanwhile her habit had been paid for by renting out her provided home, at a discount to, but still substantial profit on, market rates, whilst she lived with her partner in squats. This is not a exceptional example.
We now have even fourth generation children of families who have never worked a regular job.
And a vast health service burdened in so many ways my head spins.
They took away the notion of self responsibility.
That, as far as I can see it, is my prognosis for the terminal decline that is wreaking havoc in every walk of life.
We call for education "reform".
Reform usually means slow action, changing structures piecemeal or adjusting parameters in a technocratic ideal.
But, blinkers off, what took generations to rot, to completely decompose, may not be resuscitated if the conditions of good growth are poisoned soil.
Please forgive me my outpourings.
I lucked out in early life in so many ways.
And I screwed up big time, about a decade or so ago.
It's taken ten years work, not nine to five or even hours I could count, but a wholesale reeducation of this once super privileged, highly educated, young man, to just begin to reclaim the advantages I had.
What hope, then, those who fell through the same gaps in life, which I did, who did not benefit from a unrivalled academic education? People think I boast, rest on laurels, when I mention my young years. BS. I am highlighting just how harsh this system is. And the safety net that is provided, amazing though it be on paper, is totally alien to people of comparable upbringing to me (distorted also by genuinely Georgian era parents) and I could surmise my experience as being that alienation is in fact a class distinction, highly archive in this (to parrot John Major)" classless society". Rot. Class divisions have never been more acute. If Marx did not choke himself to death whilst reading our papers, he might laugh at the ridicule of social inversion, where now the lowest are elevated to national priorities, where the intelligence of the proletariat as worshipped by Tolstoy has become the fattened (on junk food), indigent (on "benefits" and "entitlements")and uneducated (c.f. all the above) idle class.
This was the reality, into which Tony Blair, and coterie, believes mass immigration would instill a work ethic and a hunger for self betterment. I and my friends often receive taunts, for being friends across race lines, in a majority immigrant, second to third gen, neighborhood. So I could care less for racialist nonsense. But consider the sheer scale of the solution that was promoted, to solve a problem that whilst occasionally identified, is still verboten speech in true debate.
As programmers, however many LOCs we debug a day, we should be gravely concerned as to the trivialization where supers, "3M" ideals, of twenty years ago are pocket sized stolen currency for hits of crack, and the technology is more seen as a vector against which state must protect children, or swoop in SWAT style upon admittedly amoral copyists of entertainment. The charade of the BBC, on the recent SONY hack, tells us all; a self proclaimed hacker was not interviewed but subjected to faux indignation, asked what right he had to spoil innocent childrens' appreciation of their new PS4s. We ought to be indignant instead at the presumption that technology exists for such trivial gratification. I guess anything which is potentially apolitical, is soon co-opted by political interests. But where is the promise of individual capability that once switched on and delivered a BASIC interpreter at a prompt? There's progress, measured by landfills, but where is that promise? There is the political disaster of technology, as affects us all. I want to scream at adverts for employees, asking for skills in using Microsoft word. Not because word might actually need ability in macro scripting, but because I thought the necessity to specify elementary ability with computers should have died out by the time I was in my thirties. I guess, too, that much of life is a disappointment. Software became a pseudo- religious ground, arguably, and all systems close to money will fight within themselves. But lately it seems to me every website was reinventing the wheel of a basic text editor, and I started to cry a little, inside. Not least because perfection never came for a word processor. But because I don't know in what direction this technology is going, not beyond the "d'oh-horizon" of jargon, the realization of the omits of monikers such as "cloud computing", but more generally, I could not see a direction. The proverbial revolution seems to have come and gone without revolving much at all. But look now, and everything I see does amaze me, it's wonderful. The riches make me cry. But they seem to make those who would rather attain riches without any work, cry the louder. I have never imagined there could be such a polarization of have and have not, for real, in my lifetime, growing Jo as I did, in the safe illusion of the late seventies, but I feral it now, and what we do, and no amount of web n.x hipsterism is changing this detrimental dynamic. One is only cool for so long, and the cooling cycle is on better than web time, beyond nay hope that politicians, or those involved, might ever catch up, let along "get with" any program.
If I go on, i'll be searching for New Year's Resolutions, so i'll just beg once again forgiveness for my personal outflowing of worry, and say a little prayer that there's the ingenuity to find solutions that are not mere rehashes or inversions of the same old problems.
"In my experience, children of immigrants often have a better work-ethic than the children of non-immigrants"
Doubt that divides as nicely down race lines as you might think, though. I'm too lazy to run the numbers, but this[1] seems to suggest 50% of foreign-born population in the UK come from predominantly white countries...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-born_population_of_the_...
As a layperson, I agree with the OP...The focus on the quality of teachers -- and firing "bad" ones and hiring just the "good" ones -- has always seemed to me to be overemphasized, as it makes for a sexy, easily digestible political debate. Not that good teachers (whatever your definition of "good" is) aren't worth having, but it's doubtful that they alone can have a significant impact on student outcomes...in the way we should be doubtful that the well-behaved, well-equipped cops from a rich crime-free suburb would, when moved to the Detroit PD, would have a significant impact.
I lived with a teacher and my best friend is a teacher, both are young and about my age and who work at impoverished schools, and I've been constantly amazed at how much of their talk is not about how bad the kids are, but how bad the administration is...over things such as playing favorites (among teachers) and squabbles over office space and, of course, having to buy their own supplies and books (some of which is reimbursed at the end of the year). You can chalk some of this dysfunction to the educational hot topics of the day: the power of teachers unions, teacher pay, standardized testing...but the bottom line is that passionate, effective teachers can be nullified by a weak system...in the same way that a great programmer may be ineffective in an engineering environment with poor testing/documentation processes and a terrible office environment.
> Teams that fired their coaches performed exactly the same on average in the following season as teams that kept their coaches. Notably, teams that were sub-.400 performed 20 percent better on average the following season regardless of whether they fired their coach or not. [...] Playoff performance is no better under new coaches. Non-playoff teams go an average of 0.5 playoff rounds the following season, whether they fire their coach or not.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-predicts-if-an-nhl-...
I have a friend who teaches 1st grade. Part of the curriculum was writing in a journal about what you did at home the day before.
My friend realized that the kids were more interested in writing about what they did at home in the morning as soon as school started, so she moved journal time from after lunch to first thing in the morning.
It worked out great, the kids were writing more and enjoyed writing more. Then the assistant principal observed her class and forced her to move journal time back to the old slot.
Another time my friend wanted to do an interactive history lesson that took a bit longer than normal, so she took 15 extra minutes from math that she planned to make up later in the day. The same assistant principal found out and formally disciplined her for not following the approved schedule.
Teachers are supposed to be professionals capable of developing their own lesson plans, but when administrators don't treat them like professionals their options are limited.
Maybe, just maybe, the differentiating factor is poverty, not race?
I don't think the author makes a convincing point as to why standardization is bad for students but somehow beneficial to teachers.
> There is another “teacher quality” checkpoint at graduation from School of Education in Finland. Students are not allowed to earn degrees to teach unless they demonstrate that they possess knowledge, skills and morals necessary to be a successful teacher.
So prospective teachers would be tested on teacher quality prior to graduation in an academic sense but not while they're actually teaching? Not sure if you can test on paper or by demonstration whether someone is an effective teacher. It is certainly more easily visible in the field.
It's a shame many in America don't respect teachers. Perhaps the resentment is due to the fact that most in America don't have a choice as to the primary school they attend. Like most Americans, I've had terrible teachers in the past and did feel some resentment. It was less infuriating in college since at least I had some choice as to the classes and school I attended. Coincidentally, I notice professors get a lot more respect.
I felt the author's case was clearly presented, so I'll try to summarize...
Standardized tests for students are bad because they encourage bogus metrics like "teacher effectiveness".
Requiring high qualifications for teachers is good because it improves public perception of the profession and reduces churn. (Initiatives like "fast track" teacher training increase churn, and this is bad because it can lead administrators to believe that churn is part of the solution: all they need to do is somehow weed out the bad teachers and replace them with good ones.)
If teacher effectiveness can't be measured, teachers can't be fired for performance. Union win.
On reading and my own indepth observations, I've come across the same themes, - teachers must be respected as professionals - teachers must challenge themselves, constantly looking for better approaches to education - principals must actively support the development and training of teachers to help them grow - parents must support the teachers by re-enforcing the importance of education - parents and teachers MUST treat the students as young adults rather than treating them as children ... I can't emphasise this enough.
Based on my own experiences, one school we were at had terrible teachers and an average principal ... and terrible results. The other school was progressive and built confidence into everything the students did (eg. a school fair fund-raiser was completely organised and run by ALL of the primary school students). I now live in an area with one of the highest academic performance relative to the wealth of the families, Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA). The attitude of parents, teachers and students is staggeringly different to the previous school we were at. It's no surprise that it's one of the best performing schools in Australia. You'll also notice that Australia is one of the better performing countries in the world. If you assume the problem is the teachers, or the parents, you're off the mark. You need ALL of them to work together.
I would claim the freedom given to teachers when practicing their profession is one of the reasons they do so well. Strict control usually cuts down the performance of the best people by oveconstraining requirements while protecting against the worst performers. More lean system keeps the best people motivated and gives them the leeway to do as they see best (practice art instead of just fulfilling regulations).
Worst people can do poorly but the teachers education system is so good even the worst are not that bad (usually). This is why the strict standardization of teacher education is needed - to make sure people are good enough they can be expected to perform well.
These are just anecdotal toughts based on experience (I'm a finn).
Admittedly anecdotal, but I've asked a few teacher friends if graduate school has made them better teachers and all have answered that it hasn't. Rather, they would insist that it's a more organic experience of learning through teaching over time and experimenting with the medium. Perhaps it's just that teacher education in America is fragmented and ineffective but I think it's just the nature of most art that the skill can't be acquired in an academic setting.
To me the ultimate effectiveness measure is if parents choose to send their kids to that school or students sign up for that class voluntarily.
Yeah, my anecdotal understanding of the profession acquired through similar channels would corroborate this. The sad thing is that in strict licensing situation the great teachers who lack proper licensing are locked away (e.g. when licensing requirements change).
I suppose university degrees work mostly as gateways to the careers that require them - i.e. it is thought the candidates who graduate are better qualified for the job than those that did not. I have no idea if the people filtered out would actually be the ones who would perform worst on the job.
"To me the ultimate effectiveness measure is if parents choose to send their kids to that school or students sign up for that class voluntarily."
I don't think parent perceptions kick in as a significant metric of quality until the differences in school quality have reached pathological levels.
And in the first grades kids are not really supposed to sign in to classes by themselves.
This is the exact opposite of my (previous) experience teaching high school, where the main purpose was clearly to provide daycare.
P.S. I am a teacher by occupation, and I know that the research shows that teacher characteristics matter for learners. The parental involvement or value placed on education by parents mentioned in several comments that preceded mine here are important, but I deal often (just today, in fact) with trying to help parents who are involved in their children's educations but are frustrated by what's happening to their children in United States public school classrooms.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Smartest-Kids-World-They/dp/145165...
Or, as Hillary Clinton put it, "It takes a village." I suspect that it's a part of the plight of many immigrant parents who live in isolation from an ethnic/cultural community, to feel like asking, "What's wrong with you?" of their kids, because they keep noticing that things their kids don't know things that they "should know." My parents expected me to know many things I would've picked up in my environment, had I grown up in the same one my parents did. This kind of knowledge is illustrated in Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes when the city born lads see a cow for the first time, and onlooking adults wonder if they are mentally deficient. "What are Cows!? Cows are cows!"
Another example of this kind of knowledge: When my family engages in activities, like going somewhere, we generally imagine what all of the others are doing and optimize our activities to minimize crossing paths and causing each other wait times. This isn't something we were ever explicitly asked to do. My sister and I just picked it up from our parents. In stark contrast, an ex-girlfriend of mine would instead only perform narrowly delegated tasks and discharge whatever task I delegated as quickly and directly as possible, without regard for how that would impact my activities, even if that would mean covering a cutting board I was using with another ingredient. Apparently, her father would punish initiative as a matter of the principle of obedience, and order around his family like robots.
Yet another example of this: in Japanese homes, people are expected to remove their shoes and arrange them in a neat and orderly array, optimized for exiting with a minimum of fuss and socks contact with the foyer floor.
Also very significant, in Finland: "teaching is regarded as an esteemed profession, on par with medicine, law or engineering." In the US, teachers are regarded as occupying a class between the working and professionals, esteemed lower than professions like medicine, law, and engineering. It says much about our society's priorities, that we say, "Those who can't do, teach."
becoming a great teacher normally takes five to ten years of systematic practice. And determining the reliably of ‘effectiveness’ of any teacher would require at least five years of reliable data. This would be practically impossible.
This is somewhat the inherent dilemma of hiring for any skilled profession. Mentoring is probably key here.
Is that the root cause of our society's teaching-related woes, or is the aphorism itself a consequence of glut of bad teachers?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_School_Lunch_Act
(followed by a similar program for breakfast, and then summer camps)
People need to stop blaming everything on racism, and calling lots of things racist that simply are not. Conflating the issues hurts on all fronts.
In other words, it makes it harder to identify and solve the real problem, and it makes "racism" meaningless in the public dialog.
Certainly free and easy access to sex education, contraception and abortion is something that is a good policy.
People, even poor people, have always, and will always want children.
Once children are born to poor parents, you need to address that poverty, or you will get poor educational outcomes for those children.
Certainly stigmatizing poor people, rather than focusing on bad luck they have had, will provoke different policy outcomes.
> rather than focusing on bad luck they have had
One of the main point of the article is precisely that being poor is not bad luck: overall, it happens because a person didn't take education seriously because they were not taught to do so by their parents.
I mean, you can say it's bad luck to be born to such parents, and I would agree there.
Nobody is convinced by this kind of irrelevant taunting. It has no place in a rational discussion.
Do you have evidence that public assistance is being withheld?
If anything, people aren't taking advantage of public assistance available. I remember reading that Medicaid (health insurance for the poor) was only used by half of the people eligible.
Deleted comment
It's not easy, of course. "Sharing the privilege" of being part of the dominant Christian culture in the US doesn't means helping others become Christian. But neither doesn't mean hating oneself for being Christian.
Being privileged doesn’t have anything to do specifically with my actions, and if a gay man, or a woman, or a Latino points out that I am privileged, they are not making any claim about my beliefs, and it’s nothing personal. (And they are absolutely correct, I am privileged.)
You should not be offended when people call you privileged, unless you are sure that they are making a statement about your individual beliefs, rather than just neutral statements about the prevailing structure in the society (and then you should still try to avoid responding with anger; it’s almost never really personal). Instead of taking offense, you should try to talk to these people and understand where they’re coming from and why they’re frustrated. If you listen carefully and empathetically, you may find yourself just as outraged at the injustices in our society.
It's very easy language to use. It implies the opposition is based in unthinking emotions so can be ignored. It's also true that some may actually be driven by hatred or self-hatred; and for that matter be based in very logical reasoning. But the hate narrative assumes that what's true perhaps for one (possibly imaginary) person who opposes a given status quo is also true for the entire opposition.
Yes, the g'g'parent post used a stereotype that white people have a specific stereotypes of black people. Your deleted response, which used language often used to keep the status quo, also implied a stereotype, and as you said, generalizations don't help.
What about a response like: "While that is a stereotype some white people believe, it's far from universal. I'm one counter-example. That said, I agree that the dying racist belief has had a real and horrible effect on how we deal with child poverty."?
I think that defends your views of yourself without derailing the conversation, while also discouraging the perpetrators of racism and supporting the main point of the original poster. (Remember, this is a post on education, not your views of race privilege or how to address racists.)
I'm all for a Finnish-style education system, backed by a strong social safety net with an emphasis on children. That includes, as maxerickson pointed out, a sufficiently supported school meal program. Racist views have helped shape our current system, and I think economic greed, including cutting taxes and the commercialization of education, are growing factors.
You know who else is privileged? Smart people, tall people, good looking people, people born in America, people born who are not physically disabled, people without health issues.
I find the "privileged" commentary really unhelpful because it's a drastic oversimplification of life. A black child born into a well educated and wealthy family is far more privileged than a white child born to a poor, uneducated and abusive family.
Most things are a mixed privilege. An ex-neighbor of mine, who was a good looking fitness instructor who rode a motorcycle, would also be harassed when she was on her bike, solely for being herself. Friends of mine who are moderately rich say they have difficulties because a lot of people associate with them in the hopes of getting access to that money. (Take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8809183 to see the number of people ready to jump on $7 million.)
While there are many ways to use the language of privilege, and it can even be used as a weapon to undermine other viewpoints, it seems that your last paragraph falls strongly in the standard privilege viewpoint. That is, I suspect that most people who talk about privilege will agree that "A black child born into a well educated and wealthy family is far more privileged than a white child born to a poor, uneducated and abusive family" is something which falls into the privilege framework, even if some may disagree with its validity or object to a real-world usefulness of a partial ordering which combines multiple privileges.
I'm therefore confused about how that's an example of how privilege commentary is 'really unhelpful'.
When you put a "world-class teacher" in front of 30 students who have totally different things on their mind that are NOT school-related - like e.g. having to support their drug-addicted parents, their own addictions, having to care for siblings, for food or sometimes even for a place to sleep - then even a squad of the best teachers will not help any of these kids achieve "good grades".
Putting the blame for fucked up environments on teachers (like it seems to be done very often in the US) is unfair and stupid, because the teachers are in no position to change their situation.
It's the same thing everywhere, but I admit that education being free is a big deal, but it doesn't fix social problems.
I'm personally enormously skeptical of the idea that education is a solution to poverty,[1] at a large scale. There is a game theory problem in play. The fact is that it's unlikely that education will lift an individual inner city kid "out of the hood." A relatively excellent outcome for diligence and hard work would be going into debt to attend a third rate college, for the privilege of fighting for a low-paying service job. So it's totally rational for kids to be more preoccupied with whether joining the right gang will keep them from getting harassed on the way home from school.
But if everyone worked hard and got educated, what might happen is that economic opportunities could be created "in the hood." That's the prisoners dilemma--the individually rational decision to devalue diligence and education leads to a globally worse outcome. This is where culture comes in. You see this with poor immigrant communities. They have little capital, but have cultural mores that create an incentive for education and hard work. A kid might not leave the neighborhood through education, but he'll get social standing in the community, among authority figures and peers. When everyone has that incentive, that creates economic opportunities within the neighborhood. After all, there are neighborhoods in Bangladesh far poorer on an objective scale than the worst ghettos of Chicago, that nonetheless have bustling local economies.
[1] Poverty is, of course, relative. But I'm not talking about utopia, but just about raising the plight of the poor here in the U.S. up to that of some places in Western Europe.
There is a reference that I can't dig up right now. Basically, it was talking about if how you diss someone with a stable job/relationship/adult identity - they don't take it that personally because they are 'stable'. But if you diss/disrespect someone from a gang - who has a singular-faceted life of the gang, you may end up paying with your life because you have basically diss'd the person by disrespecting their identity. Even as simple as making eye contact and not breaking it. The gang is their life.
This sounds like a documentary that needs to get made. Any aspiring filmmakers here?
In general giving people a stable, appropriate calorie diet is the best way to increase IQ over a population. Poverty has a whole lot to do with that.
Next, after you lift people out of poverty you still have the education problem. Uneducated parents don't have educated kids, statistically speaking. The first few years of life, before kids are ever sent to school define a person's learning capacity hugely. Babies that have working parents and have less personal care, less emotional closeness, and less exposure to a wide range of language are going to be disadvantaged to those kids that do.
Pretty much everyone has enough calories (too many in most cases).
As for schools-of course the rich people send their children to much better schools.
Those who can't send their children to local schools. What happens there depends on how bright they are, how hard they work and how committed their parents are to education.
In the case of some ethnic groups there is a strong aversion to educating their girls properly.
None of this has much to do with poverty, emotional closeness or whatever else you claim.
Those who can't send their children to local schools. What happens there depends on how bright they are, how hard they work and how committed their parents are to education. This is deeply ignorant. What happens when a smart kid is in the middle of a class filled with kids who have no interest in learning? Do you think the teacher will craft a whole special course specific to that kid? Or do you think the teacher will try to get something basic to stick at the lowest level, so almost all the kids get at least something from their education?
What happens when a kid's peers mock the kid for being a swot? How socially integrated is the kid going to be, when all his friends do things in the evenings, and the kid's stuck doing homework and study? Ever heard of peer pressure? Gangs? Do you have any memories of growing up in a state school in a poor area, of the risk of being beaten up if you venture into the wrong area, wearing the wrong uniform?
I presume that you're upset with life being unfair, which it most certainly is.
It does not change the fact that lack of calories is not a significant factor in poor educational attainment in the UK.
There are also many reasons for a pupil not getting top grades-but being dragged into gang life by anti-intellectual peers is not one that ranks highly.
More common, in my experience, are boys wasting hours on playing computer games and smoking dope.
As for getting beaten up by entering into the wrong area-I don't see how that stops them from doing their homework in their bedroom.
What made the difference for me were two things.
1) Parents that were role models. My mother didn't earn much money, but she had a tremendous work ethic (she grew up on a farm), and was a very disciplined person in terms of morality. She was always present in my life, and was quite firm and consistent in terms of discipline (if you did something wrong, you were punished; and you listened or else). My father was an entrepreneur, very creative, very intelligent, high ingenuity, exposed me to a lot of amazing experiences growing up (traveling, ideas, technology, etc). Neither parent drank, had drug problems, or had ever been arrested. I had a consistent, safe home environment, where being smart was encouraged, independence and success were outcomes to strive for.
2) A tremendous public education system, with high quality teachers across the board. Almost all of which were older women interestingly, most were very firm, attentive, and persistent. The school itself might have had several hundred students, but from K through 5, I had one male teacher out of maybe 15 or 20, and only one younger female teacher.
The kids that did the worst in school, almost universally had very bad home lives. They were not only extra poor, but they had terrible parents (or absentee parents); abusive, alcoholic, non-working, etc types.
My mother, a retired high school science and French teacher, thinks that part of the reason we have a dearth of excellent teachers is because women are now doing other things than teaching.
I would say that roughly half the unsuccessful students I knew of were in fact very intelligent, the other half did seem to have lower intelligence. I knew a bunch of them well. Their home lives effectively wrecked them, hampered their learning habits, and their educational stacking progress - in which your knowledge builds year after year, and to succeed each year you must have a consistent rolling forward of that knowledge base from prior years. The unsuccessful but intelligent students had poor habits, poor role models, and often a terrible outlook. Some had been taught very backwards notions about how the world works, or what values should be pursued in life.
I don't think intelligence is a greater a factor than the others. I've known plenty of wildly unsuccessful, broken, smart people, that were crippled by a mediocre foundation at home. I've known successful low intelligence people, with discipline and a strong work ethic; people that can repeat patterns of success, while not having an especially great intellect.
Middle-class and upper-class parents who work 9-5 jobs have the time to spend playing and teaching their kids on nights and weekends.
They have the money to buy good, nutrious food.
They have the knowledge (either from their own, self motivated research, or from their friends who do the research for them) to do things like limit screen time and not use a TV as a baby sitter.
Poor people can do all this too (and many try and do), but being poor makes it harder, which is one of the reasons economic class is inherited.
For example, I once had a mini cab ride where the driver was very poor indeed (a new immigrant from somewhere not so nice).
He was teaching his very young daughter to play blindfold chess.
I have not met him since, but would be surprised if he didn't do a great job in educating his daughter with very little in the way of money or time.
I suspect it's death by a thousand cuts. Some broad categories: 1) What happens to kids before they ever reach school age, and the environment they experience when they are not in school. 2) Though teacher quality is only part of the equation, teachers compete to transfer out of the poorest districts. 3) Lower expectations from school leadership, parents, and community -- possibly inadvertent due to not even knowing what high expectations look like.
My kids are in a public school system that's believed to be of very high quality. Parents bid blindly on houses to get their kids into this district. We probably have one of the highest percentages of parents with advanced degrees in the country. The "lucky" kids start kindergarten knowing how to read, are coached in math at home, may be learning more than one language, taking music lessons, eating right, playing outside, etc. Parents have time to volunteer at school, which is not just an added supply of labor, but also helps reinforce the kind of learning atmosphere that educated parents value.
Now of course someone will say "kids, whether rich or poor, do not think about 20 years down the line." They would be correct; however here the success of a kid's education depends significantly on their parents' contributions to it. If a parent is poor, and worried about their next meal, you cannot blame them for not having the energy to worry about the long term.
The long answer is "We don't know for sure, but it's likely that all of the replies to your question have some effect"
sure some teachers may teach for square pegs while others teach for round pegs but the students dont get the option of attending the class for round pegs instead of the square peg class. instead the student is thrown into a teachers class and has to conform to however that teacher wants to structure and grade the class. class A may be graded mostly on tests while class B may be mostly on homework and even still class C may be a mix of both homework and tests. then other teachers like to throw artifacts such as attendance to skew the grade even more.
finally theres the problem of subjects that people just arent good at or dont care for because they provide little real world use. subjects such as history or soke more advanced english or math. these turn into something that a student is not only forced to attend and contribute to but also be judged on.
for a personal anecdote and one of ky sources of critisms, when I was a freshman in high school I was in an algebra class and aced both finals with the highest grade in the class while getting A's and B's on all of my tests. one thing I never did though was the homework (I turned in maybe two homework assignments the entire year). end of the year comes and I fail the class because I didnt turn in the homework and I had a habit of sleeping in the class.
to top off all of that there are teachers who just suck and/or dont get along with certain students. teachers who are condescending to soke students or try to keep students in class during lunch. its not a teachers job to punish kids in any way. if the student is disruptive to the class then they should dismiss the student from the class and have the school take care of problem students.
[0] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2234433?sid=2110552233...
All you need to do to get a good secondary education system is to hire good graduates,train them and support their professional development.
What does not work is hiring idiots, de-skilling the job, filling the day with busy work and other pointless nonsense.
The problems that exist in American education are incredibly complex. We've tried a lot of big new things based on a simple, reductive approach (examples: testing and accountability for schools and for teachers, small schools, charter schools, Teach for America). I don't think any of these big new ideas have transformed a low-performing urban public school system into a system where educated white professionals would send their kids.
[1]https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
The US had a highly functional, cost effective healthcare system until the early 1990s, when costs began to soar. In fact it still has the best hospitals and doctors in the world to this day, along with the best technology and best drugs. The US also has by far the most innovative healthcare tech and pharma industries.
The US did not have an obesity problem until the last 20 or 30 years.
The US still has by far the best universities on earth. There isn't even a close second. Make a list of the top 20 universities and the US will take 17 of those slots. It had a tremendous public education system, again, until about 20 years ago. And even now, half the country still does have an excellent public education system.
If the US is so inept at education, how come US universities stand so far above the rest of the world, and have for decades? Quick, name five universities of equal quality to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale, Princeton - anywhere on earth, eg: Sweden, Switzerland, Norway.
The US has very poor healthcare results across the board, exept in one medium-size illness, cancer. Where the US does slightly better, untill you factor in that the short US lifespan, and how much younger US cancer patients are on average. And it would be very peculiar indeed if the country with the best hspitals, doctors and tech should also be the one with the shortest lifespan, years in good health, infoant mortality, amendable mortality, amternal mortality, etc, etc, etc.
The bottom line is the US system costs them most and has very bad results.
US healthcare and pharma industries are not all that innovative, have a look at number of patents brought to market. he US also scores very low on number of nobel prizes per head.
Which brings US to Universiteis. US and UK univeristies like Cambridge, Harward, UMIST, Iperial, etc are undoubtedly good...but only looks dominant when you do the by-paper measuring which only counts papers published in english. Count non-english papers and the field widens. Count Nobels, and the US brings up the rear.
1 Obesity-apparently not a problem because it didn't exist 30- years ago.
That, I find hard to believe if I remember my first trip to the US in the late 1980s and the free food restaurants in Las Vegas.
2 Healthcare -an obvious disaster, due to lack of access and the lifestyle of a large part of the population. Oh, it will also bankrupt the country without major reforms.
3 The universities-rankings are based on research, which in turn are based on buying in talent.Don't kid yourself that they reflect the quality of undergraduates that are turned out or the population as a whole.
4 As for guns-no need to bother with that one.
In fact the US did not have an obesity problem in the 1980s. Between 1980 and 2000, the obesity rate doubled among adults in the US, per the CDC. What I originally said is accurate and easy to prove.
The obvious point, is that America has only become "inept" in the last 20 to 25 years on obesity. It's a very recent problem. It can be reversed and solved as quickly as it become a problem. I'd argue that peak obesity has already occurred, the causes have almost all been clearly identified, and over the next 20 years Americans will get less obese measured by every five years that go by.
2) Total healthcare costs stopped increasing several years ago. In fact it's more likely that healthcare costs as a % of GDP and income will decline for the next 20 years. It's not going to bankrupt the country without major reforms. Not even remotely close. The US has among the highest disposable income levels in the world, healthcare expenses are a very manageable problem even at these elevated cost levels.
Americans do not have a healthcare access problem. In fact Americans are the most over-doctored, over-tested, over-treated people on earth, and it's a huge contributing factor for why Americans spend so much on healthcare. Americans consume more healthcare services than any other people. Nearly 90% of Americans have health coverage now, and the majority of those in the 10% that do not, choose not to. The poor in America have had complete coverage for a very long time, via state medicaid, among a dozen other programs.
Saying something is so, does not prove it. If you're going to make outlandish claims (the US will be bankrupted by healthcare costs), you should back them up.
3) The universities in the US outrank their peers in other countries across the board on a direct comparison basis (top vs top, middle vs middle). It's embarrassing how far ahead the US has been for the last 40 years. It's universally accepted that the US has by far the best universities. There's no debate to be had here, at all.
Take your ludicrous assertion that healthcare costs will decline as a % of GDP over the next 20 years.
You are on another planet to the rest of us.
We're already at a point where healthcare costs as a % of GDP will begin declining. With the expansion of the ACA, the US Government has begun doing what every country in Europe does: squeezing unnecessary costs out of healthcare any way they can.
You claimed healthcare costs would bankrupt the US without reforms. Now let's see you prove what you said, instead of relying on ad hominem attacks in place of actual data points.
Per capita healthcare expenditure growth has been falling for about 12 years now, and is down to low single digits: http://i.imgur.com/5ARcJ1s.jpg
"Medical Costs Register First Decline Since 1970s" http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/06/18/medical-costs-regi...
"CBO: Declining Health Care Costs Will Lower US Budget Deficit" http://www.voanews.com/content/us-cbo-estimates-slightly-low...
"Republicans Hurt By Slowing Costs in Health Care In the 2014 election, Democrats seize on opportunity to talk about Medicare." http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/26/republicans-h...
Pretty much everything you have written is wrong-you can check out your claim on future healthcare spending with what everyone else thinks.