October 26, 2005 6:00 AM PDT
Perspective: Circle time for America's education crisis
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Do you offer classes in both Cantonese and Mandarin? How are computers integrated into the curriculum? What emphasis do you place on biological sciences?
Have I been trying to find a college? No, these were hurled by concerned parents at elementary school officials.
If you want to get a close-up view of America's anxieties about globalism and educational standards, a kindergarten tour is the place to be.
Selecting a school used to be simple. Kids grabbed their Planet of the Apes lunch pail and walked down the street. Now parents (rightly or wrongly) believe that the path toward success or stumbling mediocrity begins around age 4. Hence, school selection involves a battery of interviews, assessment tests, teeth gnashing and humility.
"This is an incredibly disempowering process," a fellow dad said to me while on a tour.
It was a surprising statement. By day, that fellow parent is the president of a Fortune 500 company whose statements are parsed by Wall Street and thousands of technology executives. Across the room, a partner at one of the more prominent venture capital firms in the industry chatted up the English teacher.
The fever pitch isn't confined to private schools. The public school down the street from me, which has a Japanese-language immersion program and advanced science courses, admits just one applicant out of every 25. Princeton University accepts about twice that percentage of applicants.
Despite the clear status-seeking element to all of this, a good part of the panic is justified. The American pre-eminence in science, which emerged during World War II, came in part because of the expansion of public schools, university admissions and federal research funding. It was not a result of Manifest Destiny.
"There was a direct connection between this knowledge-based society and economic productivity," George Atkinson, the science and technical adviser to the State Department, said at the Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology earlier this week in San Francisco.
Nations that have replicated the model--China, Singapore, Taiwan--have prospered. Conversely, Japan has been mired in recession, and executives openly worry about the declining interest in science among college students. Germany has a high unemployment rate and is having trouble filling its engineering schools, according to EE Times.
So how does the United States' future look? Here's a report card:
• Many schools are quite good. Decades ago, going to elementary school involved mastering a few skills (long division, cursive writing, drawing a turkey with the outline of your hand) and absorbing an inordinate number of facts about the 50 states. Now the curriculum might include science labs, creative writing, public speaking and conflict resolution. Computers are everywhere, and most of the time, they are Macintoshes.
Foreign languages are far more prominent. At one school that highlighted Latin and Spanish, I asked if other languages were available. No, but if a child were interested, the classics teacher can tutor in ancient Greek.
In the Rocky Mountain states, some high schools have switched their schedules so that the three-month break comes in winter. That way, hopefuls for the 2016 Olympics can train. Surprisingly, the effort that educators are putting in to develop Renaissance kids is sort of uplifting.
• Homework has increased. "I won't kid you. There's about two hours of homework a night," one sixth-grade teacher told me. The eighth-grade reading list she showed me looked familiar; it was the same one I had in 10th grade. Some schools proudly claim only an hour a night of homework.
• The anxiety gap is slimmer than you think. Earlier this year, an Indian IT executive tried to shock me by telling me that the principal asks children applying to the school to solve problems. That's nothing. In Chicago, kids who want to attend an elementary school associated with the University of Chicago undergo tests, too, according to parents. During the interview, graduate students jot down observations about the child's behavior.
This is a bit scary because school often takes on ominous overtones in the countries that have moved rapidly up the ladder. South Korea comes to a near standstill on the day teens take the daylong college admissions test. Students get tracked from first grade in many countries.
• Public schools are falling behind. One father, a logistics expert between assignments, has become a hero to his daughter's public kindergarten: He's organizing the renovation of the bathroom. Supporters claim that public schools are underfunded; critics claim that they are mismanaged. Both, in reality, are probably correct.
In any event, a huge divide is growing. The ethnic-friendly admissions policies adopted by the elite universities in the first half of the 20th century became a factor in the postwar scientific explosion. A lot of technology chief executives can also talk about how they got by on scholarships.
• There seems to be some wishful thinking going on. In one school, the teacher's note below explained a series of student paintings.
"Kindergarteners examined the work of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian and his use of geometric designs and primary colors."
Granted, I can see them trying to emulate the Fauvists, but it's probably pushing 5-year-olds to really internalize the early theories of abstraction.
Biography
Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas. He has worked as an attorney, travel writer and sidewalk hawker for a time share resort, among other occupations.
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or we can call it a special region, with unsettled problems, but it is
not an independent nation by now.
more specifically, more than 99% of the population in the world
does not admit its qualification as a nation.
public schools for those are the genetic pool for prosperous
private school is too much emphasized, if there is no competitive
public school, private one will become "noble club" and then soon
fell down like in middle century Europe.
a feature of life in New York City. Perhaps they
are spreading to the other Blue States. The real
questions are, what is happening in the heartland
and what is happening in the colleges?
According to the Taulbee Survey, Computer Science
majors in America have declined by 39 percent,
compared with the fall of 2000. Perhaps this
is related to the fact that Computer Science
salaries have delined by 39%. I don't see any
way to "fix the schools" which fails to address
the lack of good careers after graduation.
Trying to fix the problems of the schools in
isolation is like pushing on a rope.
Yuppie parents almost always get obsessed by
the desire to have their children benefit from
advantages that they did not have. The kids
usually survive the experience. The fact that
the Manhattan Montessori school's pre-kindergarten has a waiting list does not
consitiute a social cirsis. It's just not
that important. Really.
A really good education system should provide a really homogenous education across all the US. American kids are not all children of CEOs, IT executives, politicians.
- pick school then BUY HOUSE
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by gravytoss
October 27, 2005 8:40 AM PDT
- Bigger in its impact on our economy than any of these: " Hence, school selection involves a battery of interviews, assessment tests, teeth gnashing and humility." is the scrutiny of family finances with the aim of buying a house in the best community you can afford [where best means "best schools"]...it is a very significant factor in house prices.
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