Jan. 04, 2006 - 19:08 MST

AS OTHERS SEE US

An interesting article in today's Rocky Mountain News by Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek. In full:

U.S.STUDENTS PROVE TEST RESULTS AREN'T EVERYTHING

"Last week India was hit by a terror attack that unsettled the country. A gunman entered the main conference hall of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, tossed four grenades into the audience and, when the explosives failed, fired his AK-47 at the crowd. One man, a retired professor of mathematics from one of the Indian institutes of technology, was killed. What has worried some about this attack is not the scope or planning or effect -- all unimpressive -- but the target. The terrorists went after what is increasingly seen as India's core strategic asset for the 21st century: it's scientific and technological brain trust. If that becomes insecure, what will beocme of India's future ? This small event says a lot about global competition. Traveling around Asia for most of the past month, I have been struck by the relentless focus on education. It makes sense. Many of these coutries have no natural resources, other than their people, making them smarter is the only path for development. East Asian countries top virtually every global ranking of students in science and mathematics."

"But one thing puzzles me, so I talked to Tharman Shanmugaratnam to understand it better. He's the minister of education of Singapore, the No. 1 country in global science and math rankings for school-children. I asked him how to explain the fact that even though Singapore's students do so brilliantly on these tests, when you look at these same students 10- or 20 years later, few of them are worldbeaters."

"Singapore has few truly top-ranked scientists, entrepreneurs, inventors, business executives or academics. American kids, by contrast, test much worse in the fourth and eighth grades but seem to do better later in life and in the real world. Why ? "We both have meritocracies," Shanmugaratnam said. "Your's is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. There are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well -- like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority. These are the areas where Singapore must learn from America." Shanmugaratnam also pointed out that American universities are unrivaled globally -- and are getting better. "You have created a public-private partnership in tertiary education that is amazingly successful. The government provides massive funding, and private and public colleges compete, raising everyone's standards."

"Despite all the praise, Shanmugaratnam said the U.S. educational system "as a whole has failed." "Unless you are comfortably middle class or richer," he explained, "you get an education that is truly second-rate by any standards. Apart from issues of fairness, what this means is that you never really access the talent of poor, bright kids. They don't go to good schools and because of teaching methods that focus on bringing everyone along, the bright ones are never pushed. In Singapore we get the poor kid who is very bright and very hungry, and that's crucial ot our success."

"From where I sit, it's not a flat world," Shanmugaratnam concluded. "It's one of peaks and valleys. The good news for America is that the peaks are getting higher. But the valleys are getting deeper, and many of them are also in the United States."

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It would seem that much of our society in the United States is based on the humorous Peter Principle, which if I remember is, a man rises to the level of his incompetence and thus never rises above it and stays incompetent at a level that holds everyone else back. Or did I misunderstand that principle ?

The idea of "No Child Left Behind" seems to be applied in a manner that the brightest and most talented are held back to the level of the dullest, least talented. Some efforts, here and there, are being made to counteract that, but not enough I think.

Much of the enthusiasm for inspiring the young ones seems to have been lost along the way and teachers and administrators, many of them, just put in a day and that's it. And the parents and those retired fight putting any more money into eductation, equally guilty of killing ambition of the young.

The man from Singapore tells it AS OTHERS SEE US . . . . . . . . .

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