I have no patience for YouTube clips that are more than five minutes long. I made an exception for this one because it was recommended by wifey. It is about 10 mins long. Would I ever view it again?
This is a former American school teacher speaking to an American audience. A constant refrain that kept echoing in my mind as I sat through this was, "Their system is so un-American and they are making a bad copy from Singapore's method".
I suppose the American government, business and civic leaders are just sick, tired and terribly embarrassed about their positions in the educational league tables. Compound that with endless anecdotal evidence of high school graduates that can't do simple math and write clearly, they are impatient to clean shop. But they are currently copying us albeit terribly. I think what gave them to confidence to adapt our system for their use is how regularly our scholars come up tops in their Ivy League schools. So we must be doing something right. They don't know that they are looking at the wrong things. Also how could they just conveniently de-link a school system from the culture that raises it? But it is the same shallow thinking everywhere. Liberal parents here demand why we can't use the less stressful but as high performing Finnish system here.
I think America is like what Churchill said about them, i.e., they have to exhaust all options before doing the right thing. In education they still have quite a long way to go. I also think America can only fix its education system from the bottom up and I am confident they will find a solution. It wouldn't be coming from the government but just as unlike and remote as a psychologist wining the Nobel Prize for Economics is where observers must look. Perhaps the Khan Academy will offer a key plank but Education is much larger than Sal Khan's vision.
After they have gotten rid of some bad and most of their best teachers, they will face the rebellion of the students and their parents. I hope they get there quickly. The world is not standing still for anybody, not even them.
really sad. People are pursuing a course or degree not to learn but to pass exam. Education is commoditised and like all other things so being commoditised, no real value is being created. No wonder corporate life has deteriorated to a paper chase, backstabbing and work is no longer dignified but replaced by the word job (like getting a job done usually to gain fame and money at the expense of everything in the path) Sad indeed :(
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