Maybe you heard about it, and maybe you actually watched John Stossel’s “Stupid In America.” To be fair, Mr. Stossel is a small-l libertarian and has been airing his opinions about the American educational system since at least 1999, so we can all be forgiven if this sounds like things he has said before. This is only the latest salvo.
I’d like to take a couple paragraphs from Reason’s coverage of the show, as written by Mr. Stossel:
The Belgians did better [on identical tests given to Belgian and American students] because their schools are better. At age ten, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age fifteen, when students from forty countries are tested, the Americans place twenty-fifth. The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from countries that spend much less money on education.
This should come as no surprise once you remember that public education in the USA is a government monopoly. Don’t like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it’s good or bad. That’s why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.
Now, I am willing to let stand the facts he cites in the first paragraph, and assume he has statistics to back them up. Namely, 10 year old American students test well compared to their international peers, but 15 year old American students do not. Our inner scientists should immediately ask why: what are they doing that we are not; what is different; is it the schools, the teachers, the methods, the teaching materials? Obviously something changes between age 10 — when kids are doing fine — and age 15 — when they are not. By and large, the families and neighborhoods of these kids have not changed, which limits the number of factors which could be at work. Mr. Stossel does well to point out that our kids appear to get dumber the more school they attend and money is not the magic factor.
I would love to sit him down with John Taylor Gatto for an hour or so and televise the results.
Unfortunately for all of us, Mr. Stossel does not ask “what do the Belgians do with kids aged 10-15 that we do not?” Instead, he makes the logical leap that “the state monopoly on education is to blame.” He envisions a capitalist frenzy where “There could soon be technology schools, cheap Wal-Mart-like schools, virtual schools where you learn at home on your computer, sports schools, music schools, schools that go all year, schools with uniforms, schools that open early and keep kids later, and, who knows? If there were competition, all kinds of new ideas would bloom.” Strangely enough, Mr. Stossel appears unaware of the many private schools in the United States, schools with philosophies, fees, and performance levels as variable as snowflakes. Oh, and let’s not even bring up homeschooling.
Curious about Belgian schools? According to this, the multiple languages spoken in Belgium are an issue, and “As well as state schools, there are subsidised ‘free’ and independent schools, often run on religious lines, though their curricula and certification are recognised equally within the system.” This tends to indicate to me that the broad strokes of curricula are controlled at the national level, and some sort of certification is conferred much like “accreditation” in the United States.
Perhaps more important to the mystery of why 15 year old Belgians are smarter than 15 year old Americans is that they “start to channel students into general, vocational, technical or artistic streams depending on individual choice and ability,” and “Assessment is ongoing and rigidly enforced.” In other words, they admit the heresy that not everybody is college material. Vocational and technical training is a good thing. Furthermore, nobody gets promoted without having the skills and knowledge to move on. Notice the difference between No Child Left Behind and this ongoing, enforced assessment: in NCLB the school fails but the kids move on to underperform at a higher level; in Belgium, the student keeps working until they have the skills to move on.
Gee, no wonder.
In closing, I bring you coyotes in a neighborhood near you (Wile E…. er, wiley, aren’t they?), more approval ratings than you can shake a stick at (thanks, Sarah!), who says wheelchairs can’t be cool, maybe living wage is an easier issue to rally behind than secretly spying on Americans, and finally a must read item, States caught up in Real ID nightmare. Remember two things: the primary purpose of a driver’s license is showing that someone can safely operate a motor vehicle; and just because we know who somebody is doesn’t mean we know if somebody is a bad guy.
does a greater proficiency in a particular pursuit involving natural inclinations (e.g., the dexterousness involved in some vocations, or the aesthetic sense employed in another)translate into a “smarter student?” or merely a more efficient use of human resource? (a “smarter” employer) By what standard is the judgement? Is it purely academic comparison? And does test performance truly, objectively relate to the school systems’ effectiveness or the students’ability independantly? Or perhaps is the outcome affected by extraneous social trends which leak behaviors into the testing room? Is it ‘cool’ to be smart in the U.S.? Would a comparison of the abilities of the top five or ten percents of each population (the most self actualized and driven) yield a more accurate comparison?
were we as good at creating/indoctrinating ‘producers’ as we are at creating/indoctrinating ‘consumers’ no worry would there be.
equally as intersting about the Belgian ex-pat article (like reading a “forward looking” stock perspectus, ne?) is the Belgians’ seeming success at employing such diverse cultures and educational methods with such universal effectiveness (assuming that the good test performance was somewhat equal within their ethnically and linguistically and methodologically distinct school systems.)