New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and billionaire Bill Gates and gadfly Michelle Rhee wring their hands over American students’ test scores. They look enviously at Shanghai and wonder why we can’t be like them.
But the Los Angeles Times had a story explaining that Chinese educators have mixed feelings about those high test scores. They know that they are squeezing the joy of learning out of their schools and pressuring children to grind, grind, grind. They worry that their students lack creativity and imagination.
Before we follow China’s example, we should think about the qualities that we value. Do we want good test-takers or do we want creativity and innovation? Do we want obedient and compliant workers or do we want divergent thinkers? Which will serve us better in the decades ahead?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
At Huffington Post, Sam Chaltain responded to Friedman’s recent Times column comparing the U.S. to China with the usual hand-wringing this way.
“America needs to have another conversation first — the one that actually clarifies what we now know about how people learn.
The good news is … we know a lot. More than ever before, we can assemble a picture of the ways our brains respond to and make sense of information. We can help people diagnose their individual strengths and weaknesses. And we can offer models of schooling that previous generations could only dream about — models in which children not only love going to school, but actually acquire relevant skills and understandings about themselves and the world.
The bad news is we aren’t having that conversation, and we aren’t elevating those stories. We talk about “achievement” as though it’s a proxy for “learning,” when in fact it’s a proxy for “3rd and 8th grade reading and math scores.” We propose incentive structures for adults that ignore what we know about how motivation works in human beings. And we propose comparing schools to other ones around the world before we actually understand what a healthy and high-functioning school really looks like — and requires.”
LINK: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-chaltain/hey-tom-competing-with-ch_b_1756898.html
Chaltain links to the Mission Hill School as a model for what schools should like:
http://startempathy.org/Mission-Hill-School-Spotlight
I couldn’t agree more. It’s a pity that we don’t hear about this kind of education reform in the corporate media rather than the usual top-down, corporate-run, data-driven, “No Excuses” kind.
And of course the politicians don’t push this kind of school either.
But then again, education reform is all about control – control of the dollars by the corporate entities, control of the children’s minds to ensure a future complacent 99% that never questions their “betters”, control of the curriculum to ensure that nothing meaningful gets taught and no one outside of the Sidwell Friends School and other elite schools learns anything that helps develop them as whole human beings.
Look at KIPP or the Harlem Success Schools – they’re emblematic of this kind of “reform.”
Uniforms, marching, endless testing, narrowed curriculum, strict rules and harsh punishments – that’s what they have at KIPP and Success and that’s what the corporate media and the corporate pols like Obama, Bush, et al point to as a “good education.”
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Deja vu all over again …
Haven’t we had this same discussion every 30 years for the last century? — Just that I personally remember or ever read about?
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We can agree about this. Robots no. Thinkers yes.
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Thanks for sharing this!
The L.A. Times piece cites Chen Weihua, a China Daily editor, who confirms that “The making of superb test-takers comes at a high cost, often killing much of, if not all, the joy of childhood.”
Yong Zhao does, in my opinion, masterfully outlines some of those costs — and sounds a warning against the eager follow-in-liners urging us to emulate the Chinese model and its students’ performance — in “What’s Still Missing in American Education and How to Out-educate China?”.
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We have had this discussion over and over again. Americans used to value innovation, creativity and independent spirit. Oh, and let’s not forget autonomy, otherwise known as freedom. Those are the things that made our country great. The “reformers” are moving away from what used to be, anyway, America’s core values.
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You know if we tracked students like they do in China and Singaporre or just selected elit school districts to be tested we wouldn’t be having this debate. But we don’t and that is one of the joys and benefits of our school systems. Faults – yes. Much to be done – yes. But let us not convert it into a testing factory with a generation of automatons.
This was a great article. Worth a look.
PISA evaluation, educational trends and international teaching experiences – IICE 2012, Dublin report
http://www.ydp.eu/resources/pisa-evaluation-educational-trends-and-international-teaching-experiences-%E2%80%93-iice-2012
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