We Have Much to Learn from the High-Performing Educational Systems of the World

Viewpoints lamenting American exceptionalism have been much in the conversational ether for the last couple of decades, but the vigorous reaction of American nationalists has countered those views with a thrust ascending all the way to the White House;  moreover, a preponderance of citizens of our center-right nation retain attitudes denying that many policies prevailing in other nations are superior to our own.  The superiority is especially notable in the vital arenas of health care and education.

 

With regard to education policy, we can trust neither conventional Democrats nor conventional Republicans to lead the way.  Democrats follow the erroneous notions of the teacher unions that provide them with generous funding.  The false trust placed by Republicans in the felicity of individual choice and local control undermines the occasionally promising initiatives emanating from the federal government.   Neither liberals nor conservatives in the United States have much to offer as to innovative breakthroughs for achieving excellence in K-12 education.

 

Thus it is that the right-of-center Chuck Chalberg (“Let the clock run down on organized school sports,” Star Tribune, Saturday, December 9) is correct in opposing the excessive attention and funding given to varsity sports activities in the K-12 schools of the United States, but he reveals an unfortunate reticence to admit that many other nations generate better overall policies, including those pertinent to the public schools.   

 

Chalberg and many other Americans would do well to read Amanda Ripley’s insightful, The Smartest Kids in the World (and How They Got That Way) (2013), which provides a lively summative account of facts available for many years now regarding the superiority of East Asian educational systems and others across the international landscape.  

 

After reviewing the superiority of systems in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, and Shanghai (China), Ripley ultimately follows three American exchange students to the high-performing nations of Finland and, South Korea, and to Poland, whose students have been on a steady academic ascent in the course of the last twenty years.

 

Ripley cites several factors that abet elevated academic performance of students in these three nations.  These nations all have rigorous national curricula, superbly trained teachers, a lack of emphasis on sports, parents who are engaged in the academic lives of their children rather than PTA-type activities and athletic boosterism, and students who as a matter of internalized ethic know that perseverance and diligence are more important than natural intelligence or ability.  Nations and geo-political entities such as Finland , South Korea, Taiwan, Shanghai (China), Japan, and Singapore feature whole-class instruction, grade by grade coherence of curriculum, class sizes that are large by the standards of the school systems of the United States, and an assumption that all students can succeed.  Immigrant populations and economically impoverished populations of these nations do well, because the systems are designed to serve all students in uniformly excellent schools, each institution staffed by well-paid and high-status teachers who have gained certification in highly selective teacher-training programs.

 

Students of these nations regularly far exceed the performance of students in the United States on the PISA (Program of International Student Assessment), an exam largely designed by the physicist and educator Andreas Schleicher, a German by birth who lives in Paris, where the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the entity that sponsors PISA) is located.  The PISA exam requires a great deal of factual knowledge, with an emphasis on application and critical analysis.  In placing a great deal of importance on critical analysis and creative application, Schleicher of his own convictions constructed an assessment that answers the typical criticism of those who oppose standardized tests and are quick to offer excuses for the abysmal performance of students in the United States.

 

Our educational dilemma in the United States is traceable to the lamentable postulations of William Heard Kilpatrick, who at Teachers College of Columbia University from the 1920s perpetrated the anti-knowledge rhetoric that has ruined generations of teachers, victims of the erroneous expostulations of education professors.  Kilpatrick himself was under the influence of 19^th century Romanticism, with its unscientific but firm faith in the potential of the unfettered individual to live well if unmarred by the strictures of society.

 

Thus do we in the United States cling to a putatively “progressive” philosophy of education that has had decisively unprogressive consequences.  Those in our education establishment and reform camps alike emphasize individualization or student and teacher generated curriculum based on personal interest, rather than on the commonly provided knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education that has moved Finland, South Korea, Poland and a bevy of other nations far ahead of students the United States on such objective measures as the PISA exam.

 

We in the United States should take our cue from Meiji japan (1868-1912) and from Taiwan during the latter’s remarkable economic ascent of the 1965-2000 era.  These geopolitical forces each surveyed the world for the best available approaches to governmental policy, catalyzing unprecedented advances in health and education.  Were we in the United States to do that, we could make everyone, including the American exceptionalists, happy by designing a system of K-12 public education that even students, families, and the general public in Finland, South Korea, Shanghai, Taiwan, and Singapore would view with awe.