Do Americans really care about the quality of their
children's education? Given the fact that almost half of them don't believe in
evolution, it's probably a stupid question. But for all the talk of improving
K-12 education, new statistics show we are not moving forward. Because we're
not even in the top 15 countries in educational quality, perhaps we've decided
to just give up.
In the most recent test scores only 38% of high school
seniors were proficient in reading. Only 26% of high school seniors were
proficient in math.
The country that seems to scare our citizens the most is
China. In China you have to know calculus before you can attend college. Korea
has the largest, by far, percentage of the population that are college
graduates. Both of these countries don't allow parents to say "he's just
not able to understand math."
However, in New York State parents were pulling their
children out of examinations because they felt their offspring might not test
well on the common core.
I taught at a California State University where some of the
sociology majors read at a sixth-grade level. They could graduate from the
University without really taking a math class. One of the classes they were
allowed to substitute for math was entitled Advertising.
I've spent the last few years in retirement helping Chinese
graduate students learn the nuances of the English language. They in turn
taught me Chinese. One of them had the highest GPA in the school of Public
Health at UCLA. Another graduated with a PhD in pharmacology and is working for
America's most famous consulting firm.
The secret to their success is that they worked incredibly
hard. Their parents never made excuses for them. They were forced to compete in
school since first grade.
If you think that sounds terrible, then get ready to live in
a second rate country. Hard work is what produces great students and leaders.
Not having their mommy say "he just doesn't have the mind for math."
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