The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.
--- Martin Luther King Jr.
United States values education. It was said back in the days when we open the West, the first three public buildings created for a town are church, town sheriff office and school. To this day, while the media dwell on the fact that United States have fallen to the middle of the pack among OECD countries, like this PISA 2015 result, things look very differently if we break up the scores by race. We found that Whites In the United States score better than most scores of other OECD countries that are mostly white, Asians in the United States do quite well against Asians in other OECD Asian countries like Korea and Japan. What is more, Hispanic Americans did better than the Hispanics in their native countries like Argentina and Mexico. African Americans did better than the only African country that participated, Tunisia. What we failed to do is to elevate the scores of Hispanics Americans and African Americans to the level of White and Asian Americans. In fact, the gap has stayed pretty much the same despite decades of experimentation and billions of resources poured in to try to solve the problem. As the whites and Asians share of the population declined, the combined scores of the United States declined compared to other countries.
A particular strength of the United States in this area mirrors the same American strength in general. America values individual initiative. In the American system, kids from a very young age are encouraged to make their own decisions. The end results speak for themselves. The American Universities are among the best in the world.. Research is an area where independent thinking is highly valued. Often times, the discovery is made when the data does not fit the previously orthodox theories. It requires someone with a independent streak to look at them in a fresh and new way.
Unfortunately, this individualistic value only works for a small subset of the population that is self driven and talented. The majority of population works a different way. Decades of peace and prosperity have stripped many Americans of our drive. Many are not even willing to do the basics like working for a living and not committing crimes. The hollowing out of the American manufacturing sector was often blamed on the greedy corporations and China, but in fact it has as much to do with the decline of American drive and work ethic as well as the rise of China.
The Chinese culture also value education. Their best universities are catching up to the Western levels. Like other Asian countries, the Chinese place a higher emphasis on learning knowledge. Developing a student that will only be able to pursue the answer if someone else pose a question and tells him that there is an answer. These students are less inclined to ask the questions when there is no assurance that there is an answer to be found. At the same time, all this drive to get into the best universities by the tiger moms and dads produce kids that work well under pressure and tight deadlines. They are model workers. The rise of the Chinese industries is in no small part due to the strength of the Chinese workers. Innovation in their work place have lead to a number of world first like 3D printed houses and innovation in ship building.
While the Chinese universities across the board have not not yet reach the level of the United States, they have come a long ways from even a decade ago. They have also produced many brilliant individuals like Ma Weiming. The rise of China, across a broad array of areas, would not have been possible without people like these. These people have acquired individual initiative and created the array of technologies and companies that not only allow the Chinese to catch up to the West, but also have allowed the Chinese to be at the forefront of technologies.
China is an incredible learning machine. In time, I have faith that they will continue to explore and improve their education system to produce better students. I am less sanguine about the future of education for the United States. In our attempt to equalize the results of different racial groups, we have introduced a number of measures like common core and changing the SAT standards. The result is the degradation of education for the good students. Since the good students are the only ones that matter to the future of our economy, this is something we need to fix.
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