Fixing Education

[Glacier]

It's a common refrain that we have the best education in the world, but others say education is going down the tubes. Where ever the truth lies, it does seem clear to me that the North American brand of education lags behind other places in the world, and from today's report, BC severely lags behind the rest of Canada. Why this is the case (or so it seems), I do not know.

Is the lack of money the problem? According to John Stossel, it's not. What are you thoughts on this video?

Today's report highlights another trend - that boys continue to fall further and further behind girls academically. (Or would that be girls continue to excel further and further ahead of boys?) Why is this the case? For the first time grade 8 girls now outperform boys in Science.

In Canada, Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta have the best Math scores year after year. Why is this? What can be done in BC to bring us up? As much as we like to bash Quebec, but they school the rest of the country in Math. Similarly, Alberta schools the rest of the country in Science. We live in a global community, aren't the educators looking at other jurisdictions to improve the system? It appears from today's report that they aren't.

What do you think should be done to improve education? Does anything need to be done?

[NAB]

Capitalism is still the best system we've got
By Gwyn Morgan, Calgary Herald, November 19, 2011

My past week began with a speech at a major western Canadian university, followed by business meetings in Montreal, where I walked past an Occupy protest encampment. Meanwhile, the Greek disease threatened to spread from Athens to Rome, bringing economic Armageddon to the entire eurozone. It struck me that these seemingly disconnected events are intrinsically related. Here's how.

At the invitation of the university president, I spoke to the 158-member general faculties council; a group that includes vice-presidents, deans, professors and representatives of the students' union.

My theme was two-fold. First, undergraduate teaching quality is dismal; an inevitable result of a systemic misalignment wherein professor recruitment, tenure and compensation decisions are dominated by research credentials rather than teaching performance. The recent Report on Business university report found that many of the 6,000 students surveyed said their worst academic experience was a poor professor.

Second, universities are failing to allocate precious taxpayer resources to faculties that graduate students with the knowledge and skills needed by our country. For example, education faculties continue to churn out large numbers of teachers, even as schools close due to lower birth rates, driving the unemployment rate for graduates to 66 per cent. Yet, large numbers of academically qualified applicants are turned away from medical schools due to lack of capacity, while millions of Canadians can't find a family doctor.

My critique of teaching quality was met with calm denial, but the call for re-allocation of resources to programs in demand generated real indignation. In response to statistics showing arts graduates often end up in "low-skill level jobs," I was told "there's more to getting an education than turning out workers for corporations," as if my advocacy of university programs focused where the jobs are was some sort of a capitalist plot.

A few days and a plane ride later, I walked by Montreal's expansive Victoria Square, which has been taken over by Occupy protesters. Police kept a watchful eye as a potentially volatile anti-capitalist/ anti-G20 rally progressed. Later, TV reports carried protester interviews, including a McGill University philosophy graduate who blamed the "system" for her inability to find a job. Another protester railed against the "capitalist predators" driving the poor Greeks into bankruptcy. Both called on governments to fix things by "changing the system." Well, governments have indeed changed the system, with disastrous consequences.

Greece has built a bloated, overpaid, underworked public service. It's a universal truth that bigger government means more business-stifling red tape and regulation. And more corruption. Unless palms of public servants are "Greece'd," it can take years to start a new business. This has not only crippled private-sector job creation, but has resulted in countless unregistered businesses that pay no taxes. Eurozone leaders decided to pour billions into this dysfunctional state. Now, like a father who has diminished his fortune supporting a son's ever more profligate ways, the entire eurozone's financial stability is crumbling.

But the Greek tragedy is only a symptom of the lethal delusion shared by Europe and the United States; the belief governments are able to counter the forces of economic reality by simply pouring in borrowed cash. And, like an alcoholic with a huge hangover, they believe they can recover from their debt addiction by glugging more hair of the dog. But every euro and every dollar of government debt must be borrowed from another person or another country. And now, for the first time in modern history, the sovereign debt ratings of several large western developed countries teeter on the edge of an abyss.

Big-spending governments are collapsing under a mountain of debt. The aftermath will be a decades-long economic stagnation, ravaged social programs and civil unrest. Yet, the key to harnessing the natural potential of people to create prosperity was stated succinctly more than two centuries ago in a lecture by Adam Smith, whose epic work, The Wealth of Nations, stands as the timeless foundation for economic freedom and prudent government. Smith said, "Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of affluence but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable system of justice."

History clearly shows that free-market capitalism is the only system in the history of the world that has ever created prosperity. But you'd have a hard time finding that historical fact mentioned in any of our academic ivory towers. No wonder our young students believe bigger government is the answer to every problem.

[Homeownertoo]

As usual, another excellent piece by one of corporate Canada's best thinkers.

There are few mysteries as to what it takes to improve education. Amy Chua may not be correct in all particulars, but her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother goes far toward explaining what can and needs to be done, but probably won't.

Unfortunately, our faculties of education are far more focused on churning out clones of the 'social justice' model to implement the same throughout the educational system. The same attitudes clearly predominate at the "major western Canadian university" where Gwyn Morgan spoke, and probably at most others as well. As such, they offer no hope for improvements because there is no willingness to even consider the current model as flawed and inferior to other models.

Here's one anecdote I find rather revealing. My brother-in-law is a teacher (30+ years) in North Van, in a school with a significant number of Asian students. It seems the Asian students do not as a rule do well at group projects, where the effort and results are shared. The Asian (South Korean, to be specific) students apparently consider it cheating to "share" other students' work. My brother-in-law interprets this as an example of how our system is better because it encourages co-operative effort. An article I recently read on this topic found, however, that students who follow the co-operative model learn more poorly because the many end up relying on the efforts of the few, who do all the learning. Seems in real life the Korean model works better, but is, in our brave new educational system, considered inferior.

[Glacier]

From my own education experience, I would say you're spot on. The downside to group projects is that you never develop your weak points. The keeners do most of the thinking and learning while the underachievers ride on their coattails. If there are enough smart kids in the group the slackers can get high enough marks on group projects to make up for poor exam results. Even if you don't make it through, you'll probably pass anyway because failure is believed to cause low self-esteem, thanks to the failed philosophy of Deweyism.

Another other issue facing us today is the shortage of workers in the blue collar trades at the same that we continue to overemphasize formal education. As Mike Rowe says, "we're lending money we don't have to kids who can't pay it back so they can educate themselves for jobs that no longer exist."