54
Interlake?
Well, patent numbers are an utterly stupid measure of creativity, because patent systems are national in application and very different in nature, philosophy and usefulness.
Even using such a stupid measure, I don’t see that USA is number 1:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Intellectual_Property_Indicators
Sorry @MotherOfDragons, but you hardly know enough to make such a rude comment:
It is clear that, although learning any language is a pain in the butt, English is much easier for most people for many reasons. And accessibility includes prevalence as a second language across the world.
Parent from the East. My son goes to international school {IB curriculum} and his learning experience is very different from my local experience. My school experience might explain why our students scored high. We were trained to write exams at age of 6 ie grade one. We got tests in each subjects every month and two mid terms and 2 finals a year. We are well trained in doing a lot of questions in a set time. We did 20 years of past paper before we did the real public exam. Some of the school time were allocated to do MCQ of various aptitude test when we were in middle school. Very often when I glanced through my exam paper, I have seen at least two- third of the questions before. We were exam machine. When we practiced exam past paper, we set the exact time and wrote the answer as fast as possible. Remember, exam involve both knowledge and speed. My son definitely lacks this training. He wrote his first exam in Grade 9. He did not go through all past paper…
Here is another theory of why US students do poorly on tests.
See:
http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/
However, …
This study attempts to control for differences in social class distributions, not differences in GNP. It selected BH (Books in the Home) as “the most appropriate of the available measures for analyzing test score differences by students’ social class”.
This isn’t an issue that I follow as closely as we probably all should … in part because I find it hard to filter out the political bias that seems to color so many discussions in the popular media. I don’t get the impression that too many members of Congress, or talking heads, are able to look at the issue dispassionately and give the public an honest appraisal of where we stand as a country, and what are our realistic options are for improvements.
I personally think that poor education in America is due to the American students’ perspective in academics.
(I am a high school student who went to a public school in South Korea and America and I am writing this because I also agree that poor education in America is a huge problem)
As proven by Milgram and Asche Experiments (conformity experiments; I don’t have time writing about this so you would have to search this), most of humans conform when their opinion is different from the masses’. Since so many American students think education is not important throughout life, it is “hard” for many students to feel passionate about education.
I, myself, have been taught in 2 different countries (US and South Korea)
I am South Korean and went to a public school in South Korea until I moved to United States.
Most of the South Korean students value academics (so much so that almost all students who are able to afford private education go to ELITE or other private academic institutions to get more education until 12 at night)
I would say my school here in US has a completely different environment compared to South Korean schools.
Many students here already gave up on striving for the best in academics. Most American students don’t try to understand why they got a D on an exam while the student next to them got an A. Unless teachers or the school itself teach how important academics really are and why students should strive for best grades, poor education of American students will continue.
The poor education in America is mostly due to the student’s perspective in academics (although I also admit that uneven wealth distribution accounts a huge root of this problem) and changing the influence of the masses(of students) are crucial to solve this problem.
“but you hardly know enough to make such a rude comment:”
I’m deeply amused that you consider that a “rude” comment. (makes snorting noise)
Actually, while learning the English alphabet is much easier than learning characters in East Asian languages, most linguists I’ve talked with and read have cited English as one of the hardest languages to learn from a grammatical and pronunciation/phonics standpoint.
There’s far too many exceptions to general rules which trip up not only immigrants and foreign learners, but also native-born folks in nations where English is the/one of the official languages. A large part of that is due to the English language haphazardly adopting elements from Germanic and Romantic French/Latin languages from the European medieval period onwards.
As for the prevalence of English as a second language across the world, a large part of that is due to historical factors such as the rise of the British Empire from the 18th century and the rise of the US as an international commercial and political/military power in the late 19th and early-mid 20th centuries. Not because English is necessarily easier for most people to learn.
If the Spanish, Dutch, or the French had defeated the British in critical battles during the 16th-18th centuries, it’s likely the prevalent second language internationally would have been one of those rather than English.
Come to think of it, if Zheng He’s overseas voyage in the early Ming era hadn’t stopped in East Africa, but had continued into late medieval/early renaissance Europe with their political disunities/wars, the second language internationally may have ended up being some variant of Chinese rather than English.
The opacity of “Holistic Admissions” at Harvard again comes under attack this week.
If you’ve read The Chosen by Jerome Karabel, holistic admissions is no doubt anti-intellectual at its core. It was started by Harvard in the 1920s as a way to keep the “greasy grinds” aka poor smart Jewish kids who excelled in the SAT to dominate admissions. Preferences were given to athletic kids because Jews tend to be small in size and did not excel in sports. It’s also a way to disguise legacy preferences. These days holistic admissions also serves as a disguise in promoting liberal causes. It’s time for elite schools to stop hiding behind this opaque admission process that runs our kids ragged doing meaningless ECs instead of focusing on academics. Come right out and admit that racial diversity is their biggest concern, then go ahead and set a hard quota for each group corresponding to their % representation in the general population, i.e.
12% blacks
16% Hispanics
2% Native Americans
5% Asians
2% Jews
63% non-Jewish, non-Hispanic whites
Mixed race people can pick a preferred race. Make it clear that each group is competing against its own subgroup, then admit the top kids academically in each subgroup until the quota is met. It’s time to stop this holistic admissions charade. Academic institutions should admit based on academic ability, not athletic/musical ability or involvement in liberal causes.
Chinese and other tonal languages are exceedingly hard for people who did not grow up with tonal languages. Given the tones and the writing, as I understand it, Chinese is the only language that the US state department teaches for 2 years prior to deployment.
Maybe I can add to your deep amusement by calling this a rude comment as well. I notice that you don’t seem inclined to defend your actual claim.
@cmsjmt, elite colleges are not running the kids ragged. The kids are choosing to be ragged, often under extreme and misguided pressure from their parents, and from coaches who want to win and don’t care that they are just kids.
These are private colleges. They can select the students they like to create the campus experience they want to offer, and considering how highly desired they continue to be, I’d say they are doing a pretty good job of it. They aren’t looking for a class entirely composed of scholars. They are looking for leaders in their fields, whatever that may be. Personally I wish they would care more about academics and less about athletics, but overall my daughter has enjoyed the diversity. There are many fine schools which admit on academics alone–if that’s what you want, no one is preventing you from applying to them.
@cmsjmt, The lawsuit you cited gives the same old argument of the “SAT penalty” for Asians. Guess what, most of them are STEM majors and there is an “SAT penalty” for STEM majors. " At California Institute of Technology, for instance, about 40% of undergraduates are Asian-American, about twice that at Harvard." Of course. That’s because at California Institute of Technology, most of the students are STEM majors and the Asian applicants are very disproportionately focused on STEM. At Harvard, they also want English majors, classics majors, visual and environmental studies majors, etc. This has been discussed on other threads and isn’t really on the topic of this thread.
I might add, for kids at the upper end of achievement, the SAT is a very poor measure of ability anyhow. It’s kind of like doing your graduate school admissions based on how many homeworks you forgot to turn in in 9th grade.
[QUOTE=""]
12% blacks 16% Hispanics 2% Native Americans 5% Asians 2% Jews 63% non-Jewish, non-Hispanic whites<<<
[/QUOTE]
Who from the above listing is both way over-represented and cannot seemingly stop complaining about discrimination?
I’d hate to be a teacher in this setup -
“… He was given a pre-calculus class with 38 seniors at H.D. Woodson High School. When he discovered that half of them could not handle even second-grade problems, he sought out the teachers who had awarded the passing grades of D in Algebra II …”
“… “Huh!” Rossiter quoted the teacher as saying. “That boy can’t add two plus two and doesn’t care! What’s he doing in pre-calculus? Yes of course I passed him — that’s a gentleman’s D. …”
@cmsjmt, so according to you Jews are now a race and should be part of racial quotas? How are you going to determine who is Jewish and who is not? Probably by asking them to label their Common Apps with a yellow star?
Most definitely the non-Jewish, non-Hispanic whites.