<p>Seriously? just because a portion of the population ends up going to public urban city highschools and drops out, fails at life etc. doesnt mean the ENTIRE NATION is doing bad at all...</p>
<p>why do we let these kids represent the population?</p>
<p>America's math and science behind the rest of the world? is that really serious?</p>
<p>most people would agree that america has the best highschools and best colleges. what other country has HADES and all the NY/east coast/LA prep schools? england? they have eton and....uh....??</p>
<p>And when it comes to colleges, no other country has such a wide range of elite schools-ivy league, top privates, top publics, top LACS...</p>
<p>internationals still make up a very small % of most top schools. I just dont get why Obama etc. say taht America's schools are falling behind when in fact, america's schools are better than ever.</p>
<p>Also, the reson im posting this is because my mom always rants about it. She went to school in china and their system pales in comparison to ours she says. Schools in china are looking at schools in america to try to see what they are doing, in attempt to copy american style.</p>
<p>Possibly a larger number of students are taking to Math/Science outside the US and doing very well on it. No one denies that the US has the best higher education system.</p>
<p>Just because you are so astonishinly ignorant that the only English school you’ve heard of is Eton, doesn’t mean that everybody else agrees with you.</p>
<p>debarghya9, there are starting to be rumblings about the American higher education system too. If you look at recent books like ‘Academically Adrift’, people are starting to wonder if they really stack up academically anymore in terms of undergrad education (as opposed to socially/financially). It’s not a crisis yet, but people are starting to mutter.</p>
<p>Maybe the US does have some of the best high schools in the world (I don’t know enough to say if it does or not), but when assessing an entire country, you have to take everyone into account, including the inner city kids; a country is only as good as it treats the least of its citizens. Lucky for the US, the measurements go for all students, not just the least. Still, having the best 10 or so high schools and the worst 1000 (amongst developed nations) doesn’t bode well.</p>
<p>Yes, the US is behind in mathematics and science among developed nations. On the one hand, you might expect Japan, South Korea, China, and Finland to be ahead; on the other… Estonia? Czech Republic? The US needs to build its education system from the bottom up. What percentage of students go to one of the few private boarding schools you mentioned? Hardly any, compared to inner city schools.</p>
<p>If your mother went to school in China, that was, what, 20 years ago? Something like that? China has been making great strides since then. Of course, their system may be worse in many aspects, but they’re better at teaching math and science.</p>
<p>I’m not going to argue about colleges and universities; just say that a lot of the best students in US colleges come from abroad.</p>
<p>^Right and China is one country that has * truly * improved much. </p>
<p>keepittoyourself, I am aware of that. I also think that OP is being dismissive of the strengths of the education systems of other nations. Still, because a) the US higher education system is the wealthiest b) the brightest from around the world still flock to the US; I think it’s fair to say that US has the world’s best higher education system now.</p>
<p>^ Broadly agree, but tt’s easy to exaggerate the extent to which “brightest from around the world still flock to the US”: the UK and Australia have tonnes of foreign students, and the brightest from Francophone countries go to France.</p>
<p>The US is up there though, no doubt about it.</p>
<p>Yes i know but a few of my cousins go to school in shanghai and they do not like the strictness of it…you are somewhat pigeonholed after HS …</p>
<p>Also, i know there are other elite UK boarding schools but i know eton because i raced them in crew and they are amazing at that. Also, most of the eton 8 went to row at harvard…</p>
<p>lol are you serious?! Our education system SUCKS! It really doesn’t matter how far they go, as to what they learn. And let me tell you we do NOT even COME CLOSE to learning as much as other countires do!</p>
<p>Primary and Secondary education are way behind other nations like Finland, Singapore, Japan, Korea, etc. However the post-secondary education in the US is untouchable.</p>
<p>As a public school student in Alabama, I think that you are speaking from a very privileged, narrow point of view. My teachers have always been mediocre, and before I moved to a prep school this semester, I have never had a teacher with a masters degree. Most of them just had teaching credentials. You have to factor in the southeast/northwest when you consider those stats. You’re right, the best schools in America are obviously fantastic, but as a whole, the system is terrible. Goddamn the teacher’s unions that are out for themselves and hang the students out to dry.</p>
<p>Because…because it doesn’t. The United States’ students as a whole score around the average of post-industrial nations at mathematics and reading, behind much of East Asia and tracts of Western Europe and the English-speaking world. While the post-secondary education system in the US is one of the (if not the) best in the world, its public school system leaves something (or many somethings) to be desired. Pearson, the group behind the oft-cited study that places the United States at 17th among the 40 surveyed countries, notes that there is no singular solution to the problem of education, no silver bullet to solve the deep problems in education that are pervasive in the US. </p>
<p>To some degree, I think the problem in the US is anti-intellectualism. We see it and feel it every day, in media and in reality. Think of it this way: Around the time of presidential elections, what do you see politicians do? They roll up their shirt sleeves, strip off their ties, and become the guy “you want to have a beer with”. People don’t want to vote for someone smarter than them; people want to vote for someone they like. The very fact that those two ideas are cast as opposites is telling of a strong anti-intellectual bent in the collective American psyche.</p>
<p>It doesn’t help, either, that teachers seem to be under-appreciated in American culture. I know the classic rhetoric in public policy is that teachers are the gateway to better education, but let’s move beyond that. Pearson states that one of the keys to improving education is to respect teachers, but what does that mean? Pearson asserts that teachers ought to be treated like the professionals that they often are. When I think of professionals and skilled workers and laborers, though, it appears that teachers have more in common with the latter than with the former: Teachers are often unionized, and productivity (ie., classroom results) is often linked with time spent in the classroom (not unlike time spent on an assembly line!), not to mention the classic "worker-management) rivalry that seems to come to mind when one thinks of teachers’ collective bargaining and striking and administrators’ victimization of teachers. More than half of public school teachers have masters degrees, and for teachers to be treated on par with other professionals (if not doctors and lawyers, then at least nurses and engineers) and for teachers to demand to be treated as such would be a tremendous step in the right direction. Of course, there is the question of pay, but let’s look at Finland, the highest-scoring country in the Pearson survey: Teachers there make an average of 87% of the national average salary, while American teachers earn (a still, in my mind, unacceptable) 92% of their respective national average. Therefore, even though teachers are being underpaid for their level of education and importance, there is something more than money at stake in the classroom. Earning degrees in something more useful than education couldn’t hurt teachers, either.</p>
<p>I would submit that this line of non-empirical reasoning, anecdotal argument, and low standard of grammar are fabulous examples of the failure of the American educational system.</p>
<p>Also, where is this mythical dropping of standards “like panties”? In admitting an Etonian crewbie, a school can expect 1) sporting excellence 2) academic excellence (I mean, the kid who failed out of my school would’ve been valedictorian at the establishment down the road) 3) rich parents from prestigious families who will pay full freight. Nothing’s sagging.</p>
<p>I am not Chinese, so I do not know to compare education in China and the US.
I am attending a public high school in Louisiana. It is a disorganized school, since it is cobsidered as a part of a school system, the superibtebdent is trying to do the same thing to all schools. He doesn’t realize that he is making chaos in schools.
Secondly, they keeps on firing licensed teachers and replace them with TeachForAmerica teachers. They are just undrwent a month training and without a masters degree. They do not have ability to control kids and the class is super loud.
Students does not know how to act appropriately, as many are from poverty and their parents dont care about them. They go to school and causing trouble. They would run up to anybody and curse them out! I jusy got cursed at by a random person last week.
I just realized that I am working with oher students that are doing drugs, guns, gangs outside the school. Several of my classmates were arrested days ago for drug distribution, murder, and/or attacking police.
So…whats going to happen next?</p>
<p>also, it is so ashamed that in my HONORS precalculus class, the teacher takes an Hour to teach 5 slides with only10-20 words on each page because the stidents are acting up, dont care, causibg disruption, doesnt know to shut up, hitring people, curse the teacher out, doesnt sit still, ETC.</p>
<p>What do you mean “why do people deny that the US has the best education system in the world?”</p>
<p>Because it doesn’t. If we look at it purely from that standpoint of higher education, the view is different. Usually when people look at this issue though, they’re referring mainly to primary education…elementary and high school. American students on the whole are held to much lower standards than many other countries that consistently outperform us on standardized tests. We move at a much slower pace, and we teach subjects late in high school that many countries teach much earlier.</p>
<p>I think one of the failings of the primary sector of the American education system is the way we go about getting our teachers. America is basically the only country in the world where one can actually major in “education.” Most countries with superior primary education systems recruit their teachers. People that are at the tops of their fields are recruited to become teachers, and are given a course on how to teach. Many teachers in America are not really all that knowledgeable about the fields that they are teaching. They have a basic cursory knowledge of the specific material that they are teaching…but not a comprehensive knowledge of the entire field. </p>
<p>The whole “America #1!!!” mindset causes a lot of people to really just be blind to facts like this. We’re told so frequently that this is the greatest country in the world, in every conceivable way…that we just take it for what it is, and don’t really question it. I love this country, but there are some things that we could certainly be doing a hell of a lot better.</p>
<p>1) “Fail at life” in the OP is really…augh. Not going to touch it.</p>
<p>2) I think you illustrate where America’s education system fails pretty well. It’s the inequality of it. (And the fact it’s producing people so unaware they’d assert the U.S. has the world’s best education system). The inequality is a huge failure.</p>
<p>3) You can praise higher education in the U.S., but look at the cost. Is it worth it, or is it creating even more inequality?</p>