<p>“I’d think certain aspects of the SAT just come with long-term, nurturing (read: rich), environments.” - challenged.</p>
<p>That is not a knock against the SAT as “long-term nurturing environment[s]” are a highly important aspect of education.</p>
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<p>The situations you mentioned are all for kids above 18.The kids are no longer kids, they are adults. Of course it is up to adults to decide what they do for themselves. I was just wondering if when the kids are truly kids (K-12) whether parents should have a responsibility to raise them. (Raising includes education in my view.) Any thoughts on that?</p>
<p>Finns’ tend to think this at the same way we (yes, I’m a Finn though I currently live at the States) think about our kids’ health care. If a dentist says our kid needs braces, we believe it and do as told. We believe that professionals know better than we parents do, when it comes to the matters like how to put a cast to the kid’s broken leg (and also know better if it is broken) or how to teach our kids to know difference between dative and accusative in the German grammar. </p>
<p>In Finland only thing I really did for my kids schooling was to check that they had made their homework when they were at first and second grade and at times asked about homework later. And went to parent-teacher conference twice a year. My kids didn’t have any bigger problems. Of course there would have been more involvement and working together with school, if they would have had. </p>
<p>Finland has it’s share of kids coming to school without understanding a word of Finnish or Swedish. And that is a growing number. We have schools where less than half of the kids are native speakers (and many more schools where everyone is native, blondish, Lutheran Finn.) There are of course special classes for year or two for kids who don’t speak any Finnish but they try to get kids to the normal classes after that. </p>
<p>One thing worth noting is, that when kids are choosing academic or vocational (or mix, very popular choice, that adds one more school year but you get both certificates) track, it’s not so, that better kids are ‘let to continue’ academic track and those doing worse are forced to vocational track. In fact you can get to academical track with worse grades than to most of the vocational tracks. There is only handful of academic high schools in whole country there kids need to have as high GPA than most of the hair stylist vocational track schools (and please, do not even talk about schools for vet technician or anything related to horses…) Of course many of the top students going vocational schools chose that route where you do both vocational and academic track at the same time. It is for example somewhat popular for those who want to become physicians to go to vocational school and become assistant nurse and study academic track at the same time. They feel it helps them in entrance exam to the medical school.</p>
<p>In relation to Phanatic’s post about the theme of “sisu” in Finland:
In Japan there is a very similar value called “gaman”. It means resilience or persistence.
The verb “ganbaru” is very often used in a commonly used phrase “gambatte”, the imperative form, meaning “don’t give up.” I think one of the post-tsunami support organzations has “Gambatte” in its name- very typically Japanese.
This is a very important part of Japanese culture.
The analogy here in the USA would be to say “Good Luck!” or “Take Care” or “I am sorry for you”- a very different attitude is implied LOL.</p>
<p>In Japan, there is also another interesting concept called “kata”- it means technique or method. The approach to learning how to do something is to take it step by step and and to develop a high level of proficiency before moving to the next level. For instance, in learning how to play tennis, months are spent on individual skills before a game is actually played for the first time. It involves a deferment of the gratification, a respect for true expertise, an endurance of repetition, and a pride in perfecting details.
Not the stuff of creativity or for ADD types for sure! Intrinsic is the respect for the teacher or “master” (sensei). And the desire to emulate or copy to achieve a skill.</p>
<p>Also of note in Japan is how each citizen develops a pride in his/her job and how well he does it by doing it perfectly, from the street-sweeper on, as they say. This a bit of a stereotype, but it is a value held by the culture. </p>
<p>These things are not necessarily right for all individuals, or even for a while culture. But it is quite interesting to see how cultures work, and how the educations system transmits values, and what sort of product it gets.</p>
<p>I have more to say about the Japanese educational system, the testing, Juku, Kumon, and what the actual classroom environment is like- not what you would expect!!, if anyone is interested…</p>
<p>I find the analysis of a system (here Finland) that turned itself around to be incredibly valuable.</p>
<p>I do remember feeling rather strange about something with my Ds’ schooling that changed from the way it was for me, and it may really be important to all this: when I was young, we student were expected to respect our teachers, and parents did not get involved or question them (even when they should have once in a while). Teachers were strict and authoritarian, in general. The home was where we got the love and the support and the attention; the parents were there for us in a different way.<br>
I felt that this was still true in Japan and in England when my D’s started their schooling there, but that it was reversed for them in the US, perhaps due to the PC/self-esteem movement. The teachers were very avoidant of exercising authority, correcting behavior, judging the kids work or ranking it. It was one interpretation of “no child left behind”, I guess- but it was dishonest and left the kids without strong leadership in the classroom. I felt I had to be more of the disciplinarian, the guider to good values and habits! </p>
<p>In order to expose my D’s to competition, to losing, to winning, to taking risks, to being judged worthy of moving to the next level, compared to a standard and to others, we exposed them to a variety of EC’s: soccer, ballet, Chorus, gymnastics, theatre, etc.
I feel that without this they would not have developed a sense of these important values and experienced the real world and developed resilience.
And I felt that I did not respect the teachers, unfortunately.
And not just because their ability to teach academic subjects was somewhat lacking, as well.</p>
<p>As I said in another thread, we have serious cultural issues in this country with our values. These are being reinforced at school. And education is just not that important nor are hard work and respect and resilience.</p>
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Actually, I’d say it is. These nurturing environments are all over wealthy families and almost non-existent in very low-income families–and there are exceptions, I know. Look at the SAT statistics, specifically the average scores by income. It’s apalling how much higher kids from 250k+ families score, more than a standard deviation from median income students, and even more from low-income students.</p>
<p>The worst thing is that the correlation between income and scores does not plateu at 80k, 120k, or even 160k… It keeps going till 250k, and if that were broken into more precise sections, I would not doubt the trend goes on even from there.</p>
<p>What does this mean? The American education system caters to the rich, that’s pretty damn unfortunate.</p>
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You’re right, that in the past there was much less questioning of teachers. I wish my parents had questioned the monster teacher I had in fourth grade.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, every test can be coached to. SAT is no exception. Trying to come up with a test that is resilient to coaching, in my opinion, is a fool’s pursuit. For every test designer there are hundreds if not thousands of coaches looking for pattern recognition. Unless you give the kids a problem that has not yet been solved, and then see how they approach it, there is no way you can measure someone’s innate ability from a test. (I am skeptical of the concept of innate ability anyway.)</p>
<p>Coaching will always favor the rich.</p>
<p><a href=“http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education[/url]”>http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education</a></p>
<p>Excellent point, David. Tests are always easy. In college, I used to memorize pages after pages of LA subjects and just regurgitate them in exams. Worked really well. Minimal effort, excellent grades.</p>
<p>Thats a shame.
It’s true that some teachers use tests that are easily coached or crammed for.
However a test can also be designed to elicit deeper information about the level of comprehension of the material that can be gathered from even an open book test.</p>
<p>Why was it a shame? </p>
<p>Yes, such a test can be designed, but then the level of the test will have to be insanely high. Perhaps only the top 10% would feel comfortable in such a test. Since tests are designed for the overall spectrum, such tests won’t work in K-12. They would, however, work in top graduate programs, and indeed do.</p>
<p>We get more out of something the more we put into it.
To really make earning an education worthwhile, I expect a great deal of effort to expended.
Admitting that slight effort was needed to earn excellent grades indicates that the amount learned was negligible.</p>
<p>Since tests are designed for the overall spectrum, such tests won’t work in K-12. They would, however, work in top graduate programs, and indeed do.</p>
<p>An astute observation, I wasn’t speaking of K-12 education since this is a college forum, however, I was thinking of tests used by profs at my daughters undergraduate college- which requires all graduates to write & defend a thesis. Much like grad school. ;)</p>
<p>I agree with that. But I was never interested in learning any of those subjects.</p>
<p>It is a mistake to believe that open-book tests are solely the domain of college or graduate schools. It is also a mistake to believe that open-book tests in basic subjects have to be extremely hard or complex. </p>
<p>Here is some food for thought: everybody knows the SAT test and many love to demonize it. But, do you believe that the MATH PORTION of the test would be easier if students were given the opportunity to bring math books with them to the testing site? Before answering, please remember that ETS/TCB allows graphic calculators despite the fact that it is entirely debatable if this helps or hurt the chances of a student. </p>
<p>Would bringing books help a student on a test that measures mostly reasoning abilities under strict time restrictions, and little to no regurgitation of memorized facts?</p>
<p>Books would actually hinder that said person. Unless they got the whole book memorized, like where to find all the facts, but that would mean that they have the capabilities to actually memorize the equations and stuff. I find that counter intuitive.</p>
<p>Knowing the fact that one can use the book on the test will make him complacent and not study. The test rolls around, they are fumbling to find the answer and when it looks like a potential answer, they use out of context.</p>
<p>Don’t. Math and science memorization is common in Asia.</p>
<p>Unless thetudents are the new Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan!</p>
<p>Re: open book test</p>
<p>Having an open book test encourages the test writer to include problems that are not just “plug in the formula in the book” type of problems, but where concepts may have to be adapted and applied to a specific problem.</p>
<p>Also, the “real world” in either industry work or academic research is not closed book.</p>
<p>What are success criteria we are talking about?
<p>How do we measure success in education? What is our yardstick for the comparison?</p>
<p>To me, the goal of public education is just one. To reduce income inequality while maintaining the steady upward slope of media income. Most social issues go away when income equality is reached.</p>