Life In 19x19

I read a newspaper article about these test results and there was an interesting point made that hasn't been discussed. In the USA the state of Massachusetts submitted its scores independently of the country-wide scores and placed much higher than many of the higher-scoring countries. In reading, Mass. 15 year-olds ranked fourth compared to all countries, 6th in science and 10th in math. Florida also submitted its scores separately and did much worse. So it seems that in the USA, some educational systems are performing very well while others are performing badly. In the USA there is a general perception that students' failure to do well is the teachers' fault. However, studies have shown that around two-thirds of educational results are due to outside-of-school factors such as poverty, lack of parental support for learning, and the general societal attitude toward education.

Returning to the original post for this thread, it is interesting that the great go-playing countries tend to have drill-based education systems. One might infer from this that drill and memorization are the most effective way to learn go. However, it might also be the case that go, being outside the official educational system and therefore not subject to the same pressures as formal school, offers a way for people (including young people) to be free of the rigid drill regimen and just enjoy playing something. The fact that a large number of Japanese youths are addicted to video games might be due to the same factors. Some noteworthy pros such as Ishikura Noboru 9p were on a career fast-track but quit to play go because professional go is a meritocracy rather than dependent on what school you went to and what social circles you belong to. So the oriental education pattern might be driving young people to play go and once they get hooked more of them want to be pros.

gowan wrote:I read a newspaper article about these test results and there was an interesting point made that hasn't been discussed. In the USA the state of Massachusetts submitted its scores independently of the country-wide scores and placed much higher than many of the higher-scoring countries.

Yes. And this should be noted in the context of comparing to Shanghai rather than rural China, for which we don't yet have data. But I guess that might be available in 2015.

I've been reading the Pisa reports and they are fascinating. Consider this comment:

"It seems that the U.S. students have particular strengths in cognitively less-demanding
mathematical skills and abilities, such as extracting single values from diagrams or handling well-structured formulae.
And they have particular weaknesses in demanding skills and abilities, such as taking real world situations seriously,
transferring them into mathematical terms and interpreting mathematical aspects in real world problems. These are
tasks where the well-known superficial classroom strategy “Don’t care about the context, just extract the numbers from
the text and do some obvious operations” is bound to fail. This strategy is popular all over the world and frequently
helps pupils and students to survive in school mathematics and to pass examinations. However, in a typical PISA
mathematical literacy task, the students have to use the mathematics they have learned in a well-founded manner."

And this one:

"At the system level, the average number of hours that students spend on homework or other study tends
to be unrelated to overall performance (OECD 2013d, Table IV.1.2)."

So I'm not certain that speculations regarding more drilling being the answer are supported by the Pisa findings, but I guess it depends on what is meant by drilling. In general, there are a lot factors to be considered. As a U.S. citizen, my feeling is that primary and secondary school teachers don't get as much respect in the U.S. as in some European or Asian countries, so we attract fewer people who are enthusiastic about teaching at those levels. There are also large swaths of both cities and rural areas where students see no hope. They just don't view educational success as a way out of anything, so they just give up or pursue pipe dreams.

This article on Japan's PISA results appeared in Yomiuri's English language edition this morning. The delicate phasing on Japan's 'departure from cram-free education' is interesting I think. Japan had earlier tried to ease the burden on students and counter the perception on students' part that J education was increasingly irrelevant. This may or may not have been working as intended but it was clearly accompanied by lower standardized scores. So back to cramming. There is also a move afoot here to go back to Saturday classes in public schools, which were cut back about twenty years ago.

Note at the bottom of the article that students do not believe that what they are learning is interesting or relevant in terms of future jobs.

A comparison chart from The Economist on Facebook, Dec 3, 2013:

skydyr wrote:One thing about these tests that is often glossed over in the media is that student achievement across all countries and testing areas is closely correlated with poverty and the general economic stability of the students being tested.

I agree, comparing Hong Kong and Shanghai is not truly representative of China as a whole, since Chinese cities are very affluent(compared to American cities), however I think it is fair to say their affluent kids are expected to study more than our affluent kids any way. I think one thing to note is that the Chinese education system has other problems, for example instead of a testing system they have a portfolio system, which is easily corruptible. The NY times ran an article about how many of the brightest students portfolios get switched with children from rich and powerful families. This may be the reason advanced education in the US is considered superior to the Chinese system, though they generally look down on our early education. Watch out for the Tiger Mom.

SmoothOper wrote:

skydyr wrote:One thing about these tests that is often glossed over in the media is that student achievement across all countries and testing areas is closely correlated with poverty and the general economic stability of the students being tested.

I agree, comparing Hong Kong and Shanghai is not truly representative of China as a whole, since Chinese cities are very affluent(compared to American cities), however I think it is fair to say their affluent kids are expected to study more than our affluent kids any way. I think one thing to note is that the Chinese education system has other problems, for example instead of a testing system they have a portfolio system, which is easily corruptible. The NY times ran an article about how many of the brightest students portfolios get switched with children from rich and powerful families. This may be the reason advanced education in the US is considered superior to the Chinese system, though they generally look down on our early education. Watch out for the Tiger Mom.

Sure, because money won't get you admission into an American University/College.


Even when you totally anonymise the system (like Ireland where universities never know who they are accepting into undergraduate courses) the money finds another way, i.e. better schools = better results = more likely to get into the anonymous system that relies totally on results. The poor intelligent kid going to the poorly functioning school is only going to get into the most competitive courses (medicine, law etc) if they have immense self-discipline and an ability to self-teach far exceeding that of the vast majority of people. The richer kids will get every possible help they can to make this easier to do (though still damned difficult to be fair).