Has anyone here had a positive educational experience?
The article brings up the USA and china and although I had to supplement my usa education (we used the same textbook for 4 years in my elementary school) and saw that my cousins in china were learning calculus while my class was still on extremely basic algebra, I never envied them their Chinese education steeped in rote memorization.
My impression is other countries might test better but they have their own problems. My cousins in China had the curiosity beaten out of them and had no time to really understand what they were studying or pursue what really interested them. The cutthroat testing environment really harmed them psychologically as well. I consider myself really lucky. The first rule of education should be "do no harm" and often that just means being more hands off.
Many of my friends learn better on their own and at least the USA lets smart kids do that more than many other countries do.
I have a bias in that I tend to think most problems can be solved by technology. Maybe this whole conversation is on a problem fast becoming obsolete due to the great equalizer: the Internet. That's my hope, anyway. (btw the best open courseware stuff comes out of USA universities.)
The article brings up the USA and china and although I had to supplement my usa education (we used the same textbook for 4 years in my elementary school) and saw that my cousins in china were learning calculus while my class was still on extremely basic algebra, I never envied them their Chinese education steeped in rote memorization.
My impression is other countries might test better but they have their own problems. My cousins in China had the curiosity beaten out of them and had no time to really understand what they were studying or pursue what really interested them. The cutthroat testing environment really harmed them psychologically as well. I consider myself really lucky. The first rule of education should be "do no harm" and often that just means being more hands off.
Many of my friends learn better on their own and at least the USA lets smart kids do that more than many other countries do.
I have a bias in that I tend to think most problems can be solved by technology. Maybe this whole conversation is on a problem fast becoming obsolete due to the great equalizer: the Internet. That's my hope, anyway. (btw the best open courseware stuff comes out of USA universities.)