Posted on 09/16/2005 5:49:54 AM PDT by blackhedd
Being a tiny city-state of four million, Singapore is obsessed with nurturing every ounce of talent of every single citizen. That is why, although its fourth and eighth graders already score at the top of the Timss international math and science tests, Singapore has been introducing more innovations into schools. Its government understands that in a flattening world, where more and more jobs can go anywhere, it's not enough to just stay ahead of its neighbors. It has to stay ahead of everyone - including us.
Message to America: They are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top.
As Low-Sim Ay Nar, principal of Xinmin Secondary School, explained to me, Singapore has got rote learning down cold. No one is going to outdrill her students. What it is now focusing on is how to develop more of America's strength: getting Singaporean students and teachers to be more innovative and creative. "Numerical skills are very important," she told me, but "I am now also encouraging my students to be creative - and empowering my teachers. ... We have been loosening up and allowing people to grow their own ideas."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I worry a very great deal about our educational system. Because in a future world where we will need to compete against China, India and Brazil, numbers will no longer be on our side.
In the past, no mercantilist country could afford to hurt us too much because the US for decades has been essentially the only source of economic final demand in the world. No one else buys as much stuff as we do.
But that will not be true for much longer.
Now good ol' Tom supposes that animated, internet-based math education in Singapore and elsewhere will counteract what has always been the greatest strength of American business: the creativity of our entrepreneurs. This advantage alone means that Americans always generate the businesses with the highest value.
He's wrong. Creativity doesn't come from knowing a lot of math. It comes from growing up and living in a free culture, where risk-taking and innovative thinking are prized and promoted. No place in the world but America can be described that way.
But as I said, I worry greatly about our educational system, at all levels. I'm afraid that of all the influences on our children and our young adults, their educators are the one group with the desire and the ability to stamp out creativity and enforce intellectual conformity.
Our educators (at all levels) are among the biggest problems we face.
10-4 on that post.
I doubt many American inventors came up with their best inventions while they were mentally running through their times tables.
My son is blessed to be enrolled in a Lutheran School that EXPECTS achievement and ideas.
Our public schools are waaaay too big. We need to abolish unified districts and return to the one-room schoolhouse. The idea of thousands of kids in a really nice big solid building is too much like prison and fosters dumbing-down.
If schools had less money, they would HAVE to be more creative.
Do kids still come up with things like riding their bikes with gallon water jugs attempting to drench each other?
Does he consider the possibility that if the people in Singapore get too creative and innovative, they will decide to ditch their government? Or perhaps they will discover that they're so rich, they don't really need to work and study so hard.
That's the trouble with capitalism and freedom. It generates so much money so quickly, relaxation and decline are only a generation away.
BTTT!
Nope. They all have supersoakers.
"Do kids still come up with things like riding their bikes with gallon water jugs attempting to drench each other?"
No they don't. You can't ride your bike when your butt is stuck to the couch watching TV or playing video games. And they are as lazy as can be.
Singapore is one step removed from a police state. People there can't ditch their government by peaceful means even if they wanted to.
Of course, the same is true in China. That's why the CCP's strategy is to feed their urban population just enough prosperity and their rural population just enough ignorance to forestall a revolution.
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