The State of American Education (part 1)

The State of American Education

 

    After commenting online on a recent Economist article about American Education, I thought I would better formulate my ideas and post them on my blog. Here goes:

 

The article, at ?, basically claimed American students were lazy compared to their counterparts in Europe and Asia, and called for extending the length of the school day and school year, and an increase in homework. However, comments on the article claimed the data was inaccurate and that other countries' school days and school years were not nearly as much longer as claimed, also that a lot of Asian education consisted mostly of rote learning.

 

As my background is in the automotive field, I what I will attempt to do is to compare education with automotive manufacture. Although of course there can't be an exact comparison, both systems do produce a product to meet a demand. Education produces people to meet a demand by employers for skilled workers, society for informed citizens, arts and entertainment for talented people, etc.. Automotive manufacture produces cars to meet demands by consumers for transportation, status, entertainment, and other reasons. Both also compete with similar institutions in other countries.

 

Suppose now a US auto manufacturer is consistently producing a product of inferior quality at an equal or higher price than foreign manufacturers – which are customers going to buy their cars from? Well, the same is true of education. If other countries' educational systems produce people of higher caliber than the US educational system, which people are employers going to hire? Where are businesses going to move?

 

So far I have no differences with the author of the article. The differences appear when we come to his proposed solutions, which seem to be adopted wholesale and without question from the educational ivory towers. Applying them to the automotive industry makes it apparent how ridiculous many of the proposed solutions are.

 

1. Consolidating Schools:
   

   
    

   Although this isn't emphasized in the article, it is an article of faith in the educational establishment that bigger schools are better and is actively being pushed.
   

   Closing three small automotive factories and consolidating production at one mammoth plant may give some economy of scale, but it does absolutely nothing to improve the quality of the product. Exactly the same product is being produced in exactly the same way. Neither does closing small local schools and busing students long distances to huge centralized schools improve the quality of education. Besides the time and fuel wasted in travel, many students become lost in the system. In fact, repeated studies have shown that smaller schools do a better job of educating students.
   

 

1. Increasing the school day and year:
   

   
    

   If an auto plant is running one shift five days a week, going to two shifts seven days a week will increase the number of autos produced, but do nothing positive for quality. In fact, the increased pressure on workers from overtime and decreased equipment maintenance due to less time to do it will actually decrease quality. However, the main push in the fight to "improve" education is to make the school year longer, or better yet, go to year-round schooling. Contrary to all the claims, this will do absolutely nothing to either improve quality or lower the cost of education. Quantity is not quality. Just putting in more time, either in a longer school day or year or both, will not mean students learn more.
   

   
    

2. More homework:
   

   
    

   This is harder to compare to the auto industry. Giving employees work to take home at night and bring back the next day isn't likely to improve quality, but employees aren't "learning". Homework has some value, but I expect too much simply discourages the students and turns them against education.
   

   
    

   What then is done in the automotive industry to improve quality?
   

   
    

   1. Goals: First of all you need a goal to aim for. If your competitor produces a more reliable car than you do, you want to not only equal his quality but exceed it!
      

      This is one of the main problems with education. There is no real goal. Everyone has a different idea of what education should achieve. As a result, no priorities are set and the educational system tries to be everything to everyone.
      

      
       

      
       

(To Be Continued)