The first reaction I had to this video was it reminded me what I already knew that the US is far behind many countires in the area of education. I was born in the UK and their philosophy on education is much different: in order to go onto higher education, you need to show that you are worthy. School is much more tradtional than alternative (allowing for students to learn differently) and when students turn 16 they have to pass a test in order to be eligible for university studies.
Japan is probably the most traditional country you can find as far as education goes, their methods are old school, they go 6 days a week and learn by discipline, drilling, memorizing and reproducing the information on tests. In the district I work, we have a large population of Korean, Japanese and Chinese, and those students easily outperform the whites. That is just a fact. Why? I believe the philosophy taught at home is different, Korean parents especially encourage students that education is the only thing that is important, no exceptions. I have kids that actually have a meltdown if they score lower than a 95 on a test, and they are not white.
The next impression I got from the presentation is students have to be technologically smart to survive. Teachers have to infuse technology into their lessons in order to equip students to succeed.
The whole job scenario is just plain scary. There are so many jobs that are not secure anymore, that are becoming outdated, that are not going to be around because of the economy. So how do we prepare kids for jobs we don't know will exist when they are ready to go into the working world? I think students today should focus on professions that will always be needed such as doctors, lawyers, teachers, medical or technology.
6 comments:
Or should we not focus on professionals and focus more on skills?
I think that is what we do in this country is focus on the skills, but we don't seem to gear it up as other countries do. We don't take it to the next level and challenge students as much as they should be challenged, we focus more on meeting testing deadlines and catering to special education students which will not make the country globally competitive, which was the point the Did You Know video was making
I think the area of "Challenge" like you said is one that requires more discussion. For many "rigor" means simply more work, but we know that there is much more to that with a lot of competing variables.
Would you say that rigor is not necessarily more work but higher order thinking and learning how to transfer what they have learned?
I agree with what you said about different countries and how the US is far behind them in education. It worries me in math and science that our students are not as interested as students in other countries. If we are to have our students concentrate on things that medicine, engineering and technology they need to have an interest and understanding for math and science. I am a science teacher and I love my field, my goal as a teacher is to get more students interested in science so that maybe we can start producing more science oriented students in the future to answer to the need for increased science expertise in the US.
I have always wondered exactly what is being done in Japanese schools and families to instill such a work ethic. The video made the US seem so insignificant and non-competitive. As a child I always heard of what a super-power the US is...I guess that has 'shifted' as well.
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