--- Kevin Tarr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > While I didn't catch how much these countries spent > on education, I doubt > it is more than the US. And they seem to have better > results.
I don't really buy this, for two main reasons. The first is that Americans have been complaining that their school systems lag the world since Sputnik, yet over that span of time the American dominance of the world in economics generally, and science and technology in particular, has been essentially total. If American schools were that bad, you'd think it would have shown up by now. Second, American _universities_ are acknowledged by everyone as the class of the world, to the extent that a top-tier American school's only real competitors are other American schools. A large part of that is due to funding and competition, but still, it seems difficult or impossible to have an elite university system and an atrocious public school system.
> Kevin T. - VRWC > Plus, I still don't know about HS level sports in > other countries
Almost entirely non-existent, I believe. At least in most of Europe sports are organized through clubs, not schools. There's a lot to be said for that system - it means that school isn't such an all-consuming part of the life of most kids. If they don't have a social outlet in school, they can find one somewhere else.
Gautam Mukunda
Hasn't there been study after study that shows the more education a child receives in this country, the farther behind he gets compared to Europe or Japan? Now one problem is we have all our kids lumped together, where if what I said is true, they are only measuring their academic track students against all of ours.
In the back of my head I knew that our universities were better than theirs. I couldn't think of a reason. Is it more endowments, the sheer number of schools, better processes since our schools are newer, more innovations? How do you rate a quality education? If I had a comp-sci degree from little Lock Haven University, is it worth less than one from U of Illinois, or MIT? How about comparing our schools to theirs. Is Oxford the best university in the world? Do we have ten that are better? Do we have another thirty that are better than Europe's second best?
Kevin T. - VRWC See you Tuesday
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