--- Kevin Tarr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >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.
> 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?
Well, I know that from my own experience when I got to Uni the forign
students mostly all had it much easier than I did. They already knew much
higher math than I did, tested out of much of the classes I took for the
first 2 years, they all spoke 2 languages and could test out of the forign
language requirment. And these people were all the ones who didn't make their
O levels enough to be admitted to Uni back in their COO.
That said, when I got into conversations with them about the topics they
tested out of, it was clear that they did not have a very deep understanding.
They knew the patterns or had memorized the factoids, but did not have a good
understanding of the topic. But this didn't matter much becouse their was
always a prof they could take who's tests didn't ask for creative thought,
only regergitation. It was noticed seveal times that almost all of the forign
students avoided the "hard" teachers.
Maybe my view is skued though. I allways took the "hard" teaches in hindsight
perhaps becouse they were less likely to give multiple choice -factoid-
tests, and also less likely to care about spelling. They also tended to teach
things in class that were not in the text, so if you were not in class and
paying attention you wour grade would suffer. Since I am dyslexic that made a
bit difference. Especialy learning through lecture. At the time I just though
the classes were more interesting.
In any event it would be good to do a study based on this, but then, people
would probably just find it raceist.
=====
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Jan William Coffey
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