Agreed, Samuel. The I feel the United States has taken its position for
granted in this...that this is and will always be the place foreigners
are desperately trying to immigrate to, for education and employment.
The problem is that the US is frequently so insular that people fail to
realize the value of immigration, or its value as in indicator of
educational, living, or employment conditions here versus the rest of
the world.
I think it is significant that the United States, despite its image as
the haven for economic prosperity, is attracting fewer and fewer of the
"best and brightest". Many of my friends' younger brothers and sisters
are now graduating from high school in India (mostly Calcutta), and they
are increasingly choosing to stay in India for college, or go to the UK,
elsewhere in Europe, or Australia / N. Zealand. When I ask them why,
they generally cite the "crazy" political leadership in this country,
the lack of jobs, and the conviction that their education will be of a
higher level elsewhere. A friend's sister recently choose to go to Pune,
India for college, despite her mother and sister residing here in Chicago.
Similarly, I have a cousin who is a senior management level employee in
the IT industry. He lives in Washington DC, owns his house, and has
matching his and hers Honda Civics. He's the epitome if the Indian dream
of coming to America, finding a great job, and making it big.
He's thinking about moving back to India. Why? He says he would make
slightly less in India than he makes here. Slightly less, in India, in
real spending power is a *lot* more because of the conversion rates. For
example, someone making $100k in the US is upper middle class. Someone
making the equivalent of $90k in Indian rupees back in India is
rich...possibly one of the richest people in the state. And the standard
of living on that kind of income in India is much, much higher than in
the US.
These two examples lead me to believe that the US is slowly loosing both
jobs and educational opportunities to our competitors overseas...I mean,
we've been hearing about the trend for call centers in India to take
business from US firms forever, but it's not just the call center jobs.
High-level executive positions are shifting, too.
What does this mean for the US economy? In the long run, it means an
increasing amount of the brainpower this country was importing is no
longer willing to be imported...and the ones who are are increasingly
not the best and the brightest. The smartest kids in the world are no
longer dying to get in to the United States for college...now, they're
thinking of the US as the second-best option, the backup plan if their
application to the London School of Economics goes wrong.
The only way for the US to improve this state of affairs is to take a
long hard look at educational policy at the nation- and state-wide
level, and really bring about meaningful education reform. I recently
got an email from my website from a teacher who says that she has been
using blogs to teach her children about online safety and the benefits
of online research and interaction. She mentions specifically that they
have already had exchanges with a scientist who worked on the Hubble
Space Telescope, for example. Her Board of Education is now shutting
down the program and banning Blogger from schools, because they're
alarmed that children could be posting and reading "inappropriate"
content on blogs.
(More on that incident here:
http://www.digitalraindrop.com/Schools-Fear-Technology)
While this kind of thing continues, how is the US ever going to catch
up? No Child Left Behind is forcing an increasing number of schools to
pass students who are less qualified than previous classes. Community
Colleges are absorbing the bulk of these students, where subsequent
pressure is placed on professors teaching introductory level classes to
pass students who are, again, less qualified than previous classes. I
took classes at Harold Washington College, in Chicago, on and off for a
couple of years. I had an astronomy professor who said he failed most of
the students in his class because they could not read and understand the
English in the textbook. He had switched from a college level text to a
high school text as a result, and still had the same problem...students
often couldn't read a line of the text and understand what it meant. He
found he was constantly asking the English department how on earth they
had passed these students, only to look in disbelief at the sheer
numbers of students the English department was forced to deal with on a
regular basis. A professor teaching a digital video class in the same
college asked us to write a 3 page paper...2 months in advance. He
followed it up with insistance that we write a bibliography and a thesis
statement and submit them after the first month, to make sure we were
making progress on our papers. Every single student in the class, with
the exception of myself, had trouble with the paper, and expressed anger
and resentment that they were being forced to write it. Some students
failed because they refused to turn it in...the only formal written
assignment in the class.
There are institutions like Haverford College, where I started out,
which required short papers of similar length turned in several times
per week. I had final assignments there where I finished a class with
papers ranging from 10 to 20 pages (and once, 30). The University of
Chicago is the same. But the majority of college students do not go to
Haverford, or the U. of Chicago...they go to institutions like Harold
Washington.
The devaluing of the degree that this causes can only result in the US
lagging further and further behind our foreign competition...the
educational system in this country is in crisis, and without some
serious political backing it may be too far gone to be resurrected.
Dave.
-------------------
Dave A. Chakrabarti
Projects Coordinator
CTCNet Chicago
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(708) 919 1026
-------------------
Samuel Young wrote:
The US has been in a educational crisis for at least 20 years.
Traditionally, US has been able to attract highly educated people from all
over the world. People came from Western Europe shortly after the world.
And more recently from Eastern Europe and Asia. It has been able to keep a
head by using the K-12 Educational systems of the rest of the world. Since
the living standards in the US has been relatively higher than most of the
world, many of these bright foreigners have chosen to stay and work in this
wonderful country.
Unfortunately, the rest of the world is catching up. In many cases the
living standards have caught up. The college and university educational
levels are catching up. Students in these countries have more chances at
home than in the US. We are attracting less of the brightest and the best.
I was one of those Asians that came from HK to the US for an education and
ended up staying. But now the educational opportunities in HK are much
better than when I was 18. I would not have to leave to get the education
that I received in the US.
My wife is getting her doctorate in Education. While she was going for her
doctorate, she wrote a paper on the disparate Mathematical education between
the US and many other Asian countries (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, HK, Singapore
and India). The professor gave her an "A" for the paper, but commented that
he had doubts whether children can really comprehend higher level Math. The
professor also wondered if there are some long term side effects if one
introduces complex concept at an early age. Well, people from other
countries are doing it and I don't think my brain is damaged, why are US
kids less capable? Unless the educators pull their heads out of the sand,
the system will never be fixed.
My oldest son is now in 7th grade and he is starting to learn algebra,
calculus and robotics. We are not waiting for others to wake up.
Sam Young
CIO
La Sierra University
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Executive
Director
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 6:44 AM
To: 'The Digital Divide Network discussion group'
Subject: Re: [DDN] Re: Should Students be Permitted to Use the
InternetasaResource for Research Assignments?
"Does education have problems? Of course. Which of our institutions, from
the family to the workplace to the polling place doesn't?"
I think that K-12 public education will change when:
* The parents of the 16 and 17 year olds coming to us, (with 3rd grade
reading and 2nd grade spelling)
* The parents of the 60% of HS students ill prepared for work or
higher education
* The parent of the 50% of black HS students who drop out due to lack
of proper preparation
* When parents stop accepting excuses and promises
All class action sue the school districts for gross negligence and
professional malpractice.
The computer and the Internet are viruses that will infect the public
schools systems and either finally change them or finish rendering them
obsolete so that the next form of education that actually works can take
over.
Mike
*************************
Michael F. Pitsch
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dr. Steve Eskow
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 1:34 PM
To: 'The Digital Divide Network discussion group'
Subject: RE: [DDN] Re: Should Students be Permitted to Use the Internet
asaResource for Research Assignments?
Paul,
I hope that you and others on this list who believe that we are in a
"crisis," and who refer to international tests that show we are educating
less well than other nations, are willing to reconsider.
There are two alternative possibilities that ought to be considered:
There is no crisis.
American education is always in crisis.
I most enjoy the second hypothesis. I've been at this work of education for
a long time, and I can't remember a single year when the critics of public
education didn't announce the latest version of the crisis--the critics
being a spectrum of attackers ranging from mediacrats who believed that the
telegraph or radio or cinema or television had to replace the old ways of
teaching to the National Association of Manufacturers, who complained that
graduates of 1966 or 1986 or the new graduates of the 21st century couldn't
spell or add or think.
For one history and debunking of the crisis, see Berliner and Biddle's THE
MANUFACTURED CRISIS.
Does education have problems? Of course. Which of our institutions, from the
family to the workplace to the polling place doesn't?
There is indeed a digital divide: within every nation and between nations,
and we need to attend to those divides.
Will the computer do for education all that the telegraph and radio and
movies and television promised to do, and failed to do?
Probably not.
If we promise too much, we are bound to disappoint those who believed in our
visions and pronouncements.
Steve Eskow
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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