School wars never end, and most of us have skin in the game for a good part of our lives. My own school days -- the boredom, the shame, the misery! -- were fresh in my mind when I was fighting the school board for my children’s sake. And now I’m revisiting the battles (though they’ve shifted a bit) with my grandchildren.
Ask Americans what should be done to fix the schools and most will offer one pet remedy. Here are some of the more popular:
Smaller classes!
Better pay for teachers!
Less testing!
Stricter teacher evaluation!
Less homework!
More homework!
More diversity!
Special classes (i.e., less diversity)!
Individualization!
More parental choice!
More parental involvement (and better parents)!
More (or fewer) charter schools!
Put an end to poverty!
I’m sure you’ll be able to think of a few more. Of course it’s obvious that any really useful reform requires more than one change, but we all tend to fasten on a single cause.
It hasn’t escaped the attention of Americans that some countries do better. I have to say right off that it’s hard to have much hope America can learn from other countries in any way at all: pretty much every single country in the world manages health care better, but do we pay attention? But let’s try, anyway.
Amanda Ripley’s The Smartest Kids in the World, and How They Got that Way singles out three countries: Finland (everyone’s darling), Korea, and Poland. She has chosen these three not only because they top the lists on a test designed to measure critical thinking, the PISA test, but because they have not always had such good results. They have managed to improve their schools, and within a relatively short period of time. Maybe we could do it too?
(This is, by the way, not the first time Americans have looked longingly at another country’s schools. When my children were young it was England, open classrooms, Summerhill... well, that was then).
It must be said right off that Ripley’s book raises more questions than it answers. She is a journalist and not a scholar; her use of statistics is sometimes dubious at best. The book is quite short (less than 200 pages of text), and in those few pages Ripley attempts to introduce not only the history, sociology, and educational systems of three very different countries, but also to show us their schools through the eyes of three American exchange students, while describing their schools, hometowns, and families.
Finland’s schools sound like nirvana to frustrated Americans: warm, welcoming, filled with high achieving teachers. Students don’t get huge amounts of homework and enjoy plenty of freedom. Korean schools are the opposite. Stressed adolescents stay at school from early morning until evening and then go to late night cram schools; no one is surprised when they sleep at their desks on specially designed pillows that slip over their arms.
But wait, these countries are homogeneous societies and welfare states, right? That’s why they do so much better! Ripley tells us, though, that child poverty is higher in Poland than in the United States, and introduces us to a class in Helsinki with many immigrant children. (The issue of race, however, is not addressed -- and immigrants, by definition, are self-selected strivers). The question of whether disparate societies account for the different results is just too massive for a book of this size. Ripley mentions, for example, that children in neighboring Norway test way below the Finns, though Norway is in fact a richer country and just as generous to its citizens. Why? She does not even suggest an answer.
Best instead to look at the ways in which all of these countries differ from the United States. And here Ripley’s findings are truly valuable -- and would be useful, if we could use them. Here is the list.
1. These schools are hard. Students are expected to learn things that are difficult for them, and to fail if they fail. All three countries (yes, even friendly Finland) require a long and difficult test at graduation. These tests are high-stakes and go far to determine the child’s future. The students know it; the parents know it; the teachers know it. “Why do you guys care so much?” asks the bewildered American. Her Finnish friends, astonished, reply, “How can you not care?”
2. All children are expected to achieve. Poverty, second-language learning, family dysfunction, are not excuses. Extra help goes to those who need it most (and extra funding goes to poorer students). All of these countries do have vocational high schools, but here too the standards are high. It’s become a cliché that even blue-collar workers require high level skills in a global economy, but clichés can be true.
3. Math. All three Americans say, “Well, I’m just not good at math.” That’s ok in American schools. Not in other countries. Required in a global economy, see above.
4. Self-esteem. This is the excuse American schools (and parents) use for praising and rewarding mediocre results. It does not enter into the thinking of Polish, Korean, or Finnish parents. You might think Americans just cannot bear for their children to suffer pain or rejection, were it not for the next item.
5. Sports. Here American parents are quite willing -- even proud and eager -- for their children to suffer. We may pity the Korean child who goes without sleep to study math, but we admire the American child who is at the hockey rink at 5 A.M. High schools in Korea, Poland, and Finland do not offer sports at all. Sports, they say, have nothing to do with school. You are welcome to play pick-up soccer in an empty lot, if you choose.
Ripley notes, correctly, that wealth has long insulated this country from any need to improve our schools. Once, decent jobs awaited those students who graduated with mediocre grades from lackadaisical high schools (and even high school dropouts could scrape a living). That is simply no longer the case in a world where jobs can easily move to other countries. She does not point out that immigration, too, once insulated Americans from the consequences of lazy education. We cannot count on that, now that opportunities may abound in other countries, and our laws make it hard for talented people to settle here.
Many people know this. But will anything change? Will Americans demand that their children learn to work hard at academics, not just sports? Even less likely, will they separate schooling from athletics? Will they tolerate failure? Will they change the way schools select teachers? No, I don’t think so. Not in my lifetime. Not in my grandchildren’s lifetime.
But I hope I’m wrong.
