Tag Archives: Education

What Cultures Value

Thanks to Eurasian Sensation, who posted this article: The One-Shot Society. The article is about the educational system in Korea, where students cram like mad for one college entrance test, a test which determines the career that they will have for the rest of their lives. In Korea, as the article mentions, people rarely change jobs, so it’s imperative that students get into the best university and then into the best company. We’ve spoken about this trend in Korea and how it limits their opportunities to make decisions later in life, which is why many Koreans try to become doctors.

Posted in Knowledge, Politics, Random thoughts | Tagged , , | 19 Comments

If I were a poor black kid

Forbes writer Gene Marks wrote an article entitled, “If I Were a Poor Black Kid.” In the article, he identifies himself as a middle aged white man and admits that life is easier because of that, but he says that if he were a poor black kid from the inner city, he’d be taking advantage of the amenities that are now available. Check some of it here:

Posted in media | Tagged , | 55 Comments

Our Grade School and Higher Education Disparity

Saw the above video on how Americans drop out of engineering. One young man talks about how he took lots of math and science in high school, including calculus, but he was somehow unprepared for science and engineering at the college level. He had interest in the subject but was not adequately prepared.

What is crazy and makes little sense is that America has one of the best systems of higher education in the world, and yet we have one of the worst systems of grade school education.

Posted in Education | Tagged | 16 Comments

China to Cancel College Majors Where Grads Can’t Find Work

China is having a similar problem to the U.S.–people are graduating college and are not able to find work. But instead of a laissez-faire attitude, they’re taking the reins and chopping those majors that don’t pay: China To Cancel College Majors That Don’t Pay. The article says:

China’s Ministry of Education announced this week plans to phase out majors producing unemployable graduates, according to state-run media Xinhua. The government will soon start evaluating college majors by their employment rates, downsizing or cutting those studies in which less than 60% of graduates fail for two consecutive years to find work.

Posted in Education | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Screen Time and Education

I saw these two seemingly contradictory articles in the NY Times recently.

The first article was about a rich, private school in Silicon Valley which discourages the use of technology as a learning tool: At Waldorf School in Silicon Valley, Technology Can Wait. Parents, many of whom work at Apple, Google, EBay, and Yahoo, pay thousands of dollars to send their kids to this school, and yet there isn’t a single computer on campus. Instead they learn with pens, paper, and bright colored chalk. One father who is a Google employee says:

Posted in Education, media | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

More Free Market Woes

This in the NY Times:

A new report suggests that American students would do well to major in science, technology, engineering or math.

The report, based on government data analyzed by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, shows that professions that depend heavily on skills learned in these fields are the second-fastest growing occupational group in the United States, after health care.

Posted in Education, Knowledge | Tagged , , | 23 Comments

Education IS Oversold, But We Also Need More Education

Ha-Joon Chang’s book helped me to reconcile some differing but not mutually exclusive viewpoints that I’ve held in the past, namely that:

a) Education is oversold (also see here)

and

b) We need more education in the humanities (also see here)

In “Thing 17,” Chang compares the literacy of different countries and shows how increased literacy doesn’t necessarily mean that a country will do better. In 1960′s, for example, the literacy rate of the Philippines was 72% compared with a rate of 54% in Taiwan, and the per capita income of the Philippines was almost twice that of Taiwan, but Taiwan’s per capita income today is nearly ten times that of the Philippines (180). The main reason a nation’s economy grows, as Chang shows, is because of its government and institutions, not because of it’s education.

Posted in Education | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Highlighted Comment on David Brooks’s Article

Check out David Brooks’s column: It’s Not About You.  David Brooks is my favorite NY Times columnist.

Then check out my comment, which got highlighted!  “Highlighted” means that it’s one of the more interesting comments, and it therefore goes to the front page of the comments. Woo hoo! And I commented with a book that a reader recommended, on a topic that we’ve been discussing lots at bigWOWO: Education.

Anyway, my comment to David Brooks is below. Check out the original article, and sound off to my sound off if you so please!

David,

Posted in Education, media | Tagged , | 2 Comments

TEDx: Yong Zhao on Education

Caught the video above at the Alpha Asian. It’s a Tedx conference where Chinese American professor Yong Zhao discusses education and what we need for the future. He does a comparison between education in Asia and the U.S. His view is that we need to build children’s strengths rather than constantly trying to fix their deficits. In America, with the American emphasis on creativity, this means focusing on creativity and confidence.

Posted in Asian American, Education | Tagged | 1 Comment

Salman Khan’s Khan Academy

Check out the TED video above. The Khan Academy has got to be one of the coolest sites ever…check it out here. Math, science, banking, astronomy, economics–you can learn almost anything on Salman Khan’s site. He has over 2,100 YouTube videos, all narrated and created by him, where he teaches subjects using only a computer writing pad and his own voice. I first heard about this from my uncle, and then I read about it yesterday on 8Asians, but I only watched his videos yesterday.

Posted in Education | Tagged , | 3 Comments