Monday, May 15, 2006

Shame! Eighth Grade In Mexico Sounds as good as a Low-Ranked American University

From Fred Reed

Just now the furor over illegal immigration from Mexico is most wonderfullt a'boil, with much billingsgate and vituperation emanating from practically everywhere. Well and good. People should all afflict each other as vigorously as they can. I mean, why were we put on earth if not to be disagreeable?

Howsomever, I've received email telling me how poorly educated the Mexicans are. Hmmm. Maybe. You can make a case for it. I know that immigrant kids do terribly in school in the US, which augurs ill indeed. Most kids don't read here either. Still, I found myself wondering just how bad the Mexican schools really are.

My stepdaughter, Natalia, aged fourteen and in the eighth grade, attends a public school in downtown Guadalajara, La Escuela Estatal Secundaria Manuel M. Dieguez Numero 7 para Senoritas. I am not an authority on Mexican education and cannot say whether hers is typical of urban Mexican schools. Nor do I know enough about American middle schools in general to make comparisons. The following are scans of pages from her texts of mathematics and biology accompanied by a few observations. I found them interesting. The translations are mine. Please excuse the sloppy scans and slow loads.

From Mathematicas 2 (ISBN 970-642-210-2)



“Consider two urns, one with 13 balls numbered from 1 to 13, and the other with 4 balls marked with the following figures: a red triangle, a red square, a black circle, or a black rhombus. How many combinations can be obtained by drawing one ball from each urn?

The possibilities can be represented by ordered pairs. For example, if from the first urn is drawn the ball marked with 2, and from the second, the ball with the square, the result is expressed thus: (2, square).The 52 pairs listed in the column to the left represent all possibilities…The probability of drawing an even number from the first urn is P(even) = 6/13 and the probability of drawing a red shape from the second urn is P(red) = 2/4 = ½. If the two probabilities are multiplied, the following is the result:

P(even) P(red) = (6/13)(1/2) = 6/26”

Not Nobel math, but not too bad, I thought.

From Biologia 2, her biology text:

 

"An important property of phospholipid bilayers is that they behave as liquid crystals; the carbohydrates and proteins can turn, and move laterally...." Note internal hydrophobic tails and external hydrophilic heads. This is not too shabby.



In the next pages is an account of both aerobic and anaerobic respiration, the 36 molecules of adenosine triphosphate resulting from aerobic glycolysis, and so on.



Early in Biologia 2 is a treatment of the role of RNA, including the substitution of uracil for thymine, transcription as distinct from translation, and the functions of messenger, transfer, and ribosomal RNA. Polypeptides are described and peptide bonds mentioned, but not with the NH3-COOH dehydration synthesis. A typical vocab list: “Endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, endocytosis, ribosomes, cellular membrane.



Then, “The synthesis proceeds only in the 5’-3’ sense, which means that the chain that is being copied is read...."



Also, (above) "DNA is formed by the union of five atoms: carbon (C), oxygen (O), hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P). The DNA molecule can be decomposed into the monomers that form it. There are called nucleotides, each of which contains three parts: a sugar of five carbons, deoxyribose; the phosphate; and a nitrogenous base, either adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), or thymine (T). Two of these bases, adenine and guanine, are structures of two rings and are called purines, while the other two, thymine and cytosine, have only one ring and are called pyrimidines.”



All of this has a notable resemblance to real if basic molecular biology. I'm not sure that it is anything to be embarrassed about.

Biologia 2 has a 31-page section on human reproduction that is purely scientific as distinct from socially propagandistic. There is no indoctrination about homosexual rights or oppression of the transgendered. The coverage is detailed and complete, with cutaway drawings of the genitalia, detailed discussion of meiosis as compared with mitosis, primary meiotic division, secondary meiotic division with prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase nicely laid out; chromatin, centromeres, and centrioles explained, and so on at length. There is an explanation of the menstrual cycle complete with a graph of variations of body temperature; description of embryonic growth; a table of tissues and organs arising from endoderm, ectoderm, and mesoderm; and explanations of various venereal diseases and how to avoid them. The treatment is neither prurient nor prissy. It is just biological : Here is how the lungs work, here is how the heart works, here is how the reproductive organs work.

Consequences however are presented straightforwardly. For example, there is a photograph of a primary syphilitic sore, which doubtless persuades students that they don’t want any and, in the section of what we would call “substance abuse,” a photo of a badly cirrhotic liver, sectioned. There are no pretty pictures for the sake of having pretty picture. All graphics have a direct bearing on the material being studied.

It may be that all of this is now standard in the eighth-grade in the United States. For all I know, American texts may be more advanced. I can’t make comparisons with things I don’t know about. But these do not seem to me to be bad books. Certainly when I was an eight-grader we didn’t get much of this; when I went on a physiology kick, I had to find a university text.

Still, I have my doubts as to whether the big-city schools in America are greatly ahead of Guadalajara. Detroit recently had, and probably still has, a forty-seven per cent rate of functional illiteracy. Guadalajara doesn’t. If someone were inspired to compare the foregoing material with what students, if so they can be called, are learning in downtown schools in, say, Washington, DC, Chicago, and New York, I would be interested to see the results.

It will be said, correctly, that the cities of America are populated by extensive underclasses of blacks and Hispanics. True enough. However, they are still American kids (now or soon to be) who are learning nothing. Natalia would eat them alive. I have some familiarity with the suburban, mostly white schools of Arlington County, Virginia, just outside of Washington, because my daughters went to them. At least one of these schools served populations living in very pricey neighborhoods.

The girls came home with misspelled handouts from affirmative-action science teachers, and they learned about Harriet Tubman and oppression. Of the sciences they learned very little. I knew bright kids who had trouble with the multiplication tables. Yes, there are schools and schools, some better than others, and advanced-placement and such. I do not suggest that Mexico has a great school system, because it doesn’t. Yet Natalia, in her particular school, is better off than she would be in Washington, heaven knows, or the Virginia suburbs. Ain’t that something?







CALIFORNIAN EDUCATION SLIPS FURTHER DOWNHILL

More than 47,000 California high school seniors will be able to graduate next month after a state judge blocked a law requiring students to pass an exit exam. Judge Robert Freedman in Oakland today ruled the California High School Exit Examination, required for the first time this year, is unfair because some teachers aren't certified in the subjects tested, according to Arturo Gonzalez, a lawyer for the students.

Freedman's decision upholds an injunction blocking the state department of education from denying a diploma to any high school seniors who passed all required courses. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said lawyers for the schools have asked the court to stay the injunction as they prepare an appeal to Freedman's decision. The ruling is ``bad news for employers who want meaning restored to our high school diplomas,'' O'Connell said in a conference call with reporters. ``We do no favors to unprepared students by handing them a diploma without the skills needed to back them up.''

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he supports O'Connell's decision to appeal the ruling, adding in a statement that the exit exam is the ``best resource'' for ensuring students are learning the ``skills they need to begin successful lives.''

Gonzalez cautioned students that they need to pass their classes in order to graduate. Freedman's decision gives ``47,000 students an opportunity to walk the stage with their classmates and to receive their high school diplomas,'' he said in a statement.

Source






Kick politics out of education: It is only when Britain's leaders are in trouble that they start marching into schools

'Since I became leader of the Labour Party, I have emphasised that education will be a priority for me in government.... Our economic success and our social cohesion depend on it. An age of achievement is within our grasp - but it depends on an ethic of education.' (Twentieth-anniversary Ruskin College lecture given by UK prime minister Tony Blair on 16 December 1996.)

Nothing better illustrates modern politicians' retreat from politics than the images of US president George W Bush sitting in a primary school classroom, absorbed in the children's story My Pet Goat, on 11 September 2001, after he was informed that the country was under terrorist attack. For a few minutes he looked completely lost, as if he had suddenly been reminded that there was a big bad world outside.

Many have commented on Bush's lack of leadership on that occasion, but the problem is not so much that he was not ready when the terrorists struck. The real problem is that modern heads of government seem to be spending more and more of their time in classrooms. Governments are devoting time and energy to determining the minute details of children's educational experience.

There would be nothing wrong with improving standards in education if this had not replaced the more important task of improving society through politics. Annual school examination results, together with other public sector performance measures, have all but replaced ideology and political principles as a measure of government performance.

Public examinations' main aim now is not so much to measure student learning but rather to measure teachers, schools and government performance. This became obvious during the A-level scandal of summer 2002 that led to education secretary Estelle Morris' resignation. Government agencies and examination boards were clearly more worried about the political repercussions of a sudden rise in A-level marks, with the inevitable accusation of grade inflation, than they were in assessing the actual performance of students in England and Wales.

It is now common for government ministers to celebrate examination results as if they themselves, and not the students, had passed the exams. The Guardian website, for instance, informs us that 'Ministers celebrated hitting an education target a year earlier today'. The target the government had set for itself was 69.8 per cent of 19-year-olds obtaining at least five good GCSEs. The government had originally set the target at 70 per cent by 2006, but hit it a year earlier after it had revised it downwards by 0.2 percentage points, following its realisation that the 2004 results had been overestimated.

It is only 30 years ago but it seems like a different geological age when chief inspector of schools Sheila Browne could tell Labour prime minister James Callaghan: 'What are you doing interfering in education? This is none of your business.'

Callaghan's famous speech at Ruskin College, Oxford, on 18 October 1976, is widely credited with having started government meddling in education. Before Callaghan, 'the principle remained that government did not interfere in how, what or how well schools taught - it was enough to ensure that education was provided'. As Callaghan explained 20 years later: 'It was not normal for prime ministers to interfere openly in such questions. Obviously I must have ulterior motives.'

Obviously he did. Callaghan argued that education should be at the centre of political discussion: 'Everyone is allowed to put his oar in on how to overcome our economic problems.. Very important too...but not as important in the long run as preparing future generations for life.' For Callaghan, education was the main means to economic and social prosperity: 'the endowment of our children is the most precious of the natural resources of this community. So I do not hesitate to discuss how these endowments should be nurtured.'

It is not surprising that Callaghan, with his dire economic record, should have wanted to deflect public attention away from economics and on to education as a means of planning the country's future. What is extraordinary is that 20 years later New Labour should have embraced these same principles, elaborated in a moment of great crisis by a leader who has since told the press that he expected to be considered 'the worst prime minister since Sir Robert Walpole [1721-1742]'.

Today Blair proudly proclaims from the Downing Street website that 'education is now the centre of economic policymaking for the future'. He explains that education is 'central to everything we stand for - making our nation strong and competitive, enlarging opportunity, building successful families and responsible citizens, and eliminating social exclusion'.

Free universal education is certainly the mark of a civilised society, so perhaps we should welcome the fact that the government devotes so much interest, time and effort to it. Unfortunately, the use of education for political ends corrupts both education and politics. It corrupts education by twisting its purpose - from the intellectual emancipation of the child through the transmission of knowledge, to the attempt to create responsible citizens and workers, with the correct skills, attitudes and opinions. By using knowledge in an instrumental way, it devalues its importance.

Schools now consider knowledge as virtually useless unless it leads to an official outcome or objective, both within each lesson and at the end of the educational process, usually in the form of a state qualification, a job skill, or an awareness of some pet government issue such as teenage pregnancy or obesity.

Even universities are finding it increasingly difficult to justify knowledge as an end in itself. Higher education minister Bill Rammell's response in February 2006 to the news that university applications are down on subjects such as history, philosophy and classics, is typical. 'If students are making a calculation about which degree is going to get them the best job and the best opportunity in life, I see that as being no bad thing', he told the Press Association. One would have thought that it was the job of the minister for higher education at the very least to pretend to take an interest in the value of philosophical, historical and classical knowledge.

Rammell's philistine attitude, however, is not too surprising if one considers that his critics in the universities were also unable to defend the intrinsic value of their disciplines. 'I think the minister is just out of date', said Professor Douglas Cairns, who is honorary secretary of the Classical Association and head of history and classics at Edinburgh University. 'Like every other arts subject, we provide the full range of transferable skills that have been expected of us for the last 10 to 15 years. A degree in any humanities subject is an excellent training for the world of work.'

Jonathan Wolff, philosophy professor at University College London and honorary secretary of the British Philosophical Association, stated: 'It is a bad mistake to think that subjects like philosophy, history and classics do not prepare students for the workplace. In the modern world, detailed factual information goes out of date so quickly that employees need the skills to conduct research, and the flexibility of mind and imagination to see problems and possible solutions from many points of views. This is what philosophy and similar subjects provide so well.' And talking of skills, whoever said that university professors are not good salesmen?

The use of education for political ends also corrupts politics, by treating adult citizens as 'lifelong learners' in constant need of education. The call for education, education and education to be the first three priorities of a New Labour government represents a recognition of the limits of political debate to influence the economy and the direction of the country - and it therefore represents a change in the relationship between the government and its citizens. Where politics is based on argument and persuasion, education as a political tool is a form of behaviour modification.

Through political debate, citizens make important decisions about their country's future. The purpose of education is not to arrive at political decisions, but only to make children think so they can arrive at the conclusion that the educator already has in mind. The uneducated citizen by definition cannot have a valid opinion.

As the political theorist Hannah Arendt has explained: 'Education can play no part in politics, because in politics we have to deal with those who are already educated. Whoever wants to educate adults really wants to act as their guardian and prevent them from political activity.... The word "education" has an evil sound in politics; there is a pretence of education, when the real purpose is coercion without the use of force.'

It is perhaps not a coincidence, then, that Callaghan at the start of his speech addressed the trade unionists in the audience as incompetent adults in need of education: 'The work of a trade union official becomes ever more onerous, because he has to master continuing new legislation on health and safety at work, employment protection and industrial change. This lays obligations on trade unionists which can only be met by a greatly expanded programme of education and understanding. Higher standards than ever before are required in the trade union field.'

Unfortunately, the frenzied political debate on education has little to do with improving children's access to knowledge. Rather, it is an expression of anti-politics. It is our society's disillusionment with politics and democracy that makes us look to the education system as the only hope for a better society and a better future for the individual.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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