On Education

China: Uncertain prospects for Chinese graduates

Via The New York Times: In China, Families Bet It All on a Child in College. I got an email from a student in China just yesterday, raising just this issue. Excerpt:

HANJING, China — Wu Yiebing has been going down coal shafts practically every workday of his life, wrestling an electric drill for $500 a month in the choking dust of claustrophobic tunnels, with one goal in mind: paying for his daughter’s education. 

His wife, Cao Weiping, toils from dawn to sunset in orchards every day during apple season in May and June. She earns $12 a day tying little plastic bags one at a time around 3,000 young apples on trees, to protect them from insects. The rest of the year she works as a substitute store clerk, earning several dollars a day, all going toward their daughter’s education. 

Many families in the West sacrifice to put their children through school, saving for college educations that they hope will lead to a better life. Few efforts can compare with the heavy financial burden that millions of lower-income Chinese parents now endure as they push their children to obtain as much education as possible. 

Yet a college degree no longer ensures a well-paying job, because the number of graduates in China has quadrupled in the last decade. 

Mr. Wu and Mrs. Cao, who grew up in tiny villages in western China and became migrants in search of better-paying work, have scrimped their entire lives. For nearly two decades, they have lived in a cramped and drafty 200-square-foot house with a thatch roof. They have never owned a car. They do not take vacations — they have never seen the ocean. They have skipped traditional New Year trips to their ancestral village for up to five straight years to save on bus fares and gifts, and for Mr. Wu to earn extra holiday pay in the mines. Despite their frugality, they have essentially no retirement savings. 

Thanks to these sacrifices, their daughter, Wu Caoying, is now a 19-year-old college sophomore. She is among the growing millions of Chinese college students who have gone much farther than their parents could have dreamed when they were growing up. 

For all the hard work of Ms. Wu’s father and mother, however, they aren’t certain it will pay off. Their daughter is ambivalent about staying in school, where the tuition, room and board cost more than half her parents’ combined annual income. A slightly above-average student, she thinks of dropping out, finding a job and earning money. 

“Every time my daughter calls home, she says, ‘I don’t want to continue this,’ ” Mrs. Cao said. “And I say, ‘You’ve got to keep studying to take care of us when we get old’, and she says, ‘That’s too much pressure, I don’t want to think about all that responsibility.’ ”

Finland offers lessons in equality for educators

Via The Star, an op-ed: Finland offers lessons in equality for educators. Excerpt:

To ensure the country remained competitive in a changing global economy, back in the 1970s Finland’s government undertook a substantial overhaul of its education system. 

Unlike other countries that focused on competition in education, however, the foremost emphasis of the new Finnish model was on equity: that all children had the same opportunity to learn, regardless of where they lived or their family situation. The school system was seen not as a way to produce star performers, but an instrument to reduce social inequality. 

Officials believed a single approach would be ineffective for meeting the needs of the nation’s diverse communities. As such, they did not implement a top-down approach to education, but allowed schools and teachers to choose how to utilize their time and resources as they see fit. With the exception of one matriculation exam that high-school students write to qualify for post-secondary studies, they also eliminated standardized tests, preferring to give teachers the authority to design their own forms of assessment. 

To cope with such responsibility and autonomy, Finnish teachers are highly qualified. All educators have a master’s degree, and only about 10 per cent of applicants are accepted into the extremely competitive faculties of education. Because citizens recognize teachers play such a critical role in child development, these learned professionals are accorded as much respect as the country’s doctors. 

None of this would be particularly remarkable, perhaps, were it not for the fact the system the Finns created today produces some of the best students in the world. Finland has been the top-rated Western nation on the world’s foremost educational test, the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), since its inception in 2000.

Welcome to the education machine

Via The Globe and Mail, an excellent item by Robert Costanzo from The Essay: Welcome to the education machine. Excerpt:

In the iconic children’s book The Hockey Sweater, Roch Carrier characterizes his childhood experience with formal education this way: “For us, school was a kind of punishment.” 

The passage of time, and my years of teaching, had caused me to forget this reality until recently, when the school my two boys attend held its parent-teacher interviews. 

My wife and I entered our kids’ classrooms with the strange mix of excitement and trepidation most parents feel when they arrive for this biannual ritual. 

Seated in chairs designed for humans one-third our size, in the kindergarten class of our younger son Buster, we were given radiant news. 

“He’s so sweet and well-behaved,” his kind-hearted teacher gushed. “He is a gem. He’s quiet but engaged, and I can tell there is a lot going on in his mind. I wish I had more just like him.” We were not surprised. We’ve been hearing the same praise since daycare and preschool. 

The Grade 2 hallway was our next stop. Walking into my son PJ’s class, we knew the news would be dramatically different. I could almost hear the foreboding music of Wagner in the background as we entered. 

“Your son has problems,” his teacher confirmed. “He disturbs others, he can’t stay focused, he rushes through his work too quickly and it’s often messy. I think he may have anger issues.” 

Then came the statement we had expected with dread: “I believe that we should have him assessed.” 

As a teaching veteran of 18 years, I could pick up what this well-intentioned teacher was laying down – ADHD, and the likelihood of medication to alter my son’s behaviour. 

As we drove home, my wife verbalized her concern. “What are we going to do about him?” she asked. 

I was concerned, too, though the source of my concern may come as a surprise to the reader. I paused a moment and then said: “I’m very worried about Buster. PJ will be just fine.”

Mr. Costanzo's reasons will not surprise any experienced teacher.

Online education in Washington State

Via onlineschool.org: Online Schools in Washington State : WA Colleges, Universities & Degree Programs. This is a very interesting resource—a set of links to online courses and programs, all on one page. (But click on the OS logo for links to more pages.) From the introduction: 

While home to many major research universities and private colleges, online schools in Washington are now offering new avenues for self-directed learning. Many brick and mortar institutions have created hybridized education programs that combine occasional on-campus visits with traditional distance learning practices. 

Programs formatted this way give students the opportunity to interact with professors and students in a face-to-face forum while also maintaining the flexibility provided by the online school paradigm. 

The concept of an online high school is also becoming more acceptable and widespread across the United States, and Washington’s “Virtual Academies” high school has demonstrated the effectiveness of this setup. 

These programs promote extracurricular activity among younger students and are taught by state-certified teachers, making them incredibly robust—in fact, they have special accelerated curricula to accommodate for a wide range of learning styles and speeds. 

The State Board of Education recently recognized the Washington Virtual Academies high school program with the Washington Achievement Award, which honors the state’s best performing schools.

The $879,000 Reason to Stay in School

The Tyee has published my article The $879,000 Reason to Stay in School. Excerpt:

So here you are, starting Grade 10 or 11 or 12, and you're not sure you can face another year of school. In fact, you're thinking seriously of pulling the plug. 

Whatever your reasons, you're not alone. According to the Ministry of Education, in 2011 81 per cent of B.C. students completed Grade 12 within six years of Grade 8. 

That means one out of five didn't complete, even with two extra years. Think of it this way: Out of every Grade 8 class of 30 students back in September 2006, six have still not completed high school in September 2012. (For aboriginal students, the six-year completion rate is 53 per cent.) 

So at least you'd have company, right? And you could get out there, find a job, and finally have some freedom and control over your life. 

The numbers say just the opposite: The less school you have, the less freedom and control you have.

Needed: A Business Plan for International Students

The Tyee has published my article Needed: A Business Plan for International Students. Excerpt:

A report published last month points the way to a prosperous Canada in a thriving world economy, with Canadian schools educating millions of international students. 

It's an attractive idea, especially these days for the British Columbia government, as The Tyee reported last week. But as that news story also noted, before leaping in, federal and provincial governments had better figure out the true costs of doing this kind of global business. 

You'd think a 122-page report with the cumbersome title "International Education: A Key Driver of Canada's Future Prosperity" would fill in a lot of those numbers. You would be wrong.

No Child Left Behind and the Debate in Educational Psychology

Via EducationalPsychology.net, an interesting article by Hanna Lindstrom: No Child Left Behind and the Debate in Educational Psychology. Click through for the full article and some good links. Excerpt

The No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001 with much bipartisan fanfare. This widespread, federally mandated education reform was designed to hold schools accountable for improvement, assure that students meet basic learning requirements, and improve teacher qualifications. In 2011, after it became evident that a large percentage of schools in some states were failing to meet the mandate, changes were made that gave certain school districts more flexibility in implementing the policy. 

One of the most important and highly controversial provisions of the original No Child Left Behind Act was the use of annual standardized tests to measure school performance. The debate over the effectiveness of these tests as a fair gauge of school achievement is fierce, with proponents arguing that standardized tests are the fairest way to compare schools across the board, and opponents claiming that the tests don’t tell the whole story of how a school is performing and improving. 

Teachers, in particular, are often critical of standardized tests for a variety of reasons: they only measure one aspect of a student’s performance; they force the teaching of specific test-related skills, leaving little classroom time for other tasks; and they might be biased against minorities and the poor, putting already low-achieving schools at a disadvantage. 

Because of their interest in determining how children learn best and how educators can best serve students, educational psychologists have also been a part of the discussion around No Child Left Behind and specifically the standardized test issue. From an educational psychology perspective, standardized tests — which are based on more traditional forms of IQ assessment — paint an incomplete picture of human intelligence and have little correlation with future performance in school and in life.

Higher Ed: Time to Rethink, and Shrink?

Earlier this month, The Tyee published my article: Higher Ed: Time to Rethink, and Shrink? Excerpt:

When Don Drummond released his report on Ontario's funding of public services last month, a hallelujah chorus went up from provincial and national media. At last someone had strong ideas about controlling government debts and deficits. 

As a retired college instructor, I paid most attention to Drummond's views on post-secondary education (PSE). Now that B.C.'s budget is in, I can see a pattern. Drummond recommends a 1.5 per cent cap on post-secondary spending; the B.C. Liberals are trimming that item by about one per cent. Even as austerity is losing its charm in Europe and the U.S., politicians are taking it up in Canada like the latest fashion. 

To his credit, Drummond is a clear, forceful writer. But that just exposes his limits as analyst of the real role of PSE in Canadian society. An economist, he starts his chapter on PSE by assuming that its only purpose is economic: 

"In this increasingly global marketplace, post-secondary education (PSE) remains a vital asset for Ontario, as over two-thirds of all new jobs in the province are expected to require PSE." 

Drummond doesn't say who expects this requirement, or what he means by "new jobs." High-tech? Fast food? Replacing retirees? But PSE to him is clearly "students' preparation for the workplace," with no airy-fairy blather about intellectual growth or scholarship. 

I'm very familiar with this attitude, because I spent 41 years preparing my own students for the workplace, right down to writing resumes and preparing for job interviews. It was great fun, and I loved it. But for the vast majority of my students, it was an expensive waste of time.

The Rise of 'New English'

In February The Tyee published my article The Rise of 'New English'. Excerpt:

Linguists estimate that about 2,500 of the world's 6,000 languages are "endangered." One of them is mine: 20th century North American Standard English. 

An endangered language is one whose speakers' children are unlikely to be using it 100 years from now. North American Standard is already vanishing before our eyes (and ears). 

I have an understandable reason to regret its passing: I taught it from 1967 to 2010. Long before I left the classroom, though, I knew I was whipped. Better said, Standard was whipped -- by more politically powerful dialects.

The Must Read on BC Schools You Won't Like

In January The Tyee published my review The Must Read on BC Schools You Won't Like. Excerpt:

Worlds Apart: British Columbia Schools, Politics, and Labour Relations Before and After 1972 Thomas Fleming. Bendall Books (2011) 

Just about everyone with an interest in B.C. schools will have to read this book -- parents, teachers, trustees, administrators, politicians, the media. None of them are going to like it. 

That's because Thomas Fleming, a professor emeritus at UVic, has studied our schools for many years; he knows the system we set up back in 1849. He knows how it's changed, not always for the better. With energetic impartiality, he finds fault with teachers, trustees, civil servants, and politicians, especially since the first NDP government took power 40 years ago.