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About 40 years ago I had the pleasure of spending a week in the upper Mekong River delta. My boat was working out of this little village that was basically a mud island covered with tall grass. The 'business' of the village was selling sticks retrieved from the river to villages down stream. Every morning all the men got into little canoes and went foraging all day for sticks.
While they were gone every single person in the village, down to and including infants still nursing, spent the day squatting in a big circle knocking the waterlogged bark off yesterday's sticks. It was fascinating to watch. I can still remember thinking, "I'm over here in this hell hole of a war and I'm the lucky one."
My second most often thought was, "If these poor bastards ever get an education, we're (U.S.A) screwed." Well, I think that's happened, figuratively at least.
While we spent my lifetime Guccing and Dioring our politically correct asses off, the rest of the world has been figuring out how to get the max out of their assets, all of them. I fear they are poised to eat our lunch and we still don't get it.
My kids have two and three pairs of sneaks; one for the hood, one for school, and one for gym. They have Xboxes at home and two free meals a day at school. They can't compete with the stick kids from the mud island.
I remember having a class conversation once about why knowing percentages and how to apply them was important to good shoppers. My class thought me a fool. They just hand over the EBT card (our welfare debit card) and don't worry about discounts. They truly didn't give a hoot about discounts.
I keep hoping for some kind of perfect storm to wake people up but my instincts tell me we have passed a tipping point where there's just not enough people that give a rip about this.
Assuming I'm understanding the implications of The Race Between Education and Technology correctly, and I think I am, countries need universal education to win: to be the most productive economy. The 20th century was the American century because of America's public schools.
Moreover, it's not just a question of providing universal education in the sense of doing today what we did yesterday.
Countries need universal education that becomes more universal as time goes on. More people getting more education.
What I can't tell, because I don't understand the issues well enough, is whether it's important to "win." What is life like for us when another country (and then another one after that) becomes the dominant economic power?
I don't know, but, like Paul, I have a feeling I'm going to find out.
Steve Levitt summarizes The Race in 2 sentences
Jimmy graduates
The anemic response of skill investment to skill premium growth
The declining American high school graduation rate: Evidence, sources, and consequences
Pushy parents raise more successful kids
The Race Between Education and Technology book review
The Race Between Ed & Tech: excerpt & TOC & SAT scores & public loss of confidence in the schools
The Race Between Ed & Tech: the Great Compression
the Great Compression, part 2
ED in '08: America's schools
comments on Knowledge Schools
the future
the stick kids from mud island
educated workers and technology diffusion
declining value of college degree
Goldin, Katz and fans
best article thus far: Chronicle of Higher Education on The Race
Tyler Cowan on The Race (NY Times)
happiness inequality down...
an example of lagging technology diffusion in the U.S.
the Times reviews The Race, finally
IQ, college, and 2008 election
Bloomington High School & "path dependency"
the election debate that should have been
11 comments:
"They can't compete with the stick kids from the mud island."
It would be interesting to see how this evolved in the US when some of our ancestors came over and worked very hard to make something of themselves and to provide opportunities for their kids. How many generations does it take to wear off? I think it's slow in many cases, but then I think of some people who worked so hard, but expect so little from their kids.
"What is life like for us when another country (and then another one after that) becomes the dominant economic power?"
Six weeks of vacation doesn't sound too bad to me. Acutally, I'm not big on the economic engine theme of education. I view it on an individual level.
Dominance is derivative of innovation. Innovators get to charge more than commoditizers (is that a word?).
When you can only do commodities you can only compete on cheap labor. In this country that process has begun. The open borders debate is about abundant cheap labor when you strip away the kimona.
Cheap labor is not flooding in to develp the next Ipod killer. No, the cheap labor is working commodities.
I would add that innovation is relatively rare because in addition to requiring a high level of education it also requires an appetite for risk.
Don't lose sight of the fact that as we strive for a judgement free, risk free, accomplishment free society (school systems?), we are taking the oxygen from the next generation of risk takers. Even if we have some very very smart next generation they still have to be willing to leave the nest if they're going to innovate.
I heard this morning, some town is eliminating the all star little league game because the kids that don't get selected are hurt. Well, yes but we're forgetting they are also foregoing the rewards of excellence, the creation of role models, and the model for risk taking.
The people in my village - and it is a village - are educated stick people. They are very, very hard workers. I call them the working rich.
I expect the kids to be like their parents in this respect if they aren't already.
Actually, I'm not big on the economic engine theme of education.
I've been more or less agnostic on this question, but THE RACE BETWEEN EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY has changed that.
One of the things TRBEAT (new acronym alert!) implicitly demonstrates is that...."no man is an island."
For instance, you need a highly educated population in order to support the diffusion of new technologies.
I heard this morning, some town is eliminating the all star little league game because the kids that don't get selected are hurt.
lollll
Yup, that's another thing that isn't going to happen here, in the village of the educated stick people!
We have ferocious travel teams. Apparently there's an entire War Between The Parents going on over various soccer issues, and it sounds like the same deal with CYO basketball.
I love it!
We've been out of it in the sports realm (although Ed coached AYSO soccer for years) because C. isn't a natural athlete & the sports scene selects for innate talent and leaves the rest behind.
Then a couple of years ago we figured it out: TENNIS. If your kid can't naturally excel in soccer, he can "unnaturally" excel in tennis through sheer, dogged persistence, practice, and excellent teaching.
We happened onto a superb tennis instructor (who has now moved to Atlanta - we are bereft) and we glommed on. Both Ed and I, instantly, saw it: C. "needs" a sport and that sport is tennis.
His teacher is so good that one of my friends, who plays tennis competitively, is starting to talk about C. as naturally talented in tennis.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
When you see good instruction in sports, the profound importance of teaching becomes crystal clear.
I've strayed from the topic.
The point is: even an egghead family like ours has some kind of core, intuitive understanding that kids need to get out there and compete.
C's new school, btw, is intensely athletic. All boys' schools are as far as I can tell.
It's been fascinating getting to know the school a little. I'm pretty sure they acculturate the kids and the parents to the school - which is a selective college preparatory school - entirely through athletics.
They want everyone in a sport; they encourage the kids to do 2 or even 3 sports.
Wrestling, swimming, and track are "open enrollment"; anyone who wants to do them, can. C. will try out for the tennis team & will join the wrestling team.
Then they have intramural sports as well.
"We play to win."
"For instance, you need a highly educated population in order to support the diffusion of new technologies."
You can be successful at Everyday Math and achieve this, but it won't provide individuals with the opportunity to reach algebra in 8th grade. My position is that a focus on the individual is stronger than a focus on the average.
"For instance, you need a highly educated population in order to support the diffusion of new technologies."
I don't think there are issues with this right now. I suppose it depends on what you call new technologies. All-in-all, it's quite amazing how quickly the internet has changed everything. It wasn't that long ago when articles were written about how cute it was to "Google" someone. My son's school is having the kids create blogs. Just yesterday, he figured out how to add a language selection widget to his blog. All the kids are doing this, but they still use Everyday Math.
Technology is easy. Reading, writing, and math are not.
"The people in my village - and it is a village - are educated stick people. They are very, very hard workers."
All of the people I know work very, very hard. I don't think there is a problem with work ethic in the US. Both parents have to work in most families. There is, however, an opportunity problem.
I've been struggling with a way to come up with some objective measure that could be used to determine who is 'working hard'. I can't come up with one.
In lieu of that here is a data point and a thought experiment. 25% of kids in the U.S. drop out of high school. Were they hard workers prior to dropping out? The post is about schooling, not our neighbors.
Here's the thought experiment. Let's say you have a kid from the Mekong delta and one from Carmel. You give them both some nasty task like learning the multiplication facts up to 12 x 12. Put them both in a room and see who gives up first.
My money is going to be on the kid from Carmel. He'll be out of that room looking for his surf board quicker than you can say duh!
Working hard is a pretty subjective thing. It means something different to everybody. Ernest Hemingway once said "Never mistake motion for action."
If you want real action it will sooner come from the person who has spent a lifetime working efficiently on things distasteful than from one who has been kept busy in directed activities.
I think we have a very very busy bunch of kids that are NOT working.
I take issue with the concept that technology is easy. I'll make my point with a tie in to the concept of technology diffusion.
Technology diffusion is not as simple as inventing something and then having it adopted by 12 year olds in one big swoop.
The internet is a terrific example of technology diffusion. Its roots are back in the late 60s with a network technology known as ARPANET. It took 40 years for ARPANET to morph into what we call the internet today. In those 4 decades, hordes of very bright and capable mathematicians, engineers, graphic artists, entrepreneurs, writers, and manufacturing companies, diffused that original technology. Each entity that touched it, added and subtracted and tweaked the original into what we know today as an easy to use 'simple' tool.
Note that the advance was largely a U.S. diffusion and the people who pulled this off worked very hard. Now it's a worldwide easy to use commodity.
The country had the perfect mix of freedom, risk takers, and educated hard workers to pull it off. That's diffusion at work. Every 'simple' piece of technology you touch today has a similar history of evolution via diffusion and disruptive innovation.
Using good technology is easy. Making good technology? Not so much.
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