As if we didn't know, the NY Times reveals the secrets to China's recent success in the PISA tests:
The Shanghai students performed well, experts say, for the same reason students from other parts of Asia?including South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong?do: Their education systems are steeped in discipline, rote learning and obsessive test preparation.
And, of course, we know the argument for mediocrity:
But many educators say China's strength in education is also a weakness. The nation's education system is too test-oriented, schools here stifle creativity and parental pressures often deprive children of the joys of childhood, they say.
Checker, of course, was first to sound the Sputnik alarm.?But Governor Ed Rendel, who was complaining about the cancellation of the Vikings/Eagles football game because of snow, thinks it's the wuss factor:
If this was China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.
Go Jets!
?Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
