Ever since I was a kid, my parents have told me how rotten and lazy
American students were and how Chinese students, with their diligence
and work ethic, would inherit the world due to their superior
education. If that weren't enough, there's the constant drumbeat of
our own media decrying the crisis in our schools, the poor conditions,
and the lack of accountability.
Now of course I'm not suggesting that our students can get away with
being lazy or that our schools don't face immense challenges preparing
the next generation of students. But I also think our schools have
many strengths and that such strengths are often under-appreciated.
For instance, consider this study just published in Science magazine
comparing Chinese and American students.
In China, students take a standardized national curriculum with 5
years of physics courses. America, on the other hand, contains a
greater diversity of approaches, and thus students have not had much
formal training in physics. So, in a test of physics knowledge and
scientific reasoning administered to freshman college students, who
would do better: the Chinese or the Americans?
Unsurprisingly, the Chinese outperform American students on tests of
physics knowledge --- things like mechanics, electricity and
magnetism. They killed us on all of those problems with balls, ramps,
pendulums, circuits, charges, etc. But the surprising thing was that
American students matched the Chinese on scientific knowledge! That's
right --- in the study, there were essentially no differences between
Chinese and American freshman students.
So what does this tell you? On one had, it should be sobering that our
students knew so little about physics, an essential topic that every
educated person should know something about (disclaimer: I'm a physics
student). On the other hand, we have much to be proud of -- our kids
have the right stuff when it comes to reasoning. Where did they get
this from? Probably from the way they were taught, which in America
means a diet of inquiry-based courses where thinking is emphasized
over rote memorization.
One could even see this result as an indictment against the Chinese
educational system; despite much more training, Chinese students seem
to have picked up only the facts, an conclusion that was also reached
in the study:
The results from this study are consistent with existing research, which suggests that current education and assessment in the STEM disciplines often emphasize factual recall over deep understanding of science reasoning
Of course, we shouldn't rest on our laurels -- American education is
still broken in many ways. Our schools are still failing them, but
perhaps not in the way you might think. But the results of this study
show that in our drive to improve our educational systems, we musn't
throw out the baby with the bath water and wholeheartedly embrace a
testing-only based curriculum. That is to say, we must not discard the
very things that make our educational system great.
Caption: Content knowledge and reasoning skills diverge. Comparisons
of U.S. and Chinese freshmen college students show differences on
tests of physics content knowledge but not on tests of scientific
reasoning.
Taken from "Learning and Scientific Reasoning", Science 30 January
2009: Vol. 323. no. 5914, pp. 586 - 587
