http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338
This is John Stossel's Blog on the stupid in america
Gives a date for the series as Jan 2006.

The real problem is culture. As an Asian in America I can totally feel this. In Asia the top of society are excellent in academics. The people that other students look up to are the ones who excel at school and score top marks. In America it's the opposite. If you're smart you're a dweeb or a nerd or a dork, attention and rewards are given for being stupid, but able to catch a ball.

Schools are not making American kids dumb. American culture and its obsession with stupidity is making American kids dumb. That much should be obvious.

The point of the documentary is that US schools are bad because they are a monopoly. But that's too simplistic, look at Russian or Chinese schools, they are state-funded as well, and are also better.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6589301.stm

I think one problem is that US schools give too much freedom. When you graduate you don't have to know calculus, history or geography. Those are all electives. This freedom to choose courses also gives a laid back atmosphere which makes it easy to fail classes.

In Russian schools you don't get to pick and choose your subjects, so a group of 30 or so students go to the same lectures all the time. Because you are with the same 30 people 7 hours a day year after year, that becomes your social group. But if you fail enough classes, you get pushed back to the previous year group who don't necessarily want to make new friends, and will probably treat you as an idiot.

So there's a lot of pressure to not fail in Russian school. But in US, what difference does a failed class make? If you aren't planning on college, not much

fuck you john stossel. phony.

That was one of the most insightful disections of the video there gluonium.

There seems to be something extra whacky wrong down in the US with education, where you need metal detectors in the schools and security guards and hell someone moves in from another country and instantly gets moved up 2 grades.

I watched this on TV a while ago. It pretty much pushes vouchers for students. I saw this and I thought it was a great idea.

But then I realized that if everyone chose which school their kids went to, religious private schools would dominate. Religious people are usually in favor of voucher programs. This worries me.

wasn't feeling too motivated

Finland, which was ranked nr. 1 on the list of the international test overall scores, use the monopoly system much like Russian model mentioned by Yaroslavvb. Sweden, ranked nr. 13, also has a state run school system. Most other top scoring countries seem to follow similar teaching doctrines aswell. This, to me, says the argument used in the video isn't entirely true.
It seems wrong to put all the blame on teachers. Surely there has to be more factors to take into consideration. This documentary comes off as quite biased in that right from the start to the finish, all blame is put on the educators.

EDIT: His saying that teachers get it easy with just a 6 hour working day makes me mad. This because the interviewer assumes that teachers in general (I'm not sure about how they work in the US) don't have atleast as much work out of school as they have in it. As a teacher with, say five to six different classes each semester and with roughly thirty students in each class, how long do you think it would take to correct and grade all the essays, exams and homework you get? I can tell you it takes a heck of a lot more than the six hours a teacher is scheduled to stay in school each day.
Granted, some teachers are bound to be bad at what they do, but this god-awful piece of propaganda directed against public school teachers is quite frankly appaling.

I know it sounds conspiracy theory-ish, but I really think a lot of the defects in our education system do have to do with culture, like p0tat03 commented, and that the anti-intellectualism prevalent in American culture is perpetuated by those in power to keep Americans ignorant and easily brain-washed.

Think of all the R & B music videos you've ever seen -- they glorify above everything else opulance (beautiful women, nice cars, etc.) and money, even violence. All these music labels are owned by rich middle-aged white men keeping our poorest worshipping counterproductive ideals (being tough and inner-city is cool, while trying to dig yourself out of poverty and speaking "white" if you're black is betraying your race; one is encouraged to spend, spend, spend on lavish status symbols, like diamonds and fancy cars) while discouraging any sort of real attempt out of poverty. Politicians forever push an image of being just "one of the guys," and being uneducated isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as you're not some blue-blooded snob. George Bush is a good example of this--he went Ivy League but is forever touting his Texan roots.

I'm not saying the public schools are kept lacking in any sort of conscious way at the lower levels, but I do think the government would like Americans to be as impressionable as possible, and this reflects in our mass media and public culture, which in turn encourages the apathy and incompetence we see in schools and among students.

It's very interesting to see the hyperbole -- perhaps it's an indication of the supposed failure of your (American, that is) education system. The central theses that school choice works; independent schools are LESS EXPENSIVE than public schools; and, unions/teachers are the problem just don't fly when you compare apples to apples.

There certainly are problems with your (American) educational outcomes but that might be more of a reflection on the socio-economic disparities that exists in your society than of any particular successes or failures of the education systems. The video focussed on two states that are not exactly known for being either socially progressive states or wealthy states. Why do I get the feeling this piece belongs on Fox? (although, there they'd have public schools being run by the devil himself ;-).

In Ontario (and, I'm sure the same applies in many other jurisdictions) independent schools tend to have better outcomes than public schools... because... those who send their kids to independent schools have a higher socio-economic status (SES), and SES is highly correlated with educational success.

Most of the best performing countries have monopolies on public education (which this video conveniently neglected to mention... Belgium is not exactly well known in international circles). My own experiences are in Ontario and Britain. Ontario has a public school monopoly. Our students score well on the standardized international tests, and, when adjusted for socio-economic status, OUTPERFORM the few independent schools that charge $20K-$25K CAD/year in tuition. Britain has charter schools alongside their public schools -- their educational outcomes are much weaker than Ontario's (they are actively copying Ontario's model). Ontario has a strong union with similar restrictions to those discussed in this video. By-and-large we have a reasonable set of teachers with reasonable outcomes and teachers have had fairly good success at advocating for effective investment in education -- in Britain, there are three unions and the teaching staff is thoroughly demoralised (they're having to recruit from abroad because locals don't want to teach in their schools).

And, finally, Ontario spend approximately $5000-6000 CAD (~$4500-5500 USD in 2007 dollars) per student, A FRACTION (1/4) of what tuition is at a comparable (or even sub-par) independent school (they're private, but not-for-profit... the for-profits are utterly atrocious in Ontario).

A few final random thoughts...
* it would help if they used more than a sample size of n=1 for their testing comparison
* comparisons of educational outcome should be adjusted for socio-economic status. If you're comparing Kansas or South Carolina, you need to find some developing nations against which to compare results to make it a "fair test" (some of your science students may be able to explain the notion of a "fair test" to you ;-). Likewise, if you're doing within- or between-state standardised testing, you need to make sure you're not comparing wealthy neighbourhoods with disenfranchised/poor ones. That's always a good subterfuge for the "reformers" since they make these grandiose claims of inadequate schools while bolstering their argument(s) with deception.

Don't get me wrong. I'm no great fan of teacher unions or of failures in school leadership or teaching, but I'm equally no fan of sensationalist and downright disingenuous reporting [1].

[1] In this case I suspect they knew that they were conveniently hiding or even consciously misrepresenting reality and comparing apples to cumquats (or, they could simply have been incompetent which wouldn't be surprising either).

interesting, but a directed over-simplification that ignores contrary evidence.

*dead

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