I find it ironic that China, the number one country for high test scores, wants to duplicate the US education system. Well, perhaps before we decided to follow their system.
Anyone every wonder why we have the most innovators, world class scientist? Why we have discovered much in the medical field, technology field??? Is it because in the past these outside the box thinkers were told they had to match what was in the rubric? Perhaps, they were not afraid to make mistakes. What was it Edison said?
Thomas Edison's teachers said he was "too stupid to learn anything." He was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive." As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" Edison replied, "I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps."
What was Einstein was labeled in school?
On any account this is great food for thought:
In BriefWhen Shanghai, China, was awarded the number one spot for educational achievement by the Program for International Student Assessment, a number of Western countries began to ask what had sparked the country’s rise. One answer is five years of education reforms that began with the Chinese government’s recognition that it needs to improve its teaching system as the population ages and the country’s pool of cheap labor runs out. The plan, called the Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium- and Long-term Education Reform and Development, aims to significantly increase government investment in education, universalize access to early childhood education and high schools, develop world-class universities, and improve the overall quality of education. The aim is to quickly transform a low-level manufacturing economy into one based on knowledge. But a well-educated workforce does not mean simply more years in school, or more testing—as China’s history of training innovators shows. There is currently a surplus of college graduates unable to find work in innovative but elite private firms or oversubscribed government agencies. Meanwhile, the Chinese service industry, the mainstay of the U.S. economy, remains tiny. Unlocking the potential of that industry is going to take a radical overhaul of how the Chinese think about education.
http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1077