A Changing Educational Model

Recently, my little sister came home from school confused about something they had learned in math. It wasn't the method itself that confused her -- she could apply the method they had learned just fine. No, what confused her was the reason why it worked, and when she asked the teacher, the teacher blew her off, saying that it wasn't important to understand why it worked because on the tests, they would only need to plug and chug.

Today, while our math teacher was out, he had us read and respond to an excerpt from Professor Jo Boaler's What's Math Got to Do with It? Particularly because of stories like my little sister's or reports on how terrible our educational system is, this touched a nerve with me, and I started thinking about how this is a reaction to a change in the world.

For the last several decades, technology has been increasing steadily. This has had many implications for humans, changing how we work, how we communicate, and so forth. Technology has taken a key place in our lives. Additionally, the countries of East and Southern Asia have started accelerating their growth, and there are fears that the United States is falling behind those countries. One place in which that fear is particularly strong is the realm of education. Our students have been falling behind, especially in math and science, which does not bode well for the future.

And there is ample reason for concern. Falling educational standards vis-a-vis the rest of the world is a serious problem and must be addressed as such. However, as of late, the country's response to this change has largely been to emphasize the STEM fields at the expense of the humanities, and to do so badly. Instead of trying to focus on learning to innovate and be creative, as Professor Boaler points out, the United States largely focuses on the memorization and plug-and-chug aspects of the subject. And that is why you get stories like that of my little sister or stories of students that can't apply themselves to do the most basic of things. Those students have learned to only do one thing, not think about the methods more critically.

This reaction is, on the surface, logical. China et al. are becoming far stronger, and they have educational systems that are lauded as great, so to respond to the change, it would be a good idea to shift to their version of education, right? Unfortunately, there are some problems with this. The Asian model tends to focus very heavily on memorization, and while that does work for their needs (people to work in their manufacturing and engineering sectors, which are key to their economies), it would not work as well for America, which tends to have a far greater stake in being the innovators and coming up with the products that need to be produced. And this is where the money is. As Fareed Zakaria says in The Post-American World, the cost to build the iPhone is minimal. Most of the profits go to Apple, the innovators, not the overseas builders.

That is the model that America should be focusing on, not a model that emphasizes memorization and STEM only. We should be emphasizing critical thinking and innovation, using all fields, not just a select few that we think will be important. Yes, the Asian model works for Asia. But to respond to the growing power of Asia by trying to emulate them exactly is, while well-intentioned, an irrational and wrong response to the change.