Friedman turning over a new leaf?

Here.

Not being an educator, I can't give any such advice.

WTF? That has never stopped him on anything before... what did he eat this morning?

I just interviewed Craig Barrett, the chief executive of Intel, which has invested millions of dollars in trying to improve the way science is taught in U.S. schools. (The Wall Street Journal noted yesterday that China is graduating four times the number of engineers as the U.S.; Japan, with less than half our population, graduates double the number.)

In today's flat world, Mr. Barrett said, Intel can be a totally successful company without ever hiring another American. That is not its desire or intention, he said, but the fact is that it can now hire the best brain talent "wherever it resides."

If you look at where Intel is making its new engineering investments today, he said, it is in China, India, Russia, Poland and, to a lesser extent, Malaysia and Israel. While cutting-edge talent is still being grown in America, he added, it's not enough for Intel's needs, and not enough is being done in U.S. public schools - not just to leave no child behind, but to make sure that the best students and teachers are nurtured and rewarded. Look at the attention Congress has focused on steroids in Major League Baseball, Mr. Barrett mused. And then look at the attention it has focused on science education in minor-league American schools.

That's the real news out there, folks. And it's not funny.

Tommy scores twice in one column!

Kevin Drum thinks Friedman's new book is torture, but the whole flat-earth globalization thing aside, there is certainly a huge problem with education in this country. Friedman mentions a Times article on 4 different students and their big university experiences, and therein (and elsewhere) experts have lamented the educational system in this country and how our means of learning need to change.

OK, sure... I guess. But more important than that IMO is the need to change the culture of education in this country. Smart kids have always been bullied and beat-up, marginalized as uncool nerds, etc. It all sounds very 50's-ish, but I think it is actually getting worse, particularly because we have people at the top who decry intellectualism and label folks with actual contextual knowledge and credentials as snobby elites. It is simply beyond me how people out there absolutely resent academics, and that filters through to our kids.

A second item... going back to the idea that our educational system needs to be changed, I think something that is overlooked is the goal of our system and not necessarily the mechanics thereof. It seems to me that the overall goal of public education in this country is basic proficiency... proficiency testing in NCLB is a good example of that line of thought. Would I like everyone to have a basic level of proficiency? Sure... but it ain't going to happen, and by focusing on so low a bar I think we are missing out.

By teaching to the average, our top third or so are not be adequately prepared. Some of these kids will be able to overcome it (like I did, but that's a post for another time) but others will be complacent or unwilling to go through the pain later when they need to catch up (this is where English and Psyche majors come from).

I once dated a very intelligent girl who grew up in Belarussia, and I was intrigued by some particular aspects of the Soviet education system, the biggest being their target: they sought to continually push the upper ranks of their children. The best were put through accelerated paces commesurate with their intellectual abilities, and the others were left behind to operate at their own pace. Furthermore, in this dynamic it was way uncool to be dumb (that culture bit I mentioned earlier)... I don't know if this dynamic was the chicken or the egg, but it sure seemed to work well for those upper level students: my girlfriend came to the US as a High School sophomore and slept to an A in upper level calculus at a good school in California (even though she really didn't know English) and got A's in college calculus classes during her junior and senior years.

The big downside was that the bottom half or third really got no attention whatsoever, and I don't believe we should have a system that separates out the chafe and then discards it. Rather, I think we should be focused on doing some separating in order to ensure that the growth of the smart kids isn't getting retarded by the slower kids or those who just don't care. We do this in so many other areas of our society, why not education? I understand that people will be worried about the stresses young kids will have in order to get to that next level, but if we don't apply a little positive pressure now, they are going to have a hell of a lot more stress trying to find a job with their degree in Rhetoric and Communication.

The mention of that major brings me to one more thing I would love to see: university limitations on the number of certain majors. Do we need English majors? Sure. Do we need a mess of them? No way. Get rid of the glut by capping the number of majors in areas. Life and Physcial Sciences will be the order of the day, with secondary focus in areas like Public Policy, Economics, and Business. I will admit that takes away from your freedom to determine your own path in life, etc., but tough toodles.

Will we ever see any of this? I doubt it... it would need a lot more tax money and there are too many parents out there who get enraged when not everyone in the class gets a sticker no matter how well they did on the spelling test. Well, I think we need a bit more capitalism and Darwinism in the classroom, or else our position in the world isn't going to hold.