Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

I spent a lot of time talking about Lee Kuan Yew on the last blog.  Guess what?  More Singapore today because I am going to talk about PISA (Programme for International Assessment).  This is the test that is given to students in some 70 countries or regions assessing their abilities in math, reading and science.  First issue I have is that how smart are these people giving the tests?  I don't see a "S" in PISA.  Shouldn't it be PIA or PFIA? 

There are two predictable reactions to the results.  The first is that since Asians scored the best, we are in serious trouble in competing with Asian countries, in particular China, in the future.  Well, lets not get ahead of ourselves.  This is a test of middle or high school students and the scores reflect what the average students in these countries can do.  The top students of the U.S. I am sure is still up there and while our high schools on average are horrible, our colleges are second to none.  There are usually two routes of innovations.  First is by some genius out of nowhere and second is out of universities.  I believe there are geniuses in all populations and a society that values people who think outside of the box will allow their geniuses to make great contributions.  I believe the U.S. is such a society.  Restrictions of freedom and demand for conformity will hold a country like China back for many years to come even if they produce the best high school students.  Our universities allow bright people to do research that are the envy of the world.  I would guess that of the top 100 research universities in the world, the U.S. is probably home to one third.  China may have 3-5.  So we are not going to lose our technological advantage any time soon.

So we should not be frightened, but we should take the results seriously.  I read a couple of pundits who said China cheated, using data only from Shanghai which is the richest city in China.  It is true that we don't have data from poor areas of China which is still the majority of the country.  But Shanghai beat out Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan which are all in the top 5 and are Chinese majority.  I certainly don't think Chinese are smarter.  If that is the case, people like me wouldn't have to migrate to America for a better living.  I would say that the reason for the results are way too many and complicated.  But I do think the Chinese and Asian culture of education is one of the most important reason.  When Lee Kuan Yew united the country his first goal after survival is to improve the education system.  He himself would admit that Singapore's system is more rigid and less creative than those of the West.  But it has helped the country rise economically.  As I mentioned before minorities in Singapore score as well as the average of the U.S.  So most people in the country can participate in the global economy and not left behind like many people in this country are.  So while we may continue to lead the world in innovations, if we don't improve our schools eventually we will suffer a wider and wider gap between the haves and the have nots.