Why Other Countries out Rank the US Academically - Research Paper Example

Why other countries out rank the US academically The US leads in many fronts be it in economics, Gross Domestic Product, Health Care provision, Democracy, Technological advancements, military prowess and influence over other countries. This has earned the United States the Superpower status. Other nations know that America is a force to be revered and reckoned with. This is not the case in the education field. A serious misconception exists between literacy and academic prowess. Whereas most Americans can read and write, the overall academic performance of Americans has been dwindling over the years. A majority of the population cannot solve basic mathematical problems. This becomes worsened by gadgets that can calculate and convert units of measurements with a press of a button. As a result, people lose touch with their academic background. Studies have shown that most Americans cannot convert units of measurement (Unger 88). Various organization rank students of different countries bases on academic performance. Due to the different educational requirements in different countries and curriculum variation, Math and Science avail the only common basis for comparison between American students and students from other nations. The Third International mathematics and science Study that includes results collected from over half a million students in more than 41 nations gets used as a benchmark to assess and compare the effectiveness of the various educational systems. Students from the industrialized European nations, Canada, Asia, the U.S and New Zealand got involved in the study. The study showed that students going to school under unimaginably tough conditions in third world countries like Costa Rica perform way better than American students (Bradshaw 111). Literacy levels in these developing nations are much higher than those in the industrialized nations. America ranked poorly in the study, behind countries like India and Brazil. Analysis showed that American students in the fourth grade perform below average. Middle school students ranked worse than their fourth grade counterparts, whereas high school students lacked the ability to compete academically. The standards set by high school students from other countries were too high, and there was no competition because American high school students were no match. Upon completion of high school education where students are ready to join higher education or the job market, American students perform poorly as compared to their peers in the Diasporas (Her 67). With the amount of funding that the American educational system receives, which is much more than funding in other nations, one would expect excellence in academics. This is far from the case. Education professionals say that schools lack focus on the core business of educational institutions, which is academics. They are over burdened with the responsibility of social re-engineering instead of focusing on the provision of quality education. Half of the energy gets focused on social work, and the other half gets focused on education. The quality of education service providers is wanting in the United States (McDermmont 98). In countries like Finland, which is one of the best academic nations, high school teachers have to posses Masters Degrees in their respective field on interest. This level of high quality teachers leads to the provision of quality education to students, who in turn churn out excellent grades. In the Unites States, teachers are sometimes under qualified to teach in institutions such as high Schools. In the Life Sciences and Biology fields in high school, an estimated 31 percent of teacher lack at least a minor in Biology. In the Physical Sciences field, over half the teachers lack at least a minor in Physical Sciences. American teachers cannot match up to their counterparts in other countries who could be said to be over qualified to teach. American teachers are also under paid. This leads to lack of enthusiasm in their jobs. These teachers become lose their passion on education, and as a result, do not give teaching their best effort (Bowles 47). Most educationists believe that the poor public education system is the main reason why other countries beat America academically. They are of the opinion that the public education system neither emphasizes the need for excellence in academics nor focuses on results. No one expects the recipients of public education to meet high standards in academics. They are not under any pressure to strive to achieve to the best of their ability. Students take a back seat and work hard enough to meet the bare minimum required to proceed to the next level. This instills laziness in the students, who go on to become academic failures not because they are dumb, but because no one expects them to get excellent academic results. They simply go through the system without the slightest of care (Her 70). Students in other countries get held accountable for their academic performance. Healthy academic competition among students is alive and thrives. The resultant effect is that students work ever harder to match and surpass the best results. Some blame has to be put on the American education system. Failure to reform the education system is due to problem misdiagnosis, lack of responsibility over the education docket, and shifting of blame across the stake holders (Gintis 107). The reference to America as the land of opportunity also demeans the American educational system. Students believe that they do not have to achieve academic excellence to prosper in life. Only a small number of students possess well refined talents that can enable them to earn a living out of. Some students turn their backs on academics so as to focus on Sports like football and basketball, whereas others focus on screen play and music. Only a small number of these students go ahead to become masters in their respective arts. The rest of them either become mediocre or give up on their dreams altogether. In extreme cases, some students drop out of school to focus on their careers, which eventually fail to take off. Without an educational background to fall back on, these students vanish into obscurity. They add up to the increasing illiterate population who do not add any value to the State (Gallup 72). Wide gaps exist between the curricula of American schools and those of oversees schools. The American curriculum is basic and does not lay emphasis on details and complexities especially in the Sciences. The greatest deficit exists in the middle school level. In other nations, there is a shift in curricula from elementary science and basic algebra to physics, Chemistry, Geometry and Algebra. The text books used by American students are more often than not lack in depth analysis and merely introduce the subject to the students rather than conclusively teaching it. Textbooks in the U.S are usually shallow as compared to those used by other students. A Japanese math text book contains six topics, as compared to the 35 or more topics that an American text book contains. These foreign textbooks are also employing innovative approaches towards learning, and they enhance greater understanding of concepts and procedures. All the above factors lead to the outranking of America academically by other nations. Appropriate measures need to be taken to reform the American education System aimed at increasing both quality and performance. Policy makers can make use of the educational models of giants in the education sector such as Finland, to curve out a new system that best fits the American Society. Works Cited Bradshaw, W. J, Gallup, A. M. Americans speak out: Are educators and policy makers listening? New York: Phi Delta Kappan, 2008. Her, Leena Neng. Making Sense of Academic Failure. Stanford: Stanford University, 2007. MccDermmont, Ray. Successful Failure:The School America Builds. Detroit: West View Press, 2001. Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis. Schooling In Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. New York: Haymarket Books, 2011. Statistics., National Center for Education. Pursuing Excellence: A Study of U.S. Fourth-Grade Mathematics and Science Achievement in International. Research. New York: NCES, 2002. Unger, Harlow G. Encyclopedia of American Education. Washington: Infobase Publishing, 2007. Read More