There is such an elementary school math problem:
"If there are 4 biscuits now, I have eaten 2. How many biscuits do I eat out of the total?"
I believe that most elementary school students can answer in seconds, but an ordinary American elementary school student thought for a while before "calculating" this ancient problem.
The United States claims to have the best public education system in the world.
In many people's impressions, American schools are a harmonious scene where teachers are enlightened, students are free, and teachers and students are happy.
American children are always unrestrained, and seem not to have to bear the burden of study and the pressure of going to higher education carried by children from China, Japan, and South Korea.
But is this really the case?
The "Waiting for Superman" I’m going to talk about today will take you to discover the true other side of American education.
The director of this documentary, Davis Guggenheim (Davis Guggenheim) is known for his sharpness. He won the 79th Oscar for Best Documentary in 2006 with the environmental documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" .
This "Waiting for Superman" also won the Best Documentary Award at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award.
Davis Guggenheim
Bill Gates not only received an interview in "Waiting for Superman," he also personally ran around to promote the documentary, all because of his concerns about the current state of education in the United States.
At the end of 2009, the unemployment rate in the United States reached almost 10%. However, the high-tech industry cannot recruit talents locally. They can only go to Asia to recruit programmers and engineers.
In 2020, the United States will have 123 million high-skilled and high-income jobs, but only 50 million citizens will be able to do so.
In the past three decades, the U.S. education system has suffered from many drawbacks.
A large number of children born in ordinary families have huge obstacles in reading and mathematics. The average level is much lower than other developed countries on the planet, while the dropout rate in public schools is increasing year by year.
68% of detainees in Pennsylvania in the United States are public high school dropouts, and the state government spends as much as $33,000 on a prisoner each year, while the average annual tuition fee for private schools is $8,300.
The cost of spending 4 years on a prisoner is enough for a child to go to a private school, not only from kindergarten to high school, but also $24,000 left to go to college.
It is impossible to evaluate whether it is the failure of public education or the good welfare of prisoners...
There is also a strange phenomenon in the United States. Many children have good grades when they are young, but at the stage from fifth to eighth grade, many people's grades drop from B to D.
There are only two possibilities. Either these children become stupid as they grow older, or there is a problem with the education system.
Here is a little bit of science popularization of the American education system:
The American school system consists of four stages: preschool education, elementary education, secondary education, and higher education.
Elementary education institutions in the United States are public and private elementary schools, with public schools accounting for 80% and private schools accounting for 20%.
There are three types of schooling system: 4 years, 8 years and 6 years, of which the 6-year system accounts for the majority, and the 8-year system is mostly in the countryside.
Secondary education in the United States refers to middle schools. There are three main types of middle schools: 4-year system, 6-year consistent system, and 3 and 3 systems.
In the past 40 years, the American people have realized a fact that cannot be ignored: American public education is heading for irreversible decline.
In 1975, public opinion surveys showed that 62% of Americans had "very" or "quite" confidence in public schools. But in 1983, this number had dropped to 39%.
The matter should have been simple: the teacher imparted knowledge to the students and sent them on a journey of higher education.
But the weird American education system makes this process too complicated for you to imagine.
For example, some students fail the exam in one state, but pass the exam in the next state.
Because the federal government makes laws to allocate funds to schools in each state, each state also allocates funds to schools, and the two sets of rules formulated by the two often conflict.
In addition, there are more than 14,000 independent school boards, making school governance even more difficult.
There are contradictions in various clauses, and various issues are chaotic.
The local school board, people from the Ministry of Education, Federal Ministry of Education, Director of Education and a large group of staff...
These people originally wanted to help schools improve the quality of education, but instead hindered school teaching and hindered the progress of education reform.
This is not the problem of a certain individual or department, but all of this constitutes a huge force to destroy the education system.
We all know that the quality of teachers is a direct factor in determining the quality of education.
Students can make rapid progress by following a good teacher who is in charge, while a bad teacher who follows a perfunctory can only ask for blessings.
Bad teachers can only complete half of the prescribed amount of teaching, good teachers can complete 150% of the amount of teaching, and the salary of these two kinds of teachers is the same.
There will be no deductions for poor teaching, and no additional rewards for good teaching.
Some students brought hidden cameras to the class, and they caught the teacher reading the newspaper in class, and even a teacher pressing the student's head into the toilet.
However, these bad public school teachers cannot be expelled.
Because the teacher contract stipulates that teachers can have tenure as long as they stay for 2 years, that is, they cannot be fired for life.
The cartoon "The Simpsons" also satirized this unreasonable phenomenon.
As long as it is "turned to normal", you can sit back and relax and do whatever you want.
There is a trade union to support the teachers, and teachers who fill up their numbers are even more confident.
If you want to expel a teacher, the process is so cumbersome that it is almost impossible to complete it.
In the United States, the firing rate of doctors is 1/57, the firing rate of lawyers is 1/97, and the firing rate of teachers is only 1/2500.
Those teachers whose teaching quality is poor and cannot be expelled are called "Lemons".
At the end of each year, all principals and lemons gather together to "dance the lemon dance".
The principals dumped "lemons" at each other. In some states, this process is called "garbage delivery", and in some states, it is called "turkey run".
Education reformers believe that as long as the bottom 6% to 10% of teachers are eliminated, the average performance of American students can be raised to the level of Finland.
However, a strong teacher union prevented the reform from being implemented.
The level of teachers also determines the quality of the school.
In the film, the ideal of the little girl Daisy is to become a doctor, and algebra is a compulsory course for admission to medical school.
In the eighth grade, she will go to Stevenson Middle School to learn this subject.
However, Stevenson Middle School’s math compliance rate is only 13%.
The more bleak prospect is that Stevenson graduates will enter Roosevelt High School, which is one of the worst high schools in Los Angeles.
Only 3% of students can enter the university, and 57% of students cannot even graduate.
Professor Robert Barfanz of Johns Hopkins University is studying schools like Roosevelt High School, where more than 40% of students fail to graduate and are called dropout factories.
Barfanz found that whether in the suburbs or in the countryside, primary and secondary education failed, and high school students who did not meet the academic standards were sent upwards.
They can only persist in high school for a year or two. In his research, he found more than 2,000 dropout factories.
Rock High School is one of the worst high schools in Los Angeles.
The number of freshmen in the ninth grade of Rock High School is 1,200, but only 300 to 400 can persist to the tenth grade, and 800 students are left behind.
The reading level of these students in the ninth grade is still between the first and third grades.
Rock High School has a history of 40 years, and 60,000 people have studied here during the 40 years.
Among the 60,000 people, 40,000 have not graduated. This is the damage that Rock High School has caused to this area in the past forty years.
A bad middle school can cause millions of drop-out children to wander on the streets. These people have no diplomas, no skills, and no expectations for life.
Initially, it was believed that bad communities ruined local schools.
But education reformers are more inclined: it is poor school education that destroys the local community. After all, the quality of the community depends on the quality of the people.
As in China today, children who can only go to public schools nearby have a high chance of going to bad schools.
In addition to public schools, there are also some elite middle schools that focus on characteristic teaching and tend to learn and train vocational skills, arts, and academics. However, there are not many such schools and it is very difficult to enter.
In this context, public charter schools have become the hope of many people.
A public charter school is an independently operated school run with public money.
However, the number of applicants for this type of school is extremely high. When the number of applicants is full, it is necessary to draw numbers and draw lots to determine who can enroll.
The fate of a person's future is thus handed over to luck.
Until the 1970s, American public schools were still the world's leading public schools.
Most Americans firmly believe that education can change the trajectory of life even if the environment is not ideal.
Since 1990, American public schools have trained more than one hundred Nobel laureates, ten presidents, and
Social elites like Steve Jobs.
However, since the 1970s, American public schools have gradually fallen behind other countries in the world.
Among the 30 developed countries in the world, American students only rank 25th in mathematics and 21st in science.
The top 5% of outstanding students in the country can only be ranked 23rd out of 29 countries.
What is dumbfounding is that although American students' math scores are at the bottom of the eight countries, confidence is ranked first in the questionnaire.
It is undeniable that American education does have its leading edge. There are many prestigious schools, talented people, and world-leading technology...
However, the educational issues hidden behind the glamorous side are becoming more and more difficult to ignore.
Official statistics show that the United States loses 7,000 students every school day on average. A total of 1.2 million students drop out each year, and only 70% of high school students graduate successfully.
However, to ensure economic development, we must rely on high-quality labor, and high-quality labor comes from high-quality education.
Bill Gates believes that if a country wants to maintain the economic development of scientific and technological innovation, it must ensure that it continuously trains talents in mathematics, science, and engineering. Our country talks about equal opportunities, but there is no equal opportunity without a great education.
After watching this documentary, I believe many people will feel a bit subversive.
It turns out that there are so many problems behind American education, but there are many obstacles to reform.
Perhaps, we really need an omnipotent super talent who can turn the tide and bring hope to children's education.
View more about Waiting for Superman reviews
