>There was a spectrum of pedagogy and instruction, with
>the US on one side, Japan on the other side, and
>Germany in the middle. Japanese classes placed the
>greatest premium on education conceived in terms of
>learning through practical problem solving by students
>themselves, with most of the class time being students
>working "hands-on", in small groups to find solutions
>to a practical problem, while American classes were
>much more in the vein of whole group instruction, with
>the teacher explaining and illustrating some
>mathematical principle to the entire class, and the
>students then practicing it individually at their
>desks through various narrowly defined and abstract
>problems [i.e., solve for x]. They conclude that the
>Japanese math classroom engenders and produces a much
>higher level of mathematical thinking. I found their
>work, and their conclusion, largely compelling,
>although I think that they make too much of the TIMSS'
>results.
I suppose pedagogy might make some difference. If Japanese students tend to outperform American ones, however, I think that much of the difference can be attributed to the fact that summer vacations for kids are much shorter in Japan (about six weeks) than in the USA (about 12 weeks). Also, Japanese kids spend more time on math during the school year than American kids, according to one study: "When Lewis and Seidman computed the cumulative math time from the data, they found that Japanese elementary school children devote more time to the study of math than does any other nation. In fact, with just three exceptions -- Finland, Hong Kong and British Columbia (Canada) -- all nations testing higher than the U.S. spent more cumulative time studying math" (<http://www.udel.edu/PR/UpDate/93/1/21.html>).
American public education is not inferior to Japanese one at all; in fact, Japanese education sucks! The main difference that _is_ a problem for Americans is that in America educational quality is much more _uneven_ than in Japan, differing greatly from rich to poor districts.
What needs to be done to improve American public education is (1) to diminish social & economic inequality & (2) to nationalize education, instead of funding it out of property taxes pooled only for local use.
American teachers, on average, are as good as Japanese ones, I think.
Yoshie