>Every human in
>every culture is rational in this practical sense, and some cultures
>did indeed develop formally rational institutions, as exemplified by
>the Chinese bureaucratic state and its system of examinations. W
>would insist however that, in the West, formal rationality came to
>penetrate every sphere of live, including the economy as
>symbolized by double-bookkeeping.
Apparently, formal rationality has yet to penetrate American education too deeply:
***** The New York Times December 6, 2000, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 1; National Desk HEADLINE: Worldwide Survey Finds U.S. Students Are Not Keeping Up BYLINE: By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 5
Four years after American fourth-grade students scored high on an international test of science and math, their performance declined markedly when they reached the eighth grade, a second survey shows.
The survey results, released here today, indicate that the changes some educators had suggested were responsible for the fourth graders' success were insufficient to produce results as they advanced in school.
The survey was based on the results of tests that 180,000 eighth-graders in 38 nations took last year. It showed American students, over all, performing worse in math and science than students in Singapore, Taiwan, Russia, Canada, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands and Australia. They did better than students in some less industrialized nations, including Iran, Jordan, Chile, Indonesia, Macedonia and South Africa.
"American children continue to learn, but their peers in other countries are learning at a higher rate," said Richard W. Riley, the outgoing secretary of education....
The report, known as the Third International Math and Science Study-Repeat, came as a letdown to a number of educators.
It confirmed the declines over time in student performances that the initial 1995 survey of students in the United States and 42 other nations indicated.
That study showed American fourth-grade students among the leaders in science and at the international average in math. In the eighth grade, though, American students hovered at less than the international average in math and at the average in science. And in the twelfth grade, they lagged far behind students in most other nations in both subjects....
..."You would like to see the U.S. a leader not just in research and Nobel prizes, but in how our little kids perform," she said....
In 1995, American fourth-grade students did better than the international average on the science exam. Of the nations participating in both the 1995 and 1999 exams, American scores were exceeded only by those of South Korea and Japan.
But the results from 1999 showed that by the eighth grade, American students fell below the international average in science, with students in Australia, the Czech Republic, Britain, Slovenia, Canada and Hungary and five other nations doing better.
In math, American fourth graders in 1995 outperformed students in Canada, Britain and Cyprus, among others. But by the eighth grade, the report showed, they were on a level with students in Latvia, while those in Canada and Australia advanced.
Several industrialized nations that took part in the 1995 study -- including Switzerland, France, Austria and Germany -- did not participate this time....
...It found that most nations tend to employ math teachers certified in math. On average, 71 percent of students internationally learned math from teachers who majored in mathematics in college, but only 41 percent of American students did.
Nations with higher rankings teach subjects like geometry, chemistry and physics before high school, giving students more time to absorb the concepts, said William H. Schmidt, executive director of the Third International Math and Science Study Research Center at Michigan State University.
"As they get to high school, students in those countries can get much more challenging mathematics or science," he said. Only 25 percent of American high school students, he added, ever take physics. *****
Yoshie