Did you go to private school? Was it worth it?

[Miyuki]

^Yes, sorry. The bullying (in public school) was meant as a pro for private school.

[Ganbare!]

I attended a great elementary school in a well-off area, most of the student body was int'l and assiduous.

Then I moved and went to some nasty public schools in which pupils enjoyed the thrills of being mugged by machette-wielding gangs of Blacks and Filipinos, the police would often pay us a visit when the surveillance cameras filmed a crime or two so location does matter. That said a friend of mine went to a Catholic private school where students were either delinquents or slackers rejected from the public school system, so they had to PAY loads of money just to get a terrible education .

Finally, I attended a top private high school for 3 years where tuition fees amounted to 1500$/year, it was worth it considering its 100% success rate at the Baccalaureate.
This has led me to believe that it is fundamental for kids to experience both systems (not dangerous schools though) to understand the value of money, of a quality and safe learning environment etc. I have to say, witnessing a 6-feet tall 13 y-o kid telling a 5-feet teacher to shut the f*** up was priceless.

[volume]

To be very short,

Yes and depends on the child.

[catgirl]

I went to a private catholic school for 9 years! So I had to see many of the same faces for 9 years ;D

My parents made me go to that school, and my mum went there when she was younger. At high school I tried public school, and I was happy with it, cause people were mature enough there and serious enough. I think at the primary school they maybe are not....So it depends on the age I guess. I heard alot of bad things about public school for younger kids.

[nealtse]

I went to mostly private schools in Hong Kong. I went to a US public high school for one year when I was 15-16, what a joke. I got a 3.8GPA without even trying, and everyone thought I was a mad genius just because I paid attention in class. In Asia, I had to put in solid work just to get a B+.

[Ganbare!]

^Exactly what me and my friends have been saying for years, outside of a few good schools and universities, education in North America is frankly lacking, little place for critical thinking, abysmal courseload, joke electives you don't even need to attend in order to pass.. The original goal of American education was to be financially, intellectually accessible and popular but too accessible inevitably led to mediocrity for the masses.

What makes the region so innovative is the high economic freedom encouraging to materialize ideas as well as attractive financial/political conditions for foreign investors and academics. The average graduate's education is worse than most East Asians' or Western Europeans' at least in social sciences and the humanities. If you don't believe me, someone among us completely proves my claims.

[betahat]

^someone among us completely proves my claims.

We want proof!

[Or instead, we'll settle for a 500 word essay on how your superior European social sciences education led you to believe that you can prove a generalization using a single example. Not that I disagree with your thesis, though of course the moment I actually look for statistical evidence on one of your claims I find that it only holds with many caveats, or maybe not at all... www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0923110.html if you're interested. Do they even do international comparisons of social sciences and humanities? Of course the US always sucks at math!]

[nealtse]

Disclaimer: Personal experience, not decades long educational demographic study.

I personally believe, it's not a matter of smarter, but culturally indoctrinated expectation and hell, even fear, of coming home with a "C" grade.

[Ganbare!]

Your figures prove that Asians and Euros beat Americans in every discipline. The Canadian rank is odd considering the curriculum is not fundamentally different than its Southern neighbors'. I went to a decent school in Westmount, Montreal in which I blindfoldedly collected A's in maths. The next year, I moved back to Paris, the only thing I could achieve were F's. I consistently ranked last of my class for 2 years until I mastered the local rigorous way. France has produced more Fields medal recipients than the UK and Germany combined. If I ever have kids they'll undoubtedly attend a Lycée, after all it's the world's widest international secondary school system as well as the most elitist.

No data is collected at the university level so unfortunately I cannot prove my claims outside of personal anecdotal evidence based on a hundred international students' testimonials (that could be considered statistically significative though). Allow me to briefly sum up my undergrad years which are fairly representative of the aforementioned foreign students' experiences.

I have dedicated 3-4 nights/week to going out, spent more time reading stuff about geostraty, warfare or politics than actually studying management as I had little interest in my major. Despite being horrendous my maths skills still allowed me to easily pass all my finance and quantitative classes. Furthermore although my real life English fluency is superior than what I showcase here it still is not at a native level as I never had more than 4-hours/week formal training in the language. Despite all this, attending a top Canadian university featured in int'l rankings and particularly reknown for its tradition of severity I still maintainted a 3.5 GPA which netted me several academic scholarships that paid my rent during my 3 years of bachelor.

Nonetheless, don't think of me as a particularly bright individual instead you should understand that a quality education like the one I received instill so much rigor in learning, procures comparatively so much knowledge, it is impossible not to ace exams that have such low requirements like the ones in North American schools. I remember a Vietnamese student in my computer science class had a perfect GPA several semesters in a row despite never being educated in English nor coming from a Western-influenced system. I can guarantee you that studying maths or certain disciplines with a different method than the one you were taught for years can prove to be very challenging. I currently have more trouble in grad school where classes are taught in my native language than I had last year.

A British acquaintance told me undergraduates in Oxford have a compulsory dissertation to write. Can you imagine this being implemented in America where many students can barely write a proper English sentence out of high school?

[nealtse]

Some might say they don't challenge you to think, but to obey. That's some of my anarchist friends talking

[betahat]

^Your figures prove that Asians and Euros beat Americans in every discipline.

The US beats Denmark and Germany at reading and is basically tied with France. I thought we were talking about social sciences and humanities, for which "reading" is probably the best measure. I always thought the stereotype was that Asians didn't really care about history, literature, etc. but excelled at rote-learning, which translates best into high test scores in math and science.

The Canadian rank isn't surprising at all - average test scores depend a lot on socioeconomic inequality, which the US has in abundance (much more than most Asian countries). If you just took a small slice of the US - say, the mostly white, well-to-do New England states - you would find that they perform comparably to the Japanese or Koreans on average or just like the Canadians.

But I can't disagree with you about maths and sciences, there is abundant evidence that the US lags here. The top Asian countries in particular do well. In fact they do MUCH better than Europe too. Look at the scores:
4brevard.com/choice/international-test-scores.htm

I think the more interesting question, then, is not why the US is so bad at math (500 vs. 538 for France at Grade 8) but why the US and France are so much worse than Korea or Singapore (over 600). If you got an F in a French school you'd get an F- in Singapore.
Clearly the school system is geared towards math and sciences, clearly those are prestige fields that parents and the culture in general push on kids. There's also the very controversial and debateable "IQ" factor. But in general I think the Asian gap is more of a mystery - not why the US does marginally worse than some European countries with much lower socioeconomic inequality, but why the those European countries with low socioeconomic inequality do so much worse than the Asian countries.

[Ganbare!]

^I mostly direct my attention to grade 12 which is the most important as it is the endpoint of secondary education and France fares pretty well in maths 523 vs 461 for the US and its top students are ranked number 1 when the Asians are left out. I think there is a cultural explanation, my belief is that having to memorize complex signs for centuries forced them to rely their left brain more (maths, rational, language sector). My father was good at quantitative, my siblings are unsurprisingly good at sciences too while similarly to my mother I excel at arts and social sciences but for some strange reason suck at humanities/languages.

The fact that only reading is assessed in humanities while scientific disciplines are given more importance shows the figures are biased. Reading is only one aspect but what about actual knowledge? Let me guess, it can't be evaluated as knowledge in literary disciplines is local, an Italian pupil has never read Shakespeare just like a Singaporean pupil has never heard of Dante. Plus, writing is not assessed either while actual knowledge in maths/science is evaluated... We don't judge individuals' education by their ability to read!

Concerning adults as we were debating the average man's education I think it's safe to say 99% adults can read nevertheless writing/rhetoric/knowledge none evaluated by these rankings, can vary greatly from country to country. Therefore I don't see how you can conclude from these skewed and incomplete figures that Americans are nearly as educated as the French or more than the Danes in social sciences/humanities because of US pupils' reading score! Especially considering common anecdotal evidence which is sadly all we have left here confirms that the American populace have little knowledge of such important disciplines as Geography, History or Art at least much less than the two aforementioned people.

However, I do agree about social disparities significantly lessening some countries score more than others but we're discussing nations as collective entities so generalizations necessarily happen.

[betahat]

^^A British acquaintance told me undergraduates in Oxford have a compulsory dissertation to write. Can you imagine this being implemented in America where many students can barely write a proper English sentence out of high school?

Yes, look at any undergraduate attending Harvard or a comparable top ranked school. Again, America is very diverse with a fat lower tail that brings down the distribution. But the best schools and students are very good.


The reason the figures are "biased" for science and math is that those are the only areas with comparable curricula. History - which is the main social science that students will take - and literature are obviously very location specific. Hence there is no comparing. I agree that Americans are generally more inward focused than Europeans (not sure about Asian social science or humanities curricula), especially the Scandinavians who always have a global outlook (not so true of the French mind you) so their knowledge of history and literature is even more local. Americans are stereotypically ignorant about world history and geography (though I have yet to see any data that backs that up). But find me a Frenchman who can name all 50 state capitals...

In the absence of data, you'll just rely on anecdotes. Hmmmm. I guess I can't argue with that, but you're not going to get anyone to change their priors and prejudices with that one.
(The great thing about the PISA was exactly that it overturned all the prejudices and preconceptions people had - the French and Germans were shocked to find out that they are pretty average by OECD standards.) My prior and prejudice is that a lot of the strength of European countries' educational system is early specialization, which means people in technical and other streams are less likely to know a broad set of facts, especially in the humanities and social sciences. And given the specialization in math and science in Asia, I don't think the average Korean's knowledge of art or history is much better than the average Americans. So controlling for socioeconomic status, I'm not convinced at all that there's a gap for social sciences and humanities. At least, I'm going to need a lot more than anecdotes.


^We don't judge individuals' education by their ability to read!

Actually for most of recorded history that's exactly what we did. And I still do. Memorizing lots of facts and being able to rapidly assimilate and understand new knowledge are different skills - both can be useful, but it doesn't make sense to priviledge one over the other. Reading comprehension is obviously critical for the humanities and social sciences, and differences in reading ability translate directly to subsequent performance in university and later in life.

Anyway, how do you explain the fact that 15 year old French students do worse than Canadians on Reading, Math and Science tests? Esp. in light of your own experience.





Also, I think this is the most interesting thing to come out of the international education comparison litereature

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trends_in_International_Mathematics_and_Science_Study

"Data for US students is further tracked for ethnic and racial groups, which can be tracked as the nation. As a whole, grade four students in the United States lagged the best Asian and European nations in the 2007 TIMSS international math and science test. However, broken down by race, Asian Americans scored comparably to Asian nations, European Americans scored comparably to the best European nations. Hispanic Americans averaged 505, comparable to students in Austria and Sweden, while African Americans at 482 were comparable to Norway.

Grade eight students in the United States also lagged the best Asian and European nations in the 2007 TIMSS international math and science test. Broken down by race, US Asians scored comparably to Asian nations, white Americans scored comparably to the best European nations, Hispanic Americans averaged 475, comparable to students in Malaysia , while African Americans at 457 were comparable to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Lebanon.[2]

[FreckleFoot]

I did not go to private school. There was no way my parents could ever hope to afford it. They will probably be working until the day they die.

If it's true that private schools generally have less violence and bullying (I don't know because I've never been), I definitely think I would have benefited from going to one. I still went to one of the better public schools. Even though I was one of the top students despite a lot of bullying, I feel as if I could have done so much better. Without the stress of bullying in school I might have made the right decision when moving on to sixth form (last two years of high school for North Americans). I took the IB there, but didn't choose as wisely with my subjects. The group of IB students was far nicer and more international than the A-level group. However, by then the damage had already been done. I had fought so hard in secondary school I had lost my energy to continue by then. I didn't do as well as I expected, but I admit there were also other negative factors affecting me outside school.

I agree with Robyn: I do not think it is fair at all to exclude those who haven't got the money to attend private school. If they are intelligent and have a good record in regards to behaviour, why shouldn't they be given the chance? Or is it that the richer people would rather not have their children mixing with the awful working class riff raff?

[Ganbare!]

^There is no denying the American elite fare as well as other top countries, I tried to pinpoint that statistically you are more likely to find an American whose education is lacking regardless of global focus or not compared to other regions. Considering the lack of conclusive data as we are not even comparing comparable knowledge I don't think either of us can decisively convince the other.

That said there is something I have to admit the academic French system is not very effective in terms of education as it is too elitist. It does not take into consideration the children needs, it just assumes everyone can become an 'intellectual' which means there is a high failure rate among weaker students. Most universities in the UK have a compulsory dissertation graduation requirement, there is one too in France excepted it's in grade 11. The French baccalaureate is the only national diploma that awards 30-credits AP in 4 years institutions around the world as the baccalaureat already includes university-level philosophy, calculus etc, it tells something about the quality of the education.