our infrastructure is old and failing. The cost of upgrading exceeds the cost of building it. On education, it appears to be a nightmare. As a teacher I have to stay on top of trends and they don't look good.
Schools are spending too much time on developing the whole child and making up for the lack of parental involvement instead of just educating. Test scores are falling rapidly and most teachers are beginning to question what the point is. Without a concerted effort to return to the basics, students will not be up to the task of supporting advanced manufacturing.
Don't waste your vote, vote Green or Independent in the next election.
They should. And while they're at it, they should take a cautionary lesson from Japan. Here, teaching knowledge instead of skill is the tradition -- not to mention the cause of widespread inability, barring attendance of "cram schools," which may as well replace traditional Japanese schools altogether.
(All Japanese study English for at least five years in school, yet less than 10% of those whose English studies are limited to those five years can hold their own in a casual conversation, or even introduce themselves without sounding like C3PO. This is because of the infuriating tendency of Japanese schools to teach material so that students pass the test...and then promptly forget everything. If a student's ultimate goal is passing a test, that's all he'll ever achieve.)
in Hanoi where I am. Parents want their kids to go to university and nobody wants to give them the bad news that their child isn't going to make it. However, their math skills blow away most American students simply because they spend so much time practicing.
I was the best student at French in my school and I could barely hold a conversation before I went to live in a French speaking country. If the students don't have a way to practice English daily then, yes it is just studying for the test. Here there is a 98% literacy rate on 1/50th of the US budget.
Go figure.
