Still Worrying about Sputnik
One of the things I know is that anxiety is irrational. We worry about the wrong things and not about the things that should concern us. And then, of course, we don’t take the steps to do something about what we ought to be worrying about.
This week the New York Times has contributed to our collective anxiety attack. First Thomas Friedman—whose theories about education derive from the thesis of his book, The World is Flat, that global economic competitiveness is magnified by the spread of on-line communications and technology—describes his tour of schools in Shanghai. He reminds us that in his flat world, Shanghai’s children are beating ours on the international PISA exams. And then Motoko Rich tells us supposedly better news from the TIMSS international tests. She leads with, “Amid growing alarm over the slipping international competitiveness of American students,” and then tells us not to worry quite so much because at least “students in 36 states outperformed the international average on math exams given… in 2011.” In other words there is cause for alarm about our international competitiveness, but maybe we aren’t as bad-off as we thought.
This is an old, old subject. Stanford University education professor Linda Darling-Hammond addressed it directly in 2010 in her nearly 350 page book, The Flat World and Education, whose title demonstrates that her book is intended to speak directly to the allegations of Thomas
