Yes, the U.S. educational system has shown its inferiority once again. A report released yesterday, which tested young high school students of the world’s richest countries on real life, basic math problems, ranked the U.S. 24th out of 29 countries. Ouch.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41278-2004Dec6.html

Despite steady rises in standardized tests scores (in large part to the Bush Administrations infamous education bill, No Child Left Behind, which sets national testing standards for young students) the U.S. continues to fall behind its educational competitors in Asia and Europe.

So whom did our bureaucratic geniuses in the education sector blame the lackluster results on?

You guessed it! When asked what the overall message of the report was, deputy education Secretary Eugene Hickok was quoted as saying, “we need more qualified teachers.”

C’mon, Eugene. If we implement legislation that forces educators to revolve their curriculum around preparing students to ace a test, we severely undermine the basic educational value of learning. Students are taught, at a very young age, to prioritize getting the grade over learning the material. It’s hard to “get young people interested in math and science” (Hickok’s words) if, instead of letting them explore the material, we force students to regurgitate useless facts and formulas just so government leaders can hold up a piece of paper and claim, “See! Our children our geniuses, and we are geniuses for making them geniuses!”

Pasi Sahlberg, a former official in the Finnish education ministry who now works at the World Bank, was asked about Finland’s impressive results in the survey (#1 ranking). “Every child goes to the same school, and there is no school choice," Sahlberg explained, "Teachers focus 100 percent on educating and teaching children rather than preparing them for tests.”

Hmm….those crazy Finns may be on to something there. But what do our Washington think tanks say when told of the U.S. coming in 24th? Tom Loveless, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, argued that U.S. standardized math tests are “far too easy.” That must be it. Or it could be because, as director of the Center on Education Policy Jack Jennings pointed out, the U.S. is a "much more diverse country than most of its competitors."

Yeah, those minorities, really dragging us down.

Our kids might not be able to apply any of their “acquired math skills” to real life, but at least their test scores are above average.

But hey, our children should never fear; getting good grades, possessing a high IQ, and learning to apply knowledge to real life situations is not the end all, be all.

I mean, look at our president.