We hear over and over and over that Chinese kids are learning much, much more than American kids, and that this is because American public schools are failing our kids. Meanwhile, kids in American public schools today are learning things at a much younger age than their parents learned the same things, have vastly more homework and at a much younger age than their parents did, and have much less lunch and recess time at school than their parents did. What gives?
When American and Chinese kids are compared, what are they comparing exactly? They're comparing the available data. So what data is available? The data available is all Chinese kids in school, and all American kids in public schools. Is that a good and useful comparison?
First, it's generally understood that wealthy kids do better in school than average and poor kids. There may be many reasons for that. Wealthier parents may have more time to help with and enforce homework and may be more motivated to do so, wealthier households may have more intellectually simulating things to do in and around the home and have the means to do more intellectually stimulating activities outside the home, and DNA that performs better in school may bubble upward on the economic ladder.
That wouldn't matter for this comparison if all Chinese kids were being compared to all American kids, but in fact, only the wealthiest Chinese kids go to school at all. The majority of Chinese kids cannot go to school and are not factored into the comparison. So we're comparing the wealthiest Chinese kids to American kids.
Further, most of the wealthiest American kids are in expensive private schools. They too aren't factored into the comparison. Only American kids in public schools are included. That means most of the highest performing American students are not part of the comparison.
But there's still more. In America, public schools are tasked with educating ALL kids, even the most troubled kids who make no effort to learn and do nothing but cause trouble, and even the most mentally challenged kids. In China, such troubled kids are removed from school while mentally challenged kids never enter school at all.
So the comparison excludes many of America's best students, while including America's most troubled and most mentally challenged kids. The average American student being compared is well below the performance of the real average American student. But for China, the comparison includes only the top performers.
The comparison is perfectly absurd, and of no real use at all. We're comparing America's below-average kids to China's top performers. No one should be surprised that the below-average kids of one nation aren't up to speed with the top performers of another. The weird thing is that we're actually trying to bring America's below-average kids up to the level of China's top performers. It's idiotic and dysfunctional, and it's not going to work.
This isn't really the fault of the American public school system or its teachers. We the voters are ultimately responsible for having tasked them with this impossible goal. The problem is the American media, and the mindless drones among their readers and viewers, who compare top-performing Chinese kids to below-average American kids, find that the below-average kids are not up to speed with the top performers, and decide, all logic to the contrary, that this means American public schools are failing our kids.
So what should really be compared? The richest X% of China's kids who are fortunate to go to school should be compared to the richest X% of American kids, the overwhelming majority of whom are in expensive private schools. American kids of average wealth, who are mainly in public schools, should be compared to Chinese kids of average wealth -- who sadly have no opportunity to go to school at all.
Those comparisons can't be done well today because good data isn't available. For China, good data probably won't be forthcoming in the foreseeable future because it would make China look bad. But we do know about what percentage of Chinese kids go to school, and that those are generally the richest kids. The obvious next step is to find out who the same percentage of richest American kids are, and get their data. Most of those kids are in private schools. If private schools won't provide that data under current laws, there's a simple fix for that without violating anyone's privacy; a law can be passed requiring each school to just provide the numbers without names attached.
What would that comparison show? Who knows, but one thing's for sure -- it would show something dramatically different than what the current sorry excuses for comparisons show.
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