Finland Über Alles
December 18, 2007
Tiny Finland scored first in science and second in math and reading in the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment, sponsored by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. But Asian “tigers” were five of the top 10 in math, led by Taiwan and including Hong Kong, South Korea, Macao and Japan. They were also five of top 10 in science, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, and four of the top 10 in reading. The United States was way below the international average in science and below the average for industrialized nations.
What didn’t make news were figures broken down by race for the United States. While blacks and Hispanics lagged, whites actually led Asian Americans 523 to 499, with the best Asian nations scoring from 522 for Korea to 542 for Hong Kong. Hispanic Americans at 439 outscored Thailand at 421, which wasn’t much higher than 409 for African Americans.
Considering the overrepresentation of Asians in science and engineering, I’d wonder about the structure of the science questions. Students were expected to know that zinc oxide and mineral oil are reference materials when put on light-sensitive paper to test sunscreens. This reminds me of “inquiry based” science used in Washington state’s Assessment of Student Learning standardized science test that asks elementary kids to make up experiments, which I didn’t even have to do in college, but requires knowing very few basic facts.
Ironically, nations like Korea are looking to adopt fuzzy no-arithmetic mathematics that have American parents, and even Michelle Malkin, in open revolt. They found that basics like regrouping, long division and the least common denominator have been replaced by “important mathematics” like coloring boxes, singing and writing letters about global warming. Many of our kids are graduating into college remedial math to cover all the “bad, old” math that was left out so that “all children, including minorities and women, will succeed.”
Sticking with hippie mathematics will only make America lag even farther than Asians, who are the masters of rote learning. I’ve worked with Asian programmers who were completely stumped by problems they had not seen before, whereas an American would keep on working until he figured something out. Still, that’s no excuse to replace teaching facts and methods with experimentation and exploring new ideas, when the correct answer was written in books thousands of years ago.
Asian men still can’t run
Steve Sailer, who runs a blog on human biodiversity, counted up some of the fastest times of American high school cross-country runners, looking at names and pictures. He determined whites were overrepresented at 82 percent, while most of the blacks were actually east African at 9 percent. Asian Americans were only 1 percent. Asian guys these days seem to concentrate in racquet sports, but considering how well whites do at this, maybe more of our boys should try donning those running shoes to get their athletic experience on their college applications.
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anybody notice that US whites scored as well as the koreans?