Before moving to the United States, 13 years ago, I lived in a country very similar to
Thailand, Brazil. They might look very different – the language, the food, the geography, the
history. But they are very similar in one thing. We both know – Brazilians and Thais – that a
necessary condition to sustainable development and a better life for all of our citizens is the
improvement of education. It is not about natural resources, oil or agriculture; it is not about
attracting foreign companies and investors. It’s about human capital, the most precious and
valuable type of capital. And why? Why is education and human capital so important?
Every single piece of research show that better-educated people have a higher income,
lead happier lives, educate better their kids, are more productive, spend less time doing
repetitive work, have less issues with substance abuse and violence. Better educated people
are just happier, except for one thing. They know there is so much more to learn. The more
you know, the more you realize there is to know, and the more you appreciate what previous
generations did. The more you know, the more you understand that people can look at the
same idea from different points of views, so yours is just one of the many possible ones. So
education also makes us more humble, better at understanding other cultures, more prone to
respect and be tolerant to other people and traditions. Education also makes us more capable
to see what we can become. As Paulo Freire would say, it guides us out of the here-and-now
towards the world of possibilities, of solutions.
But why? Education is the process of telling the new generations about everything
of value that humans have produced. History. Art. Mathematics. Powerful ideas. You are
incorporating the best that hundreds of generations have produced. So it is no surprise that
after you learn all of that, you become a better person. Education has worked very well for
us, for centuries, in many different formats.
But something bad happened. Somewhere, this project went wrong. And I think it
went wrong when we decided to industrialize education. After the industrial revolution, we
were in love with the idea of mass-producing everything. We fell in love with the assembly
line. So we decided to make education an industrial product. We standardized curriculum.
We invented the school bell. We grouped students by age. The only problem is that this was
done before any research on education had ever been done. Of course the mass production
of education did wonders to universalize schooling. But we designed a system not knowing
anything about the brain, about human learning, motivation, behavior, memory, or children
developmental stages. And now, that system created in this vacuum of research is what we
have, and it is very resistant to change. It is really hard to transform it, even though it’s terribly
inefficient given what we know and the new technologies we have
If you survey every country on earth, only about 10 will say that they are happy
with their educational system. How is it possible that countries are spending 5 percent of all
their gross national product, which in the case of the United States accounts for almost a
trillion dollars, and are still quite unhappy? There are two explanations. One is the industry of
rankings, another thing we inherited from the industrial age. We have stopped talking about
our national vision for an educational system, and started to obsess over rankings. And this
is the thing about rankings: only one country can be first, and then everyone else is unhappy.
But that does not mean that all the other countries are doing it wrong, and that they should
copy the number one. Education is not an international contest, it’s not the world cup or the
Olympics. International contests are about preparing a very small elite group of people for a
2-week competition. Education is not about preparing a small elite group, it is about millions
and millions of children of all sorts of cultural backgrounds, previous abilities, and interests.
The way we should think about such a mega-system is very different. But let us look at some
concrete examples of how this can go wrong. A couple of years ago, Finland got the first
place in the Programme for International Student Assessment (or PISA), an international test
organized by the Organisation for Economic Coperation and Development (or OECD) in
more than 20 countries. Everyone went crazy about the Finnish system. Then, a year ago, the
province of Shanghai, which managed to enter the test as a country and not a province of
China, topped Finland for the first time on the PISA. Finland was second, by a small margin.
But then everyone started saying, “Oh, may be the Finnish system was all wrong after all. Let’s
now look at the Chinese system.” That is not how a country should design its educational system.
It’s not about chasing the newest fashion in education just looking at who is number one.
To show you how these rankings can be misleading, let me tell you some of the
problems with them. First, if you look at some of the top countries or provinces in the PISA
test, Singapore, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, the first fact that comes to mind is that most are
city-states, not large countries with diverse populations. Managing an educational system in
one single city or region is a lot different than in a country such as Brazil, Thailand, or the US, with large, diverse populations with significant cultural differences, millions of immigrants, and large income disparities. We are comparing apples and oranges. Second, if you look at what is really happening in some of those countries in terms of how they are organizing their educational systems, it is a nationally-organized test preparation machine, rather than real education. Children are spending 12, 13, 15 hours a day memorizing facts and learning how to do well in tests. Try to give them a problem without a clear right answer, and they don’t know what to do. And most problems in real life do not have a clear right answer, especially the ones that matter.
Another problem with the international rankings is that, more and more, researchers
are pointing out lots of methodological problems. For example, it has been shown that some
countries administer the test in the middle of the school year, while others do it more towards
the end. Some do it before the summer vacation, some do it after, some do it when the kids
are half a year younger. Different countries teach the content in a different order. All of those
methodological problems are just now becoming apparent, and many scholars are calling
for a complete reevaluation of what those rankings mean. And here is another example of
the counterintuitive data that you get. In the TIMSS exams, that measures proficiency in
mathematics, reading and science, Singapore came in first in 4th grade math. But do you know what was the improvement from 2007 to 2011 in Singapore? No statistically significant
improvement. In contrast, Tunisia jumped 32 points, and Iran jumped 28 points.
Why isn’t anyone talking about the educational systems in Tunisia, and Iran? What we get
from the press about rankings is a gross approximation, it is technically so misrepresented
that it should not be taken into consideration for any serious policy-making. Rankings make
for great news, great conversation, but generate terrible policy.
So should we just forget about international comparisons altogether? No, of course
not. But it has to be a comprehensive analysis, we need to look at the data, and see what it
is really telling us. Also, we need to look at other things. For example, the GEM Report, a
worldwide survey on entrepreneurship and innovation, shows that many of the top PISA
countries are very bad at innovation, at having new ideas, at generating people willing to take
entrepreneurial risks. Actually, it has been shown that there is a mild negative correlation between the PISA and the GEM scores. And if you look at international measures of creativity, it has
also been shown that countries that spend too much energy on standardized testing see a
decline in national measures of creativity in students, which will of course impact innovation
in the future.
But the rankings are not the only problem we have. The second problem is that
instead of creating lifelong learners, we are creating lifelong haters of learning. It’s not only
the countries that are unhappy. The children are very unhappy as well. The latest statistics
from the OECD shows that 52% of our students, on a global average, find school boring,
and 30% just dislike school altogether.
Before moving to the United States, 13 years ago, I lived in a country very similar to
Thailand, Brazil. They might look very different – the language, the food, the geography, the
history. But they are very similar in one thing. We both know – Brazilians and Thais – that a
necessary condition to sustainable development and a better life for all of our citizens is the
improvement of education. It is not about natural resources, oil or agriculture; it is not about
attracting foreign companies and investors. It’s about human capital, the most precious and
valuable type of capital. And why? Why is education and human capital so important?
Every single piece of research show that better-educated people have a higher income,
lead happier lives, educate better their kids, are more productive, spend less time doing
repetitive work, have less issues with substance abuse and violence. Better educated people
are just happier, except for one thing. They know there is so much more to learn. The more
you know, the more you realize there is to know, and the more you appreciate what previous
generations did. The more you know, the more you understand that people can look at the
same idea from different points of views, so yours is just one of the many possible ones. So
education also makes us more humble, better at understanding other cultures, more prone to
respect and be tolerant to other people and traditions. Education also makes us more capable
to see what we can become. As Paulo Freire would say, it guides us out of the here-and-now
towards the world of possibilities, of solutions.
But why? Education is the process of telling the new generations about everything
of value that humans have produced. History. Art. Mathematics. Powerful ideas. You are
incorporating the best that hundreds of generations have produced. So it is no surprise that
after you learn all of that, you become a better person. Education has worked very well for
us, for centuries, in many different formats.
But something bad happened. Somewhere, this project went wrong. And I think it
went wrong when we decided to industrialize education. After the industrial revolution, we
were in love with the idea of mass-producing everything. We fell in love with the assembly
line. So we decided to make education an industrial product. We standardized curriculum.
We invented the school bell. We grouped students by age. The only problem is that this was
done before any research on education had ever been done. Of course the mass production
of education did wonders to universalize schooling. But we designed a system not knowing
anything about the brain, about human learning, motivation, behavior, memory, or children
developmental stages. And now, that system created in this vacuum of research is what we
have, and it is very resistant to change. It is really hard to transform it, even though it’s terribly
inefficient given what we know and the new technologies we have
If you survey every country on earth, only about 10 will say that they are happy
with their educational system. How is it possible that countries are spending 5 percent of all
their gross national product, which in the case of the United States accounts for almost a
trillion dollars, and are still quite unhappy? There are two explanations. One is the industry of
rankings, another thing we inherited from the industrial age. We have stopped talking about
our national vision for an educational system, and started to obsess over rankings. And this
is the thing about rankings: only one country can be first, and then everyone else is unhappy.
But that does not mean that all the other countries are doing it wrong, and that they should
copy the number one. Education is not an international contest, it’s not the world cup or the
Olympics. International contests are about preparing a very small elite group of people for a
2-week competition. Education is not about preparing a small elite group, it is about millions
and millions of children of all sorts of cultural backgrounds, previous abilities, and interests.
The way we should think about such a mega-system is very different. But let us look at some
concrete examples of how this can go wrong. A couple of years ago, Finland got the first
place in the Programme for International Student Assessment (or PISA), an international test
organized by the Organisation for Economic Coperation and Development (or OECD) in
more than 20 countries. Everyone went crazy about the Finnish system. Then, a year ago, the
province of Shanghai, which managed to enter the test as a country and not a province of
China, topped Finland for the first time on the PISA. Finland was second, by a small margin.
But then everyone started saying, “Oh, may be the Finnish system was all wrong after all. Let’s
now look at the Chinese system.” That is not how a country should design its educational system.
It’s not about chasing the newest fashion in education just looking at who is number one.
To show you how these rankings can be misleading, let me tell you some of the
problems with them. First, if you look at some of the top countries or provinces in the PISA
test, Singapore, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, the first fact that comes to mind is that most are
city-states, not large countries with diverse populations. Managing an educational system in
one single city or region is a lot different than in a country such as Brazil, Thailand, or the US, with large, diverse populations with significant cultural differences, millions of immigrants, and large income disparities. We are comparing apples and oranges. Second, if you look at what is really happening in some of those countries in terms of how they are organizing their educational systems, it is a nationally-organized test preparation machine, rather than real education. Children are spending 12, 13, 15 hours a day memorizing facts and learning how to do well in tests. Try to give them a problem without a clear right answer, and they don’t know what to do. And most problems in real life do not have a clear right answer, especially the ones that matter.
Another problem with the international rankings is that, more and more, researchers
are pointing out lots of methodological problems. For example, it has been shown that some
countries administer the test in the middle of the school year, while others do it more towards
the end. Some do it before the summer vacation, some do it after, some do it when the kids
are half a year younger. Different countries teach the content in a different order. All of those
methodological problems are just now becoming apparent, and many scholars are calling
for a complete reevaluation of what those rankings mean. And here is another example of
the counterintuitive data that you get. In the TIMSS exams, that measures proficiency in
mathematics, reading and science, Singapore came in first in 4th grade math. But do you know what was the improvement from 2007 to 2011 in Singapore? No statistically significant
improvement. In contrast, Tunisia jumped 32 points, and Iran jumped 28 points.
Why isn’t anyone talking about the educational systems in Tunisia, and Iran? What we get
from the press about rankings is a gross approximation, it is technically so misrepresented
that it should not be taken into consideration for any serious policy-making. Rankings make
for great news, great conversation, but generate terrible policy.
So should we just forget about international comparisons altogether? No, of course
not. But it has to be a comprehensive analysis, we need to look at the data, and see what it
is really telling us. Also, we need to look at other things. For example, the GEM Report, a
worldwide survey on entrepreneurship and innovation, shows that many of the top PISA
countries are very bad at innovation, at having new ideas, at generating people willing to take
entrepreneurial risks. Actually, it has been shown that there is a mild negative correlation between the PISA and the GEM scores. And if you look at international measures of creativity, it has
also been shown that countries that spend too much energy on standardized testing see a
decline in national measures of creativity in students, which will of course impact innovation
in the future.
But the rankings are not the only problem we have. The second problem is that
instead of creating lifelong learners, we are creating lifelong haters of learning. It’s not only
the countries that are unhappy. The children are very unhappy as well. The latest statistics
from the OECD shows that 52% of our students, on a global average, find school boring,
and 30% just dislike school altogether.
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..