Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

2-1-90 . . . Nearly everyone believes that public education in this country is in a bad way. Officials decry the poor performances of students on standardized tests, teachers blame parents for letting their children watch too much television, and parents blame teachers for not teaching well enough or disciplining their students. Are students really doing less well, or have our standards and expectations changed? If we expect more of our students than we once did, it will appear as if they’re doing less well. This raises the question of which standard should be used to assess student performance. One standard is the performance of students in other countries. The one most often mentioned is Japan, and American students fare badly in comparison. So you hear public officials complaining that we are not “keeping up” with the Japanese or that our students are “losing the race” to Japanese students. This is typically American thinking. Rather than develop internal standards of academic performance, we look outward, to other countries. And rather than view education qualitatively, as how well certain skills are inculcated, we view it quantitatively, as how much students know. In other words, we think of students as vessels into which liquid is poured rather than as functioning organisms with a panoply of social and professional skills. Education in the modern world has been reduced to competition, much to its degradation.