The Kojo Nnamdi Show

I'm a Chinese-American. There's an intrinsic difference in how we educate our children between the two cultures. Chinese on one hand stress conformity through raw memorization and repetition, as a result they excel in subjects that revolve around rigorous rules like mathematics, but lose when it comes to creativity (hence why China's new fighter jet looks remarkably like our F-22).

In America we place a significantly larger focus on individualism in our children's development which helps aid in creativity, but for subjects like math in which there is only one right answer to a problem, our children are ill-equipped to handle.

I think the solution would be to put more emphasis in the necessity of raw memorization when it comes down to subjects like mathematics at a young age.

Great show. Thank you. I attended schools in Czechoslovakia, later Slovakia. The system there has changed but at that time, we were heavily focused on academics and just didn’t have that much time for sports and didn’t even consider working part time. I started a university in Slovakia and was disappointed with the lack of creativity and critical thinking and left. I finished my undergraduate and later got my graduate education at American universities and was impressed with the level of critical thinking. On the other hand, I do agree that in comparison (I also lived in Iceland, England, Italy and Germany and I’m somewhat familiar with their school systems) the US schools put a lot less emphasis on the depth and breadth of the material covered. I, for example, was way ahead in my knowledge of math when compared with my fellow American students. In a nut shell, I’d add that I might have forgotten a lot of the math and sciences that we covered, but I gained the discipline that goes with the heavy academic load covered early on. Basically, I think that achieving the balance—proper amount of academics--age appropriate, critical thinking and extra curriculum activities is what is needed. Some countries, apparently China, figured they need more critical thinking and I think it’s quite appropriate to focus in the US on improving the quality of teachers and requiring the students to simply master more material. I’d just add, and I apologize if I missed this in the show, but for example high schools in many European countries separate students according to their capabilities. It’s not that students choose harder courses, they are from early on in schools (similar to prep schools) that prepare them for universities. To my knowledge, most kids from these schools go to college. Hence, the preparation for college starts there a lot earlier than in the US and on the other hand, some kids are early on a track not to go to a university.
Overall, a very interesting topic. Thank you.

First, the US has to do something about the teacher education. They need to be highly trained, and then treated accordingly as professionals in their field, with trust and power to do the job they were trained to do. At the moment they are just paid puppets, who do the work they are told to do. With a higher education, more pay, and trust & respect I think we could start seeing results.
An other major reform need lies in the one-size-fits-all thinking. Not every Kindergartner needs to spend 6+ hours at the school. We could cut the day in half; offer school-like activities in the morning, and an enrichment progarm in the afternoon for those who need it. The US ed system pushes too hard in the beginning, and then not enough when the students get in the middle school level.
Thirdly, the curriculum needs to be better aligned with the developmental stages of the students, so that we teach them the right stuff at the right time. And in depth, not just scratching a topic from the surface, to promote learning not just memorazing.