My Dangerous Idea

Things are busy for me this fall as I am starting teachers' college. This has left me with less time to read the books I would like to read. Still, I am slowly working my way through a book called What Is Your Dangerous Idea? It is a compilation of short essays by many of today's top thinkers.

To more narrowly define the question, these thinkers were asked to describe an idea, not necessarily their own original idea, but one they think about a lot. The key is that the idea should be "dangerous" not because it is assumed to be false but because it might actually be true (John Brockman).

I do not wish to talk about any of their ideas in this post. Instead, here's one candidate idea for most dangerous that I often think about:

The Asian approach to education is actually superior to the Western approach.

Given that I'm now taking a program to become a teacher in Western society, this is certainly a dangerous idea.

I might be dead wrong. There is plenty to criticize about the style of education they dole out in countries like Japan, Korea, and China. Kids in those Far East nations spend crazy hours devoted to study. Without any statistics at hand to back this up, the suicide rate amongst students is said to be much higher in those countries. Many kids are sent to Western countries to study in the belief that they will receive a better education. And of course, we shouldn't forget the primary criticism that Asian schools focus on rote learning, while their Western counterparts nurture creative thinking.

But as I discussed in a previous post, intuition isn't all it's cracked up to be. Our intuition that our education system is better just might be wrong. In case you doubt that, here are a few quotes from the news recently:

"An evaluation by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked the United States 18th among 36 countries in secondary education. Almost 25 percent of U.S. students fail to graduate from high school on time; in South Korea, it’s 7 percent." (New York Times, August 23, 2009)

The National Education Association (in America) reported recently that results from testing found: "The fourth and eight graders who tested in mathematics improved their average scores compared to European students, however, fail to compete with Asian students from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Singapore." (September 8, 2009)

"Asian American students achieved best scores in the 2009 U.S. SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) college entrance exam in mathematics and writing, according to a report by the U.S. College Board." (August 27, 2009) How about that -- Asian-American students even beat the rest of America's students at their own game.

As a former English teacher in Korea, I'm well aware of the perception amongst many of my foreign colleagues that we Westerners are lucky to have been educated in North America. But what is the basis of such an assertion in the face of statistical evidence that says otherwise?

Whether or not the Asian methodology is better than the Western, what it really boils down to is effort. Asians take education more seriously. They are willing (as a general rule) to put more time and effort into their studies. U.S. President Barack Obama even felt it necessary to lecture America's youth on their responsibility to themselves to be better students. How many kids will heed his advice?

Given the population difference between Asia and the West, the new century will soon become the Asian Century. I'm not here to criticize that; I just think that we Westerners will have to pull our collective head out of the sand and consider which parts of the Asian approach to education we should adopt.

It would be dangerous not to do so.