4 thoughts on “Power shift eastwards”

1. Hi Richard, hope your trip to Korea was good. I am back from the states.

   My uncle is 6th form teacher near Manchester and he heard the same thing from the Polish parents of one of his students. Having just returned from the states and chatted with my cousin and a couple of other high school students, I think I would prefer my children to have education in Poland as well.

   I think what is really interesting is the shift of perception that this comment highlights well. I think it shows that some countries (Poland, for example and India as well) are catching up to western society or the standards in western society are becoming lower. Most likely a combination of the two.

2. Hi Jason,

   Korea was excellent, but didn’t see much outside of the inside of a hotel.

   I think ‘the rest’ are certainly catching up fast, while the UK dithers over the purpose and certainly the process surrounding schooling (you’d think after a few hundred years both would be sorted out by now) others are just getting on with the basics.

   One of the key issues for me is around authority/respect, not only for teachers but for education itself. Without this nothing works.

   Reminds me of a recent trip to South Africa where the kids in one of the poorest townships were walking to school in the smartest (cleanest, best pressed) clothes I’ve ever seen and had a real smile on their faces too (like they were really happy to be going to school, that it was a genuine privilege). Contrast this with the sight of kids going to school in similarly poor (and not) areas of the UK.

3. I teach ESL in Poland and have recently been teaching more children and young adults and have been impressed by the maturity of my students and their peers. This comes at a cost; there is a huge amount of pressure on them to decide young and quickly what they want to do and begin an educational path towards that goal. I do not necessarily think that deciding a university path at the age of 13 is necessarily correct or good, but given the alternative…

   The question is how do emerging countries prevent what has been happening in the US and UK? And how do countries like the US and UK go about changing to remain competitive because, in my opinion, competitiveness is the ultimate edge we are going to lose, or have already lost.

4. Hi again!

   I think we’ve been getting children to specialize too soon for years and there is also the point made by Ken Robinson (see TED talks) that the paths that children are pushed down are themselves too narrow (too much focus on narrow educational outcomes with a handful of courses and “outcomes” (hate that word) being the be all and end all). In other words, the purpose of education is entry to a good University and perhaps a ‘professional career’. I don’t think so.

   Also, if societies are ageing fast then kids aged 5 or 10 today will have an extra 5, 10, 15 years+ to decide what they want to be so why the rush?

   BTW, interesting report in the UK papers today that work ethic, not skills or educational attainment is the key thing. 82% of employers rated attitude as important when recruiting at ‘entry levels posts’ versus 38% citing literacy and numeracy (all 3 would be nice of course). The report from the Center for Social Studies concludes that a fourth ‘R’ should be added to reading writing and arithmetic – ‘responsibility.’

   The big question, of course, is how to you teach a work ethic? How, in fact, do you instill ambition in children? If anyone has a perfect answer I’ll let my kids know, but I’m doing my best.