Preparing Our Children
Posted on September 24th, 2008 by Tariq Nelson
China and India are preparing their children to kick economic tail in the future. What are we - Americans - preparing our children to do?
This is the trailer for the film 2 Million Minutes which examines how students in India and China are being better prepared than American students to compete in the future…
We will have to teach our children that they MUST be relentless in their studies and compete in order to survive the competition from the rest of the world. Or they will sink.
Empty platitudes will not work
Filed under: Children's Issues
I don’t even think it’s about being relentless. We need to be challenged and held to higher standards. I graduated hs in 2002 and it was pretty easy. I went to one of the top three hs in Philly and frankly me and my friends didn’t have that hard of a time. It was a bit a difficult to go from one level to the next (rapid or basic courses to honor courses to AP courses) but we adjusted just fine. We did complain a bit but I suppose that was par for the course. What sucks though is that when we got to college most of us were in for rude awakenings especially if we went to elite colleges. College was such a different planet and yes, students from Asia and South Asia generally had a much easier time. American students are never challenged in school to begin.
Some of us think we’re being challenged but we’re not. How can I possibly be challenged when I can do my math homework at lunch time (which I did frequently) and still get an A or a B? If schools actually pushed students, we could compete with China and India. Right now they’re just letting us slide.
Also, the biggest problem is in the math and sciences. My English and Social Studies classes were engaging and difficult especially my AP ones. But my math and science classes were anything but. I think part of the problem is that so many students have really inadequate math and science instruction from a young age that it’s really hard for math and science teachers to push students once they’re in high school. Then you get to college where you have to take math and science courses to at least fulfill general education requirements and the professors are often stunned that many of their students don’t even know basic materials that they should have learned in their primary education.
When you say ‘kick economic tail’, I cringe a little.
I still believe, on the basis of it, that American business and economy still has some base of morality, however frayed it has been in the last few years.
When I see the Chinese economy, I think of them trying to squeeze every dollar out of you, without regards to consequences. While I don’t deny that they work very hard, and are diligent in pursuing their goals, I still feel that there is a lack of ethics in their dealings.
Case in point, the poison milk incident, which apparently has affected over 50000 children in China, the latest in a string of products out of China with an adverse effect on consumers.
I agree that we have lost some sense of a strong work ethic in the west, but I want to see it come back with a sound basis in ethics/morality. I’d go so far as to say that, possibly from the effects of advocating atheism as per their communist beliefs, the Chinese (and I’m referring here to mainly their administration rather than Chinese people as a whole) have a very poor grasp on morality.
On a side note, the Indians, I’ve found to be a lot better balanced on their outlook, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they are as ready to kick economic tail as we might think. Certainly they produce very high caliber people through their educational system (they do tend to have much larger pool thanks to their population), but they still seem to suffer from initiative (This isn’t a put down by the way, I think they are very capable). Having seen some members of my company’s Indian workforce, they are capable and intelligent, but they are timid when it comes to self-direction and making decisions. I don’t know if its the caste system at play, or the effects of British colonialism, but any company which has outsourced work to India will tell you that despite being cheaper (in terms of salary), in most cases it takes 10 people twice as long to do the same job as it does in the US. I would like to see India succeed as a viable alternative to China, hopefully it’ll push the Chinese to be a lot better about their business practices.
If there are any differences that I notice between Asian and American students is between them,their families and their schools systems.
My former World History professor would tell us about the methods of education in her native India. When she was going to school she said that were no such things multiple choice or fill in the blanks. Everything Indian students did was done the long way.To one Cantonese girl, it was a sin if she brought her parents a B grade. He parents wanted her to have straight A’s, not an A-, but A’s. That was the grades they expected from her.
Even though success is not recognized in Africa( which it should be), I remembered one my African classmates telling me about the academic system in her native Ghana.There no short cuts in their academics. Similarly, to my former Indian professor, making grades that was below and A was not good enough for the school or their parents. She was also telling me about their grading system. Let’s put it this way: To an American ,it would seem much harder to get a good grade from it than the native ( she thought it was torture).She would say that when she would visit her homeland and schools, she would feel dumb because the kids would seem very ahead.
I look at today’s American schools and I wonder. Supposedly, school uniforms, better equipment or new schools will make our kids be better performers. Yes, it may give them slight motivation, but it’s not getting into their core of their academic problems.
One of the problems that I have often said about it is that it’s about the teachers, students and the parents. There is a lot of discord when it comes to this issue.Secondly, unlike their countries our culture view success as an individualist thing. There may be one family who may encourage success from their kids and another family who may not .It isn’t as empathized as it would be China and India. In those countries, it is almost a must that you do well.Lastly, their schools systems are more academically uniformed than it is in their states. One of the problems that continue to exists here is that education is not created equal.For example(s) In more affluent areas the students tend to have better books and teachers whereas, you go in the inner city, they are less likely to have them.For some of our kids, it may be a stumbling block on their success.
Education administrators always wanted better schools and higher test scores, but the reality is that it will to be unified if they want American students to be the best of the best.( along with teachers, and parents) They cannot focus on one set of students, while ignoring the needs of others. In China and Asia , their education system is more more uniformed. I could be wrong ,but it seems that the standards for all their students are expected and applied to all of their students.
@Tariq
Alhamdulillah timely topic, in a nutshell it’s the parents and environmental culture that are the key. When parents set the expectations and provide asstance then students can achieve more.
Having voluteered a few years with the the A World in Motion program by SAE International which targets school children to get them excited about math and science.
Each time it was amazing to see time after time the girls beat the boys in competition yet overall the girls still did not do well in the actual math classes.
Yes teachers play a role, but in the US teachers simply don’t command the respect of the society, there are exceptions that do but as a general rule they don’t.
The teachers union keeps promoting the myth of better books, look math is math whether the pages are tattered or new. The problem is the children lack the zeal to learn, because the cultural focus is elsewhere.
This was part of the topic at the last Eid-ul-Fitr Khutbah. Quite frankly, the Americans are not going to be able to compete. That should be pretty common sensical. In a global economy, where a multi national can find high tech workers India and pay them $800 a month to work 60+ hours a week WITHOUT HEALTH CARE and without numerous environmental or safety regulations, why IN THE WORLD would they (the multi-nats) pay an American $50,000 a year and all the perks he’s going to want?!? Also, China and India are RAPIDLY growing markets filled with people who are excited to have some disposable inome.
Friedman, who’s mentioned in the video had a documentary that was posted on Google Vid for a while. He mentions that India has a population of 550 MILLION UNDER THE AGE OF 27. As i said, those folks are hungry–literally–and spoiled suburban mono-lingual Americans are not capable of competing with such people. And that is all the more the case with the greying of America and it becoming a giant geriatric society.
I teach/mentor, and i make it a point to my students to STUDY LANGUAGES!!! One of my students spent the summer in China (studying Chinese–and not for the Olympics) after completing his freshman year at an Ivy League school majoring (in-sha’ Allah) in Arabic and Mathematics. Although English will remain the global language for the foreseeable future, learning various languages is a key to entering different cultures, and gives Muslim Americans an additional leg-up on your typical “English-only” middle America volk.
People need to understand that the standard of living in America is going to go down. Between the immigration of folks from South of the Border (and the folks south of Mexico haven’t come in full force, yet) and the North American highway (and rumors of a N. American Union), and the emigration of industrial and high tech jobs elsewhere, the folks here are going to be stuck behind the counter of Burger King or Family Dollar. Some Americans may do well–profoundly well–but the overall comfort level by necessity (dags! just had to answer a dang telemarketing call from India–yesterday’s caller was trying to convince me his name was “Warren”)… for the mass of Americans is going to decline.
Education, of course is a factor–but it ain’t because the kids’ books aren’t pretty enough or have enough glossy photos. Few would think we are better educated today than the people (who were educated) 75 years ago. As George Carlin says (said) about people who always cry about: “We need education.” It’s all part of a (profiteering) system that wants people just smart enough to push the pencils and buttons and too dumb to ask intelligent questions about what’s going on in the society (keep in mind that this is a nation that voted for G.W…. TWICE!!!).
Muslims do have an advantage in all of this (globalism), for the international networks are already in place. For African-Americans Muslims, they need to see to it that their children’s scope is expanded beyond the hood and beyond the urban areas–their scope needs to be expanded faaaaar beyond the borders of America. Praise Allah, we do have the means to do that, we just need to have the vision to take advantage of what is available to us.
With Allah is the success.
http://swarthmoor.wordpress.com/
Relentless?
Is that how our parents motivated us when we were hanging on monkey bars in school yards, playing hide-go-seek, and just starting our multiplication tables? I think we can instill in our children the value of determination, hard work, time management, organization, and the love of learning without making them feel super stressed out. As some social scientists who work on Blacks in education have pointed out, sometimes that whole thing about working twice as hard leads to students taking themselves out of the game.
While I don’t deny that we may need to instill a better sense of hard work here, I think some of you are overly concerned about playing the comparative game.
Indian workers cost a 10th as much? A few years ago, they used to cost a 20th as much. A few years from now they’ll cost 1/2 as much. Their workers will eventually start pricing themselves at a point where it won’t matter as a deciding factor. And from what I’ve seen, at this point, even if they cost a 10th as much, you need 10 of them to do one man’s job in the highly specialized stuff (eg advanced engineering). And the ones that know what they’re doing also know what they’re worth, so don’t think they’ll settle for wages lower than they’d get here.
K-Dude,
The US has already seen the loss of its industrial base. Try finding a high school grad who can get a job, marry and buy a house within five years. It’s no longer 1950’s America. Likewise, although the Indians may close some of the pay gap, how many American jobs will be lost in the process? To what degree are, for instance, American engineers having to expect wage cuts because of Indian competition? Certainly some QUALITY jobs will remain in America, but when it comes to quantity–and especially a quantity of jobs with at least a decent quality of pay, the Americans are going to lose the battle.
Like i mentioned in my first post, we regularly get telemarketing calls from India–and we all know where the call service centers are located if we want to get one of our trinkets fixed (incidentally, many of those jobs are now shifting to the Philippines, because the Filipinos don’t have as thick an accent as the Indians). This week we started getting telemarketing calls in Spanish (no, not by Latinos with thick accents–no, in the Spanish language). What does that mean to the LaKeishas of the world? Nominally educated, xenophobic, and monolingual Americans are going to have an EXTREMELY tough go at things in this global economy. Times have changed, and the American public simply isn’t ready for it. The world has passed America by.
With Allah is the success.
http://swarthmoor.wordpress.com/
This thread should illustrate why we should be pushing our kids more. For African Americans in particular we may need to go to the extremes of India and china to catch up.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/8137-international-black-students-considered-minority.html
This was the video i was speaking about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQaHrcwKsoc
And here is a lecture by Friedman–but i haven’t sat thru it, yet:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5891472953591531001&ei=PCXcSNSMGpKYrQLU4pmhCw&q=globalism+%2B+Friedman&vt=lf&hl=en
as-salaamu `alaykum
I, too, feel very uncomfortable with this concept of “relentless” in their studies as I have said before.
Yes, they may study “relentlessly” and be fiercely “competitive” but at what cost? How long can people be pushed to perform like robots until they break down both individually and collectively? At what point are morality and ethics, as K-Dude said, lost? Yes, the Chinese also push people to work for pennies without benefits so they can be highly productive and attractive for foreign firms as workers. This also entails human rights violations. Should we try that too?
It is definitely one thing to have standards, but entirely another to suggest that people can and should be turned into machines.
My dh is a university professor. These kids not only lack basic skills like writing mechanics, but they also are horrifiyingly lacking in original thought, and even equally disturbingly so in honesty and ethics. The latter two qualities cannot be gained by pushing, academic doping, or getting them to “compete” in the world.
This is a beautiful documentary:
http://www.wfum.org/childrenplay/
The description talks a lot about urban sprawl and such, but a major issue tackled in the documentary and not mentioned much in the description is the effect of being highly regimented and scheduled and raising children just to have “a resume like a Wall-Streete executive” and to get into the “top schools”.
Also, what of children for whom academics is not their forte? I know we like to pretend these people don’t exist anymore or that they are suffering from a curable disease, (”they must just need better education programs” we rationalize) but Allah subHaanahu wa ta`aala has created human beings with different strengths and weaknesses, and different natures. There are students in dh’s classes who should not even be in college. I have close family members who simply can NOT do the whole “academics, studying, sit at a desk thing”.
Perhaps this sounds far-fetched or idealistic to some, but I have seen first-hand that we need to value the work of the human hand, the physical realm, and not just value the work of the the pen and the computer screen. I believe it is essential for healthy societies to have this attitude.
If our sons grow up and want to build houses or drive a dump truck instead of go to college and be something that requires one to sit indoors all day, what will our reaction be? Do we value this work or consider it beneath us? Look how our society has devalued this work: Take my brother: he is very talented at operating heavy machinery. When my dad was young, he was brilliant–highly gifted in fact– but he loved to build with his hands and his music degree wasn’t going to make him enough money anyway so he went into construction. The difference between Dad and Brother? In the ’70s we still valued skilled labor enough– he was able to support his wife and two little kids on his salary installing windows and building decks and houses. Okay, so my mom took part-time jobs on occasion to get a little extra to pay for Christmas presents. But today, my brother can’t even make enough money to pay his rent, let alone fully or even mostly support his wife and baby on one salary. Instead, we import people we deem to be of lesser social standing astaghfiru l-laah (i.e., Hispanics) to do these jobs for dirt cheap while we allegedly pursue “higher achievement”.
Where is the life in this system?
I’m just asking you to consider other factors carefully when you have this idea that we shoudl all be shooting for this particular goal you have in mind.
@ Lady
You made some very germane points, and the Religion has solutions. For one, in regards to education, it is understood that not everyone is an academic intellectual or a student of Islamic knowledge (much less a Religious scholar). Also, what the people are calling “education” here is largely job training and not producing intelligent, reflective, articulate, and aboveall MORAL human beings who are obedient to their Lord.
There is a body of Religious knowledge that is incumbent upon every accountable person (fard ul-`ayn). It entails the matters of Doctrine, Prayer/purification, the sins of the various organs (so one may refrain therefrom) and the other basic duties each Muslim must perform in their lives. Leaving out this knowledge is in itself an enormity.
Secondly, there are the worldly branches of knowledges that some must attain to protect the interests of the Muslims, such as, agronomy, engineering, medicine, commerce, etc. This knowledge isn’t required for every individual, but enough need to have it to meet the Muslims’ needs of that community, and failure to do so means that all who are capable but don’t are sinful.
Also, we need to produce Muslims with knowledge of the details of Creed to refute heretical doctrines/sects and those who have the detailed proofs for the various Religious practices. If we cannot produce scholars, then we need at least high level students of `Ilm. As you can see, essentially all three classes of people are covered here. The problem here is how do those who are nominally educated fit in to the global economy?
For Muslims, we need to think beyond this nationalism. We need to learn Spanish and understand Latino culture, so that we can make a much greater push with the da`wah amongst them. Likewise, American Muslims need to keep their passports ready and keep in mind the opportunities that lie for us abroad. As the Latinos have been willing to look beyond their mother countries for work, we are in all likelihood going to have to do the same, and we are going to have to accept the reality that we are going to have a considerably lower standard of living–which will be more in line with the vast majority of the Muslims on this earth.
With Allah is the success.