Motoko Rich, "American Students Test Well in Problem Solving, but Trail Foreign Counterparts," The New York Times, April 2, 2014, p. A17.
William Kerrigan, "The Falls of Academe," Mark Edmundson, ed., Wild Orchids and Trotsky (New York & London: Penguin, 1993), p. 152, p. 165.
Dismayed by tests showing a decline in language skills, analytical capacities, fund of historical knowledge, and reasoning in political contexts, apologists for America's crumbling educational system have argued that the nation's students may still be great at something called "problem solving." ("Whatever happened to the liberal arts?" and "Whatever.")
A recent international test indicates, however, that American students may do "well" at this category of intellectual achievement that involves finding the solutions to puzzles or problems (whatever that means), but that they do less well than their counterparts in other First World states in all categories of both theoretical and practical (including this very "problem solving") knowledge and/or skills in every academic area. ("The Mind/Body Problem and Freedom.")
Worse, it appears that a number of Third World nations that have placed resources and other forms of commitment into their educational systems may be surpassing the U.S. in general literacy levels and educational "attainment" of students, notably Brazil and Cuba are doing exceptionally well in education for their populations. Considering the obstacles for those two countries this accomplishment is amazing. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba.")
For decades the U.S. was the world leader in both categories of learning, theoretical and practical. America is now near the bottom of the pile among wealthy countries in terms of educational attainment and in the disparities that exist in our society with regard to learning as between rich and poor students. ("Aaron Schwartz, Freedom, and American Law" and "Nihilists in Disneyworld.")
There are numerous explanations offered by experts for these distressing results to which I will devote a brief comment in my closing paragraphs. For now, it may be best to examine in detail the tests administered and results obtained which confirm many sad findings noted earlier in these blogs. ("Humanity and Humanities in Decline" and "Has science made philosophy obsolete?")
Among the more salient features of these so-called results is the finding that Asian students obtain more general knowledge in science and math -- perhaps effort has something to do with this fact? -- as well as historical and cultural information than their American counterparts, including Americans of Asian ancestry whose response to this news, unsurprisingly, is "whatever." ("Robert Brandom's 'Reason in Philosophy'" and "William Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
American students were simply trounced by students from European and Asian countries, despite alleged surveillance by the NSA on European teaching methods. Happily, U.S. students do very well in "self-esteem" and tend to think themselves "superior" to others, who are smarter and better educated than they are, but do not know the lyrics to Lady Gaga's songs. This fortunate American self-esteem among students exists no matter how poorly our kids do in all forms of tests. Who knew? ("Is Humanism Still Possible?")
"The American students who took the problem solving tests in 2012, the first time they were administered, did better on these exams than on reading, math and science tests, suggesting that students in the United States are better able to apply knowledge to real-life situations than perform straightforward academic tasks."
Here is the "bottom-line" which cannot be obscured by journalists looking for a silver lining in this dark cloud. Mixed metaphor? Whatever! Who needs to know all of that stuff about grammar and all? Duh!
"Still, students who took the problem solving tests in countries including Singapore, South Korea, Japan, several provinces of China, Canada, Australia, Finland and Britain ALL outperformed American students." (emphasis added!)
These findings apply to high school students. The latest tests of university graduates indicate that the differences in intellectual attainment only increase after college when Americans are compared with their counterparts from other countries.
This fact may help to explain why a majority of Ph.D.s granted by American universities today are received by non-U.S. candidates. The numbers are especially striking in the so-called "hard sciences" and mathematics as well as logic/philosophy.
I am not shocked by these findings and would have predicted these results based on prior writings dealing with America's current intellectual crisis.
Political Correctness (PC) and declining intellectual standards -- these are probably related phenomena -- have combined to produce students whose learning in the humanities is often non-existent or embarrassing, even as they are surpassed only by levels of scientific and mathematical illiteracy among young people that often makes their diplomas fraudulent documents. ("Is the universe only a numbers game?" and "Nice Babies and Bad Psychologists.")
Narcissism and self-congratulation among their equally ignorant teachers along with the awful smugness that defines America's children of privilege has produced a generation of graduates who know much less than their predecessors, but who admire themselves much more.
Reacting to these statistics Bob Wise, the aptly-named former Governor of West Virginia and President of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national policy and advocacy group focused on improving high schools, had this to say:
"The challenge is that a lot of other nations are now developing this [problem-solving capacity] and even moving ahead. So where we used to, in an earlier era, dominate in what we called the deeper learning skills -- creative thinking, critical thinking [philosophy?] and the ability to solve problems -- in terms of producing the workers that are increasingly needed in this area, other nations are coming on strong and in some cases surpassing us."
Philosophy is the academic field that seems to correlate most strongly with creative judgment and analytical capacity, foresight and talent for generalizing prospective solutions, logical reasoning and warranted conclusions.
America may have the world's richest philosophical academy and one of the world's greatest philosophical traditions, but we may be dead last among developed nations in making the subject available to young people, or introducing philosophical discussion among generally well-educated adults, who often fail to appreciate the relevance of philosophical scholarship and learning to the intellectual challenges and public controversies of the day. This is a failure of my generation of intellectuals, not of today's young people. ("Nihilism Against Memory" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")
As someone who has published articles in philosophical journals as well as a book dealing with Continental thought and who is qualified to teach philosophy of law at the undergraduate or law school level, I find these realities sad and painful. ("Why philosophy is for everyone.")
On the positive side the U.S. seems to lead the world in something called "alternative culture appreciation courses" to say nothing of seminars devoted to "The Lesbian Phallus in Jane Austen's Novels." Shakespeare, Milton, metaphysics, Renaissance studies, quantum physics are poor alternatives to the deeper meaning of the Simpsons cartoons in terms of gay and lesbian studies. ("Shakespeare's Black Prince" and "David Hume's Philosophical Romance.")
I began by speaking of "causes" of these distressing developments in academia. William Kerrigan may have anticipated some of what I wish to say in seeking to explain the appalling ignorance that has become common not only among freshmen, but among graduates of many of our leading universities and their professors.
Professor Kerrigan has noted the reductivist tendency among colleagues seeking to boil down life's complexities and the wealth of our literary heritage to issues of race, gender, sexual-orientation and what is called "white male privilege":
"Current attacks on the literary canon ... suggests all sorts of good reasons for studying overlooked works by women, nonwhites, and postcolonial authors. The reasons do sound good to me, but I cannot overcome the heartfelt conviction that the educational program they support is a prescription for mediocrity. [emphasis added] Nothing I have ever read or heard has made me doubt for a moment that the greatest figures in European literature are Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Swift, Pope, Johnson, Austen, the Romantic poets, Dickens, Emerson, Melville, Whitman, and so on."
Professor Kerrigan goes on to lament:
" ... everything is reduced to political [sermons] about race, class, and gender" -- to say nothing, for once, about the undeniable glories of, say, lesbianism for Asian students of mathematics -- "that make contemporary people feel good, feel sympathetic and tolerant and superior to the evil past."
I cannot imagine why people in China, for instance, are increasingly having second thoughts about sending their daughters and sons to American colleges and universities to discover these "different" lifestyles and value-systems as opposed to being educated. After all, foreign students are bound to gain so much "self-esteem" in American liberal arts colleges even if they do not learn very much about science or math, history or the arts.
