Despite scores, US can compete

In the area of American education, much has been made of declining US test scores, particularly as they pertain to math and science, which most American students tend to dread.

For years, we have heard that same old refrain: American students are dangerously losing ground. They cannot compete against their Asian and European counterparts.

However, the charges are only partly true. Most Americans students are behind in math and science. This part is certainly true. Asian students, for example, tend to do better in these two vital areas, and there are reasons for this academic disparity.

Take Mainland Chinese students, for example. Most of us stereotypically assume that Chinese students tend to excel at math, and most of the research tends to affirm this generalization.

Chinese students probably excel at math and science for the following reasons:

First, their Confucian heritage and culture places a strong emphasis on education. That is to say, their government and culture emphasizes order, adherence to authority, and firm discipline, which are entirely consistent with learning mathematics, an area where rules are never broken.

Second, unlike America, the mass media has not entirely infiltrated traditional Chinese society—-at least not yet, anyway. Hollywood and MTV have probably not (yet) kept Mainland Chinese students from their homework. Traditional family values remain largely intact vis-à-vis the freewheeling United States.

Which brings us to the second part of the charge: namely, that Americans cannot compete. This part is false.
American students may well be behind in math and science, but they certainly can still compete. After all, America is still number one, numero uno—-the biggest and strongest economy in the entire world.

There is a reason for this: relative freedom and relatively free markets still count for something.

Contrary to popular belief, education is not a sufficient condition (the end all and be all) for a vibrant and prosperous economy. After all, skilled and educated workers can always be imported, if necessary. The increasingly free movement of labor must inevitably follow the free flow of goods and services across borders.

The globalized, high-tech, information-age New Economy of the 21st Century is as much about breaking the rules and finding new paradigms as it is about traditional rote learning. It is about freedom, dynamic energy and creativity, all of which America has in abundance relative to the stifling, rigid conformity of the rest of the world.

So long as it has relative freedom, America will always be number one—-educational test scores be damned. The CNMI might do well to keep this in mind.

Strictly a personal view. Charles Reyes Jr. is a regular columnist of Saipan Tribune. Mr. Reyes may be reached at charlesraves@hotmail.com