Shanghai surprises and the American character: Looking inward for success

For the past month, education experts have been trying to better understand Shanghai's surprise success in the annual Program for International Student Assessment — a test given to 15-year-old students across the world, the results of which provide a shorthand assessment of each nation's relative educational achievements.

The New York Times' David Barboza dove into the debate this week with an article that suggests the Shanghai students performed well because "their education systems are steeped in discipline, rote learning and obsessive test preparation."

In other words: China's most populous city played to its strengths. In a place where people are known for discipline, devotion to national ideals, ambition and hard work, students are showing the shuän pí li doesn't fall far from the shù.

So while there is much to learn from the Shanghai success, it would be futile for American educators to try to copy it. And even if we could, that success has its price. One of the Shanghai weaknesses, writes Beijing's Peking University High School deputy principal Jiang Xueqin, is that while its students excel at the sort of rote memorization that allows them to perform admirably on tests like the PISA, they lack "social and practical skills... curiosity and passion."

Social skills? Curiosity? Passion? That's us in droves.

As the U.S. endeavors to better its international educational standing, we should always strive to turn our weaknesses into strengths — or at least to turn them into lesser weaknesses. But we should also carve out educational policies that play to our unique national character, making the strengths we already have into even bigger strengths.

So what do we have going for us? Well, for starters: creativity, confidence, independence, internationalism and a top-notch higher education system.

While Americans deeply value creativity, we've long struggled to tie it to educational excellence. And, in fact, we've severely undercut its presence in our schools: Everyone knows that, when it's time to tighten a school's belt, one of the first things to go is art and music instruction. Problem is, one of the best ways to light a fire in a student's educational career it to stoke his or her creative mind.

Studies have consistently shown that students engaged in music and arts education perform better and drop out far less frequently than their peers. Principal Eric Guthertz of San Francisco’s Mission High School can testify to that. He credits a new music program to helping reduce the dropout rate at his school from 32 to 8 percent — in a single year.

Could engaging — and measuring — our creative character to help improve academic performance be as easy as protecting music and arts education? Perhaps it’s not that simple, but it’s certainly a piece of the puzzle.

And here’s another piece: Confidence. The film “Waiting for Superman” glibly mocks the fact that, while students in the U.S. generally perform well below other industrialized nations when it comes to reading, math and science, they consistently rank first in self-confidence. The message: We’re doing a great job at telling our kids how wonderful they are, but not providing them with the educational tools it takes to match their perceptions of themselves with the reality of the world.

But there’s at least one area of education where an independent spirit, coupled with a high degree of self-confidence, is a winning recipe — and it just happens to be the most significant segment of our changing educational landscape. Online education — which requires drive, independence and the sort of self-confidence you’ll only find with a “Made in the USA” sticker on it — is virtually tailor made for the American character. And perhaps not surprisingly, much of the innovation and social entrepreneurship surrounding the online learning revolution is centered in the United States. It's time to embrace online learning and use it to engage our struggling students and to propel our top performers to even greater academic heights. 

Another strength that we have yet to exploit is a university system that remains the envy of the world. Dr. Stephen Jones points out that universities have the capacity — and, he says, the moral responsibility — to work with the K-12 schools that provide the students they will later serve. Unfortunately, many institutions of higher education limit their participation in the world of K-12 education to an endless cycle of complaining that those students aren’t ready for college. It’s certainly fair to point out that many schools aren’t adequately preparing their students for college. The question is, why aren’t more universities standing up to challenge and change the status quo?

Finally, the U.S. has an enormous strength in its internationalism. We’ve long known that students who learn more than one language early in life perform better throughout their educational (and professional) careers. And in a nation of greater diversity than any in the history of humankind, we have the raw material to create the greatest foreign language teaching corps in the world. It’s time to make foreign language teaching a priority — and to draw the best of our bilingual population into the business of creating a more multi-lingual America.

We don’t have to follow China to be a Shanghai success. We only have to look at what we already are — and work to be even better.

Rebekah Richards is the chief academic officer of The American Academy, which partners with school districts nationwide to re-enroll high school dropouts back into school. For more information about TAA and its services visit www.schoolasaservice.com.