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Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization

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Yong Zhao (2009). Catching up or leading the way?
Education in America and Australia is at the cross-roads.
The Australian federal Labor government is enamoured with Joel Klein's New York style approach to high stakes testing that has been the staple in Taiwan and China for years. Yong Zhao (2009) warns that "East Asia pedagogy" leaves students short on the strategically important factors of innovation and creativity. Zhao thinks that it is strange that thinking countries like Singapore are changing their education systems to grow innovation and creativity, while the U.S. and Australia are heading the other way!

As Zhao notes, a key problem with a pure cognitive learning model is that it doesn't cater for all of the multiple intelligences. The result can be a class of students: high scores, low ability. The bureaucratic mandarin model that promoted such learning in traditional China, also had a big downside. Growing creativity, and culturing academic risk taking has enabled America, inspite of regular floggings in TIMMS and PISA, to develop more patents than anyother country.
My thought is that it is not one or the other style of learning, we need a balance of both! We need to ensure that everyone has enough learning to live in society happily, and we need to grow the innovation and creativity with constructivist and problem solving pedagogies also.
This book is well worth purchasing and it should be compulsory reading for educators and politicians. It sounds a timely warning to all educators that we all need to stop and re-assess the direction of Western education, as the assessment tail wags the education dog to death!

Zhao presents the essence of his book in the preface:

" .... what China wants is what America is eager to throw away - an education that respects individual talents, supports divergent thinking, tolerates deviation, and encourages creativity ... In the meantime, the U.S. has been trying hard to implement what China has been trying to be rid of ..."

This book is not only a penetrating analysis of the current situation, but presents a very sensible analysis of globalization and how we need to prepare.

I expected a top notch book about education for the coming decades,
and I was not disappointed. The book was solid, from the research
quoted to the editorial perspective of the author. As a school
board member, it presented me with much food for thought.

Amidst all the rhetoric, Yong Xhao's aptly titled book offers an analysis that is refreshingly new and important. We're Americans and we ought to lead with our strength, which is our unusual ability to combine many domains of "smarts". Zhao offers a perspective on school reform that is as unexpected as it is brilliant.

I wish every education policymaker in America, beginning with Arne Duncan, were required to read this book - thoughtfully - before proceeding with any further "reforms." It explains why we are moving the education system backward instead of forward, wasting years of precious time, not to mention billions upon billions of dollars. More importantly, it sets forth some better ideas about how to guide the system toward more meaningful, fruitful reforms.

With the new reformers spending millions of dollars to show how behind the US in comparison to other industrialized and emerging countries, this book shows that, despite the obvious need for improvement, the US will continue to be at the leading edge of innovation in the 21st century. The engine that powers this innovation is that individual talents are celebrated and American students are encouraged to develop their unique talents to the fullest. He cautions us that the US is moving toward narrowing the curriculum and valuing only reading and math to the detriment of students being exposed to the other curriculum areas. The Arts, science, social studies have been given scant attention as more time is dedicated to the reading and math instruction. American children are not getting a balanced education and finding it difficult to develop their unique talents and passions.

Americans strengths lie in it's diversity and society's admiration of the rebelious attitude to carve our own path and not accept the line that "we do something a particular way because that is the way it has always beer done".

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know the United States' test scores have been slipping far down the list of developed (and undeveloped) nations in the world. In this book, Yong Zhao analyzes this topic using China and the United States as comparison countries.

The book begins a little slow, discussing the history of the US education system from the cold war onward. Educators who are familiar with the history of NDEA, a nation at risk, and No child Left Behind may not find much use for this chapter. The author uses the often exaggerated "missile gap" between the US and the Soviet Union, and politicians capitalization on the fear it created, as an analogy for the perceived "education gap" between the US and other world powers.

The book questions whether international test scores should be used as a measure of educational attainment. It discusses the strengths of the US education system (creative development, individualization for each students needs) and the weakness' of the Chinese system (focus on test scores at the detriment of all other subjects) and deconstructs the myth that every year the US if falling further behind in regards to education.

The most compelling message I took from the book was that the US, particularly since the implementation of NCLB and its emphasis on standardized testing, is moving towards the system that Chinese educators are moving away from. The author argues that in many ways China is trying to model itself after the US system; while the US is throwing away the very system that the Chinese want to adopt.

Overall it was a well written book that takes a different perspective on a hot topic being discussed in education circles right now. I would recommend this book for any teacher working in the field or in educational policy making. In fact, I have passed it along to many of my friends who are finding it an interesting look at how the US should walk through the minefield of educational reform.

I am not a professional educator (although I have a master's degree in teaching, my undergraduate degree in Computer Information Systems), I am a computer network administrator who happens to teach that subject to both high school and adults. I firmly believe in The American Way, capitalism, and American Exceptionalism. I am very suspicious of most "education" books because too many have the wrong perspective. Our teacher education system has for too long bowed at the alter of Multiculturalism, Diversity, and blaming America for the world's problems. The book was a mix of American Exceptionalism and Multicultural Diversity (with a bit of global warming thrown in for good measure). I figure the author knew his target audience, American teachers, so the book was very much geared toward them. So if you are a firm believer in that philosophy you will be pleased. What may make you angry though is the proof that our system, the American system, is not broken (as evidenced by the erroneous belief in the so-called Education Gap between us and China/Europe). Even as far back as 1964 we tested behind many other countries in Math/Science/Reading. There are numerous reasons why our system has produced some of the most creative genius our world has ever seen, I won't list them here, that is the job of the book. I will say that the author is in strong disagreement with our current trend of nationalization of our education system with narrow focus on proof of success by looking at test scores. And that is where I strongly agree with the author. Unfortunately, we are quickly becoming a nation with students who know how to take a test, but are losing their individuality and creativity in the process. It's that individuality and creativity that has been the cornerstone of our system, and should remain intact.

The comparisons in this book were outstanding. Creativity is an important skill to have no matter where you live.

In a world where the transnational flow of ideas, people, culture and technology is dramatically altering our educational landscape, many teachers, policymakers, and parents are searching for a clear path towards a more successful and effective education system. A desire that is further influenced by a discourse on `21st century skills', and aggravated by the current state of economic uncertainty and upheaval facing by many North American communities. Yong Zhao's book, Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, provides a sound contextual ground from which to understand globalization's impact on the field of education, and presents some hopeful directions for an American system leaning towards increased standardization, centralization and high-stakes testing. Zhao's path to educating confident and capable human beings is defined by a celebration of diversity, cultivation of creativity, cherishing of individual talents, fostering of global competencies, and a decentralization of curriculum that moves schools away from test-based accountability regimes. This is, however, a path that is diametrically opposed to the present trajectory of school reform efforts in United States.

The central thesis of this book is that America is at a crossroads, and to prosper in an age of globalization it is necessary to make some critical choices as to the nation's education system. America could either `catch up' with other countries, many of whom are also travelling down a path of standardization and narrow outcome-based accountability, or `lead the way' by fostering creativity, talent diversity, and global and digital competencies in schools and school communities.

Practical wisdom and a mounting corpus of research evidence, as outlined in this book, clearly points out the limitations of teaching to the test, hyper-focusing on borderline students in order to show quick improvement on test scores, and diverting teacher and student attention to only the `basics' of math and reading. Zhao proposes that to meet the challenges and complexity of the future, American education should look back on its traditional strengths of respecting individuality and difference, and in doing so provide, "more diverse talents rather than standardized labourers, more creative individuals rather than homogenized test takers, and more entrepreneurs rather than obedient employees." (p. 181). Educators, policy makers, parents, politicians and business executives interested in educational change would be well served to read this book as America rapidly advances towards a future riddled with uncertainty, and sure to be filled with dynamic change, complexity, and vulnerability.

A full academic review of this book by Dr. Philip McRae can be found in the Journal of Educational Change.