City Pages reports on the craziness out in Minnetonka, where a vocal minority is opposing Minnetonka High School's introduction of the International Baccalaureate qualification to the district. Apparently, the IB is
"anti-American, anti-Christian, .... and rejects the Judeo-Christian values held by the majority of families in our district and instead promotes the atheistic Secular Humanist principles of multiculturalism, pacifism, one-world government, and moral relativism.
That well known godless communists George Bush has endorsed the IB, so it can't be all that bad.
One of the parents complaining about the IB says "Our education system is the envy of the world ... Why would we want to subordinate that to some organization connected with the United Nations?"
Umm, no. Or at least not according to the best international comparisons out there, available from the TIMSS study of international achievements in mathematics and science, and the PIRLS study of reading ability.
The United States' educational performance is virtually indistinguishable from Canada, Australasia, and Europe, and somewhat behind those hard-working kids in Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.
Now you could make the claim that the U.S. education system is productive, since it achieves pretty good test scores for fewer hours in school (the same is approximately true of Australia and New Zealand, which also have low schooling hours compared to Europe and Asia). But that's a distinctly second order way of being the envy of the world.
(Also noted on Minnesota Politics)
Posted by robe0419 at May 12, 2005 12:26 PM | TrackBackBut isn't it pretty much universal to believe that your country's education system is the Envy of The World? After all, that's what our politicians always tell us... I mean, that's what the politicians in government tell us. The ones in opposition tell us how it's slipping behind because of the government's misguided policies and if we vote for them they'll make it The Envy of The World again. For less money.
Of course, bringing the UN into it seems to a peculiarly American variant. Here the bogeyman is always more likely to be the EU. (They probably want to foist their arty-farty French-type baccalaureates onto us too...)
Posted by: sharon at May 12, 2005 03:40 PM