I have been wondering since that class discussion whether who is at the top really matters. The US wants its kids to beat the Chinese and then ..... then what? We'll have one more study which will claim that US kids are now at the top (and of course someone will dispute that claim and there will be many more studies trying to prove/disprove that). Excelling in studies is definitely important and one must strive to gain as much knowledge as possible but one must not forget that every child is distinctly different. That doesn't mean that US kids are dumb or Indian kids are intelligent but what it means is that people from different cultures have different goals and needs and these influence the way the entire community thinks and acts. For example, in India, learning is given a divine status. There is a goddess of learning. So it is automatically put at a very high pedestal and is viewed as something that will enhance a person spiritually and help him/her lead a better life. One may not hear or say this aloud but I feel it is there within each one of us as a subconscious force driving us to gain knowledge. There is also a huge social value attached to education. Educated people are respected by the society and they automatically gain a high status in the community. So you see, the motivation factor to gain knowledge is completely different as compared to US where the stress is on beating the kids across the globe. Of course these are not the only ones and there are LOTS of other factors influencing the game but for the sake of argument I've used these couple. In fact now even the Indians are getting into the race business...
So all these examples are simply to stress that every community has its own "local" needs and goals. In trying to compete with the kids across the globe we are putting too much stress on our kids at home and that is getting reflected in disastrous ways (increased suicide rates, increase in diseases amongst kids, etc.). Why can't we just settle for goals that are meaningful to each community and structure the learning experience of the kids accordingly. Why do we need to make every child on the globe the most intelligent? Some of you might be saying globalization demands that. But like we saw, education is a complicated matter... it's not just schools, kids and curriculum. There's a huge socio-cultural aspect to it which is often neglected. Globalization can merge markets across the globe but can it also merge socio-economic and cultural values? People across the globe will remain different and their differences should be acknowledged and respected. The race to be the global first shouldn't take a toll on the kids... let them play and learn at their own pace.
Parents want their son to best student in class, and then the school wants their student to be the best in the board exams, and so on and so forth. Thus, this microcosm that is the family leads the global viewpoint. The issue of US parents or the education system wanting their kids to be smarter than Indian or Chinese kids is the tip of the iceberg, and probably the effect rather than the cause. In India, where the school authorities regulate what the child should study and how much load he will be given at what age (often irrespective of the load capacity of the individual student, but rather averaging across a very non-uniform cohort) the top-down competitiveness might be a problem. I remember that in many schools their was a competition to get top 10 rankings, and even higher up, their was a certain smugness in the West Bengal Board that their education was better than the rest of India (so much so that they deducted 10% from ICSE marks when considering students for admission in WB Board schools). In the US, however, the schools are more socratic in their communication with the parents and the approach is, shall we say, more democratic. However, the important thing to note is that the parents aren't obsessed by the competitiveness- which threatens development, both for the child and for the country.
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