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

by Yong Zhao

Book Overview

At a time when globalization and technology are dramatically altering the world we live in, is education reform in the United States headed down the right path? Are schools emphasizing the knowledge and skills that students need in a global society--or are they actually undermining their strengths by overemphasizing high-stakes testing and standardization? Are education systems in China and other countries really as superior as some people claim?

These...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416608737
• ISBN13: 9781416608738
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: ASCD
• Length: 229 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Required reading

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.

Pleased!

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.

A must read

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.

Re-checking education's true north

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!

One of the best books on education ever written

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.