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<p>Because…because it doesn’t. The United States’ students as a whole score around the average of post-industrial nations at mathematics and reading, behind much of East Asia and tracts of Western Europe and the English-speaking world. While the post-secondary education system in the US is one of the (if not the) best in the world, its public school system leaves something (or many somethings) to be desired. Pearson, the group behind the oft-cited study that places the United States at 17th among the 40 surveyed countries, notes that there is no singular solution to the problem of education, no silver bullet to solve the deep problems in education that are pervasive in the US. </p>
<p>To some degree, I think the problem in the US is anti-intellectualism. We see it and feel it every day, in media and in reality. Think of it this way: Around the time of presidential elections, what do you see politicians do? They roll up their shirt sleeves, strip off their ties, and become the guy “you want to have a beer with”. People don’t want to vote for someone smarter than them; people want to vote for someone they like. The very fact that those two ideas are cast as opposites is telling of a strong anti-intellectual bent in the collective American psyche.</p>
<p>It doesn’t help, either, that teachers seem to be under-appreciated in American culture. I know the classic rhetoric in public policy is that teachers are the gateway to better education, but let’s move beyond that. Pearson states that one of the keys to improving education is to respect teachers, but what does that mean? Pearson asserts that teachers ought to be treated like the professionals that they often are. When I think of professionals and skilled workers and laborers, though, it appears that teachers have more in common with the latter than with the former: Teachers are often unionized, and productivity (ie., classroom results) is often linked with time spent in the classroom (not unlike time spent on an assembly line!), not to mention the classic "worker-management) rivalry that seems to come to mind when one thinks of teachers’ collective bargaining and striking and administrators’ victimization of teachers. More than half of public school teachers have masters degrees, and for teachers to be treated on par with other professionals (if not doctors and lawyers, then at least nurses and engineers) and for teachers to demand to be treated as such would be a tremendous step in the right direction. Of course, there is the question of pay, but let’s look at Finland, the highest-scoring country in the Pearson survey: Teachers there make an average of 87% of the national average salary, while American teachers earn (a still, in my mind, unacceptable) 92% of their respective national average. Therefore, even though teachers are being underpaid for their level of education and importance, there is something more than money at stake in the classroom. Earning degrees in something more useful than education couldn’t hurt teachers, either.</p>