Competing in the Global Economy

The discussion in class on Tuesday about competing in the global economy reminded me of a Time Magazine article I read in another class called The Case Against Summer Vacation.  Basically the article concludes that U.S students fall behind in the summer because their vactions are so long.  Students in low SES situations fall behind because they are not having some of the out of school educational opportunities that a child from a higher SES family may have such as going to the zoo or summer reading programs.  I know as a child I was always engaged in some learning opportunities in the summer and I still came back not remembering everything I had learned from the previous year.  That is why children who are even less fornuate fall even further behind.  The thing that intriqued me the most about this article was this chart:

As it shows U.S. children spend much more instructional time in the classroom but with less school days.  On the other hand countries like South Korea and Denmark spend less instructional time with about ten more days and their math scores are much higher.  What do you think about this data?  Should we be looking at what those types of countries are doing in order to compete in this global economy?  I wonder if we could find out what they are doing instead of just relying on standardized testing.  It is just so suprising to me that U.S. children can spend so much time in the classroom and have such lower scores than other countries.

Von Drehle, David. (2010, July 22). The Case Against Summer Vacation. Time Magazine. Retrieved from
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2005863-1,00.html.