Review_Author: Qingfeng Liang
Book_Author: H. W. Stevenson and J. W. Stigler
Book_Title: The Learning Gap: Why our schools are failing and What we can
learn from Japanese and Chinese education
Reference: Summit Books
Date: 5/1/00
Time: 12:52:35 PM
Remote Name: 128.175.34.250
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Based on five studies funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, The learning gap discusses the continuing crisis in American education using some kinds of information from China, Taipei, Japan and the United States. While its authors are quick to point out that they do not speak as educators(they are social scientists and psychologists by training.). The focus of this book is on the overwhelming societal differences in students and teachers attitudes, educational philosophies, parental support, disciplinary approaches, and daily academic enviorment between and among these diverse cultures. Further,it reports on the results of surveys and observations authorshave conducted to assess the relationships between socialization and academic achievement as well as perceptions, satisfactions, and expectations regarding effort and ability.
In their book,Stevenson and Stigler also describe the relative success of the Asian schools is real, they say, and it lies in four areas: (1) professional teacher working conditions;(2)curriculum and goals for education that are clear and constant over time; (3) emphasis on individual student effort rather than innate ability; (4)close integration of home and school (which increases attention to academic homework and daily preparedness).
Any reader of this book should pay attention to the chapteron socialization and achievement because it points to a difference between East and West that may be fundamental to the problems as well as the solutions inherent in education in the U.S.A. relatively sharp differencec exists between the functions of home and school. What differed remakably was parents's attitudes- the Americans tended to focus on innate disabilities, the Asians on the student's efforts. These and othre findings are advanced to "offer a new slant on American life," and to correct the perception that Asian children forgo children pleasure for academic success.Timely, free of jargon and from "culture- bashing," this 10-year study sounds a clarion for American educators,calling on them to apply approaches that work in other cultures (e.g. longer school days or more free time for teachers) in order to improve American's schools.
The Learning Gap offers a glimpse of what we'd know if the federal government were funding real educational research. Structures and emphases we take for granted in the United States, such as stratification of students on the basis of presumed ability, a discontinuity between home and school, and factory-like teaching and learning conditions, may be the causes of American relatively poor educational results. The authors also call for change in American belief system regarding education. They point to the need for an increase in the value attributed to education and the creation of a currency by which America society begins to correlatespecific outcomes with being educated. This is an excellent book and I highly recommend it.