- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American students lag behind much of the world in
math and science because their classes are boring, unfocused and incoherent,
researchers said Thursday.
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- Educators, parents and politicians were
shocked earlier this year when an international study showed American children
score worse than the rest of the world in the two subjects.
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- The Third International Mathematics and
Science Study (TIMSS) ranked U.S. 12th-graders, aged 17 and 18, 18th out
of 21 countries -- far behind Sweden and the Netherlands and ahead only
of Lithuania, Cyprus and South Africa.
-
- But William Schmidt, an applied statistician
at Michigan State University, and colleagues say pupils are not to blame.
``The U.S. curriculum appears not only to have been unfocused but highly
repetitive, lacking coherence, and providing little rigorous challenge
during the middle years, particularly when compared to those of other TIMSS
countries,'' they wrote in the journal Science.
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- The TIMSS study measured general math
and science literacy in third, fourth, seventh, and eighth graders and
at high school seniors in the U.S. and more than 40 other countries.
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- Schmidt took a closer look at the results,
released earlier this year.
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- ``This tries to put it all together and
paint a larger picture,'' said Schmidt, who is also the U.S. national research
coordinator for the TIMSS study.
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- One of the key findings after an analysis
of more than 1,500 textbook and curricula frameworks from about 50 countries
was that Americans tried to teach too much, Schmidt said in a telephone
interview.
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- For example, U.S. math textbooks for
8th graders cover about 35 topics compared to an average of seven in Germany
and Japan, he said. U.S. curricula also covered more topics than in those
of virtually all other TIMSS countries.
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- This can be a problem because it gives
teachers little time to spend on each topic and textbooks often repeat
familiar ones, Schmidt explained. This fails to challenge students and
causes them to lose interest.
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- ``This is the mile-wide, inch-deep curriculum
we are talking about,'' he said.
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- Schmidt said American students are studying
simpler subjects, like fractions and earth sciences, at the same age as
children elsewhere are beginning algebra, chemistry and physics, he said.
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- ``Our students are not now being taught
on par with students from other countries,'' he said, calling for a national
program. States now set their own curricula.
-
- Glen Cutlip, a spokesman for the National
Education Association, which represents most teachers, agreed there are
problems with U.S. curriculum and said his group was concerned about the
performance of American students.
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- But it would be expensive to change because
it would require new textbooks and expanded teacher training.
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- ``If students can learn more than we
are teaching then we would see that as a problem '' Cutlip said. ``But
we have to decide how important it is to us as a society, if we are willing
to devote the resources it would take to make those changes.''
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- W. Virginia Williams, spokeswoman for
the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, agreed there are ingrained
problems with the U.S. curriculum and said studies like this can help draw
public attention to the issue.
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- ``The things that Schmidt has pointed
out are not at all anything our council has disagreed with,'' Williams
said in a telephone interview. ``If we continue to ask our students lower-level
questions, they won't rise beyond that.''
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