My “education” during high school in Maryland was a farce. By the time I was a senior the only classes open for me was some business class, where you only went to school half the day, and had to “work” the other half at your job. Of course the jobs were at the local truck stop.
And I still made “honor society” at the same time I was suspended for hooking school.
Sure not every school in the US needs to be ultra difficult. But they all damn well need to be a bit harder, and some courses need to be very difficult for those that can handle it.
I do feel however that if schools weren’t ranked at all, they’d be 10x worse than they are now. My sister teaches in public school, and the only thing driving most efforts to be better than barely passable are the rankings.

After 8 years of teaching my thoughts are thus:

- Pedagogically, setting up education as a competition is anathema to what education should be about: learning and growing, being curious about the world, problem solving, etc. Competition sets up extrinsic rewards instead of the more desireable intrinsic ones.

- No matter how much or how little competition there is, some kids will be much more likely to wind up on top and some kids will be much more likely to wind up on the bottom due to genetics and parenting. Setting up more competition is just more likely to make the kids who wind up at the bottom feel worse about themselves and low self-esteem is a terrible affliction.

- Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences is very important and often ignored in education. He reveals that in addition to linguistic and logical-mathematical which we emphasize in teaching and testing, people have other important and valuable skills which are less valued in school: musical, kinesthetic, spacial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Competition continues to overlook and deemphasize these other less-testable but highly valuable skills.

My public school education in Ohio was excellent. I was surrounded by other eager learners and many of us went off to presitigous universities and later success without any artifical competition placed on us.

Having schools compete against each other is another thing entirely and that has some merit to it. Accountability and competition between schools is more likely to raise the bar for the quality of education.

Why am I not surprised that our resident contrarian disagrees with me?! Low self-esteem is crippling, not inspirational! Having a sense of your overall strengths and weaknesses (see early post about Howard Gardner) is the best way to find success in life — not by emphasizing 2 aspects (math and literacy) and those who have difficulty being branded as losers. Just last year I had a wonderful student who struggled with math and english. In a highly competitive environment he would have been left in the dust and it probably would have crushed his spirit. But he did his best and progressed and also possesses great interpersonal, intrapersonal, as well as musical abilities and I have high hopes that he will go on to succeed in a career that doesn’t emphasize the skills he’s weaker at. Enough of life is competitive, can’t we allow kids to be kids for at least a few years and enjoy life and learning for learning’s sake?

Brian, first of all while I haven’t read Howard Gardner I’m certainly behind the concept that people have different skills, and that math & literacy are far from the be-all, end-all of education. As someone wiser once asked me: In the Kalahari, who’s smarter — a Bushman or a Harvard PhD?

That said, kids intrinsically love competition; they thrive on it. The trick is to make sure there are enough different types of competition — and I fershure do NOT mean inventing nonsense so every kid can win.

Kids aren’t stupid; they see through that kind of crap very easily and all you’ve done is made sure some of your “winners” know without a doubt they’re really losers who can only win when the game is rigged.

this is more of a global issue that just a japanese school issue, but here is my two cents. ranking students may have some adverse consequences, but on the whole is probably worth it. while their are other ways of gauging and increasing student performance, i think that rankings are among the most effective way (and when it comes to gauging, the only way). the most obvious reason why being the universality of the data. with it you can not only tell the difference between students, but the difference between teachers, the differences between schools, teaching methods, curriculum, etc.

with this data it is much easier to enforce some sort of accountability on the students and teachers. it could expose those instructors whose classes were doing consistently poorly compared to others. it could help school administrators determine by distribution which parts of the curriculum were difficult for the students and devise strategies for improving results. it could help to determine what teachers were superior in teaching certain subjects and allow others to learn from their pedagogy. in conjunction with annual subject competency exams to could help route out “test” teachers who don’t encourage true learning but only what it takes to pass. it also has a built in shaming mechanism to give lazy students some motivation and a recording mechanism to identify and assist struggling students.

the greatest argument that i’ve seen against the practice from commentators is that ranking kids and inspiring competition induces stress among the children. my counterargument is as follows: fair or not, stressful or not, people are measured in life. school, from a social perspective is supposed to prepare children for adulthood through instilling work ethic, a respect and desire for learning, and an expectation of real world situations. therefore, it is incumbent upon the schools to show some age appropriate semblance of real life, especially when it comes to performance ratings. regardless of whether you are employed at a major firm, a small company, self employed, or unemployed you will be judged on your performance, often in public, for the rest of your life. learning about how to deal with feedback is part of growing up. it allows you to determine where you excel and where you need improvement.

in addition denying the children a ranking system underestimates their maturity and life experiences. if you’re trying to spare a child’s feelings by judging them in public, consider the fact that todays children have already posted on blogs, youtube, and most likely have had their entry rated in full access of those they hold dear, and for the most part have handled it just fine. you’re asserting they can take the trolls calling them a fag, but having other people know they received a “c” on last week’s math quiz is too much for them?

i would also question a person’s priorities in sparing a child embarrassment in the hope it will reduce stress in their youth. youth is the best time to effect change in a person while they still easily modifiable and the cost of learning from one’s errors is cheap. One of the greatest flaws I see in the american system of public “schools” is that in the interest of preserving some children’s self esteem the system will cater to those who hold up everyone else who is actually succeeding. this creates an unfortunate situation where there are a great number of adolescents who’s minds are left uncultivated because no one had the balls to flunk little johnny and put him in remedial classes where he belongs. it also encourages the belief among the little johnny’s of the world that they’re special, late bloomers, or smart in a different way and that everyone could and should bend over backwards to make everything easy on them. with no standard to aspire to they just surrender themselves to mediocrity or failure.

conversely, removing rankings can take away an important incentive among those who excel to do precisely that. sometimes what makes all the sacrificed time and effort worth it to someone is to know that it meant something. that’s why those athletes cry at the olympics, it’s the realization of everything they tried, trained, and suffered so long for. if you take away those elements of goals and rewards, you take away a vital component of what makes people excel in the first place.

then when the children grow into adulthood they are in for an unduly rough awakening when they enter the world where people don’t bend over backwards for their convenience. where being at the bottom of the list according to stats doesn’t mean the workload is slowed down for you, but rather that you need to find a way to become more skilled or find another source of employment.

while, in the end, there does have to be more than just social pressure and personal desire as an incentive to learn, people shouldn’t just dismiss ranking and pressure to succeed out of hand as agents of destruction.

**end rant**