September 22, 2017 • 42 mins
Are sneakers in the classroom bad for your education? Should schools keep investing in janitors? And why does no one do homework anymore? Join Will and Mango on an Open House of the World's Best Schools (and what works in building a better pupil.) Featuring reporter Lauren Camera.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, mango, what's that? Well, so I've probably spent
a little more time than I should today just sitting
here trying to calculate America's gross national happiness gross wife
our gross national happiness. So it's this index created in
the nineteen seventies by the King of Bhutan, and he
decided that instead of focusing on his country's gross domestic
product or GDP, that they should be focused on their
(00:23):
g n H And and so the government began working
on policies to increase gross national happiness. So this is
a real thing. I'm not kidding. And as part of
the focus, the Boutanese government came up with an education
reform plan called Educating for Gross National Happiness. They were
trying to provide a more holistic schooling for the country's children,
you know, better in a great schools into their communities
(00:45):
and promote ecological health. I mean it's all good stuff, right, yeah,
And at the very least, it's a very sweet idea,
I agree, but you know, it's fast. They need to
look at how different countries around the world approach education
and and what they decided to focus on, and how
even some of the operank systems in the world can
approach things so differently, so we'll talk about some of
those today. But don't worry, We're not done talking about
(01:07):
gross national happiness. So let's get started, right Hey, their
(01:28):
podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
and as always I'm joined by my good friend man
guest Ticketer and on the other side of that soundproof
glass doing his best Billy Idle impression as our friend
and producer Tristan McNeil. It's not a bad one. Actually
looks kind of looks like him. Are you ready to
talk education? Mango? Am I? So? I'm super excited for
our guests and and we're definitely gonna put one of
(01:49):
our listeners to the test with a ridiculous quiz and
I'm ready to get started, all right. Well, before we
dive in, we should say that they are obviously challenges
involved when you try to compare educational systems around the world.
Every country has its own values and its own challenges
and of course its own strengths. But we did decide
to look at data gathered by the o e c D,
(02:10):
which is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and
and specifically their Program for International Student Assessment, and the
o e c D is this inner governmental organization. It's
made up of thirty five countries, the US being one
of those, and other places are included like Australia and Mexico,
the United Kingdom, Finland, Japan, Chile, and and several others.
(02:32):
And the organization was founded in the sixties with this
goal of trying to help economic development around the world.
They also work to think through common problems, but one
of the areas that they look at is the quality
of education around the world. So this Program for International
Student Assessment is is just one way that they evaluate
things like the level of education and science and math
(02:52):
and reading. But you know also what percentage of children
have access to education. Yeah, and we should also say
that in looking at an assessment like this, we know
it's not a perfect science and it doesn't really give
us a look at every country in the world. I mean,
this has been criticized for like only in valuating the
wealthier nations, and that's a valid criticism, but it's one
of the better collections of data available and it is
(03:14):
fascinating to look through. Yeah. So all that to say,
you'll hear us referring to the O e c D
as we compare countries that are members. And our goal
here is not to say that one country is better
than others. But it really is fascinating how you could
pick two countries that are near the top of the
student assessment in terms of math and science and reading
scores and realize that they have incredibly different approaches to education.
(03:38):
And that's exactly what we want to do. I mean,
these are these are two countries that you will always
show up on these lists of the best school systems
around the world. But again, these two countries are so
very different in how they approach education. Yeah, and not
from one another, but also from us. Right, And of
course we're talking about Finland and Japan here, and we'll
be looking at a few other countries too, but let's
(03:59):
start with Ease. So Will's assignment was to look into Finland,
and I took Japan. And we should know that we
couldn't have done this episode without the incredible research assistance
from Jocelyn Sears. So well, why don't you talk to
me about Finland? All right? So it was super interesting
reading about the investment and focus that Finland put into
their educational system really beginning in the early nineteen sixties,
(04:20):
and this was when parliament there decided that the best
way to really build long term economic success was to
invest in education and specifically in their teachers. So they
made the decision that all teachers needed to be highly trained,
and by the late nineteen seventies, all teachers were required
to have a master's degree. And get this, fewer than
(04:41):
fifteen percent of applicants are even accepted into these master's programs.
It's that competitive. And according to a fascinating Smithsonian article
I was looking at the focus on investing in teachers,
it really led to this elevated status for teachers. It
kind of put them on par with doctors and lawyers,
and not in terms of salary, but because of the
amount of autonomy and respect that they're given. Yeah. And
(05:04):
and so you were telling me that even after they
get into the master's programs, it's still really competitive to
get those teaching jobs. Yeah. So one statistic I saw
from a few years ago is that there are nearly
seven thousand applicants competing for fewer than seven hundred openings
at the primary school level. And you know, most teachers
now have master's degrees not only in education, but also
in a specific content area, and there's additional focus on
(05:27):
being prepared to teach their special needs students, which is wild.
But talk to me about autonomy. Well, the government decided
that once they'd really invested in teacher training after about
a decade or so, it was it was time to
put decision making in the hands of these teachers. So
prior to the nineties, the curriculum guides in Finland were
something like seven hundred pages long, which I mean, I
(05:48):
guess isn't that surprising since there's obviously a ton involved
in teaching. But what's more crazy than that is that
if you want to read the core curriculum guidelines for
teaching math today, you can do that in fewer than
ten pages. Yeah, it's because these are really just guiding principles,
and the teachers and local schools they're able to tailor
(06:08):
those guiding principles to meet the needs of their local population.
So this whole structure is pretty decentralized. Then, oh, definite.
So that's definitely all fascinating. But here's what I might
find even more interesting, and it's that when we were
looking at the stats on school hours and time spent
with the teachers. It seems like kids in Finland are
spending far less time with their teachers than kids in
(06:30):
most other countries. Well that's right, but but let's back
up a little bit and start from the beginning. So,
so kids actually don't start school there until they're seven
years old, and before that, Finland does provide this heavily
subsidized daycare, you know, opportunity for all of its children.
But in these preschools, they aren't really focused on teaching
things like math and reading. The focus is much more
(06:52):
on play, I mean lots and lots of creative play
and outdoor play. And then the parental leaf policy and
Inland is so generous, allowing parents to stay home until
their kids reach three, and so their rates of enrollment
in early childhood education are are actually pretty low. And
even after three, there are fewer kids in preschool at
ages three and four than any other country in the
(07:15):
O e c D. That's really interesting. But what about
once they get to primary school. Well, here's where our
kids are going to be incredibly jealous. So for the
first few years of school, the school day is only
four hours long and seventy five minutes of that is recess,
seventy five minutes of recess, so I'm certain my son
doesn't see anywhere near that much. No, I was looking.
(07:36):
I think the average time allocated the recess in the
US is is less than half an hour. I think
it's like twenty seven minutes. But you know, in Finland
it's mandated that they have fifteen minutes of recess for
every hour of instruction, and even beyond that, the schools
also incorporates so much more time for arts and crafts
and just very active hands on learning. So forget about
(07:56):
my kids being jealous, like I'm jealous. I get it,
I get but I'm guessing the days get longer as
the kids get a little older. Yeah, but you know,
even by ninth grade, school days are just six hours long.
So if you total the amount of time finished kids
spend at school over their nine years of basic education,
it's about sis which I know that sounds like a lot,
but that's more than a thousand hours less than the
(08:18):
O E C D average. So one of the things
I read about Finland and that I'll talk about a
little when we look at Japan is the psychology of
removing shoes when coming into the classroom. Well, I thought
this was interesting too, And and of course in a
place like Finland where it's very cold in the winter,
there's a practical purpose for taking your shoes off, you know,
to prevent bringing in snow and mud. But like you said,
(08:39):
there's also a psychological impact that's been seen in multiple studies.
So the thinking is that students feel more relaxed than
at home, that it helps them focus and even improves
their behavior. And it was interesting to read about studies
in other countries where it's more common to wear shoes
indoors and to see the impact of testing on shoe removal.
And so one experiment in Spain, where it's the norm
(08:59):
to wear shoes indoors, found that behavior and performance improved
with the shoe removal test. That's pretty neat. So back
to the time spent on school and studying, we haven't
talked about homework. Are the kids in Finland making up
for less time in school spent by doing more homework?
Not even close, to be honest with I mean, in fact,
kids in Finland spend less time doing homework than any
(09:21):
other kids in the O E. C. D SO study
from two thousand and twelve found that the average fifteen
year old spent about two hundred minutes per week on
after school study. That's almost a hundred minutes lower than
the next lowest, which was the Czech Republic. My son
hits homework so much, I'm sure he's gonna be packing
his bag exactly. So what else do we want to
know about the education in Finland? All? Right? Well, a
(09:43):
few things, a few other notes I had here, but
but one big one I actually should have noted this
earlier is that a big part of the reformed education
policy in Finland is focused on equality and education or
equal access I guess. And so there's a strong belief
that every child, regardless of their family's income, or their background,
or their status or location, should have the same educational opportunity.
(10:05):
They really see, education is this way to combat social inequality,
and as a result of this, the gap between the
weakest and the strongest students is the smallest in the world.
And there are a couple other things I wanted to mention.
What else here? Um? Oh yeah, Actually, there aren't any
standardized test in Finland, which is like school paradise, I know.
(10:26):
So instead teachers work to assess the students independently as
they progress, so this gets back to the highly trained
teacher thing, and every student receives free school lunches as
well as access to medical and dental care. Uh University
tuition is free now. As for the future, their latest
curriculum updates focus on something called phenomenon based teaching, which
(10:47):
is this effort to focus less on individual subjects and
more on this interdisciplinary approach. So the teachers collaborate more,
you know, to make this work, and it'll be interesting
to see what this means for Finland in the future.
And all of this is completely fascinating to me. One
other note, though, I do think we should keep in
mind that there are only about five million people in Finland,
so it's a very small country compared to some of
(11:09):
the other massive countries around the world, and even compared
to Japan, which I know we'll talk about next. So
this is not to say that everything that works in
Finland will work everywhere else, but it's still really interesting
to see what they've accomplished. Definitely, Well, I'm ready to
talk about your fan but first, why don't we take
a quick break. So Mango, a couple of weeks ago,
(11:31):
you may Remember, we responded to several listener requests, and
we we told our listeners that we were going to
give some of them a chance to be on the
show and play some of our ridiculous quizzes. All they
had to do was either send us an email or
call into our Fact hotline four pt Genius to tell
us why they should be on the show. And that's
(11:51):
seven Fact hot Line. It is still right, Manga. I
was just gonna say that's good. I just wanted to
check because I've heard of a lot of fact hot
lines or other hotlines not going so I'm glad we're
maintaining that. So so anyway, our guest today responded and
and was the only person who wrote in or who
(12:12):
called in, and who was both a zombie on the
Las Vegas Strip and a production of Evil Dead the
Musical and a mechanical bull operator. I think was the
only person that called it. We've got so many great
calls and so many great emails, but Sam Murphy was
the only person that called in with both of those qualifications,
as well as being a science teacher at the elementary level,
(12:33):
which is why we decided to have Sam on the
show today. So Sam Murphy. Welcome to part time genius. Hi. So,
I'm assuming growing up you you always knew that you
wanted to be both a zombie on the Las Vegas
trip and a mechanical bull operators. That is that accurate? No, absolutely,
you know. And like when I was looking for college programs,
(12:53):
I looked for something I could double major in both
of those things. It was very important to me. That's terrific. Well,
I had a question specifically about the bull operating side
of it. I actually two questions. What one, what's a
respectable time to stay on a bull for? And too?
Have you have you ever seen anyone right a sober? Okay? Um?
(13:15):
So the official time in rodeo is eight seconds and
then you're officially being scored from that point on. So
if you can stay on mechanical bowl for eight seconds,
having never rode before, you're doing great. That's fantastic. Um.
And I'm sure. Yeah, during the day there are a
couple of times where people were mostly sober. It's people
(13:37):
on the laws biggest trip. Yeah, imagine that's true. Just
to clarify, if you have not made it eight seconds,
you're not even to the point of being judged yet.
Is that what you're saying in rodeo. Yeah, you have
to go eight seconds and then they'll start scoring you.
So I mean, like when I was a bull operator,
I'd go pretty easy for the first like four so
people could feel good about themselves. Got it, and you
(13:59):
crank it up? I understand. Okay, Now that's pretty awesome.
And you're also a comedian and an actor in Las
Vegas as well as a science teacher. I mean, I
don't know how you find the time to do all
of this, but but tell us what you teach at
the elementary level. UM. Yeah, so it's a really really
great third party company. UM. And we teach science, and
we sort of teach like the highlight reels of science.
So we dropped dry ice into things and see what happens,
(14:22):
and we make them slime and we send that home
with them. UM. So it's really really cool to be
this fun, bright part of kids days when they're really
bogged down with tests and making sure that they hit
certain requirements in certain marks, and we say, go play.
Oh that's awesome, that's awesome. Well, well we have a
quiz ready for you today, Mango. What quiz are we
(14:43):
putting Sam up to? Uh, well, it was going to
be called the Great School Quiz, but I've upgraded it
to the pretty Great School Quiz. Al Right, Well, it's
five questions and they're pretty straightforward questions, but they're fun.
One Sammy ready to play? I'm so ready? All right,
here we go. Question number one. What band wrote confusing
lyrics to the song I Am the Walrus when they
(15:05):
heard that high school students were being forced to study
and analyze their songs in class. That's right, one for one, alright.
Question number two, what popular condiment was banned in French
school cafeterias in two thousand eleven on the grounds that
it posed a threat to the national cuisine. Yeah, that's right,
(15:28):
well done too for two. That sounded like a little
bit of a guest, But I'm glad you trusted your
got on that one. Okay. I just feel like French
people would be like ruining alright. Question number three. What
nineteen seventies and eighties animated music series got its start
when an ad executive realized that his kid couldn't remember
the multiplication tables but had no problem recalling rock lyrics.
(15:52):
M Holograss not a bad guest of the answer, to
this one, Mango. Yeah, what am I talking? Yeah that's right,
Schoolhouse Rock. But we'll give that to you. Yeah, I
think we're giving Sam credit for that one. Alright. Question
number four. What Cuban dictator declared nineteen sixty one the
Year of Education and sent literacy brigades to the countryside
(16:16):
to build schools and teach people to read. Yeah, that's right.
And and by the end of that year, literacy had
jumped from sixty to nine. Alright, so you're four for four.
Let's see how Sam can do on the last one
and two thousand, fifteen students in Chicago launched a unique fundraiser.
They got the school to play the song Baby by
(16:38):
this Canadian artist between classes, and students could pay money
to get it to stop. What artists are we talking about?
Justin Bieber. The campaign was so effective that it raised
over a thousand dollars in less than three days. Wow.
So I think Sam has gone an astonishing five for five.
(17:00):
So what is Sam je today? Mango? Yes, I'm when
amazing five for five? And not only is Sam one
a handwred note to their mom or boss, but also
a copy of Stray shopping Carts of North America, which
is a field guide to abandon shopping carts. Thank you,
I'm so excited. Thank you so much for having me.
(17:41):
You guys, welcome back to Part time Genius. Now, before
the break, we talked about Finland, and I wish all
our kids the best as they relocate it to take
advantage of their shorter school days and lack of standardized testing.
(18:04):
But now it's time to talk about another country that
also appears near the top of these O e c
D rankings. And again this is based on scores in
math and science and reading, but it's a country with
a very very different approach, and that's Japan. So Mango,
the mic is yours. Thanks for warming up for me.
So I want to go back to a point you
made earlier about the fact that every country is different
(18:26):
and that each culture has its own priorities and their
own interests. So even though Finland and Fancy very high
scores on the assessment, they really do have different approaches.
And I actually wanted to start by talking about values first.
So so things beyond I guess the learning of the
core subjects m definitely and and we'll get to that
stuff too, But first I want to emphasize how much
(18:47):
focused Japanese culture puts on developing independence and the sense
of social responsibility, all at a very young age. So
one way to illustrate the importance of independence before we
talk about what happens at school is how kids get
to school. I've I've read about this a little bit before,
and and and that's the fact. I guess that most
kids in Japan walk to school, Right, that's true, but
(19:08):
that's not all. So most of them, as as young
as like six years old, will walk to school alone
or at least not with their parents. Like many of
them walk as a group. But usually this big ends
around first grade. And for most schools, if kids are
within walking distance, they're required to walk. The walking distance
can be considered more than four to five kilometers, so
(19:28):
the average walk for an elementary school kid can be
up to thirty to sixty minutes. Yeah. There's a sociologist
in Tokyo whose name Terru Clavell, and she put it
this way quote, it's a culturally indoctrinated understanding that children
are supposed to be independent by the time they start
grade school. Really, so that's age six. And she goes
(19:49):
on to refer to a statement in Japanese that translates
quote to the adored child send him on journeys. Alright, So,
so you've got six year olds walking up to an
hour with no adults supervision. Well, in most areas, the
PTA finds these retirees in the area and asked them
to come outside and you know, supervise the walkers, and
they have designated safe zone houses if any kids need
(20:11):
any sort of help. Well, if anything, I would have
to imagine this emphasis on walking would play at least
a little bit of a role in Japan having lower
rates of childhood obesity. Oh, it definitely does, all right.
So so you were saying that there's also this focus
on social responsibility, and this is something I feel like
I have seen a little bit about. Does this have
something to do with the fact that I've heard a
few times that they're no no janitors in Japanese schools? Yeah,
(20:34):
so you know, I'd heard that a lot too, And
that's not exactly true about the no janitors things. So
most schools do have them, but they focus on the
more complicated repairs and in most cases also cleaned the bathrooms.
But yeah, that's the basic idea. So there's something called tokatsu,
and it's these are non cognitive activities that are used
to develop the sense of social responsibility. And these include
(20:57):
the daily chores. The children are responsible for cleaning the classroom,
cleaning common areas, stuff like that, and this starts at
first grade, and students are required to bring their own
washcloths to help out with the cleaning. They'll clean for
about twenty minutes a day, and in one report I
saw during this time the school might play cheerful, marching
music and it's all over the sound system. But it's
(21:18):
to keep everyone energized at home. Yeah, And and to
be clear, this is not seen as any sort of punishment.
I mean, it's it's much more about this moral education
and learning to be responsible in a group. And as
you might guess, much of the stems from the Buddhist
idea of purification and and the sense that cleaning is
not far off from a form of meditations. Interesting and
(21:41):
in addition to this, most schools don't have cafeterias, so
students in their teachers have lunch together in their classrooms
and in places where the schools are providing the food.
Students actually rotate through the responsibilities of serving others in
the class. I mean, I think that's great, But what
about the core classes themselves? I mean, I'm guessing this
is where we're going to see the biggest differences from Finland.
This is where Japan and Finland definitely take different approaches.
(22:04):
And this is the case whether we're talking about a
number of hours in school, the focus of the classes
in school, homework, even standardized testing. So let's talk about
the school hours first. For much of the twentieth century,
Japan followed a six day school week, and they've always
had a reputation for this very strict teaching methods with
like lots of rote memorization, and this six day school
(22:26):
week is something that's been fiercely debated over the past
few decades. In what way, Well, in the seventies and eighties,
people became more vocal about the amount of pressure being
placed on students in Japan, and in response, there was
this new educational system developed called you tori kyoku. I
know I'm pronouncing that wrong, exactly right, So this translates
(22:48):
roughly as quote pressure free education. You did say that, right,
which is kind of funny when you think of it
being applied in Japan. But there was this attempt to
replace some of that wrote learning with this move towards
more creative thinking and problem solving skills. And and on
top of all of that, the school week went from
six to five days in the nineties and did that
help some Well, it's tough to say what it did
(23:10):
for students stress levels. But it hasn't all gone smoothly.
And in fact, after the shift, Japan saw its scores
go down a bit on the International Achievement tests. So
many people want them to return to the six day weeks,
and in fact, in a survey a few weeks ago,
eighty six percent of parents in Tokyo were in favor
of returning to Saturday classes and only seven percent we're
(23:34):
actually opposed. That is incredible and I cannot see that
being the case here. Oh no, it wouldn't be. And
and there's definitely a moved to push back towards the
sixth day weeks. So in fact, there's a bit of
a loophole in the legislation which gives schools the opportunity
to teach classes on Saturdays if there's a special need.
So in two thousand and twelve, nearly half of elementary
(23:54):
schools and junior high schools were holding at least some
amount of Saturday classes, so they definitely spend far more
time in the classroom than the students in Finland. Yeah,
and that's not the only additional time they're spending there.
Because they have these highly competitive entrance exams and other
standardized tests. There's something called juku or or cram schools,
and they help students prepare for years for these exams.
(24:17):
Like these cram schools meet after school and on weekends
to help students prepare for future exams in math, science, English,
and we're talking kids as young as six or seven,
Like one report showed nearly twenty of elementary students and
almost half of junior high students attended some amount of
cram school. And these schools weren't cheap, like they cost
more than three thousand dollars per year in some cases.
(24:40):
And it isn't just juku like like one study showed
nearly seventy of students attending after school math lessons as well.
So so unlike in Finland where from a very young
age there's this huge focus on preparing for entrance exams
and standardized tests. I mean, it sounds so stressful. Yeah,
despite some of the efforts to address the intense pressure, like,
(25:02):
it's definitely still a very real thing. I look at
these numbers here and it's like eight two percent of
Japanese students report being very worried about their grades in school.
And there's some other issues that they should be addressing
as well, like bullying is actually an issue in Japan,
but it's a little different than in the US. It's
very much a group phenomena there where the entire class
(25:23):
will gang up on one classmate and it's really sad.
It's it's like between the stress and the bullying. It's
thought to be the primary reason that teen suicide rates
spike on September one, which is the first day of school.
That's horrible. Yeah, And and for all the impressive test
scores and achievements, that's definitely a problem that needs to
be addressed. But I do want to finish the discussion
(25:45):
to Japan on a positive note. What you got unicycleicycle
that smile on everybody's face. So the majority of elementary
schools in Japan have unicycles on hand for kids to
ride during recess time. And it's because the Ministry of
Education shouldn't recommends that schools have these along with bamboo
stilt to help build core strength, right of course. I
(26:07):
mean they even have an all Japan elementary school competition
or a championship of unicycling. That's pretty awesome and definitely
a better way to end the discussion of Japan, you know.
But but hopefully they can successfully address some of the
issues you mentioned, because it does seem like there's certain
things about you know, their focus on independence and a
desire to serve others that seem very good. But all right,
(26:29):
let's take a quick break before we talk about a
few other places. Our guest today is an education reporter
at u S News and World Report, and she's been
covering education policy and politics for nearly a decade now,
Lauren Camera, Welcome to Part Time Genius than so So, Lauren,
(26:51):
we're spending most of this episode talking about education systems
around the world. So far in this episode, we've talked
about Finland and Mango just finished schooling us on Japan.
So now we want to talk a little bit about
the US. But it seems like that can be a
little bit challenging because, you know, rather than pointing to
a big national trend. It feels like you kind of
have to look at what all the states are doing
(27:13):
individually or independently. Would you say this is true? Yeah, absolutely,
I'd say that that's definitely true. Um. I often say that,
you know, there's not really one overarching trend, but rather
lots of states trying to do lots of different things
all the time. UM. Sometimes I like to joke that
in the USC education system loves its shiny new objects.
(27:34):
It upsets it a lot over you know, one thing,
and then it's quickly onto the next. Would you mind
telling us about a few of those shiniest ones. Well,
right now you might be seeing some of your kids
have later school start times for examples, uh schools, and
at least nineteen states that um I know of our
planning to start the school day later this year. This
(27:55):
is sort of a trend that's been happening the last
year or two, after the CDC released a report a
couple of years ago just blatantly saying that kids are
not getting enough sleep and um that they're just starting
the school day to early. So you'll probably see that continue.
You also might see less homework. UM. There was a
recent survey in June by Morning consoled that pretty much
(28:18):
found that of American adults feel that, um, you know,
less than one hour of homework per day is pretty
much appropriate for elementary school students. So we've seen, for example,
there is a school district in Florida, I believe it's
Marion County. The school superintendent recently issued a ban on
homework in thirty one of its elementary school. So you
(28:40):
might not see a hard line drawn like that everywhere,
but we might start to see a dip in homework assignments. Um. Also,
I would say, you know, the increased use of technology.
This has been a trend for the last couple of years,
but um it's actually a really interesting one. If you
look at the data. In twenties or team, only four
(29:01):
million students had access to broadband that was fast enough
that allowed them to use digital tablets in the classroom.
But now, just like four years later, that number has
pretty much catapulted to thirty nine point two million students
have that ability. Now, just to ask you about that,
your are you saying, just to clarify, is that access
(29:22):
in the classroom or access at home. That's access in
the classroom and at libraries okay, okay, So the ability
to do their work on those Yeah, yeah, that's largely
thanks to actually, believe it or not, a federal program
called e rate. It's probably one of the only federal
programs I can think of off the top of my
(29:43):
head that was conceived and is doing exactly what it's
supposed to do. So in the four short years you have,
you know, thirty five million more students having that ability.
So it's pretty remarkable. Actually. You know, one other thing
that I could think of is that the probably be
an increased interest in making popular again vote tech programs, apprenticeships,
(30:05):
things like that, other technical skill courses as ways to
help build the so called skills gap that's getting a
lot of attention these days as well. Yeah. Now on
the homework front, is are these decisions based on studies
around the um effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of homework
or is it based on just kind of family needs
(30:27):
of it? Do do you know why the trend does
seem to be moving in the direction of less homework
for students. I mean, I'm fully in favor of it,
I'm just curious why. Yeah, well, I've in the eleventh
month old sun. He's not really bringing home a lot
of homework yet, but he's falling behind already. Yeah, right, UM,
I think it's it's both based on you know, public polling, opinions, UM,
(30:51):
and also research that suggests, you know, a lot of
the learning is the most effective learning at least is
done in the classroom. Well, and is there anything else
that do you feel like we should know about right
now regarding education policy or or any other trends. Yeah,
it's probably um, you know, it's probably worth noting that
as a backdrop to the story. All states right now
(31:13):
are in the process of devising new education plans. This
is something that's required under the new federal Education Law,
the Every Students Sees Act, and those plans are in
the process of being okayed by the um Department of Education.
And that's really going to change how students in schools
are assessed and held accountable and will therefore have a
(31:34):
big impact on the classroom. Uh. You might, as a
parent start to see some of these changes this year,
perhaps things like greater access to art classes or a
p in IB classes, potentially STEM programs, and some states
are proposing to even pay more attention to socio emotional
(31:54):
health of students. That's very interesting. Well, I'm glad you're
here to read through all fifty of those plans so
that you cannot make sense of those for us. But
thanks so much for your terrific reporting and for joining
us today on part Time Genius. Yeah, thanks so much
for having me. Welcome back to part Time Genius. We
(32:22):
were just wrapping up our discussion of Japan, but I
realized I had one more question, and that's because we've
been looking at two pretty different ends of the spectrum
in terms of time spent at school and after school
work and standardized testing, and we're talking about these are
kind of two ends of the spectrum. It's so, do
Japanese students spend more time on homework than all other countries?
(32:43):
Actually no, so that honor belongs to China. And it's
not even a close competition like the O E c
D looked at sixty five countries in a study a
few years ago, and Chinese students spend eight hundred thirty
one minutes per week on homework. My gosh, and that's
almost two minutes more than the next closest, which was
the Russian Federation. They spend five five minutes and only
(33:07):
a few other countries spent more than five minutes per
week on homework. And of course all of this is
more than four times what the kids in Finland are spending. Gosh.
In fact, almost high school students in China say they
typically finished their homework after eleven pm. Yeah, and it
sounds like this is another place where, you know, the
level of competition and stress must be so high. Definitely. So.
(33:27):
Just like Japan, China has some very high stakes tests
for their students. Like there's a huge nine hour college
entrance exam called the High Test. And unlike the s
A T where several students hit perfect scores every year,
no one has ever achieved a seven fifty, which is
the perfect score on this exam. And I guess this
exam is is really important for college entrance. Yeah, I
(33:49):
mean it's not just important, it's actually the only criteria
for getting into Chinese university. Yeah. It's so competitive there
that the top universities may only select one out of
fifty students. Oh my god, that's crazy. And you know
we sit here thinking that the U S schools are
a competitive Yeah, no kidding. And and this exam is
so important that can have this major impact on students
future career and even their marital status. But I think
(34:12):
the craziest part about the exam maybe the prompts used
in the writing section. So according to an article in
The Guardian, two of the prompts from the two thousand
and fifteen exam included quote do butterfly wings have colors?
And quote who do you admire most? A biotechnology researcher,
a welding engineer, technician or a photographer. I'd like to
(34:35):
turn in my essay on that first one. The answer
would just be yes. But it seems like there would
have to be a breaking point for all of this
one day. Well that's already kind of starting to happen,
though not really in this seismic way, but you definitely
see fewer students taking the exam and just opting to
go to school abroad, and and then others are starting
to go to vocational schools, which tend to be less competitive.
(34:57):
I mean, I doubt the entrance exam is contributing much
to gross national happiness. I mean, if they're measuring that there,
I kind of doubt that they are. I told you
I was going to bring this one back up, but
but let's go back to Bhutan's It was really fun
reading about the implementation of this program. And so it's
focused on four primary pillars. So there's sustainable development, preservation
and promotion of culture, conservation of the environment, and good governance.
(35:21):
And then to measure their progress, Bhutan developed an index
in two thousand and eight that would quote reflect g
n H values, set benchmarks, and track policies and performance
of the country. So the way they set these benchmarks
and track all of this is through this index that
includes nine domains their psychological well being, time use, community, vitality, culture, health, education,
(35:44):
environmental diversity, living standard, and governance. You got all those
I got, But you know, I mean, like the whole
four pillars and nine domains thing. It sounds so Buddhist,
like it reminds me of the Four Noble Truths and
the eight Full path. I love the way you say
Buddhis But that's because it really is rooted in Buddhist
philosophy and and and that's no big surprise because Bhutan
(36:07):
is majority Buddhist. And in fact, in two thousand ten
they began requiring schools to make time for daily meditation.
But even back on the education side of me, there's
there's another interesting piece of this. So with their focus
on education and all their efforts to provide primary schooling
for everyone and increase the literacy rate, Bhutan is seeing
some pretty significant results. I mean, they're not going to
(36:29):
be on the same top list that Finland and Japan
are in terms of all of their scores, but what
they've accomplished is still really impressive. So just just looking
at some of the numbers for literacy, actually, let me
pull these back up. It says in two thousand five,
the literacy rate for those sixty five and older was
about for men and only five percent for women. But
if you look at the fifteen to twenty four age
(36:51):
range at that point, it was eight percent for men
and sixty eight percent for women. But then fast forward
seven years to two thousand and twelve, looking at that
fifteen to twenty four year old age group, again, it
jumped to for men and almost for women. I mean,
these are some huge games. Yeah, it's incredible, So maybe
focusing on gross national happiness isn't such a silly idea.
(37:13):
But you know what else is incredible? The part time
genius backed off. All right, I'll kick us off here.
So earlier when we were talking about all students receiving
free school lunches in Finland, I'm not sure if you
(37:34):
saw the story, but this will now be happening in
New York City. Earlier this year in New York announced
the program to provide free lunches to all public school kids,
which is great. So looking at a country we didn't
really talk about today, do you know that in France
schools are working to teach children not to be picky
eaters through this thing called taste training lester So in
two thousand eleven this became part of their national curriculum,
(37:55):
and Karenlebillion, author of French Kids Eat Everything, told warts
quote the French take a different approach to food from
a very young age. They believe and have done scientific
research to prove that you can teach your kids to
eat just like you teach them to read. And according
to the report, young kids are expected to learn how
to enjoy such delicacies as pickled pig snouts. So I'd
(38:17):
like to see them trying to get my kids the
eat the host gross. Actually, I had a fact here
about education in France as well, and I didn't know
that Traditionally, French children have only gone to school four
days a week, and it's Wednesday that's kind of their
special day with no school. And this dates back to
the late eighteen hundreds when this day was reserved for
religious education, and in the seventies it became a mandatory
(38:39):
day off. But in the past decade or so it's
turned into this heated debate. To go back to two
thousand eight, Nicholas Sarkozy mandated the elimination of classes held
on Saturday, which some schools were kind of using to
make up for that day off, and mandated they returned
to this four day week. So then a few years
later Francois Holland instituted a half day on Wednesday, so
(39:00):
became four and a half day school week. And then
early in his term, Emmanuel Macron informed schools that they
would have the option of going back to the four
day week if they so desired. That's amazing. So, speaking
of recent announcements, something I forgot to mention, we were
talking about Japan. According to the Japan Times quote this year,
the Ministry of Education announced they would be adding the
(39:21):
teaching of a second language at all elementary schools and
so while he might be thinking English, it's actually computer
programming languages. So as part of the language curriculum update
to be completed by all students will be taught coding
in schools. Wow, okay, alright, Well, in Russia, September one
is known as Knowledge Day and it's the celebration of
(39:41):
the beginning of school and it's accompanied by lots and
lots of ceremony. So at the end of the ceremony,
a first grade girl sits on the shoulders of a
senior boy and then she rings a bell to signify
the start of the year. I had no idea what
that means, but it sounds very like, of course, she
sits on the shoulders and rings a and it's time
to start school. So I have to admit I saved
(40:03):
this one for last. In two thousand to nonprofits started
by Hilula Swan of our I'm sure I'm getting that
good job created the first boat based school in Bangladesh.
And so you might be wondering why. It's because so
much of the country is often flooded during the monsoon season.
It makes it very difficult for many kids to get
(40:25):
to school. And with a boat based school, the school
comes to them. So by there were twenty two of
these floating schools. And it's amazing because the school really
also serves as a school bus by traveling around and
picking up the students. And after all the students are collected,
the boat docks and and the school they begins, I know,
and the boats have internet access and they've got solar
(40:46):
panels to make it all possible. And the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation have given it a million dollars to
build more boats and improve the technology. It's really phenomenal.
And uh, it isn't just there so inspired by this,
you can actually find schools in other countries prone to flooding.
So these occur in Cambodia and Nigeria, the Philippines, Vietnam
and Zambia as well. Now I see why you say that,
(41:08):
one mango, I have to admit that that is an
incredible fact and and be honest, worthy of this week's trophy.
So congratulations, that's it for today's show. Thanks so much
for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is
(41:35):
a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be possible
without several brilliant people who do the important things we
couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the editing thing.
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the MIXI
mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing.
Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the
Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams
(41:55):
and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears.
Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard, we
hope you'll subscribe, And if you really really like what
you've heard, maybe you could leave a good review for us.
Do we do? We forget Jason? Jason who
Guess what, mango, what's that? Well, so I've probably spent
a little more time than I should today just sitting
here trying to calculate America's gross national happiness gross wife
our gross national happiness. So it's this index created in
the nineteen seventies by the King of Bhutan, and he
decided that instead of focusing on his country's gross domestic
product or GDP, that they should be focused on their
(00:23):
g n H And and so the government began working
on policies to increase gross national happiness. So this is
a real thing. I'm not kidding. And as part of
the focus, the Boutanese government came up with an education
reform plan called Educating for Gross National Happiness. They were
trying to provide a more holistic schooling for the country's children,
you know, better in a great schools into their communities
(00:45):
and promote ecological health. I mean it's all good stuff, right, yeah,
And at the very least, it's a very sweet idea,
I agree, but you know, it's fast. They need to
look at how different countries around the world approach education
and and what they decided to focus on, and how
even some of the operank systems in the world can
approach things so differently, so we'll talk about some of
those today. But don't worry, We're not done talking about
(01:07):
gross national happiness. So let's get started, right Hey, their
(01:28):
podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
and as always I'm joined by my good friend man
guest Ticketer and on the other side of that soundproof
glass doing his best Billy Idle impression as our friend
and producer Tristan McNeil. It's not a bad one. Actually
looks kind of looks like him. Are you ready to
talk education? Mango? Am I? So? I'm super excited for
our guests and and we're definitely gonna put one of
(01:49):
our listeners to the test with a ridiculous quiz and
I'm ready to get started, all right. Well, before we
dive in, we should say that they are obviously challenges
involved when you try to compare educational systems around the world.
Every country has its own values and its own challenges
and of course its own strengths. But we did decide
to look at data gathered by the o e c D,
(02:10):
which is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and
and specifically their Program for International Student Assessment, and the
o e c D is this inner governmental organization. It's
made up of thirty five countries, the US being one
of those, and other places are included like Australia and Mexico,
the United Kingdom, Finland, Japan, Chile, and and several others.
(02:32):
And the organization was founded in the sixties with this
goal of trying to help economic development around the world.
They also work to think through common problems, but one
of the areas that they look at is the quality
of education around the world. So this Program for International
Student Assessment is is just one way that they evaluate
things like the level of education and science and math
(02:52):
and reading. But you know also what percentage of children
have access to education. Yeah, and we should also say
that in looking at an assessment like this, we know
it's not a perfect science and it doesn't really give
us a look at every country in the world. I mean,
this has been criticized for like only in valuating the
wealthier nations, and that's a valid criticism, but it's one
of the better collections of data available and it is
(03:14):
fascinating to look through. Yeah. So all that to say,
you'll hear us referring to the O e c D
as we compare countries that are members. And our goal
here is not to say that one country is better
than others. But it really is fascinating how you could
pick two countries that are near the top of the
student assessment in terms of math and science and reading
scores and realize that they have incredibly different approaches to education.
(03:38):
And that's exactly what we want to do. I mean,
these are these are two countries that you will always
show up on these lists of the best school systems
around the world. But again, these two countries are so
very different in how they approach education. Yeah, and not
from one another, but also from us. Right, And of
course we're talking about Finland and Japan here, and we'll
be looking at a few other countries too, but let's
(03:59):
start with Ease. So Will's assignment was to look into Finland,
and I took Japan. And we should know that we
couldn't have done this episode without the incredible research assistance
from Jocelyn Sears. So well, why don't you talk to
me about Finland? All right? So it was super interesting
reading about the investment and focus that Finland put into
their educational system really beginning in the early nineteen sixties,
(04:20):
and this was when parliament there decided that the best
way to really build long term economic success was to
invest in education and specifically in their teachers. So they
made the decision that all teachers needed to be highly trained,
and by the late nineteen seventies, all teachers were required
to have a master's degree. And get this, fewer than
(04:41):
fifteen percent of applicants are even accepted into these master's programs.
It's that competitive. And according to a fascinating Smithsonian article
I was looking at the focus on investing in teachers,
it really led to this elevated status for teachers. It
kind of put them on par with doctors and lawyers,
and not in terms of salary, but because of the
amount of autonomy and respect that they're given. Yeah. And
(05:04):
and so you were telling me that even after they
get into the master's programs, it's still really competitive to
get those teaching jobs. Yeah. So one statistic I saw
from a few years ago is that there are nearly
seven thousand applicants competing for fewer than seven hundred openings
at the primary school level. And you know, most teachers
now have master's degrees not only in education, but also
in a specific content area, and there's additional focus on
(05:27):
being prepared to teach their special needs students, which is wild.
But talk to me about autonomy. Well, the government decided
that once they'd really invested in teacher training after about
a decade or so, it was it was time to
put decision making in the hands of these teachers. So
prior to the nineties, the curriculum guides in Finland were
something like seven hundred pages long, which I mean, I
(05:48):
guess isn't that surprising since there's obviously a ton involved
in teaching. But what's more crazy than that is that
if you want to read the core curriculum guidelines for
teaching math today, you can do that in fewer than
ten pages. Yeah, it's because these are really just guiding principles,
and the teachers and local schools they're able to tailor
(06:08):
those guiding principles to meet the needs of their local population.
So this whole structure is pretty decentralized. Then, oh, definite.
So that's definitely all fascinating. But here's what I might
find even more interesting, and it's that when we were
looking at the stats on school hours and time spent
with the teachers. It seems like kids in Finland are
spending far less time with their teachers than kids in
(06:30):
most other countries. Well that's right, but but let's back
up a little bit and start from the beginning. So,
so kids actually don't start school there until they're seven
years old, and before that, Finland does provide this heavily
subsidized daycare, you know, opportunity for all of its children.
But in these preschools, they aren't really focused on teaching
things like math and reading. The focus is much more
(06:52):
on play, I mean lots and lots of creative play
and outdoor play. And then the parental leaf policy and
Inland is so generous, allowing parents to stay home until
their kids reach three, and so their rates of enrollment
in early childhood education are are actually pretty low. And
even after three, there are fewer kids in preschool at
ages three and four than any other country in the
(07:15):
O e c D. That's really interesting. But what about
once they get to primary school. Well, here's where our
kids are going to be incredibly jealous. So for the
first few years of school, the school day is only
four hours long and seventy five minutes of that is recess,
seventy five minutes of recess, so I'm certain my son
doesn't see anywhere near that much. No, I was looking.
(07:36):
I think the average time allocated the recess in the
US is is less than half an hour. I think
it's like twenty seven minutes. But you know, in Finland
it's mandated that they have fifteen minutes of recess for
every hour of instruction, and even beyond that, the schools
also incorporates so much more time for arts and crafts
and just very active hands on learning. So forget about
(07:56):
my kids being jealous, like I'm jealous. I get it,
I get but I'm guessing the days get longer as
the kids get a little older. Yeah, but you know,
even by ninth grade, school days are just six hours long.
So if you total the amount of time finished kids
spend at school over their nine years of basic education,
it's about sis which I know that sounds like a lot,
but that's more than a thousand hours less than the
(08:18):
O E C D average. So one of the things
I read about Finland and that I'll talk about a
little when we look at Japan is the psychology of
removing shoes when coming into the classroom. Well, I thought
this was interesting too, And and of course in a
place like Finland where it's very cold in the winter,
there's a practical purpose for taking your shoes off, you know,
to prevent bringing in snow and mud. But like you said,
(08:39):
there's also a psychological impact that's been seen in multiple studies.
So the thinking is that students feel more relaxed than
at home, that it helps them focus and even improves
their behavior. And it was interesting to read about studies
in other countries where it's more common to wear shoes
indoors and to see the impact of testing on shoe removal.
And so one experiment in Spain, where it's the norm
(08:59):
to wear shoes indoors, found that behavior and performance improved
with the shoe removal test. That's pretty neat. So back
to the time spent on school and studying, we haven't
talked about homework. Are the kids in Finland making up
for less time in school spent by doing more homework?
Not even close, to be honest with I mean, in fact,
kids in Finland spend less time doing homework than any
(09:21):
other kids in the O E. C. D SO study
from two thousand and twelve found that the average fifteen
year old spent about two hundred minutes per week on
after school study. That's almost a hundred minutes lower than
the next lowest, which was the Czech Republic. My son
hits homework so much, I'm sure he's gonna be packing
his bag exactly. So what else do we want to
know about the education in Finland? All? Right? Well, a
(09:43):
few things, a few other notes I had here, but
but one big one I actually should have noted this
earlier is that a big part of the reformed education
policy in Finland is focused on equality and education or
equal access I guess. And so there's a strong belief
that every child, regardless of their family's income, or their background,
or their status or location, should have the same educational opportunity.
(10:05):
They really see, education is this way to combat social inequality,
and as a result of this, the gap between the
weakest and the strongest students is the smallest in the world.
And there are a couple other things I wanted to mention.
What else here? Um? Oh yeah, Actually, there aren't any
standardized test in Finland, which is like school paradise, I know.
(10:26):
So instead teachers work to assess the students independently as
they progress, so this gets back to the highly trained
teacher thing, and every student receives free school lunches as
well as access to medical and dental care. Uh University
tuition is free now. As for the future, their latest
curriculum updates focus on something called phenomenon based teaching, which
(10:47):
is this effort to focus less on individual subjects and
more on this interdisciplinary approach. So the teachers collaborate more,
you know, to make this work, and it'll be interesting
to see what this means for Finland in the future.
And all of this is completely fascinating to me. One
other note, though, I do think we should keep in
mind that there are only about five million people in Finland,
so it's a very small country compared to some of
(11:09):
the other massive countries around the world, and even compared
to Japan, which I know we'll talk about next. So
this is not to say that everything that works in
Finland will work everywhere else, but it's still really interesting
to see what they've accomplished. Definitely, Well, I'm ready to
talk about your fan but first, why don't we take
a quick break. So Mango, a couple of weeks ago,
(11:31):
you may Remember, we responded to several listener requests, and
we we told our listeners that we were going to
give some of them a chance to be on the
show and play some of our ridiculous quizzes. All they
had to do was either send us an email or
call into our Fact hotline four pt Genius to tell
us why they should be on the show. And that's
(11:51):
seven Fact hot Line. It is still right, Manga. I
was just gonna say that's good. I just wanted to
check because I've heard of a lot of fact hot
lines or other hotlines not going so I'm glad we're
maintaining that. So so anyway, our guest today responded and
and was the only person who wrote in or who
(12:12):
called in, and who was both a zombie on the
Las Vegas Strip and a production of Evil Dead the
Musical and a mechanical bull operator. I think was the
only person that called it. We've got so many great
calls and so many great emails, but Sam Murphy was
the only person that called in with both of those qualifications,
as well as being a science teacher at the elementary level,
(12:33):
which is why we decided to have Sam on the
show today. So Sam Murphy. Welcome to part time genius. Hi. So,
I'm assuming growing up you you always knew that you
wanted to be both a zombie on the Las Vegas
trip and a mechanical bull operators. That is that accurate? No, absolutely,
you know. And like when I was looking for college programs,
(12:53):
I looked for something I could double major in both
of those things. It was very important to me. That's terrific. Well,
I had a question specifically about the bull operating side
of it. I actually two questions. What one, what's a
respectable time to stay on a bull for? And too?
Have you have you ever seen anyone right a sober? Okay? Um?
(13:15):
So the official time in rodeo is eight seconds and
then you're officially being scored from that point on. So
if you can stay on mechanical bowl for eight seconds,
having never rode before, you're doing great. That's fantastic. Um.
And I'm sure. Yeah, during the day there are a
couple of times where people were mostly sober. It's people
(13:37):
on the laws biggest trip. Yeah, imagine that's true. Just
to clarify, if you have not made it eight seconds,
you're not even to the point of being judged yet.
Is that what you're saying in rodeo. Yeah, you have
to go eight seconds and then they'll start scoring you.
So I mean, like when I was a bull operator,
I'd go pretty easy for the first like four so
people could feel good about themselves. Got it, and you
(13:59):
crank it up? I understand. Okay, Now that's pretty awesome.
And you're also a comedian and an actor in Las
Vegas as well as a science teacher. I mean, I
don't know how you find the time to do all
of this, but but tell us what you teach at
the elementary level. UM. Yeah, so it's a really really
great third party company. UM. And we teach science, and
we sort of teach like the highlight reels of science.
So we dropped dry ice into things and see what happens,
(14:22):
and we make them slime and we send that home
with them. UM. So it's really really cool to be
this fun, bright part of kids days when they're really
bogged down with tests and making sure that they hit
certain requirements in certain marks, and we say, go play.
Oh that's awesome, that's awesome. Well, well we have a
quiz ready for you today, Mango. What quiz are we
(14:43):
putting Sam up to? Uh, well, it was going to
be called the Great School Quiz, but I've upgraded it
to the pretty Great School Quiz. Al Right, Well, it's
five questions and they're pretty straightforward questions, but they're fun.
One Sammy ready to play? I'm so ready? All right,
here we go. Question number one. What band wrote confusing
lyrics to the song I Am the Walrus when they
(15:05):
heard that high school students were being forced to study
and analyze their songs in class. That's right, one for one, alright.
Question number two, what popular condiment was banned in French
school cafeterias in two thousand eleven on the grounds that
it posed a threat to the national cuisine. Yeah, that's right,
(15:28):
well done too for two. That sounded like a little
bit of a guest, But I'm glad you trusted your
got on that one. Okay. I just feel like French
people would be like ruining alright. Question number three. What
nineteen seventies and eighties animated music series got its start
when an ad executive realized that his kid couldn't remember
the multiplication tables but had no problem recalling rock lyrics.
(15:52):
M Holograss not a bad guest of the answer, to
this one, Mango. Yeah, what am I talking? Yeah that's right,
Schoolhouse Rock. But we'll give that to you. Yeah, I
think we're giving Sam credit for that one. Alright. Question
number four. What Cuban dictator declared nineteen sixty one the
Year of Education and sent literacy brigades to the countryside
(16:16):
to build schools and teach people to read. Yeah, that's right.
And and by the end of that year, literacy had
jumped from sixty to nine. Alright, so you're four for four.
Let's see how Sam can do on the last one
and two thousand, fifteen students in Chicago launched a unique fundraiser.
They got the school to play the song Baby by
(16:38):
this Canadian artist between classes, and students could pay money
to get it to stop. What artists are we talking about?
Justin Bieber. The campaign was so effective that it raised
over a thousand dollars in less than three days. Wow.
So I think Sam has gone an astonishing five for five.
(17:00):
So what is Sam je today? Mango? Yes, I'm when
amazing five for five? And not only is Sam one
a handwred note to their mom or boss, but also
a copy of Stray shopping Carts of North America, which
is a field guide to abandon shopping carts. Thank you,
I'm so excited. Thank you so much for having me.
(17:41):
You guys, welcome back to Part time Genius. Now, before
the break, we talked about Finland, and I wish all
our kids the best as they relocate it to take
advantage of their shorter school days and lack of standardized testing.
(18:04):
But now it's time to talk about another country that
also appears near the top of these O e c
D rankings. And again this is based on scores in
math and science and reading, but it's a country with
a very very different approach, and that's Japan. So Mango,
the mic is yours. Thanks for warming up for me.
So I want to go back to a point you
made earlier about the fact that every country is different
(18:26):
and that each culture has its own priorities and their
own interests. So even though Finland and Fancy very high
scores on the assessment, they really do have different approaches.
And I actually wanted to start by talking about values first.
So so things beyond I guess the learning of the
core subjects m definitely and and we'll get to that
stuff too, But first I want to emphasize how much
(18:47):
focused Japanese culture puts on developing independence and the sense
of social responsibility, all at a very young age. So
one way to illustrate the importance of independence before we
talk about what happens at school is how kids get
to school. I've I've read about this a little bit before,
and and and that's the fact. I guess that most
kids in Japan walk to school, Right, that's true, but
(19:08):
that's not all. So most of them, as as young
as like six years old, will walk to school alone
or at least not with their parents. Like many of
them walk as a group. But usually this big ends
around first grade. And for most schools, if kids are
within walking distance, they're required to walk. The walking distance
can be considered more than four to five kilometers, so
(19:28):
the average walk for an elementary school kid can be
up to thirty to sixty minutes. Yeah. There's a sociologist
in Tokyo whose name Terru Clavell, and she put it
this way quote, it's a culturally indoctrinated understanding that children
are supposed to be independent by the time they start
grade school. Really, so that's age six. And she goes
(19:49):
on to refer to a statement in Japanese that translates
quote to the adored child send him on journeys. Alright, So,
so you've got six year olds walking up to an
hour with no adults supervision. Well, in most areas, the
PTA finds these retirees in the area and asked them
to come outside and you know, supervise the walkers, and
they have designated safe zone houses if any kids need
(20:11):
any sort of help. Well, if anything, I would have
to imagine this emphasis on walking would play at least
a little bit of a role in Japan having lower
rates of childhood obesity. Oh, it definitely does, all right.
So so you were saying that there's also this focus
on social responsibility, and this is something I feel like
I have seen a little bit about. Does this have
something to do with the fact that I've heard a
few times that they're no no janitors in Japanese schools? Yeah,
(20:34):
so you know, I'd heard that a lot too, And
that's not exactly true about the no janitors things. So
most schools do have them, but they focus on the
more complicated repairs and in most cases also cleaned the bathrooms.
But yeah, that's the basic idea. So there's something called tokatsu,
and it's these are non cognitive activities that are used
to develop the sense of social responsibility. And these include
(20:57):
the daily chores. The children are responsible for cleaning the classroom,
cleaning common areas, stuff like that, and this starts at
first grade, and students are required to bring their own
washcloths to help out with the cleaning. They'll clean for
about twenty minutes a day, and in one report I
saw during this time the school might play cheerful, marching
music and it's all over the sound system. But it's
(21:18):
to keep everyone energized at home. Yeah, And and to
be clear, this is not seen as any sort of punishment.
I mean, it's it's much more about this moral education
and learning to be responsible in a group. And as
you might guess, much of the stems from the Buddhist
idea of purification and and the sense that cleaning is
not far off from a form of meditations. Interesting and
(21:41):
in addition to this, most schools don't have cafeterias, so
students in their teachers have lunch together in their classrooms
and in places where the schools are providing the food.
Students actually rotate through the responsibilities of serving others in
the class. I mean, I think that's great, But what
about the core classes themselves? I mean, I'm guessing this
is where we're going to see the biggest differences from Finland.
This is where Japan and Finland definitely take different approaches.
(22:04):
And this is the case whether we're talking about a
number of hours in school, the focus of the classes
in school, homework, even standardized testing. So let's talk about
the school hours first. For much of the twentieth century,
Japan followed a six day school week, and they've always
had a reputation for this very strict teaching methods with
like lots of rote memorization, and this six day school
(22:26):
week is something that's been fiercely debated over the past
few decades. In what way, Well, in the seventies and eighties,
people became more vocal about the amount of pressure being
placed on students in Japan, and in response, there was
this new educational system developed called you tori kyoku. I
know I'm pronouncing that wrong, exactly right, So this translates
(22:48):
roughly as quote pressure free education. You did say that, right,
which is kind of funny when you think of it
being applied in Japan. But there was this attempt to
replace some of that wrote learning with this move towards
more creative thinking and problem solving skills. And and on
top of all of that, the school week went from
six to five days in the nineties and did that
help some Well, it's tough to say what it did
(23:10):
for students stress levels. But it hasn't all gone smoothly.
And in fact, after the shift, Japan saw its scores
go down a bit on the International Achievement tests. So
many people want them to return to the six day weeks,
and in fact, in a survey a few weeks ago,
eighty six percent of parents in Tokyo were in favor
of returning to Saturday classes and only seven percent we're
(23:34):
actually opposed. That is incredible and I cannot see that
being the case here. Oh no, it wouldn't be. And
and there's definitely a moved to push back towards the
sixth day weeks. So in fact, there's a bit of
a loophole in the legislation which gives schools the opportunity
to teach classes on Saturdays if there's a special need.
So in two thousand and twelve, nearly half of elementary
(23:54):
schools and junior high schools were holding at least some
amount of Saturday classes, so they definitely spend far more
time in the classroom than the students in Finland. Yeah,
and that's not the only additional time they're spending there.
Because they have these highly competitive entrance exams and other
standardized tests. There's something called juku or or cram schools,
and they help students prepare for years for these exams.
(24:17):
Like these cram schools meet after school and on weekends
to help students prepare for future exams in math, science, English,
and we're talking kids as young as six or seven,
Like one report showed nearly twenty of elementary students and
almost half of junior high students attended some amount of
cram school. And these schools weren't cheap, like they cost
more than three thousand dollars per year in some cases.
(24:40):
And it isn't just juku like like one study showed
nearly seventy of students attending after school math lessons as well.
So so unlike in Finland where from a very young
age there's this huge focus on preparing for entrance exams
and standardized tests. I mean, it sounds so stressful. Yeah,
despite some of the efforts to address the intense pressure, like,
(25:02):
it's definitely still a very real thing. I look at
these numbers here and it's like eight two percent of
Japanese students report being very worried about their grades in school.
And there's some other issues that they should be addressing
as well, like bullying is actually an issue in Japan,
but it's a little different than in the US. It's
very much a group phenomena there where the entire class
(25:23):
will gang up on one classmate and it's really sad.
It's it's like between the stress and the bullying. It's
thought to be the primary reason that teen suicide rates
spike on September one, which is the first day of school.
That's horrible. Yeah, And and for all the impressive test
scores and achievements, that's definitely a problem that needs to
be addressed. But I do want to finish the discussion
(25:45):
to Japan on a positive note. What you got unicycleicycle
that smile on everybody's face. So the majority of elementary
schools in Japan have unicycles on hand for kids to
ride during recess time. And it's because the Ministry of
Education shouldn't recommends that schools have these along with bamboo
stilt to help build core strength, right of course. I
(26:07):
mean they even have an all Japan elementary school competition
or a championship of unicycling. That's pretty awesome and definitely
a better way to end the discussion of Japan, you know.
But but hopefully they can successfully address some of the
issues you mentioned, because it does seem like there's certain
things about you know, their focus on independence and a
desire to serve others that seem very good. But all right,
(26:29):
let's take a quick break before we talk about a
few other places. Our guest today is an education reporter
at u S News and World Report, and she's been
covering education policy and politics for nearly a decade now,
Lauren Camera, Welcome to Part Time Genius than so So, Lauren,
(26:51):
we're spending most of this episode talking about education systems
around the world. So far in this episode, we've talked
about Finland and Mango just finished schooling us on Japan.
So now we want to talk a little bit about
the US. But it seems like that can be a
little bit challenging because, you know, rather than pointing to
a big national trend. It feels like you kind of
have to look at what all the states are doing
(27:13):
individually or independently. Would you say this is true? Yeah, absolutely,
I'd say that that's definitely true. Um. I often say that,
you know, there's not really one overarching trend, but rather
lots of states trying to do lots of different things
all the time. UM. Sometimes I like to joke that
in the USC education system loves its shiny new objects.
(27:34):
It upsets it a lot over you know, one thing,
and then it's quickly onto the next. Would you mind
telling us about a few of those shiniest ones. Well,
right now you might be seeing some of your kids
have later school start times for examples, uh schools, and
at least nineteen states that um I know of our
planning to start the school day later this year. This
(27:55):
is sort of a trend that's been happening the last
year or two, after the CDC released a report a
couple of years ago just blatantly saying that kids are
not getting enough sleep and um that they're just starting
the school day to early. So you'll probably see that continue.
You also might see less homework. UM. There was a
recent survey in June by Morning consoled that pretty much
(28:18):
found that of American adults feel that, um, you know,
less than one hour of homework per day is pretty
much appropriate for elementary school students. So we've seen, for example,
there is a school district in Florida, I believe it's
Marion County. The school superintendent recently issued a ban on
homework in thirty one of its elementary school. So you
(28:40):
might not see a hard line drawn like that everywhere,
but we might start to see a dip in homework assignments. Um. Also,
I would say, you know, the increased use of technology.
This has been a trend for the last couple of years,
but um it's actually a really interesting one. If you
look at the data. In twenties or team, only four
(29:01):
million students had access to broadband that was fast enough
that allowed them to use digital tablets in the classroom.
But now, just like four years later, that number has
pretty much catapulted to thirty nine point two million students
have that ability. Now, just to ask you about that,
your are you saying, just to clarify, is that access
(29:22):
in the classroom or access at home. That's access in
the classroom and at libraries okay, okay, So the ability
to do their work on those Yeah, yeah, that's largely
thanks to actually, believe it or not, a federal program
called e rate. It's probably one of the only federal
programs I can think of off the top of my
(29:43):
head that was conceived and is doing exactly what it's
supposed to do. So in the four short years you have,
you know, thirty five million more students having that ability.
So it's pretty remarkable. Actually. You know, one other thing
that I could think of is that the probably be
an increased interest in making popular again vote tech programs, apprenticeships,
(30:05):
things like that, other technical skill courses as ways to
help build the so called skills gap that's getting a
lot of attention these days as well. Yeah. Now on
the homework front, is are these decisions based on studies
around the um effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of homework
or is it based on just kind of family needs
(30:27):
of it? Do do you know why the trend does
seem to be moving in the direction of less homework
for students. I mean, I'm fully in favor of it,
I'm just curious why. Yeah, well, I've in the eleventh
month old sun. He's not really bringing home a lot
of homework yet, but he's falling behind already. Yeah, right, UM,
I think it's it's both based on you know, public polling, opinions, UM,
(30:51):
and also research that suggests, you know, a lot of
the learning is the most effective learning at least is
done in the classroom. Well, and is there anything else
that do you feel like we should know about right
now regarding education policy or or any other trends. Yeah,
it's probably um, you know, it's probably worth noting that
as a backdrop to the story. All states right now
(31:13):
are in the process of devising new education plans. This
is something that's required under the new federal Education Law,
the Every Students Sees Act, and those plans are in
the process of being okayed by the um Department of Education.
And that's really going to change how students in schools
are assessed and held accountable and will therefore have a
(31:34):
big impact on the classroom. Uh. You might, as a
parent start to see some of these changes this year,
perhaps things like greater access to art classes or a
p in IB classes, potentially STEM programs, and some states
are proposing to even pay more attention to socio emotional
(31:54):
health of students. That's very interesting. Well, I'm glad you're
here to read through all fifty of those plans so
that you cannot make sense of those for us. But
thanks so much for your terrific reporting and for joining
us today on part Time Genius. Yeah, thanks so much
for having me. Welcome back to part Time Genius. We
(32:22):
were just wrapping up our discussion of Japan, but I
realized I had one more question, and that's because we've
been looking at two pretty different ends of the spectrum
in terms of time spent at school and after school
work and standardized testing, and we're talking about these are
kind of two ends of the spectrum. It's so, do
Japanese students spend more time on homework than all other countries?
(32:43):
Actually no, so that honor belongs to China. And it's
not even a close competition like the O E c
D looked at sixty five countries in a study a
few years ago, and Chinese students spend eight hundred thirty
one minutes per week on homework. My gosh, and that's
almost two minutes more than the next closest, which was
the Russian Federation. They spend five five minutes and only
(33:07):
a few other countries spent more than five minutes per
week on homework. And of course all of this is
more than four times what the kids in Finland are spending. Gosh.
In fact, almost high school students in China say they
typically finished their homework after eleven pm. Yeah, and it
sounds like this is another place where, you know, the
level of competition and stress must be so high. Definitely. So.
(33:27):
Just like Japan, China has some very high stakes tests
for their students. Like there's a huge nine hour college
entrance exam called the High Test. And unlike the s
A T where several students hit perfect scores every year,
no one has ever achieved a seven fifty, which is
the perfect score on this exam. And I guess this
exam is is really important for college entrance. Yeah, I
(33:49):
mean it's not just important, it's actually the only criteria
for getting into Chinese university. Yeah. It's so competitive there
that the top universities may only select one out of
fifty students. Oh my god, that's crazy. And you know
we sit here thinking that the U S schools are
a competitive Yeah, no kidding. And and this exam is
so important that can have this major impact on students
future career and even their marital status. But I think
(34:12):
the craziest part about the exam maybe the prompts used
in the writing section. So according to an article in
The Guardian, two of the prompts from the two thousand
and fifteen exam included quote do butterfly wings have colors?
And quote who do you admire most? A biotechnology researcher,
a welding engineer, technician or a photographer. I'd like to
(34:35):
turn in my essay on that first one. The answer
would just be yes. But it seems like there would
have to be a breaking point for all of this
one day. Well that's already kind of starting to happen,
though not really in this seismic way, but you definitely
see fewer students taking the exam and just opting to
go to school abroad, and and then others are starting
to go to vocational schools, which tend to be less competitive.
(34:57):
I mean, I doubt the entrance exam is contributing much
to gross national happiness. I mean, if they're measuring that there,
I kind of doubt that they are. I told you
I was going to bring this one back up, but
but let's go back to Bhutan's It was really fun
reading about the implementation of this program. And so it's
focused on four primary pillars. So there's sustainable development, preservation
and promotion of culture, conservation of the environment, and good governance.
(35:21):
And then to measure their progress, Bhutan developed an index
in two thousand and eight that would quote reflect g
n H values, set benchmarks, and track policies and performance
of the country. So the way they set these benchmarks
and track all of this is through this index that
includes nine domains their psychological well being, time use, community, vitality, culture, health, education,
(35:44):
environmental diversity, living standard, and governance. You got all those
I got, But you know, I mean, like the whole
four pillars and nine domains thing. It sounds so Buddhist,
like it reminds me of the Four Noble Truths and
the eight Full path. I love the way you say
Buddhis But that's because it really is rooted in Buddhist
philosophy and and and that's no big surprise because Bhutan
(36:07):
is majority Buddhist. And in fact, in two thousand ten
they began requiring schools to make time for daily meditation.
But even back on the education side of me, there's
there's another interesting piece of this. So with their focus
on education and all their efforts to provide primary schooling
for everyone and increase the literacy rate, Bhutan is seeing
some pretty significant results. I mean, they're not going to
(36:29):
be on the same top list that Finland and Japan
are in terms of all of their scores, but what
they've accomplished is still really impressive. So just just looking
at some of the numbers for literacy, actually, let me
pull these back up. It says in two thousand five,
the literacy rate for those sixty five and older was
about for men and only five percent for women. But
if you look at the fifteen to twenty four age
(36:51):
range at that point, it was eight percent for men
and sixty eight percent for women. But then fast forward
seven years to two thousand and twelve, looking at that
fifteen to twenty four year old age group, again, it
jumped to for men and almost for women. I mean,
these are some huge games. Yeah, it's incredible, So maybe
focusing on gross national happiness isn't such a silly idea.
(37:13):
But you know what else is incredible? The part time
genius backed off. All right, I'll kick us off here.
So earlier when we were talking about all students receiving
free school lunches in Finland, I'm not sure if you
(37:34):
saw the story, but this will now be happening in
New York City. Earlier this year in New York announced
the program to provide free lunches to all public school kids,
which is great. So looking at a country we didn't
really talk about today, do you know that in France
schools are working to teach children not to be picky
eaters through this thing called taste training lester So in
two thousand eleven this became part of their national curriculum,
(37:55):
and Karenlebillion, author of French Kids Eat Everything, told warts
quote the French take a different approach to food from
a very young age. They believe and have done scientific
research to prove that you can teach your kids to
eat just like you teach them to read. And according
to the report, young kids are expected to learn how
to enjoy such delicacies as pickled pig snouts. So I'd
(38:17):
like to see them trying to get my kids the
eat the host gross. Actually, I had a fact here
about education in France as well, and I didn't know
that Traditionally, French children have only gone to school four
days a week, and it's Wednesday that's kind of their
special day with no school. And this dates back to
the late eighteen hundreds when this day was reserved for
religious education, and in the seventies it became a mandatory
(38:39):
day off. But in the past decade or so it's
turned into this heated debate. To go back to two
thousand eight, Nicholas Sarkozy mandated the elimination of classes held
on Saturday, which some schools were kind of using to
make up for that day off, and mandated they returned
to this four day week. So then a few years
later Francois Holland instituted a half day on Wednesday, so
(39:00):
became four and a half day school week. And then
early in his term, Emmanuel Macron informed schools that they
would have the option of going back to the four
day week if they so desired. That's amazing. So, speaking
of recent announcements, something I forgot to mention, we were
talking about Japan. According to the Japan Times quote this year,
the Ministry of Education announced they would be adding the
(39:21):
teaching of a second language at all elementary schools and
so while he might be thinking English, it's actually computer
programming languages. So as part of the language curriculum update
to be completed by all students will be taught coding
in schools. Wow, okay, alright, Well, in Russia, September one
is known as Knowledge Day and it's the celebration of
(39:41):
the beginning of school and it's accompanied by lots and
lots of ceremony. So at the end of the ceremony,
a first grade girl sits on the shoulders of a
senior boy and then she rings a bell to signify
the start of the year. I had no idea what
that means, but it sounds very like, of course, she
sits on the shoulders and rings a and it's time
to start school. So I have to admit I saved
(40:03):
this one for last. In two thousand to nonprofits started
by Hilula Swan of our I'm sure I'm getting that
good job created the first boat based school in Bangladesh.
And so you might be wondering why. It's because so
much of the country is often flooded during the monsoon season.
It makes it very difficult for many kids to get
(40:25):
to school. And with a boat based school, the school
comes to them. So by there were twenty two of
these floating schools. And it's amazing because the school really
also serves as a school bus by traveling around and
picking up the students. And after all the students are collected,
the boat docks and and the school they begins, I know,
and the boats have internet access and they've got solar
(40:46):
panels to make it all possible. And the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation have given it a million dollars to
build more boats and improve the technology. It's really phenomenal.
And uh, it isn't just there so inspired by this,
you can actually find schools in other countries prone to flooding.
So these occur in Cambodia and Nigeria, the Philippines, Vietnam
and Zambia as well. Now I see why you say that,
(41:08):
one mango, I have to admit that that is an
incredible fact and and be honest, worthy of this week's trophy.
So congratulations, that's it for today's show. Thanks so much
for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is
(41:35):
a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be possible
without several brilliant people who do the important things we
couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the editing thing.
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the MIXI
mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing.
Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the
Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams
(41:55):
and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears.
Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard, we
hope you'll subscribe, And if you really really like what
you've heard, maybe you could leave a good review for us.
Do we do? We forget Jason? Jason who
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.