"Cawwy the Wun"

I recently commented that American adults are poor citizens, poor parents and poor teachers. This is a geometric problem since their children will one day have those same responsibilities and, like their parents, will be ill prepared to exercise them, making their own children even less capable. I posited that this cycle has been playing out for at least 20 or 30 years and perhaps longer. (It's genesis likely coincides with the advent of the Dewey Decimal System - not because that system is bad, but because the rest of Dewey's educational ideas were bad: New Math, Creative Spelling and Esteem-based teaching plans all derived from Dewey.)

Now there's a positive, if not altogether flattering to the American psyche, trend in American education. Reuters - 'U.S. homework outsourced as "e-tutoring" grows.'

"I like to tell people I did private tutoring every day for the cost of a fast-food meal or a Starbucks' coffee," Robison said. "We did our own form of summer school all summer."

The outsourcing trend that fueled a boom in Asian call centers staffed by educated, low-paid workers manning phones around the clock for U.S. banks and other industries is moving fast into an area at the heart of U.S. culture: education.

It comes at a difficult time for the U.S. education system: only two-thirds of teenagers graduate from high school, a proportion that slides to 50 percent for black Americans and Hispanics, according to government statistics.

China and India, meanwhile, are producing the world's largest number of science and engineering graduates -- at least five times as many as in the United States, where the number has fallen since the early 1980s.

Parents using schools like Taylor's say they are doing whatever they can to give children an edge that can lead to better marks, better colleges and a better future, even if it comes with an Indian accent about 9,000 miles away.

Yes, it is truly embarrasing that Americans can't help their own children learn, but the positives are many: Parents investing in their children's future on the free market, technological enabling of a new paradigm, and most importantly, smarter kids. (Well, within the limitations of the public schools to challenge them.)

One way to judge the worth of an educational initiative is by the reaction to it by the NEA:

A New Delhi tutoring company, Educomp Solutions Ltd., estimates the U.S. tutoring market at $8 billion and growing. Online companies, both from the United States and India, are looking to tap millions of dollars available to firms under the U.S. No Child Left Behind Act for remedial tutoring.

Teachers unions hope to stop that from happening.

"Tutoring providers must keep in frequent touch with not only parents but classroom teachers and we believe there is greater difficulty in an offshore tutor doing that," said Nancy Van Meter, a director at the American Federation of Teachers.

But No Child Left Behind, a signature Bush administration policy, encourages competition among tutoring agencies and leaves the door open for offshore tutors, said Diane Stark Rentner of the Center on Education Policy in Washington.

UPDATE: I should have given a hat-tip on this one... to dagny's "article of the day" email on Friday. (It's a private subscription service with a membership of one.)

Education Posted by JohnGalt at September 30, 2006 10:15 AM