Education Olympics

In the past few years, I've heard several people wonder aloud why people don't get more worked up about our educational shortcomings - "after all, if we came in 24th in an Olympic event, people would be outraged!"

The Fordham Foundation ran with this, and have been holding an Education Olympics parallel to the real thing. It's done with a sense of fun while still sharing some important international comparisons. My only gripe is that they seem to be sharing it through their own established channels - preaching to the choir, in other words, and not highlighting the contrasting performances with the public at large.

That aside, it's a good campaign, and it introduced me to a stat I had not seen before. In the PISA category of explaining phenomena scientifically - applying their knowledge of science to a situation - both males and females placed 32nd among participating countries.

For a country that plans on building its future in STEM-related industries, this isn't a good sign...