Misguided Priorties Lead to Solving the Wrong Problem.

[acroyear]

Five Myths About U.S. Kids Outclassed by the Rest of the World - washingtonpost.com:

Yes, we're a nation of strivers and self-improvers; the American drive to be the biggest and the best in everything seems part of our national character. But if being No. 1 in education is our goal, shouldn't we also want to be No. 1 in all the things closely linked to academic achievement, such as quality of childhood health care and reduction of childhood poverty? National pride can be a destructive concept, especially when it views learning as a zero-sum game ("their" gains are "our" losses, and vice versa). Continuous improvement should be our goal, regardless of whether we're No.1 in the test-score Olympics.

I would suggest here that the "biggest and best" is an anachronism, a remnant of the mass marketing campaign from the early years of the cold war that really has no place in driving policy today.

Comments

[dawntreader]

i agree. it's like people think there's a finite amount of success to go around and if someone else has "used it up" it ruins our chance of getting it.

i also wonder if other countries are as obsessed as we are about ranking everything. good grief. top 40 music, sports teams and medal winners, lists for everything from "worst drivers" and "best resorts" to shows like "most eXtreme animals," "top 100 hollywood hookups," and "top ten jens." it's ridiculous how many things we count.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Historically, we inherited "The List" from the English. England was one of the first countries where the nobility took the concept of the "hit parade" away from the royalty, and once separated, it became easy for the commoner to take it away from the nobility.

Most of this was through the 17th century, where royalty lost all power, then only had what power the nobility decided to give it (eventually taking it away again and turning it over to a backwater Prussian with no cultural sense at all).

Sure, a few rare moments happened where the King or Victoria declared something "great" in the same way that Henry or Elizabeth would have (e.g., George II's standing up in the middle, the Alleluia Chorus of Handel's Messiah, a tradition that remains to this day), but really it was out of their hands most of the time and all they could or did do was rubber stamp what was popular already, like the current Queen meeting the Beatles.