Outside+Readings+4-7

__**Outside Readings:**__

Kylie -- The International PISA Tests Are Leading America Astray In this article, people are panicking because the US only scored average on the PISA test. "Our students scored in the middle of the pack! We are not No. 1," said Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch. What is so horrible with average? Some people think the way to fix this is to implement more tests to get ready for the next PISA. In my opinion, this is not the way to go. Is there a better way to prepare students for the PISA?

Katie- [|Globalization demands] Secretary of Education Tony Miller stated that through the National Education Technology Plan technology that we use in our everyday live will be incorporated into the American classrooms. The goal is to raise our education status internationally. By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” —President Barack Obama, Address to Congress, February 24, 2009

Beth - The National Imperative for Language Learning I chose this article for a couple of reasons. First of all, because I am studying to be a Spanish teacher, and I love any encouragement of teaching languages. But mostly, I chose it because it fits really well with the topic of global competition that we have been discussing all week. I think this article is so incredibly accurate. PISA shows us that we have fallen behind in Reading and Math and Science, but I cannot think of an area that we have fallen more behind the rest of the world than in the teaching of foreign languages. Other students are learning their 3rd and 4th languages when our students begin their first.

This is a little bias, but what a terrible thing to fall behind in. I think that the US has really lost sight of the importance of learning other languages. I cannot count how many times I have heard the arguments: Why do we need to learn another language when the rest of the world is learning English? or If Mexicans are going to move to the US, then they should learn to speak our language. I think that we forget that learning a language is so much more than just learning some words. It's like learning a new culture and a whole new way to communicate. Anyway, my point is that we are putting ourself at a major disadvantage by neglecting to include more language learning in our schools. In a broader sense - we are not teaching our children an understanding of culture, and in a more concrete sense - we are causing ourselves to rely on other countries and businesses to communicate with us. I wonder - if the US had more and more fluent speakers of other languages, would foreign countries begin to outsource companies, call centers, and work in general to US?