Helicopter parents - who hover over every aspect of their child’s education - have now risen as far as the graduate job market, says Paul Redmond

(…) The impact of the helicopter parent extends well beyond the lives of their children. In higher education, helicopter parents are rapidly transforming the relationship between universities and students. Parents are more vocal than their children; they also tend to be far more confident in making demands. Typically, these start before their sons and daughters arrive on campus. (…)

According to one recent study, 20% of all new students now live at home (in 1996 it was 12%). During the same period, the proportion of students living in university halls fallen from 35% to 27%.

Not that living in halls means an end to helicopter parenting. Thanks to the invention of the mobile phone, surely the longest umbilical chord in history, parents can now speak to their children on a daily, even hourly basis. And they do. (…)

Helicopter parents - the five most common kinds

The Agent

Operates like a footballer’s agent: fixing deals, arranging contracts, smoothing out local difficulties. It’s the Agent’s job to represent his or her client at events which, for whatever reason, the client feels are simply too tedious to attend. Having an Agent helicopter parent is like having Max Clifford working for you round the clock. For free.

The Banker

Accessible online, face to face or via personal hotline, the Banker is unique in the world of financial services for charging no APR, asking few if any questions, expecting no collateral, and being psychologically inclined to say ‘yes’ no matter how illogical or poorly articulated the request. The Banker is also resigned to never seeing loans repaid.

The White Knight

Imbued with an almost semi-mythical status, the White Knight parent appears at little to no notice to resolve awkward situations. Once resolved, the White Knight will fade anonymously into the background. Intervention is accomplished silently and with minimum fuss.

The Bodyguard

The primary function of the Bodyguard is to protect the client from a range of embarrassing social situations - such as cancelling appointments and soaking up complaints on behalf of their client. Particularly skilled in constructing elaborate excuses. When not protecting life, limb and reputation, doubles up as a chauffeur and personal assistant.

The Black Hawk

Named after the military helicopter, and dreaded by teachers and educational administrators, the Black Hawk is unique among helicopter parents due to their willingness to go to any lengths - legal or illegal - to give their offspring a positional advantage over any competition. Particularly lethal when elected to parent-teacher associations. (…)

Source: Guardian Unlimited, UK
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2234183,00.html

Not long ago the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published a report that contained the following “shocking” information: Annual spending per high school student in Israel is $6,066 compared with an international average of $7,276. Spending on preschool and elementary school students is also lower. And yes, Israeli classrooms are among the most crowded in the world - with an average of 27 students versus 22 in other developed countries. The crowding in middle schools is even worse, and given the forecast for construction, there is no chance of improvement in the near future.

Israel’s teachers do their best to function in this wretched reality, while earning lower pay than their colleagues in other countries. Now it has been confirmed; even those who didn’t know, who insisted on not knowing, can no longer plead ignorance. And when we say “lower,” we mean significantly lower: $25,131 for the Israeli teacher at the highest level of promotion, compared with an average of $45,666 in the OECD countries.

The disseminators of the lies will never apologize, never right their wrongs, never ask forgiveness, never support the teachers in their unavoidable strike. They’re not about to be distracted by any findings.

Nor will the lie stop at higher education. Members of the Shochat Committee spoke about a growing trend around the world to raise tuition at universities and colleges, and their recommendations fit this trend. They didn’t bother to say that in most of the countries surveyed, tuition has not yet risen, and certainly hasn’t doubled as they tried to argue. In the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Germany and other countries, university students don’t pay any tuition. In Belgium and France they pay $500, in Italy $1,100, in New Zealand and Holland $1,500, in England $1,800 and in Israel $3,000 - before the tuition hike…

Source: Ha’aretz, Israel
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/914855.html

A new report commissioned as part of an initiative to improve Math, Science and Technology (MST) education throughout the Kansas City area suggests that on the whole, parents, students, and local communities nationwide are complacent about or even resisting efforts to strengthen MST education, failing to realize the opportunities that knowledge of such subjects can bring in the 21st century…

With lawmakers and school leaders alike stressing the importance of math, science, and technology (MST) education in preparing students for 21st-century jobs and careers, one might assume that parents and students would agree these subjects are crucial to their future success. But a new report challenges this assumption.

According to the report, titled “Important, But Not for Me: Parents and Students in Kansas and Missouri Talk About Math, Science, and Technology Education,” parents and students say they understand the importance of MST skills in general–but they don’t see these as important for themselves…

“The dilemma is really twofold,” says Jean Johnson, executive vice president of Public Agenda. “One is that parents, students, and local communities may be complacent about or even resist efforts to strengthen math and science education. Right now, most just don’t share leaders’ sense of urgency. The second is that many young people and their families may not recognize the vast and interesting opportunities available to students with strong math and science backgrounds. They just may not have absorbed how much the economy and future jobs are changing.” …

… While parents and students believe that having basic math skills is “absolutely essential,” many say understanding higher levels of math, such as calculus, is not essential. Ninety-two percent of parents and 83 percent of students value basic skills, while only 23 percent of parents and 26 percent of students value higher-level skills…

Source: eSchool News, MD
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=7380

Britain’s young workers are among the lowest achievers at GCSE or equivalent in a league table of countries published today.

The results show that Britain has plummeted to 22nd of 29 countries, from 14th place 40 years ago, despite its pupils attaining ever-higher grades. They raise fears that an underclass is emerging, increasingly unsuited to the job market as manual work declines and competition grows from abroad.

While 97 per cent of South Korean students were awarded the equivalent of five good GCSEs, only 73 per cent of British exam candidates achieved the same results. They were surpassed by those educated in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Scandinavian countries and much of Western Europe…

Andreas Schleicher, head of analysis for the OECD education directorate, predicted polarisastion between the university-educated and those who failed to achieve a good secondary education. “It is an issue of globalisation,” he said. “The average British citizen has to compete with the best-educated people in China. Those with poor qualifications will find it harder and harder. There have been huge changes in the labour market and the prospect for those without good qualifications is declining.”

The annual report on educational standards compared the qualifications at age 16 of people now aged between 25 and 64. The number of British men and women who attained the equivalent of five GCSEs at A to C grade had risen from 60 per cent among those leaving school 30 or 40 years ago, to 73 per cent for those aged 25 to 34. Improvements in other countries had soared, however, pushing Britain from 14th to 22nd in the table. Only Turkey, Spain, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Poland and Mexico scored lower…

The report also questioned 15-year-olds across all the countries to find out how many intended to go to university. Only 32 per cent of British respondents wanted to study for a degree, one of the lowest levels of all countries…

Source: Times Online, UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article2484981.ece

China’s vaunted engineering grads are good at taking tests but fall short on the job. China is trying to change its technical education.

The perception in the West that China churns out engineers at a factory pace seems less threatening at closer look. Many graduates can’t find work, and corporate recruiters lament a dearth of qualified applicants. Underfunding and other factors have produced an educational crisis that could soon wreak havoc on China’s growth. To sustain its breakneck pace, China will need lots of high-quality engineers and scientists, but it doesn’t have the universities to produce them. Prof. Mao Shoulong of Renmin University, a specialist in government administration, recently spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Wang Zhenru about the challenges facing China’s education system…

In general, the quality of college education is upgraded in China compared with that of the ’80s … In the ’80s, students studied much harder than students do nowadays. At that time, only about 5 percent of the senior middle-school graduates were able to enroll into colleges. But now more than 20 percent of senior middle school graduates are enrolled in college. Even so, compared with famous universities in the developed countries, the quality of education in China is still low…

… In general, compared with what China had before, China now has upgraded its quality of education, but compared famous universities in the world, China is still low in educational quality…

The rote memorization system detracts from the quality of education. But in China this system is welcomed. For example, middle-school students have to do rote memorization. College students and postgraduates also have to do this. In China, students have to take unified national examinations for postgraduate education, so most of the students have to recite or memorize things. In this way, combining theory with practice and making new breakthroughs and creativity are ignored.

Many Chinese graduates today are not employable in big multinational firms, for example, because they don’t have practical training…

Source: Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20216224/site/newsweek/

In the race for entry to the state’s academically selective high schools, children from Asian backgrounds are at the front of the pack. Next year’s entrants got news of their success recently, and it is a sure bet the extraordinary dominance of those with Chinese-Hong Kong parentage will continue. In some selective high schools more than 80 per cent of entrants have an Asian heritage.

It is fascinating to consider what accounts for this academic success, and why children from Anglo cultures perform on average less well.

Ironically, self-esteem may explain the performance gap - but it is the higher self-esteem imbued into most children from a Western culture that may be their undoing.

The self-esteem movement for the past 30 years has dominated parenting styles and classroom teaching in the West. It is a movement that did not catch on in the East where humility is still a virtue and self-congratulatory behaviour discouraged…

The movement undermined old beliefs that competition was good for children. It led to bewildering changes in school report cards - “F” for failed disappeared because it was bad for self-esteem - and in the more extreme manifestations, led to changes in school sports programs. Everyone got ribbons for “participation”.

It was a kinder, gentler approach to children, but now some experts are recanting. They contend that too much praise, or praise of the wrong sort, can backfire and end up denying children the tools they will need to experience real success…

Seminal work on the effect of praise has been carried out by a Stanford University psychologist, Carol Dweck. It has shown there is good and bad praise. Praising children for effort was much more effective in improving academic performance than praising children for being smart. Children felt more empowered, were prepared to try hard and take risks, when imbued with the idea that intelligence is not innate but can be developed by hard work…

When the NSW Education Department warns parents off the use of coaching colleges as a gateway to selective schools, it is sending the message that intelligence is innate and hard work won’t help. That’s nonsense, and Asian parents know that…

Source: Brisbane Times
http://tinyurl.com/3dmz76

A nation of engineers vs. a nation of slackers? According to popular belief, Chinese students ace all of the international tests while American students rank near the bottom with countries we have never heard of. The obvious conclusion, to these naysayers, is that the American schools are inferior to Chinese schools.

Certainly, there are differences between Chinese and American education. The most obvious difference is sheer numbers. China has about 200 million primary and secondary students compared to 50 million in the United States. Another is class size. The typical Chinese classroom has 50-60 students, even at the elementary level and especially outside major metropolitan areas. Finally, the teaching methods and emphases in China are different from those in the United States. Despite these differences, hundreds of hours of observations in Chinese and American classrooms ranging from kindergarten to college tell us that these two systems have a lot to teach each other.

We think that China can learn at least two things from American education. First, Chinese classrooms should be more student-centered and involve more active learning. The traditional Chinese classroom is teacher-centered where the teacher is like a movie actor and the students are the audience. The teacher presents information while the students listen quietly and intently. However, in the United States, the teacher is like a movie director and the students work as actors, sometimes even as co-directors…

Second, Chinese education needs to pay more attention to skill training and the real-world application of knowledge. Chinese students have an amazing ability to memorize a huge amount of information and solve problems from a book. This skill serves them well in the test-driven culture that dominates education in China. But, Chinese students don’t develop the creativity needed to be innovators…

Americans shouldn’t get smug because there are also things to be learned from China. First, American education should focus on building a mastery of core concepts, especially in math and science classes. Biology, chemistry, physics, algebra and geometry are required for high school graduation in China. In addition, textbooks, curriculum and teacher training are based on national standards in China…

In the United States, even though different academic disciplines have their own sets of national standards, they are not adopted, tested or integrated into teacher education programs nationwide. Second, schools in America cover too many concepts with too little depth. Compared to their Chinese counterparts, American teachers and students know a little about a lot of topics but not as much about the few important topics. Finally, students in China spend nearly twice as many hours studying as students in the United States…

Source: Daily Record
http://tinyurl.com/2agg2c

Judy Carline helps expatriates settle in after they’ve transferred to Hong Kong. These days, she spends most of her time helping anxious parents who are trying to get their kids into international schools…

Hong Kong’s booming economy and increased demand for English- language instruction from local Chinese parents have filled the city’s international schools to the bursting point. The shortage is so bad that some employees have decided not to relocate to Hong Kong, says Lee Quane, Hong Kong-based general manager at personnel consultant ECA International.

“Those who reject Hong Kong are the ones with families,” says Quane, 31. “Pollution used to be the main reason, now education is coming to the fore.”

U.S. families face particular hassles. Hong Kong International School, or HKIS, the largest of three schools teaching a U.S. curriculum, has a waiting list of 630 for the fall term. The school, which charges as much as HK$157,100 (US$20,110) a year, has 2,600 places for students aged 4 to 18.

“The number of children on our wait lists is at historic highs,” says school director Richard Mueller, 62. “Demand has gone up dramatically since 2005 because more companies are adding staff or relocating to Hong Kong to tap China’s economic growth.” …

Demand for English-language schools has increased since Hong Kong returned to Chinese control in 1997. Since then, three- quarters of the city’s 414 secondary schools have been forced to switch their language of instruction to Cantonese from English…

Hong Kong’s government says there are plenty of spaces for expatriate students. The city has 35,900 places for expatriate students, only 85 percent of which are filled, says Bernadette Linn, deputy secretary at the Education and Manpower Bureau.

Those figures are misleading, says Jack Maisano, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong.

“Schools are not all of the same caliber,” he says. “Many are not where executives would send their kids.” …

Source: Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aI3PnC.hbA6Y&refer=asia

Wall Street and Silicon Valley are courting Zhang and graduates like her—students with top grades, finance and math skills and a couple of languages—more heavily than any students since the days of the ‘90s dot-com explosion…

Meanwhile, the number of U.S. students choosing computer science as a major plummeted 39 percent in the five academic years ended in 2006, according to the Washington-based Computing Research Association. Those with technical expertise are the same ones that Yahoo Inc., Google and a growing number of hedge funds and private equity firms also want. ‘‘Technology is the hardest to hire for,’’ Raiffa says. ‘‘We really have to compete.’’

To fill math-intensive jobs, banks are bringing in more non-U.S. employees—people like Zhang who came to the United States to study. They typically started out in countries such as China or India, which have been more focused on math and science education. One dividend is the knowledge of cultures where firms such as Goldman aim to expand.

‘‘We know that we are hot property,’’ says Rishi Dhingra, a master’s degree candidate in quantitative and computational finance at Georgia Tech…

With their ease with technology—the Internet is as basic a tool as pen and paper to them—the Millennials are smarter than their bosses were at the same age, Strauss says. Most don’t see themselves working at their current job for more than a year or two. And having seen their boomer parents struggling to juggle careers and family, they aren’t willing to sign on for a life of 80-hour workweeks…

Source: Daily Report
http://tinyurl.com/ywsprk

A growing number of university students have trouble with basic maths, an expert said yesterday.

Young people are struggling with their degree subject because they lack even basic numerical skills, it is claimed.

Dr Christie Marr, head of the Mathematics Support Centre, based at St Andrews University, said that even the brightest students may need help.

It follows fears by the Royal Society of Chemistry earlier this year that Britain’s economic stability was under threat because levels of basic skills among Chinese students far outstrip those of home-grown school-leavers…

Source: Telegraph.co.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/27/nfees227.xml