A lesson.

I recently had an interesting conversation with my boss at Kumon, a math and reading tutoring center that in my native Ohio is a hotbed of overachieving Indian and Asian kids. However, here in Chicago, the second-story suite at 55^th and Lake Park paints a very different picture.

You can feel the desperation in the waiting room. Parents whose children are in seventh grade and can’t do addition yet flip aimlessly through the magazines that my boss leaves out there randomly (we boast a copy of Skymall from 2000…). These are not the parents who form our friend circle in Dayton. They range from high school dropouts to high-powered lawyers, all crammed in this airless room that smells of our janitor’s unwashed hair, craning their necks to see what I’m teaching their children. They need this center, and this center needs them—my boss admitted that he loses about half of his students every year at December (though it’s yet to happen this year), perhaps because parents can’t keep up with the tuition (around $100 per subject per month). Then again, what choice do they have now?

It was Sunday, and I was sitting in front of the center’s tired Toshiba laptop, typing in test scores because my boss still insists on using paper records instead of cutting out that middle step. I don’t complain. Actually I do, endlessly, but never to his face.

While browsing his emails for him, I noticed that one of his Chrome tabs was open to the recently published article on Shanghai’s PISA scores. As some of you may know, China recently entered the international standardized-testing ring. The New York Times basically shit its pants over how high the Shanghai test scores were—although why that should be surprising, I have no idea. I mean, what are Asian kids known for, besides being whizzes at math and piano? I may be the only known exception on Earth.

Anyway, my boss and I got into a discussion of the current educational system in America, which I’ve become fascinated with ever since I started working here. I mean, we’re tutoring this woman who’s going to take the Illinois teaching exam for the third time, and she can’t answer the question:

“What percent of 36 is 30?”

(Incidentally, an English major at UChicago told me laughingly that she wasn’t even sure she’d be able to do that, which…didn’t quite make me laugh.)

America currently ranks around 30^th in the world in reading and math, and yet some of my peers don’t see much reason to be very concerned. People crow about American innovation, without realizing that people down the street from them have children who are thirteen and can’t yet read a picture book. What can we do? We read about all the latest gimmicks, school districts complaining that they can’t teach because they don’t have the latest computer system. But I think it goes deeper than that.

We need a change in cultural perspective before anything else. There are many things wrong with the Chinese system, and I’ll be the first to admit it, but the one lesson that Americans should take from this might be the Chinese “culture of education”, as the Times put it. China has long placed emphasis on filial duty and respect for elders, so that children think of teachers as people who actually have something to teach them. There’s no complaining about students being “overworked” or “pressured” just because they have two quizzes in one day—successful students in China recognize that they are just that: students. Education is the focus, and as a result, Chinese students are on the rise in the world. Although American universities are still on top and still attract the highest caliber of students from around the world, the day is coming when other nations will have the resources to challenge American universities. Already, we see an increased number of international students leaving America after school to return to their native countries, taking their new skills back with them.

Of course, respect for teachers goes hand in hand with all of this. The woman who can’t figure percents is admirable for wanting to go into the teaching, but that doesn’t mean she should be allowed to. In all likelihood, she will eventually pass the test—with tutors holding her hand every step of the way. 

What’s going to happen when she faces a classroom of seventh graders, most of whom do math at the 4^th grade level?

We need to make the teaching profession what it ought to be: a respected calling, with pay that corresponds to the hard work good teachers put in. It’s almost criminal that people who get up at 5 in the morning every day to shape America’s future barely make enough to be considered middle class. Of course, I may be biased, being the daughter of two professors. But I’ve seen and experienced firsthand what a difference good teachers can make, and how far we can be set back by mediocre ones.

My boss asked me whether I think what made America great still lingers in its soil and its people. In his opinion, if we can reach back to our roots, we can remain on top forever, and I agree. But if we don’t adjust soon, we lose that chance. So what exactly was it that made this country the beautiful place it is today? How can we fight the double-edged sword of complacent arrogance and helplessness in the face of our educational problems? We owe it to ourselves to think this over.