Kristof, as usual, nails it right on the head. The Chinese are kicking our butts -- and will continue to do so, I fear, because we won't learn from them and do some obvious things...

China educates 20 percent of the world's students with 2 percent of the world's education resources. And the report finds many potential lessons in China's rigorous math and science programs.

Yet, there isn't any magic to it. One reason Chinese students learn more math and science than Americans is that they work harder at it. They spend twice as many hours studying, in school and out, as Americans.

Chinese students, for example, must do several hours of homework each day during their summer vacation, which lasts just two months. In contrast, American students have to spend each September relearning what they forgot over the summer.

China's government has developed a solid national curriculum, so that nearly all high school students study advanced biology and calculus. In contrast, only 13 percent of American high school pupils study calculus, and fewer than 18 percent take advanced biology.

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http://select.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/opinion/27Kristof.html?hp

June 27, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Chinese Medicine for American Schools

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

SHANGHAI

Visitors to China are always astonished by the new highways and skyscrapers, and by the endless construction projects that make China's national bird the crane.

But the investments in China's modernization that are most impressive of all are in human capital. The blunt fact is that many young Chinese in cities like Shanghai or Beijing get a better elementary and high school education than Americans do. That's a reality that should embarrass us and stir us to seek lessons from China.

On this trip I brought with me a specialist on American third-grade education — my third-grade daughter. Together we sat in on third-grade classes in urban Shanghai and in a rural village near the Great Wall. In math, science and foreign languages, the Chinese students were far ahead...