Education

Again, I'm struck and intrigued by an article and want to share it with the world (or, the few of you who found my blog). NYTime's Tom Friedman wrote an op-ed piece, "Steal This Movie, Too", which discusses the issues behind the American education system as will be revealed through the upcoming documentary Waiting for Superman.

The United States has long been seen as the super power of the world, right? While I was in China, many of the Chinese people I interacted with still thought of America as the perfect place. But, why is our public education system not helping students? China, too, has problems with their education system because their children are merely test-taking masters; however, during a discussion of school systems, I told the teacher that America is also in need of reform. Then she shot back, "then why are there more nobel prize winners in America than in China?"

China's trying to model its education system to the American system where kids can do creative projects and be more like kids. You know which Chinese-speaking places are doing things right, though, is Taiwan and Hong Kong. Both countries score high in reading, math, and science.

I was very fortunate to have been part of a decent public school. California's not the type of place that has too many private schools like in the East Coast, so, at least in the suburbs, public schools can be worthy. (Although, it may be thanks to the massive amount of Asian kids we have here, too.)

Everyone should be able to get a decent education through a public school system. Teachers should be more valued because they're supposed to be enlightening and guiding the future generation to greatness!

In any case, it would be lovely if we could focus more on the education system and improve the quality of education for our students, lest the US wants to (continue to) be the laughing stock of the developed world.

Internet Privacy

This morning I read the weekend Wall Street Journal and was really intrigued by the cover story of their Weekend Journal: "The Great Privacy Debate". For the past week, I've been reading the journal's coverage of internet privacy as they've been spreading the word about tracking cookies and data mining.

As you'd expect, one writer took a positive stance of web tracking having its benefits, and the other was anti-web tracking.

The first article, about being web tracking and its benefits, has a lot of good points. As users of the internet, we should know that part of us being online means that we're giving up some information and, in turn for giving information, we're getting a personalized experience while we surf the internet.Ads made just for you!

I don't know about you, but sometimes the ads scare me.

That's why, I'd have to agree more with the second stance that says we shouldn't take web tracking so lightly. The writer made a good point in fearing the way we seem to care less and less about our privacy and treat the internet as a diary – something we can confide our secrets and information in – without considering the consequences. “Personalization’s evil twin is manipulation,” he states.

I think that we should be wary of the information we choose to post on the internet. Unless you really don't mind people being able to track you down through your internet history, then you can carry on. However, it would be a shame if our world turned into the one Cory Doctorow depicted in "Scroogled".