Flutterby™! : What China and Japan do for products, we could do to our children

Regarding that last entry, Charlene and I recently went to see Waiting for "Superman" and were sorely disappointed. About 10 minutes of actual content squeezed into two hours of attempted drama over whether some kids were going to get into charter schools, with a lot of teacher union bashing in the middle.

But what also struck me about that is the way in which the paragon of education it raised was one of turning out educated children as more uniform commodities. I don't refute the notion that stronger reasoning and mathematics skills are a good thing, but as Eric keeps reminding me about geography, the context in which the knowledge and techniques are applied is often way more important.