28 March 2008

Hong Kong Super-star Tutor Millionaires

In Hong Kong, the best tutors get their photos on the trams, and can earn millions. Blogger Freeman Hunt looks at this very "un-American" trend, and can only say "wow!". She links this table in the Wall Street Journal that suggests that Hong Kong may have started a trend that is likely to spread.


CountryScience ScoreReading ScoreMath Score
Argentina 391 374 381
Australia 527 513 520
Austria 511 490 505
Azerbaijan 382 353 476
Belgium 510 501 520
Brazil 390 393 370
Bulgaria 434 402 413
Canada 534 527 527
Chile 438 442 411
Taiwan 532 496 549
Colombia 388 385 370
Croatia 493 477 467
Czech Republic 513 483 510
Denmark 496 494 513
Estonia 531 501 515
Finland 563 547 548
France 495 488 496
Germany 516 495 504
Greece 473 460 459
Hong Kong 542 536 547
Hungary 504 482 491
Iceland 491 484 506
Indonesia 393 393 391
Ireland 508 517 501
Israel 454 439 442
Italy 475 469 462
Japan 531 498 523
Jordan 422 401 384
S. Korea 522 556 547
Kyrgyzstan 322 285 311
Latvia 490 479 486
Liechtenstein 522 510 525
Lithuania 488 470 486
Luxembourg 486 479 490
Macao-China 511 492 525
Mexico 410 410 406
Montenegro 412 392 399
Netherlands 525 507 531
New Zealand 530 521 522
Norway 487 484 490
Poland 498 508 495
Portugal 474 472 466
Qatar 349 312 318
Romania 418 396 415
Russian Federation 479 440 476
Serbia 436 401 435
Slovak Republic 488 466 492
Slovenia 519 494 504
Spain 488 461 480
Sweden 503 507 502
Switzerland 512 499 530
Thailand 421 417 417
Tunisia 386 380 365
Turkey 424 447 424
United Kingdom 515 495 495
United States 489 -474
Uruguay 428 413 427
Source__via__WSJ
Imagine a society where the superstar millionaires are the ones who help students achieve their goals--instead of gangsta rappers and too-often-thuggish sports stars? What kind of society would reward the intelligent and productive people who have a positive impact on people's lives, instead of the psychological neotenates who are current pop stars and idols?

You may notice that Finland occupies the top spot in the WSJ table of achievement. Studying the top-level "national" performers should give us an idea where we have gone wrong. Notice also that Canada places third internationally, suggesting that US educational researchers can begin by studying their northern neighbor.

Educational unions in the US are a significant impediment to useful educational reform. The multicultural nature of the US population also makes it difficult to compare stats to smaller and more homogeneous populations. Finally, reforming the psychologically neotenous nature of US popular culture is virtually impossible. The best result to hope for is that a significant fraction of the US population will begin to see the importance of focusing more on things that matter.

Update 29March08: More here.

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9 Comments:

Blogger Eshenberg said...

Latvia,Latvia:( Each year more [censored] and [censored] we stay!
Want change,but don't have will and money of course.... government. Big problem is russian language to,after you finish school many Latvians don't know this language(so good) and have problems to find good jobs!
Off Topic-soon average IQ will be 85 :D
P.S.Sorry for grammar:)
varjuga!

Friday, 28 March, 2008  
Blogger Richard Sharpe said...

Your link to Freeman Hunt points to the Wikipedia Cram school entry.

Cram Schools have been going for a long time in HK (and other places like Korea, Japan and even China). It is not a new trend.

People seem unlikely to deal with the IQ realities, it seems to me.

Friday, 28 March, 2008  
Blogger Michael Anissimov said...

Neato!

Consistent with high regional IQ of East Asians?

Friday, 28 March, 2008  
Blogger al fin said...

Thanks for the comments.

Yes, the IQ issue is one of the many issues needing to be dealt with, Richard, absolutely.

Martins, what did you mean when you said "soon average IQ will be 85"? The last I heard, the average IQ in Latvia was 97.

Friday, 28 March, 2008  
Blogger Richard Sharpe said...

More interesting than those averages would be the variance ...

That would give us some idea of how many high performance individuals are likely to come from each group ...

Friday, 28 March, 2008  
Blogger al fin said...

Okay, but you can go to the bottom of the Al Fin sidebar and find hundreds of publications that deal with those issues.

This post is about society's priorities and how it rewards different types of individuals. That is a very deep-seated problem that requires more honest analysis than current academicians are willing to apply.

Saturday, 29 March, 2008  
Blogger Audacious Epigone said...

"Imagine a society where the superstar millionaires are the ones who help students achieve their goals--instead of gangsta rappers and too-often-thuggish sports stars? What kind of society would reward the intelligent and productive people who have a positive impact on people's lives, instead of the psychological neotenates who are current pop stars and idols?"

A necessary (but not sufficient) precondition of such is a high IQ society. As the birthing patterns and immigration trends continue to drive down the average IQ of the US, the Idiocratization is only going to accelerate. Hong Kong and Finland can still pull this off. The US--well, maybe in Minnesota and the stuffy areas of DC, but I don't see how it is viable at the national level to any extent.

Saturday, 29 March, 2008  
Blogger Eshenberg said...

Sveiki!
In Latvia the new post social(USSR) birth generation are getting dummer and dummer,because they only know they right but not duty.Many end secondary school and don't go study further to high school or college!
And one more Finland and Hong Kong have low birth rate so ,they will fall to IQ average :)
varjuga

Saturday, 29 March, 2008  
Blogger Richard Sharpe said...

Heh,

There is quite a bit of symbolism in that photo that will be missed by most westerners.

The number on the building behind the tram is 298, which loosely means it is easy to gain wealth. (It's a Chinese thing ...)

Saturday, 29 March, 2008  

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