Third world Vietnam has better education than the USA

March 28, 2013 · Posted in innovation, sharing · Comment 

http://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/
Vietnam teaches children how to program computers in elementary school. This article points out many ways and reasons Vietnam provides much better education than the USA.

An important point is that learning to program computers is expected of everyone in Vietnam. In the USA there is a stigma against students who are “too smart” and athletes are praised and have lots of money spent on them. Vietnam and Asia in general views being smart as the highest status and athletics as a hobby at best. I suspect that also contributed to overall better health among Asians because athletics isn’t a hostile exclusionary clique. Its just something people do for fun.

My favorite part of the article is:

Due to a lack of funds, the school could not afford two CS teachers, so half the school was unable to take CS. I asked what a teacher’s salary was. $100 per month. So I went to an ATM and bought them a second teacher for the next year.

When you see fabulous results then people are glad to freely support it. Even more so when it costs less than a cup of premium coffee.