How Canada became an education superpower

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40708421

by iamjdg • 9 years ago

240 249 9 years ago

bbc.com

rvern• 9 years ago

Non-AMP version: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40708421.

dang3• 9 years ago

Thanks, we changed it.

mjehanzeb• 9 years ago

When it comes to fairness and equality. No doubt, Canada is doing wonderful job. System treats everyone the same. Any country interested to improve should certainly investigate Canadian system.

kul2• 9 years ago

Equality of opportunity is what is important, not equality of outcome, which is what some people try to conflate it with.

satya71• 9 years ago

Equality of opportunity is not measurable. Equality of outcome is. Given that we know some variables such as race, sex, and sexual preferences shouldn't affect outcome, we should look for equality of outcome without correlation with these variables.

coliveira2• 9 years ago

This is the kind of ideology that leads to trouble. If there is equality of opportunity, there will be equality of outcomes, at least on average. When you see inequality rising it is a serious clue that opportunities are not the same for everyone.

kamaal9• 9 years ago

Speaking as an Indian, I think Canada is well poised to be the next big super power, replacing the USA. The only other country that looks like can pull this off is Germany.

Education together with freedom and tolerance always gives the best return for the money you invest. These days its a given that most Indian students who originally opted to go for US to do their MS degrees are now flocking to Canada. Also a whole range of working professionals are going to Canada to work, start companies and contribute to the economy of Canada.

Your economy and overall national ecosystem always benefits when you get highly trained, hard working people with a strong work ethic as immigrants. Not only do these people contribute to the economy disproportionately in return for a good life, they also impart similar values to their kids.

At the same time its sad to see US take such a protectionist and anti-immigrant stance, totally forgetting the important role immigrants have played in the rich and success journey so far.

More dangerous than all these awesome immigrants not coming to your country is they going else where. There is no infinite supply of great talent in the world, and given how priorities align not everybody can be trained to be good enough among your existing citizen-pool. The only real way of having a disproportionate set of awesome people in your country, is to create an environment where you can attract them from outside. Without these awesome people no country can last a long time in front of a competition.

thesmallestcat• 9 years ago

Canada has a smaller population than California, it doesn't have enough cannonfodder to be a superpower.

myusernameisok2• 9 years ago

This is very disingenuous in my opinion, California is the most populous state. Most of Canada is not populated. Most Canadians live within the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor [1]. Its a fairly small (densely-populated) area compared to the total area of Canada and especially compared to California.

For example, If southern Ontario were a state then it would be the 6th most populous state [2] [3] (between Illinois and Pennsylvania in population) and also more dense than Illinois.

I feel like Americans don't really appreciate how most Canadian cities are so close to the border.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City%E2%80%93Windsor_Co...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ontario

adventured• 9 years ago

Speaking as an Indian, I think Canada is well poised to be the next big super power, replacing the USA.

It's not poised at all in fact. It has no chance of becoming a superpower or replacing the US. That's a very, very far fetched premise (might as well say Sweden).

Canada has 36 million people with a very slow population growth rate. They've added a mere 10 million in three decades. Their GDP hasn't net expanded since 2008 in dollar terms ($1.55t in 2008; $1.53t in 2016). By comparison, since 2008, the US has added annual economic output the size of three Canadas (~$4.5 trillion).

Unless you're projecting Canada will have a one million dollar GDP per capita equivalent in the future - ~20 years out - while the US somehow completely languishes (despite there being no evidence to support such an outcome). That's what it will take for Canada to become a superpower. It's impossible.

kamaal9• 9 years ago

Never say impossible.

Everything you say now about Canada, could have once been told about the US.

Superpowers are very powerful, but they are to an extent fragile. Affluence is good, but it also softens your bones and makes you believe you are the best because you are in some way special.

No doubt the US is still a very great country, with great culture and great people and there has hardly been country in Human history that has been this awesome. But its wrong to say this will last forever.

Things get reversed very quickly. Look at the middle east, look at the USSR. It takes a lot of effort to keep a super power intact. Things go down rather too quickly if you are not careful.

alacombe5• 9 years ago

totally forgetting the important role immigrants have played in the rich and success journey so far.

OOTH, being an immigrant in an unbuilt country where winter will kill you in 6 month if you do not get to work 24/7 building a shelter is different that being an immigrant in a fully developed country and collect welfare (which a lot of current "refugee" are doing).

j7ake2• 9 years ago

The size of economy of California is comparable to that of Canada . How do foresee Canada overtaking the entire USA as an economic powerhouse ? And why is china considered not a competitor for superpower while Germany is ?

kamaal9• 9 years ago

I think only UK, Russia and Germany have an economy comparable to that of California.

California is a very typical example of how immigrants and why immigrants are so important. Pretty much bulk of California's riches come from start ups and companies founded by Immigrants.

Also California is an exception that so much good talent shows up every single year, year after year. Its not that hard for a state to match the economy of other powerful nations if the best students, from the best universities of every single country on earth show up with aim of doing good work. Progress happens so rapidly and at such scale because of disproportionate concentration of best of human race in a small place.

If the same goes to some other place in an another country, same results will happen there. And this can happen pretty quickly. Start ups are not that hard to do these days.

beloch2• 9 years ago

Speaking as a Canadian...

The U.S. still has ten times our population. With a population of just over 35 million, Canada is the world's 38th most populous country. That's a little over two Mumbai's. Perhaps Canada will become more influential in the years to come, but a superpower?

If you were simply referring to education, again, Canada is unlikely to compete with the U.S.'s ivy league in the near future. Our universities have higher standards than U.S. universities on average, but we lack both low-end crapiversities and truly elite institutions that can generate the kind of funding a U.S. ivy league university can. If you can't make it into the ivy league than a Canadian university is a great option, but if you can...

Our government isn't investing significantly more than the U.S. on research on a per capita basis, so the bulk of grant money in North America is still in the U.S.. Also, our tech sector is sluggish and poorly paid as compared to that of the U.S.. Lots of people like the idea of moving from the U.S. to Canada... until they find out they'll be making half as much for the same work!

No, Canada isn't poised to become a superpower anytime soon. The best we can hope for is improvement. We're going to see a lot of articles like this from U.S. authors because they're really not happy with their politics right now, nor should they be. However, the reality is that Canada is still a bit of a backwater. We're North America's Sweden. A nice place to live, but too small to really make a huge impact.

kamaal9• 9 years ago

>The U.S. still has ten times our population.

India has four times the population of the US. Yet the economic output is no where comparable.

More important than masses is quality trained population. Human ingenuity and talent can't be matched through scale.

avip2• 9 years ago

Wait Canada is "too small" now? You have deserted islands bigger than my country. I bet you could fit the entire UK in a place with 0 inhabitants - without breaking it to smaller chunks! That's a ridiculously hefty country... it's infinite in any practical sense.

dba7dba2• 9 years ago

I think Canada is well poised to be the next big super power, replacing the USA.

With all due respect, I think that is a very far fetched assumption. Canada is not one of the premier auto manufacturing nations like US, Germany, Japan, S. Korea. Auto manufacturing is a good indicator of a nation's industrial power imho because it requires a balanced combination of design, engineering, manufacturing, logistics, and marketing.

Also, it annoys me that US is getting so much flack for the seemingly anti-negative immigration policy. Let's not forget US has been accepting more legal AND illegal immigrants than any other nation, since 1970s. I may be wrong and would really welcome any correction on this.

To avoid flame war, I will just stop there.

Respectfully.

randomsearch• 9 years ago

Canada is not one of the premier auto manufacturing nations like US, Germany, Japan, S. Korea.

According to my extensive wikipedia research, you've missed China off that list, and it produces more than double the USA (2nd largest producer). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_motor_veh...

flor1s• 9 years ago

Highest absolute net migration, decent relative net migration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra...

rubatuga4• 9 years ago

In the typical sense, Canada will not become an economic superpower. However, countries can also posess cultural capital and I think Canada sets a great example by being the first country to have multiculturalism as a federal policy. The successful integration of citizens in a multicultural society will be viewed highly (and probably romanticized) by the citizens of other countries.

kamaal9• 9 years ago

When I visited New York, on the way to Statue of Liberty, they made a stop to a place called 'Ellis Island'. That happens to be the place all the early European immigrants landed. So in some way US was considered a beacon and refuge to the worlds freedom loving people who wanted to make a good life for themselves.

And then there was a guide that talked about Thomas Alva Edison and how the American populace of those time felt and had a sense of pride in Edison. They couldn't match the Universities and post-Industrial revolution/renaissance intellectual capital of Europe, but they were happy that people were building the same intellectual capital in their private enterprises.

But in the mean time Germany bled away its best to the US. Ivy leagues happened in the US. The rest is known history.

The same compounding forces that can cause run away success, when applied in a negative sense, the compounding way, can cause run away destruction.

mc32• 9 years ago

Not quite. They don't have the pop. China is on the verge. Time will tell if they clear the bar, or they stall like Japan (they have the advantage of land and pop., but it's getting older). Russia, if they ever just got their economic and political house in order could again become a rival in a couple decades.

Right now the only contender is China. They have money and they have been throwing it around in Africa like nobody's business. They are also flexing in the SCS to impress their neighbors in PH, VN, MY, JP, etc.

Germany will only ever be a regional power, but not global. They don't have the reach.

tanilama• 9 years ago

Canada can be a super BRAIN powerhouse, its success in funding deep learning/reinforcement learning through its dark days, showing some really interesting perspectives of how its research system works, and it seems pretty solid and robust and have a different focus on long term goal. And I would predict, as Trump administration continues to use immigration as scapegoats to push for its agenda and its political vision turns inwards into infighting, US cannot be that techie/entrepreneur wonderland it once persuades the world it is.

However, there is no chance Canada can be a global power on all scales, as what US is now. They don't have big enough of population, not that important as a market, much of its land is not inhabitable or farmable, and it surely cannot catch up with US as regards to the military power.

Mind you that Canada have its own conservative power, it is just a different cycle, and it surely gets a lot of inspiration from Trump's takeover. So, let's be a little realistic and don't let your emotion triumphs over your rationale.

nshelly• 9 years ago

Superpower only in the sense that Canada could become an influential, outward-facing country like Norway, Switzerland or Singapore with their high qualities of life and host to the headquarters of non-governmental organizations. I would also add that with climate change and global unrest throughout the world, Canada is well positioned geographically. With regard to being a place for the world's most ambitious in entertainment, sports or business, it's unclear if Canada will challenge any major country in our lifetimes.

schwarrrtz2• 9 years ago

Migrants coming to Canada, many from countries such as China, India and Pakistan, are often relatively well-educated and ambitious to see their children get into professional careers.
Prof Jerrim says these families have an immigrant "hunger" to succeed, and their high expectations are likely to boost school results for their children.

Speaking from personal experience as a native Canadian, this can also motivate non-immigrant children to work harder. When half of your peers have an immigrant's work ethic it can be a real positive influence.

Disclaimer: this is an anecdote, my personal experience may not generalize, etc.

diegoperini5• 9 years ago

Your lack of prejudice is really admirable.

dublinclontarf• 9 years ago

What else was he supposed to do?

"These immigrants, coming over here, getting better grades than the rest of us"?

That just becomes an admission of stupidity.

Kurtz79• 9 years ago

Prejudice: "preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience".

The poster is "speaking from personal experience", so it's not really surprising.

surge2• 9 years ago

No it isn't admirable means its some how not the expectation.

Lack of prejudice is and should be the norm. Having prejudice should be detestable, you shouldn't get a pat on the back for not being prejudice no more than you should for being a polite normal person who treats people with common decency and respect.

blazespin• 9 years ago

Yeah, I'd like to see these stats broken down to immigrants. I'd guess that the immigrants are actually leading the way.

My guess is that Canada is careful about selecting those allowed to migrate for education which helps a lot here.

hasenj7• 9 years ago

Requirements for immigration is difficult and if everyone had to pass the same bar my family had to then it's almost guaranteed that most immigrants are well above average. Or put another way, the average of immigrants is probably higher than the average of native born citizens.

That said, the opposite is true for refugees. The only thing you need is to somehow get inside the country. If you can convince some judge that you have a moderately believable story about why you will be in danger if you go back to your country you can get refugee status.

So there's basically two classes of immigrants. Those that are selected with very high standards, and those who just get in with almost no standards.

I'm guessing the latter group does not even send their kids to Universities.

rfdub• 9 years ago

Our selection process is as follows: "Does your daddy have money?"

DarkKomunalec5• 9 years ago

When half of your peers have an immigrant's work ethic

That many?

vinceh• 9 years ago

Depends on where you are. In major cities like Vancouver[1] and Toronto[2], you have over half of the population belonging to "non caucasian". Although this doesn't directly mean all of them are immigrants, subsequent generation tend to carry (or at the very least but influenced) by their parents cultural values, like work ethic. Anecdotally, I'm a second generation Taiwanese living in Vancouver and I consider myself to have the "asian" work ethic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Vancouver [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Toronto

dx034• 9 years ago

Depends on the area you live in. Immigration tends to focus on certain spots (larger cities, areas where people from the same region already live, areas with international schools from that country). This effect occurs independent of the wealth of immigrants.

schwarrrtz2• 9 years ago

Ok so I have some actual stats now:

More than 45 per cent of Metro Vancouver residents are foreign born, according to the 2011 census. There are only three major cities on the globe that have a higher percentage of foreign-born residents.
They are Dubai, Brussels and Toronto.

http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/vancouver-fourth-fo...

616c• 9 years ago

Hanging out with immigrant kids in the US I would tend to agree. A few years in the Persian Gulf with mass immigrant youth mixing with a GCC citizen subset in schools as a policy requirement still provided lots of anecdotes that those GCC students care a lot less than expat kids despite pressure on the latter. They can get jobs slated for GCC nationals only with lax requirements. Many see little value out of college beyond the elite who wanted out.

Now immigrant and expat to me means overlapping national and ethnic and national backgrounds. It is an issue of the intended period of their residency.

I think govt policy was hoping for the later in institutions like the one I worked at, and it made me sad.

Waterluvian• 9 years ago

The majority attitude of a classroom was ultimately how I tried to behave during highschool.

maehwasu• 9 years ago

So you are arguing for skills/intelligence based immigration policies?

rubatuga4• 9 years ago

I mean that's what happens in reality

abandonliberty• 9 years ago

Not only motivate but provide more motivated/mature peers. Most of my friends in school were immigrants for this reason.

Mind you, I also know high school graduates who never bothered to learn English. They find a way to make their living in Chinatown (which is slowly expanding across the city).

forkLding• 9 years ago

For those looking for the actual results, its the 2015 PISA results conducted by sampling 15 year olds. Heres a more relevant link:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canada-s-15-year-old-stude...

For more info from OECD on results: http://www.oecd.org/education/Singapore-tops-latest-OECD-PIS...

zhemao3• 9 years ago

Oh look, yet another article about a country that's doing education better than us here in the US. And the funny thing is that they all seem to do things in different ways.

You know what I think the problem is? Americans on the whole just don't care about public education. Either in terms of quality or equity.

jmknoll• 9 years ago

While we've got the cynicism out, I'll do you one better. I think its that Americans on the whole just don't care about public anything.

Public education, public healthcare, public transportation, public libraries, public lands.

Decades of the Republican party screaming that government is the enemy while gutting every public institution that it can get its hands on has led to a real, tangible decline in the quality of public services.

Then from here you get into a vicious cycle of "Wow, our train system is horrible. But I'm already paying for my car; I don't want to have to pay for that chump who can't afford a car to get to work." Or "What a shame about the state of our local school. But I'm already paying for little Billy to go to Catholic school. Why should I pay for the neighbor's education as well?"

Not sure about how we get ourselves out of this mess. But I feel like just generally giving a shit about our neighbors and communities would be a good start. Seems like we're heading in the wrong direction for the time being though.

zhemao3• 9 years ago

Very true. I don't think the Republicans are solely to blame though. I live in the SF Bay Area, definitely a very blue part of the country. Despite pretty steep taxes, our public transportation and public schools aren't much to look at. Better than other parts of the country, probably, but it ain't Canada. Even when there's a political will, there doesn't seem to be much know-how in how to actually provision public infrastructure and services in an efficient way.

ghufran_syed• 9 years ago

Most public education is run by cities in the US, and controlled locally. If the "Republicans" are the problem, shouldn't we see better education results in Democrat controlled areas, of which there are clearly many in the US? Seeing as there is no such difference to my knowledge, I would suggest that your assertion is unsupported by the facts.

alacombe5• 9 years ago

Coming from Europe, I can tell you that secondary Canadian education is laughable at best.

narak• 9 years ago

Please expound...

zhemao3• 9 years ago

And if you came to the US and saw our public schools here, you'd probably die of laughter.

avip2• 9 years ago

I had the exact same impression, yet somehow they nail it in OECD comparative tests.

Kpourdeilami• 9 years ago

I attended a high school in Toronto from grades 10 to 12. The purely academical content of the science and math courses (math, physics, chemistry, and biology), can seem "laughable" but that is not all that there is to our education system. Every student is required to take elective courses from 3 different categories and students get exposed to lots of different ideas early on.

The public school I went to offered 100+ elective courses on different topics from law, and philosophy to computer science, industrial design, and even hairstyling. We had access to great teachers who took on project-based approaches to teaching that made the lessons more enjoyable. For example, when my Physics teacher wanted to teach us about vectors, he put us into groups and gave each group a sheet of vectors and a tape meter. We had to travel in the direction of each vector on the sheet until we got to a point in the school where he had hidden a sheet of paper and when we took that back to him, he would mark our assignment as completed. After that assignment, everyone in my class had a much better understanding of vector arithmetics.

Students who will attend a post-secondary in other countries will end-up redoing most of the advanced math and science they did in high school in the first-year of university anyway. For the rest of the students, those extra science and math courses will just be a waste of valuable time that they could have spent learning more useful skills.

joss82• 9 years ago

Another distinguishing feature is that Canada's teachers are well paid by international standards - and entry into teaching is highly selective.

Funny how this makes education level better, huh?

Are you listening, France?

seszett• 9 years ago

Huh, why are you singling out France out of the blue?

I'd say that the fact that France is better than OECD average with relatively low teacher pay (though higher than the average salary in the country) seems to indicate that salary isn't everything, on the contrary.

The differences regarding immigration to Canada and France might be a far more important factor though.

watwut• 9 years ago

"seems to indicate that salary isn't everything, on the contrary."

Higher salary for teachers harm, higher salaries for programmers are common sense measure to attract better quality more passionate programmers.

pertymcpert• 9 years ago

Maybe he or she is French and has experience of these issues? Just a complete guess though.

macspoofing9• 9 years ago

Pay and job security are usually lumped in together but aren't quite the same. I think most people would support a relatively good wage for teachers if there was more accountability. Even in Canada it is notoriously hard to fire bad teachers.

lwansbrough• 9 years ago

But the children of newly-arrived, migrant families seem to integrate rapidly enough to perform at the same high level as their classmates.

Quite the opposite, I think. I don't have the data to back it up, but it always seemed like the migrant kids excelled far more often in STEM courses (to the point where our classes were considered trivial or elementary) than their Canadian-born peers.

sattoshi• 9 years ago

This is my experience throughout gradeschool as well.

The explanation is quite evident: the immigration policies put in place promote such that only the best come in.

devrandomguy• 9 years ago

The OECD, trying to understand Canada's success in education, described the role of the federal government as "limited and sometimes non-existent".

Actually, the federal government did make one critical mandate[1]. It effectively ensures that we are all exposed to two languages in school, and creates a much more rigorous French immersion stream in the school system.

That immersion into another culture and language, at a very early age, has paid huge dividends in my ability to travel, to assemble and work in multinational teams, and to form constructive, even loving, relationships with people who are at first very alien to me. I believe that it is also to be credited for enabling several of us, all from the French immersion stream, to begin playing with algebra somewhere around Grade 3, by deeply reinforcing our awareness of multiple representations for single concepts or entities. This then segued into my first programming language, QBasic, a year later.

If you have kids, then based on my own experience and observation of my cohorts, I strongly recommend that you find a way to ensure that they learn a second language, while they are still learning their first. Throw them in the deep end, you can always pull them out.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_23_of_the_Canadian_Cha...

vkou• 9 years ago

French immersion is also criticized for segregating the academically-minded families who put their students through it from the general population.

The best parts of it can, and should be replicated across the general student population, without creating a taxpayer-funded charter school system.

zimablue2• 9 years ago

There are also studies that bilingual children have serious drag, no free lunch they're statistically behind in their first language.

macspoofing9• 9 years ago

French immersion is also criticized for segregating the academically-minded families who put their students through it from the general population.

"Academically-minded families"? What do you mean? Families that care about education vs families that don't?

am1988• 9 years ago

It effectively ensures that we are all exposed to two languages in school

French education is a complete joke in large parts of the country.

refurb• 9 years ago

I grew up in Canada and had the exact same thought.

I was also going to say that French Canadian culture is pretty dam similar to Anglophone culture when put on the cultural spectrum of the world. Not super exotic.

kchoudhu• 9 years ago

Yeah, none of my Canadian cousins speak a spot of French. The mandate is junk.

rubatuga4• 9 years ago

Most people at my school dropped it in Grade 9

a_imho• 9 years ago

PISA results are a good indicator how well a particular educating system prepares students for PISA tests.

Looking at the charts in [1], Canadian performance seems to be slightly declining (esp. Maths).

[1]http://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/CAN?lg=en

brutalistcode• 9 years ago

Within three years of arriving, the Pisa tests show the children of new migrants have scores as high as the rest of their schoolmates.
It makes Canada one of the few countries where migrant children achieve at a level similar to their non-migrant counterparts.

The high performance of migrant children probably comes from their motivated and educated parents due to Canada's immigration policy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/opinion/canada-immigratio...

erikb• 9 years ago

It seems to me like every second country is an education superpower now and feels quite special about it. What do we get if we combine this information with that most students don't feel they've learned in school the skills they needed after school, and also combine it with many scientists believing that science is not about generating knowledge anymore but about producing an endless, unchecked stream of papers?

If considered a market, I'd say these three things combined make it a likely bubble and an oportunity to start looking for what will come after.

devoply• 9 years ago

Modern society does not have any metaphysical meaning associated with it and everything is heavily specialized and distributed using self-interest. This at the end seems to be a recipe for eventual failure. Why? One reason is that self-interests start aligning with each other forming monopolies and conglomerates which is essentially corruption manifest. The modern civilization needs an overarching metaphysics which then ties to a sense of morality of each individual serving the entire society rather than just themselves. That's the only hope we have for a future. Otherwise the aligned self-interest will destroy civilization.

If you carry this out you see its implications everywhere in the system. The food production does not serve any goals of society, instead food production is focused on optimizing for costs and yield. What this leads to is intensive farming which then leads to depletion and fragility which leads to disease. In terms of actually producing the food to eat, i.e, processed food, again self-interest produces highly addictive foods that increase profit, the cost of that is paid by the other side of the bargain.

When that self-interest of corporations aligns with academia or even the self-interest of academia itself, it then starts focusing on profit and educating students for the needs of corporations. Which then feeds into this sort of cycle of people who serve corporations, and corporations who serve themselves. And society pays the price.

NumberCruncher2• 9 years ago

> It seems to me like every second country is an education superpower

Everybody is above average.

ThomPete11• 9 years ago

One of the things I always ask in these discussions is "so what did that do for them" Finland is also an education super-power but what does it really do for the country?

Unless all countries are underdeveloped, education is a hygiene factor and doesn't as such provide any benefits.

In Europe, Switzerland is one of the countries with the fewest academics. Instead they focused on technical educations (starting from something akin to trade school up to university level knowledge). The results while most European countries first now a waking up the the realization that academic education isn't the only education of value and is scrambling to make their tradeschools/technical schools working better, Switzerland is one of the few countries doing very specialized production that can't be outsourced (for now)

In other words education is important but the focusing on education especially higher but also on the elementary level as some sort of indication of how well a country is fairing is not really a useful metric.

dm3197• 9 years ago

I would say a technical education is an education, but I agree, pure academia isn't for everyone - though the article doesn't distinguish this. In fact, Switzerland does very well by the OECD metric [1].

Why is education important? Can I suggest we compare two countries singled out in the article as 'could do better's - the USA and UK, and their recent democratic decisions. Compare that to Canada's cabinet, who, for example, has appointed someone with a PhD as minister for science [2], a doctor as minister for health [3] etc etc. I don't think I need to give examples of Scandinavian countries which regularly top the rankings for both wealth and pay equality.

Maybe a population where the country has valued education are less likely to say they "have had enough of experts" [4], more likely to respect the knowledge of a specialist, and more likely to have skills which are capable of transferring to the changing work market.

The problem is that investing in education has its pay-offs 20-30 years down the line, which is why, even if we believe in education, governments are reluctant to actually spend the money on it.

[1] http://www.oecd.org/edu/bycountry/switzerland/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirsty_Duncan

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Philpott

[4] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Gove

ThomPete11• 9 years ago

But again I must come back to the simple thing that appointing a PHD as a minister for science means very little because politics aren't science or business for that matter. Politics are humans prioritizing various intersociety related issues and many of these prioritization are scientifically or rationally absurd but are the right solution for the collective.

The very idea that better educated people make better decisions in politics is simply wrong as far as I can see. Canada isn't benefitting anymore than Finland is. There are bigger factors that count.

al_chemist• 9 years ago

their recent democratic decisions.
for example, has appointed someone with a PhD as minister for science [2], a doctor as minister for health [3] etc etc.

You elect ministers in direct elections? Otherwise it's like watching prime minister in a restaurant and announcing "Democracy has decided! We are having chicken risotto tonight!"

ChrisjayHenn2• 9 years ago

In regards to your third paragraph, I would posit the opposite causality occurs as well - in a country where academia is seen as an honorable profession for morally upstanding people, people with integrity are more likely to pursue academics, and as a result there are fewer examples of dishonesty by these same experts [1]. Of course, this dynamic can cause a vicious cycle in any field, politics being a common example.

[1]https://www.nas.org/articles/Estimated_40_Percent_of_Scienti...

hoorayimhelping• 9 years ago

the USA and UK, and their recent democratic decisions.

As long as people (especially educated liberal leaning people) keep framing recent elections as "dumb people elected Trump cause they're dumb," we're going to keep getting Trumps in the elected office. One of the loudest things communicated in the last election in America is that people who don't vote like you are tired of the patronizing, condescending and presumptuous tone. Rather than characterizing the outcome of the last election as "uneducated people elected an asshole", it might do well to understand the concerns of the people who elected him, rather than dismissing them offhand.

RobertoG• 9 years ago

If you accept that what really means the sentence "the good of the country" is "the good of all the people of the country" , something that, by the way, it seems we have forgotten lately, then education by itself is a desired outcome.

Education, good health and, in general, a happy life for all should be the goal, not the means.

Also, in this age, the most important asset is knowledge, because almost anything else can be compensated for with knowledge.

ThomPete11• 9 years ago

The point is that at some point there is diminishing returns. Findland and Canada scores top characters but aren't the top countries i.e. they don't benefit as countries more than countries with worse education. That's the point I was trying to make.

And I disagree that knowledge is important in the way you seem to talk about it. Knowledge is applying solution to problems yet many problems humans aren't capable of solving alone and thus will need to trust machines to do but that's a whole other discussion :)

rubenfiszel• 9 years ago

I would be interested to see your source about Switzerland. Not that I am doubting the claim but it is a small country with some relatively big universities in Zurich, Geneva, Fribourg.

To ponder that assertion, I would also add that you have some of the two best ranked engineering universities in continental Europe (EPFL and ETHZ), the best hotel school in the world (EHL) and one of the best business school in the world (St-Gallen).

awkwarddaturtle8• 9 years ago

Highly educated immigrants could be a boon to a society. Or it could be a drag on wages of white collar workers.

Nothing is ever all good or all bad.

In other words education is important but the focusing on education especially higher but also on the elementary level as some sort of indication of how well a country is fairing is not really a useful metric.

It isn't even a good metric for determining a nation's education status. The number of quality universities is a far better indicator.

Canada has a handful of quality universities. The US has hundreds. So how much sense does it make to call canada an education superpower?

biggerbistro4• 9 years ago

The number of "for-profit" scum schools that have cropped up lately to stands to challenge this idea further. There is heavy foreign demand for Canadian education but not always prioritizing the good institutions.

I had a Chinese friend tell me that in China it doesn't matter which Canadian school you went to, just that you went to a Canadian school. Nice to have that reputation but it is ultimately self-destructing.

matthewcanty• 9 years ago

I'm reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile at the moment. His explanation of how Switzerland operates as municipalities, with little central government intervention - except collecting taxes - is strikingly similar.

In this context: Let smaller education decision making groups decide what is important for their local area. Any failure is of benefit to all, while the negative impacts of the actual failure are localised.

awkwarddaturtle8• 9 years ago

Articles like this put me off because it is blatant propaganda.

Canada isn't an education superpower. The silly international ranking of kids' test taking abilities is meaningless.

Real education superpowers are those with top universities which in turn produce economic gains/growth/etc.

If canada was a true economic superpower, we'd see them producing Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.

Frankly, there is only 1 education superpower - the US. Go check a list of top 100 universities. It's almost entirely US colleges. Britain is the next far distant competitor. The only other nation who may challenge the US to become an education superpower in the future is china as they are building tons of universities. This is something we did in the US in the 1800s. Build a incredible number of universities as our economy grew. The only question is whether china will be able to match our quality because they are going to surpass our quantity by a large margin.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35776555

Also, if the BBC journalist did any bit of research, they would know that Canada's "150th anniversary" is fake propaganda itself. Canada isn't 150 years old. They gained their independence in 1983.

UseStrict• 9 years ago

Someone hasn't had their coffee yet. We do have top-tier universities (UBC, University of Toronto, UWaterloo), who have produced outstanding research and individuals who went on to do great work abroad and developing here at home. We're home to top-tier companies like Shopify. Plus our education is much more consistent across the board, not as pay-to-win like America.

And how is 150 years of forming the Dominion of Canada not something to celebrate? "150 years ago, Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia – united to create the Canadian Confederation, called the Dominion of Canada. On account of the British North America Act that became law July 1st 1867, these British colonies would be recognized as an independent nation."

http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/france/150Canada150.asp...

awkwarddaturtle8• 9 years ago

We do have top-tier universities (UBC, University of Toronto, UWaterloo)

I agree. I didn't deny that. Now compare how many top universities we have in the US? If the US has hundreds of top universities and Canada has a handful, how does that make canada an education superpower? If canada is an education superpower, then is north korea a nuclear superpower? Isn't the word superpower supposed to mean something?

We're home to top-tier companies like Shopify.

Shopify is top-tier? It has revenues of $151 million/year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopify

On account of the British North America Act that became law July 1st 1867, these British colonies would be recognized as an independent nation."

But they weren't an independent nation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Act_1982

Canada became "independent" in 1983. Canada celebrated its first Canada Day in 1983.

To claim canada is 150 years old is a verifiable lie.

Listen, canada is a wonderful nation. I have nothing against canada. My complaint is about the article. Its assertions don't make any sense.

alonsonic2• 9 years ago

It depends on your definition of a good university.

For you, the most important result might be economic gains/growth and for others, it might be scientific/academic achievements such as Nobel prizes, research papers, major scientific breakthroughs, etc.

If that's the case then the US is not the only education superpower.

awkwarddaturtle8• 9 years ago

For you, the most important result might be economic gains/growth and for others, it might be scientific/academic achievements such as Nobel prizes, research papers, major scientific breakthroughs, etc.

I agree.

If that's the case then the US is not the only education superpower.

The US is easily the only education superpower.

Go check the nobel prizes of US vs Canada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_uni...

josho• 9 years ago

Google et al are largely a consequence of the Cold War. That is government programs dumped massive amounts of money into tech programs creating the first wave of wealthy tech entrepreneurs, since that time the feedback loop has continued.

The valley would not exist without quality schools, but those schools are no better than Canada's. Evidence for that is the significant number of Canadians recruited to work in the valley. Google and others hire Canadians because their schools put out top performers.

awkwarddaturtle8• 9 years ago

The valley would not exist without quality schools, but those schools are no better than Canada's.

I'm not saying canada doesn't have good schools. I'm saying the US has hundreds of top universities while canada has a handful.

In that respect, if you call canada an education superpower, you are making a mockery of the word superpower.

That's my point.

And a significant number of indians, chinese, etc also work in silicon valley. Wouldn't call india or china an education superpower either.

pmilot3• 9 years ago

Real education superpowers are those with top UNIVERSITIES which in turn produce economic gains/growth/etc.

Why is your metric considered more apt than the article's? Good student performance consistently correlates with higher-paying jobs and higher quality of life. At the nation level, this correlates to higher Human-Development Index, which is generally considered a pretty good thing to have...

If canada was a true economic superpower, we'd see them producing Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.

That is utter nonsense. What does this have to do with education at all? Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, and Steve Jobs were all college dropouts. They simply had the right idea at the right time. Their economic success has very little to do with the U.S. education system.

awkwarddaturtle8• 9 years ago

Good student performance consistently correlates with higher-paying jobs and higher quality of life.

Because that's the more sensible definition for superpower?

Good student performance consistently correlates with higher-paying jobs and higher quality of life. At the nation level, this correlates to higher Human-Development Index, which is generally considered a pretty good thing to have...

Great. I agree. Did I disagree anywhere? My issue is with the usage of the word superpower. And americans on average earn more than canadians.

Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, and Steve Jobs were all college dropouts.

And? They did go to college.

They simply had the right idea at the right time.

Right.

Their economic success has very little to do with the U.S. education system.

Ah I see. When the US education creates successes, it has nothing to do with the US education system. When canada's education system produces successes, canada is a superpower.

As I said, my only issue is with the BBC blatant propagandistic article. Their use of "superpower" and their perpetuating the lie of Canada's 150th year.

I'm for education. But canada is no more an education superpower than north korea is a nuclear superpower.

And I love your logic. Bill Gates, Zuckerburg, etc don't count. But kids taking silly tests count. Okay.

pmilot3• 9 years ago

This is good news, but it doesn't tell the whole story. What's important to remember is that each Canadian province has its own education system, so mileage may greatly vary depending on where you live in Canada.

In Québec, where I live, the drop-out rate is abysmal compared to other provinces, especially in french-speaking school boards [1] (which are much more numerous in Québec):

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/dismal-dropout-rates-...

rubatuga4• 9 years ago

Also, Manitoba is ranked almost last within Canada for science, reading, and math

calvinbhai• 9 years ago

Canada will be the world super power in the next 5 to 10 years. By then, the USA will lose its access to cheap credit and will become a cesspool for haters of high skilled and legal immigrants

hackermailman2• 9 years ago

The universities are reaping the benefits of the Trump effect, with record levels of applications from overseas students seeing Canada as a North American alternative to the United States.

It's been record levels since the beginning of Obama's term in 2008 and climbing every year. Reason is immigration laws since then are incredibly lax for foreign students. If you want Canadian citizenship show up here for ESL private school, a hair academy, a university, any accredited course and you can obtain a temporary work permit while attending classes (and for a period afterwards). This allows a local company to offer to sponsor you for full time employment, which eventually leads to citizenship. Vancouver is filled with Brazilian accountants who got in this way, they came here to take ESL, and went to go work for some accounting firm like KPMG with their degrees they have from Brazil.

Edit: they changed the laws in 2014 to make this a little more difficult, but temporary work permits are still available for any student esp somebody going to university/college. These always lead to full-time offer and citizenship.

pm9013• 9 years ago

The only real problem I see is that comp. levels in Canada are not as high as the US while COL in most of the major cities is similar to NYC. As a (legal) immigrant to the US, while Canada definitely sounds very attractive, I don't want to take a major hit to my quality of life just to escape Trumpland...

hackermailman2• 9 years ago

As an anecdote my friend's UVIC compsci grad class nobody stayed here and all took offers in Seattle instead because entry level salaries there are at least twice what you would make here. These US companies all directly recruit grads on campus too with large signing bonuses. It's the same story for nurses, if you have a nursing degree in Canada, US companies again directly recruit on campus and offer 3x the salary and signing bonuses, housing allowance benefits, ect.

samBergeron• 9 years ago

I don't want to take a major hit to my quality of life just to escape Trumpland

Major hit to your quality of life? I'm sorry, you may potentially have a little less money in your pocket, but you're trading direct cash for better social services (read healthcare and education).

You make it sound like we're living in a 3rd world country.

jkaunisv12• 9 years ago

You're right about compensation, but cost of living in our major cities is nothing like NYC. I live in the capital and pay under $1000 for two bedrooms very close to downtown. You can get a swanky condo penthouse here for less than a one bedroom in Manhattan. Or split a nice house with two other people for $400-600 each.

Friends in Toronto pay around $2000 for two bedrooms in the middle of downtown. Haven't checked in a while but fairly certain Montreal is somewhere in between. Those same friends were paying more than $3000 for less space in the far end of Brooklyn.

Vancouver is crazy but sort of a special case especially when compared to nearby Seattle, but it's the only major city that is so close to an American metropolis.

And that's leaving out the free healthcare and abundant green space which is a huge boost to my QoL.

smnrchrds2• 9 years ago

Not everyone works in tech. A software developer can double or triple their salary by moving from Canada to SF, but a mechanical engineer can't.

potatoman2• 9 years ago

Objective non-biased journalists can't let any opportunity to bash Trump slip by.

alex98• 9 years ago

I think it's important to point out that this rising tide does not lift all boats. The autonomy of individual provinces results in a divide between the provinces. While provinces like Ontario and BC rank in the top 5 globally, Prince Edward Island ranks 26th in the world. I'm from PEI, and when I arrived at university I noticed my peers from bigger provinces were simply taught more material, especially in math and science. Ideally there would be some more standardization nationally to reduce this delta.

slm_HN• 9 years ago

My father taught college in both Canada and the United States around 40 years ago. When I asked about the differences between the two countries he said they were basically the same, except that Canadian students worked harder and complained less.

jimpick• 9 years ago

Something else to add ... there was an influx of draft dodgers from the Vietnam War, and a lot of those became teachers. Canada was investing in their education system at that time whereas the U.S. was trying to choke off campus protest movements. Fast forward half a century, and that investment has paid dividends.

g9yuayon• 9 years ago

I took an AP math in Canada and later graduated from CS department of U of Toronto. The schools in Toronto did at least one thing right: they didn't dumb down their courses.

I did well in my AP calculus, 98/100 or something like that, but I still felt the pressure in all the tests and exams, as there were just so many questions crammed in a single test. I had to keep writing, non stop, and barely had time to double check any of my answers. Contrast to my school experience before I went to Canada, I could usually use way less than half of the exam time to finish and double check every problem.

The same pattern continued in U of T. The class average of courses like algorithms often went below 40/100. I usually had to keep writing until the last minute to finish every single question in an exam. Assignments were usually time consuming and required lots of thinking. I still remember the tremendous satisfaction when I finally proved a theorem about universal hashing (an exercise from CLRS, IIRC). And past success on assignments and tests didn't guarantee good grades in the final exam. I was actually dumbfounded when I did poorly in my AI course, even though I did extremely well except for my final exam.

Looking back though, I am very grateful for the struggles my professors put me through. They made me. What I learned then carried me a long way, even today. Without the high standards imposed by the schools, an ordinary student like me would not be able to do as well. As I kept telling friends, schools MUST keep their students in discomfort zones to help them learn and improve - the very thing that US schools, in particular SF bay area public schools, have been failing miserably.

Philosopher• 9 years ago

This will be self-congratulatory, but teachers deserve a huge amount of the thanks for these results. We deal with increasing student complexity, bureaucratic requirements and degraded infrastructure to not only get the job done well, but to get it done to some of the highest standards in the world.

Note too that we haven't just done well on the most recent PISA tests, we've been a consistent top level finisher across the three subject tests since PISA started over a decade ago.

sebnap• 9 years ago

It's obviously because of Jordan B. Peterson.

How Canada became an education superpower

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