Human-Error Processor

下午去邮局取了Amazon寄来的书” Cuba’s Academic Achievement: Why students in Cuba do better in school?“，晚上忍不住先翻了前言看，结果很快被吸引住了。不愧是大家，层次很清楚。Martin Carnoy先写了为什么这个时代如此关注academic achievement，然后把自Coleman以降的历史脉络一一呈现，最后提出他自己这本书的研究方法和结构。非常简洁，但是字字珠玑。

在讲到他自己觉得为什么古巴的教育是很特殊的时候他写道：

The reasons for Cuba’s academic success that emerge from this study will please some educators but displease others. The reasons certainly conflicts with political philosophies stressing individual freedom and decentralized pluralistic democracy….. But Cuba creates this social context mainly through a hierarchical centralized government bureaucracy, not through individual families acting alone or collectively at a local level by attending school board meetings or church services.

为什么作为一个政治上不民主，个人自由被压抑的国家，却能够教育出优秀的儿童？他在后面又写到：

We suggests that states can generate just as potent a form of social capital in promoting educational achievement as families can, and that state-generated social capital is essential to improving educational achievement for low-income groups ——- those that have the least social capital on their own.

而这一点却是在一味强调私有化、责任机制、小班教学、提高教师素质的今天—–不管是美国还是其他国家的教育界——所被忽视的。在我看来，这就是叫做制度优势。

但是我们对此仍然知之甚少。