Friday, February 25, 2011

Dear Dylan Ratigan: Shanghai is not "China"

MSNBC has to be the worst traditional media when it comes to reporting on education. Yesterday on the Dylan Ratigan Show the host repeatedly said that  "China" was the number one country in education in the world, according to the PISA tests. Uh, no, only Shanghai was tested for PISA. And Shanghai is hardly representative of China as a whole. Shanghai has a population of 19 million. China has a population 1.3 billion. That makes Shanghai about 1.5 percent of the total Chinese population.

According to Wikipedia, "Shanghai has one of the most developed education systems in China. It is the first city where the 9-year compulsory education is implemented in the country...Shanghai is also a major centre of higher education teaching and research with over 30 universities and colleges." It is completely absurd to compare the educational attainment of selected students in Shanghai to the entire United States, and even crazier to believe Shanghai is typical of the entire country of China.

Your liberal media at work.

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