The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Wealthy Asian nations lead in education, studies find Posted: 11 Dec 2012 06:16 AM PST  A student takes a nap on a desk during his lunch break in a classroom in Hefei, Anhui Province June 2, 2012. — Reuters pic Morocco and several Middle Eastern nations occupied the bottom of the rankings of fourth-grade student performances in reading, science and math, reflecting the challenges caused by poverty and relatively new educational systems, according to two Boston College-backed studies released on Tuesday. The studies found that international student achievement generally has improved in the past decade as more nations have increased their focus on education, with top-performing Asian countries holding their lead in math and science and gaining ground in reading. "In the beginning, when we were assessing the reading, they were not necessarily at the top of the charts," said Ina Mullis, a Boston College professor who worked on the studies. "A decade later they are." The improvement reflects a focused effort both by parents to read more to their children in the home and official efforts to make school reading programs more rigorous, Mullis said. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study evaluated 63 countries' performance in science and math while the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study evaluated 49 nations' performance in reading. Hong Kong, Russia and Finland recorded the top-three performances in fourth-grade reading, the studies found. In science, South Korea, Singapore and Finland led, with Singapore, South Korea and Finland leading in math. The United States ranked sixth in fourth-grade reading, 11th in science and seventh in math. Canada ranked 12th in fourth-grade reading. The nation did not participate in the science and math rankings, although the provinces of Quebec, Ontario and Alberta did and all three ranked above average in each subject. Literacy challenge The poorest reading performances came in Morocco, Oman and Qatar. Yemen, Morocco and Kuwait trailed in math, with Yemen, Morocco and Tunisia occupying the bottom spots in science. Their struggles reflect the difficulty of establishing new school systems, said Boston College professor Michael Martin, another study author. "Education is a multi-generational enterprise, so if you go back 30 or 40 years, many of these countries really did not have an education system, with only a small group of people getting a decent education," Martin said. "When parents haven't been to school and are not literate. This is a big problem to overcome." While well-funded, well-organised school systems produced the most able students, the studies found performance was not purely dependent on schools. The top performing students were those children raised in homes where books were present and they regularly were read to and saw others reading or engaged in math-related activities like games. The math and science studies found many countries did better in teaching the basic rules of those subjects than in teaching their application, with students struggling to think of ways to use their knowledge to analyse a problem. The rankings are based on 900,000 tests of students in their fourth year of formal schooling, typically aged 10 or 11, in countries that opt into the studies. The math and science study is conducted every four years and the reading study every five. They overlapped this year by coincidence. Martin said the studies aimed to improve world educational standards by showing educators what other countries had achieved. "One thing you can learn from these is what's possible," Martin said. "That comes as a shock sometimes, what students in other countries can actually do and the gap sometimes between what your students are achieving and what students in other countries are achieving." — Reuters |
| Youth who overeat more likely to take up drugs, says study Posted: 11 Dec 2012 02:46 AM PST  A US study found that youth who overate were more likely to start using marijuana and other drugs. — Reuters pic Binge eating, defined by loss of control during overeating, was also tied to a higher chance of depression and becoming overweight or obese, researchers writing in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine said. "Physicians and parents should be aware that both overeating and binge eating are quite common in adolescents, and these problems put them at risk for other problems, such as drug use," said lead author Kendrin Sonneville, from Boston Children's Hospital. "The earlier we can screen for who is at risk, the more able we are to prevent the onset of drug use." This type of study does not prove that one behaviour causes another, but rather that one can be a warning sign of increased risk for the other. Sonneville's team used data from a large study of 16,882 children and teens, initially between age nine and 15, who filled out health-related questionnaires every year or two between 1996 and 2005. At any point during that time, up to one percent of boys and up to three per cent of girls said they binged regularly. Those rates were reversed - about three per cent of boys and one per cent of girls - among children who overate without loss of control. During the study period, 41 per cent of youths started using marijuana and 32 per cent used other illicit drugs. Children and teens who had reported overeating on surveys were 2.7 times more likely to start using marijuana or other drugs, and binge eaters were 1.9 times more likely to take up drugs. Researchers have thought teens who lose control while eating might also be at risk for other impulsive behaviours, such as drug use, Sonneville said. But her findings showed that any kids who overate - whether they reported losing control or not - were more likely to start experimenting with drugs. It's not yet clear why that might be the case. Overeating without loss of control wasn't tied to obesity, so it's important to know that eating too much can be a problem for reasons other than weight, Sonneville said, and that extra weight isn't the only sign of worrisome eating. She said doctors should ask children and teens about their eating patterns, and parents who notice their children eating much more than usual in a sitting should go to their health care provider. Treatment from a dietician or therapist could help head off future problems, she added. "It may be easy to overlook eating problems in normal-weight or healthy-weight kids," she said. "We need to think about eating habits even before they maybe affect a kid's weight, but realise these may be a risk factor for other problems down the road." — Reuters |
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