公号: 【璐璐的英文小酒馆】
查音频节目文稿，了解广阔的世界。跟随我们的脚步，体会英语的温度。
Hi, everyone. And welcome back to America Under the Microscope.
欢迎回来《闲话美国》。
Hi, James.
Hi, Lulu, hi everyone.
Every time I'll start the episode by asking you what we're gonna talk about today, but instead of doing that, I would like to propose a specific topic.
I see. Go ahead.
Have you been following the latest heated discussion about textbooks? The problem with Chinese text books on social media.
Ah, I have seen posts about it, but I haven't really been following that news.
So a lot of people are getting really angry about the problems with these text books. I thought it would be quite interesting to talk about text books that you guys use in United States.
That's a very good topic. Let's do it.
First things first, in China, our textbooks, especially for K12, so for primary education and secondary education, they are generally approved by the Ministry of Education, 是由教育部这边要审核和认可的。
And then how the curriculum as well, 整个课程计划, what about in the States? I'm guessing, from based on what we were talking about before in other episodes, each State will have their own rules.
That is a very good guess and you are correct, in America, it’s a lot more complicated than here in China.
Don't you have Department of Education? Don't they have a say like more of a generalized control over this?
OK, so we do have a Department of Education at the Federal level, but in America, the Department of Education does not set curriculum and does not choose or write the text books that the schools use. The Department of Education sets the education policy, such as who can go to school like don't discriminate against your students, things like this; and making sure that the schools are credited, and are safe and suitable for students. But the material, the curriculum is all done at the local State level.
I see, so Department of Education is very much about macro policy, 更多是宏观的一些政策, very vague, very general.
That's right.
And then what does State do?
The State Departments of Education, they are the ones who really control what is taught in the classroom. So the State Education Departments, they're the ones that set such curriculum and choose the standards which the teachers need to be teaching in the classroom. Additionally, they also approve the text books that are to be used in school.
Okay, you know in China, we would say at this grade you should be, for example, you should recognize, let's say 3,000 Chinese characters at this age or at this grade, you should be able to do geometry, so that sort of thing is set by the States.
Yeah, governments uhhh
Those are what we'd call the standards.
I see.
I have a question though, because each State will have this much power over how kids are taught, what kind of contents are taught in school, then the difference between states can be significant, right, technically some states can set a very low standard for the students for the kids?
Now there are some nationwide standards that the States can choose to use. Some people may be familiar with the term Common Core.
What is Common Core?
This is a standard for English Language Arts and Math that has been adopted in many States across the country as part of their school standards; and Common Core states things like by this Grade students will be able to analyze text and write a descriptive essay, by this Grade, they can know this kind of math formula and things like that it's a standard, but States can choose their own.
Common Core听起来有点像我们统一的教学大纲。But you also said they're about English Language Arts and Math.
公号: 【璐璐的英文小酒馆】
查音频节目文稿，了解广阔的世界。跟随我们的脚步，体会英语的温度。