Carolyn Varick, a Summit Country Day math teacher, doesn't get alarmed by test results that suggest the nation's math students trail h their counterparts in Asia and elsewhere.

        Last week, results of the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed only about a quarter of the nation's eighth-graders and fourth-graders performed at or above the proficient level.

        But Mrs. Varick got another perspective this summer when she spent three weeks in Japan, where she observed students in school.

        “Our cultures are very different, but by and large, I think what we do here in the United States works for our kids,” she said.

        She was one of 200 U.S. teachers selected to visit Japan under the auspices of the Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher Program, an educational exchange sponsored by the Japanese government.

        She teaches eighth-grade algebra and geometry at the private K-12 school in Hyde Park, but she has also taught in public schools during her 17-year teaching career.

        Mrs. Varick visited elementary, lower secondary and upper secondary schools in Iwaki City.

        “It was sort
of like taking a step back into the 1950s,” she said. “There was very little technology used in the classrooms.”

        School computer labs sat empty.

        Curriculum is mandated from the national level, she said, so there's not much flexibility for teacher creativity.

        Class sizes are large — a standard set by the government.

        “When you're dealing with 36 to 40 children in a classroom, there are no individual accommodations made,” Mrs. Varick said.

        She said she learned that top students in Japanese college prep schools are the ones whose test scores are used for comparison with students from other nations.

        Japanese students are better at computation because they don't use calculators, she said: “They are brought up doing things with paper and pencil, and working quickly, which is definitely an advantage in all those testing situations.

        “Their students could do computation and get the right answer, but not have any idea how to apply it or use it. The questions that involve application, where they take something and use it creatively, the American students do much better.”

        She'll have students do more computations by hand, but won't tinker much with the way she teaches.

        “I would not trade our education system for the Japanese system,” she said.

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