EDUCATION WATCH : Perfect Ten

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena just got what may well be the last birthday present of its centennial year.

No ribbons or bows on this one. Just a few paragraphs in a Newsweek cover story that picks Caltech as one of the 10 best schools in the world. Now, doesn’t that sound nice?

The compliment makes a rich gift. And while the fund-raisers who work so hard to build up the school’s endowment might argue with this, it is also a rich gift that money can’t buy.

Caltech’s neighbors, of course, are not surprised. They have known it for years to be what a recent profile in the Los Angeles Times Magazine described as “one of the brightest objects in the galaxy of science.” But it never hurts to have others notice. In its global survey, Newsweek decided that Japan now leads the world in science at the elementary and secondary school level. This results, it reported, from a change in curriculum in which, for example, Japanese 10-year-olds bring model cars and solar batteries to class and try to build solar-powered toys as a means of thinking creatively. Along the way, Newsweek says, they learn photovoltaics, too.

The Netherlands gets the nod for the world’s best programs in mathematics, using a real-world approach that teaches students to make connections between otherwise abstract numbers and objects all around them.

But, the report says, America shines in postgraduate programs, and “(Caltech) represents the best of that tradition.” A nice way to start the second hundred years.