The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got that Way

I have found the article titled “Lessons from the Smartest Kids in the World” from usnews.com, which has a brief summary and information from Amanda Ripley’s book titled “The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way”. While I was not able to find the exact book itself, in my research I have found several sources and interviews with the author that I will use to make my argument. I feel very strongly about many of the arguments presented in this book, and the facts are very clear that the American schooling system is severely behind other countries standards. In order to improve our school system as a country, there needs to be much more support from the parents, more expectations from teachers, and we even need the government

European education versus American education has always been a problem but Stossel put it to a test. He gave an assessment to a school in Belgium and to an “above –average” school in New Jersey. Stossel never informed us about how “average” the students taking this test were in Belgium. When asked what the students thought about the test they all had the same answer, that it was surprisingly easy. Except one Belgium student had a smart remark with “if the Americans don’t know this then they are STUPID.” Belgium received a 76% pass rate while American only received 46%. Students from both

Many people know that the U.S. does not rank very high in education. You hear about how they are always trying to improve education, but they still fall short of where they strive to be. In Anu Partanen’s “Finland’s School Success, What Americans Keep Ignoring” she addresses this issue. She points out what Americans are doing wrong, what Finland is doing right, and how the U.S. can improve the education system in many ways.

My final book review discussion was about the book The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way by Amanda Ripley. I found this book extremely engaging. The author did an amazing job of presenting her information by engrossing the reader into the story. This style gave a clear understanding of the “how” and not just the “why”. During this discussion, we talked about the fundamental differences about how the different countries styles were different than our own, and why they seemed to be more successful. I was enthralled by how prestigious the teaching profession was in Korea and Finland. One teacher in Korea made four million dollars for his services in one year. In Finland, acceptance into teacher programs in colleges is exceptionally

America’s education system has recently been a concern for many people. A recent international test “shows the U.S. trailing behind educational powerhouses like Korea and Finland.” (The Atlantic) In addition, the U.S. was 26th out of the 34 countries who took the International Student Exam; considering the U.S. has the world’s largest economy, this rank is abysmal. If the U.S. wants to improve their education rankings, they are going to have to look at countries who are currently seeking success. Two of those countries, Finland and Korea, approach education quite differently than the U.S; nevertheless, their methods seem to be working for them.

Because instructors are teaching directly for the test, the data collected may not be an accurate representation of the student’s true abilities. As standardized test grow in popularity among the school system, the pressure to achieve high scores rapidly builds. The importance of high scores goes beyond individual students’ performances, and teacher evaluations. Serious repercussions could result from poor scores, or performances. For example, “schools that continue to fail to improve may be closed, and districts that continue to fail may be subject to state takeover” (Posner). With the weight of the success of the school on their shoulders,

The U.S. spends more on education than most countries in the world, but are polarized with an educational system where high-end schools attract students worldwide and public schools without sufficient care for the poor and recent migrants. The education expert Jonathan Kozol states that the U.S. education system is full of savage inequalities. In other words, it only matters how much is spent,

These include lack of funding, high poverty rates, and racial or ethnic diversity as explained by Amanda Ripley. Although these expectant confounding variables could have been at fault for our country’s more than dissatisfactory results, Ripley continues in her oration to invalidate and elaborate how these components are in no way hindrances to the results of the OECD PISA scores. The U.S is still one of the top ranked countries when it comes to spending in the world per student on kindergarten through high school education and still the nation with one of the smallest class sizes in the world. According to this chart provided by The New York Times, the United States is one of the few countries recorded that inconspicuously stray from the overall direct trend between math scores and average spending per student. Evidence clearly illustrates lack of funding is not an influencing issue in the U.S’ academic performance. To continue, the next map below divides states by relation to their educational counterpart, with purple colored states being respectively the top 15 performing countries in the world— none of which is present in the United States. This statistical depiction of academic accomplishment within regional boundaries eliminates the other confounding variables of racial and ethnic background. Take the state of Maine for example, “where 96% of the population is white, (and New Hampshire and Vermont follow similar racial and ethnic trends,)” Ripley states. These homogenous places display no correlation to higher scores, leaving the argument in which cultural differences could impede performance completely invalid. Despite, all these supposed deterrents, it is evident that these many commonly thought variables, do not influence

“I don’t get why Ms. Bitters always has to give us so much homework. You’d think after teaching here for so long she’d realize half the class just copies off of Billy Bowman’s paper, and his answers are just wet spots from his own drool,” Dib complained as he closed his locker and slung his backpack over his shoulder.

The United States was just recently ranked 20th of the top twenty education system in the world, according to World Top 20 Project, and in American eyes, that is like getting last place. Ever since the beginning of time, humans have always competed against one another in various competitions (Human Rights Advocate, 2017). From trying to conquer the world, there are still some trying to do that today, to simple acts of athleticism or brain power. From the space race to the Olympic Games, and now the education race. Countries are trying to see just how hard they can push their youth to learn and become successful so that the country as a whole can benefit from their new human capital, but research can show

In the article “Learning from Abroad”, by Ben Levin, Robert B. Schwartz, and Adam Gamoran, several reforms for improving and maintaining high academic performance are analyzed. The authors highlight that although The United States has made efforts to improve academic performance, the results have been disappointing. They thus look to other countries in which academic performance is high or has raised. They make it

From a close analysis of statistics, America long lost its educational standards and status to other nations whose policies and educational terrain appear polished. Supporting this reasoning, one could argue that economic challenges are pushing nations to invest much on education as a means of realizing solutions to the same economic woes. The implication is that other nations with better educational models have better opportunities for finding effective solutions more than the U.S. One significant question to pose could be the level of education of the future generations and the manner in which they could be able to compete at

Based on the numerous sources of sound data available, U.S. is currently out-educated. On the latest Program for International Student Assessment form 2015, the United States scored an average in reading and science, and below average in math. Results had been unchanged since 2000. U.S. scores are behind global leaders like Finland, South Korea and Canada. It is not a surprise that Shanghai outscored every other country, in all areas tested.

The first problem with the Aamerican education system is the fact that way to too much pressure is put on students to perform to a letter standard. Students spend countless hours fretting over a number that, in the society that they have grown up in, represents their worth. Students are graded on everything, constantly being judged through tests, quizzes, and other various assignments. In fact, in many schools “test scores became an obsession...test taking skills and strategies took precedence over knowledge” (4). The Merriam-Webster Ddictionary

Different regions and cultures made different ways of educating. Asia always dominates in the rankings of the OECD on the PISA (Worldwide study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations of 15-year-old school pupils ' scholastic performance in mathematics, science, and reading.) tests. More specifically, China has always ranked in at least the top 10. In the 2012 release of the OECD rankings, Shanghai China ranked number one on all reading (570), Mathematics (613) and Science (580) tests while the United States ranked 36th in mathematics, 25th in reading and 28th in science. The United States scarcely ranks in the top 10. Why? China and the United States school systems and students