The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got that Way
The Threat of the “Smartest”
Soda Ruan
America is a country that currently spends more money on public education per student than any other nation in the world; nevertheless, these good intensions have achieved only slight positive outcomes. For instance, in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), an authoritative test used to measure the education levels of students from 53 countries, American students ranked 12th in reading, 17th in science, and 26th in math. No doubt, a question like this one has been argued for decades “ what exactly is happening in foreign countries that allows them to out-pass America in terms of academics?” The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way is an illuminating book by Amanda Ripley that answers the question by showing how other countries educate their kids in a much more effective way than we do.
Amanda Ripley, a gifted writer who has done feature stories for Time Magazine and the Atlantic, has a new tough task to conqueror. In order to discover the secret path to education success, Ripley travels to three particular countries that earned remarkable honors in international tests: South Korea, Finland, and Poland. She collects information from a broad range of participants in the education systems including three American exchange students who could pierce harder and dig deeper through the glossy surface of the leading schools guiding us to their top secrets. Then, of course, Ripley finds a few key things that are enlightening in bettering our education system.
The first component she considers is rigor. In Korea, Eric attended a high school called Namsan, in the city of Busan. There, students literally spend their every waking second studying. From 8 o’clock in the morning to 11 o’clock at night (and beyond), they take classes, nap and eat at school, and then they transfer themselves to private tutoring schools known as hagwons. Because they are facing the fierce competition where only the top
Soda Ruan
America is a country that currently spends more money on public education per student than any other nation in the world; nevertheless, these good intensions have achieved only slight positive outcomes. For instance, in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), an authoritative test used to measure the education levels of students from 53 countries, American students ranked 12th in reading, 17th in science, and 26th in math. No doubt, a question like this one has been argued for decades “ what exactly is happening in foreign countries that allows them to out-pass America in terms of academics?” The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way is an illuminating book by Amanda Ripley that answers the question by showing how other countries educate their kids in a much more effective way than we do.
Amanda Ripley, a gifted writer who has done feature stories for Time Magazine and the Atlantic, has a new tough task to conqueror. In order to discover the secret path to education success, Ripley travels to three particular countries that earned remarkable honors in international tests: South Korea, Finland, and Poland. She collects information from a broad range of participants in the education systems including three American exchange students who could pierce harder and dig deeper through the glossy surface of the leading schools guiding us to their top secrets. Then, of course, Ripley finds a few key things that are enlightening in bettering our education system.
The first component she considers is rigor. In Korea, Eric attended a high school called Namsan, in the city of Busan. There, students literally spend their every waking second studying. From 8 o’clock in the morning to 11 o’clock at night (and beyond), they take classes, nap and eat at school, and then they transfer themselves to private tutoring schools known as hagwons. Because they are facing the fierce competition where only the top