Prioritization

"International and U.S. students agreed on the importance of sports in the lives of U.S. teenagers. Of all students, 91% of international students and 62% of U.S. students said U.S. students placed more importance on doing well in sports than did students abroad. International students were more likely to say U.S. students cared much more about athletic achievement."

This passage really stuck out to me because it explains exactly why the U.S. ranks so lowly. The students don't care about school. They stay in school to be on the basketball team and they pass their classes just enough to be eligible to play in the next game. If U.S. students cared about their education just as much then maybe we'd rank higher then Poland someday. 

Yours Or Theirs?

I have read many reviews from various different people. People of all ages, places, occupations, and educational backgrounds. Most of the reviews I read we're very positive. The readers loved it. The only negative reviews I saw were from people who believe the education system is fine. These people believe the way America ranks in the education department is in line with how everything in our country is.  But that isn't the book's fault.

Below are just a few reviews from some pretty note-worthy people who loved this book:

"The Smartest Kids in the World is a must read for anyone concerned about the state of American public education. By drawing on experiences, successes, and failures in education systems in the highest-performing countries across the globe, Amanda Ripley lays out a course for what we must do to dramatically improve our nation's schools.” 
(Michelle Rhee, Founder and CEO of StudentsFirst)

“The Smartest Kids in the World should be on the back-to-school reading list of every parent, educator and policymaker interested in understanding why students in other countries outperform U.S. students on international tests.”
 (US News & World Report)

“Such an important book! Amanda Ripley lights the path to engaging our next generation to meet a different bar. She makes an enormous contribution to the national and global discussion about what must be done to give all our children the education they need to invent the future.” 
(Wendy Kopp, founder and chair, Teach For America, and CEO, Teach For All)


I chose these three specific reviews because I agree with each one of them. I believe everyone who is involved with the education system should read this book, especially teachers. Personally, I think it is the students and the teachers who are most at fault. Many students in America just do not care about their education and the teachers are sympathetic towards them. They're more worried about them passing the class. So they water down the information, read the book to them and give them the answers to the test questions. They make the classes easier but the students are still failing because they still don't care.  

But who's opinion really matters, yours, mine or theirs?

A Sparked Interest

About Amanda Ripley

After graduating from Cornell University, Amanda Ripley worked as a investigative journalist for TIME, The Atlantic and the Washington Monthly. During most of her career she tried to stay away from the topic of education. On numerous occasions her editors asked her to write about schools or testing but she always countered with ideas such as illnesses, terrorism or governmental issues. This all changed one day when an editor asked her to interview Michelle Rhee, a new leader of Washington D.C.'s public schools. Amanda spent months talking to the teachers, students and education researchers. She was very curious to find out why some children were learning so much while others weren't learning much at all. She spent the next few years researching and writing stories about education. One day Amanda discovered that children in the United States were scoring worse on test scores compared to children in many other countries. Determined to discover why children around the world seemed to be smarted than children in the United States Amanda traveled, following 3 exchange students, to Finland, South Korea and Poland.