I immigrated to the U.S. when I was about nine-years-old and entered the fourth grade as a student of an education system so many children in China dreamt about. “Is it fun? I heard you don’t have any homework,” my friends back in China would speculate as their eyes sparkled. But as the initial thrill faded, dread lodged deep in my ribcage from the words that left my teachers' lips -- words I couldn’t understand. I began to wonder if this system that has been so popular in the past had cracks and crevices within that people were oblivious to and perhaps there was a veneer that I was on the cusp of discovering. Now, as an American high school graduate, I think I found my answer.
Recently I read The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way by Amanda Ripley, a book gifted to me by one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. The book shocked me. Usually, I find articles and books about education to be a bit boring, but there was so much truth in Amanda’s words that her book dumbfounded me. She talked about many things, of course, following various exchange students as they learned from the smartest countries in the world (defined by test scores, which I know can be limiting and misleading, but the test rankings she discussed came from a test designed to test cognitive ability/creative thinking, not necessarily the rote memorization techniques that are often cited to disparage standardized testing). In this list, I want to talk about three things she mentioned that I personally reacted to most strongly.
1. The American education system splits up students into different tracks way too early
Amanda Ripley talked about how there was a lack of injected rigor in many American classrooms and how the world’s smartest countries delay the splitting up of kids into different educational tracks. That is, whereas everyone would take the same classes until age 16 in Finland, in the U.S., honors classes and “gifted” programs often begin as early as elementary school. The reason why this matters is because kids are young and malleable, so they often believe what they are told. Consequentially, if they are expected to be smart and told they are “gifted,” they’ll live up to those standards. Unfortunately, because American students are separated into different tracks at such young ages, many times kids who could be incredible learners end up discouraged before they’ve even had a chance to truly learn.
I can’t stress how much I agree with this. I remember hearing about kids at this other local elementary school being offered the opportunity to take math at the middle school even though they were only in 6th grade. I was so upset--the math I was learning in the classroom felt ridiculously easy, yet I had no way of learning the more advanced material I believed I could handle because such an opportunity wasn’t offered to kids in my elementary school. I had to go out of my way to teach myself material from textbooks I borrowed from the library to test into more advanced classes later on, but many students, when not given the opportunity for advancement in the first place, find no need to push themselves to get to where they could be.
2. The American education system is too obsessed with sports
I know, I know. It’s Olympics season. If I point out even any possible flaws with sports, I’m going to be mobbed. But you know what, I’ll take the risk. Please just hear me out.
When I was registering for 7th-grade classes, I knew more about the middle school’s athletic programs than I did about its classes. The same thing happened when it came to high school. The truth is, American schools are obsessed with sports. Our local newspaper covers the high school’s athletic updates in every issue without missing a beat, yet rarely mentions the academic honors that students try equally hard to achieve. This is not to fault the newspaper because frankly, I think it reporters are writing what often sells. And oh, do people want to read about sports! Amanda Ripley discussed the idea that American parents were better than basically every other nation’s parents at this kind of involvement in their children's lives: parental engagement, always watching their kids’ soccer games, always bringing snacks for basketball games, and so forth. But what Amanda Ripley found was that this sort of engagement, while nice, had essentially no effect on the students’ education. The students were not smarter or better at teamwork. They scored less on tests (especially those testing critical thinking skills) than students from countries where sports were a purely recreational activity to partake in after school but something that never could equal school in importance while a kid is growing up.
The main idea is this: American parents and schools focus so much on sports, give so much leeway to athletes (there’s a reason why many colleges lower requirements for athletic recruits, but that’s a whole other topic for another time), and spend so much money on gyms instead of paying teachers that they feel like they’ve done their job in helping their student. Except what they’ve done is the opposite: they’ve created an environment where school becomes a nuisance that stands in the way of sports for many students. By focusing so much on sports and glorifying athletes (we see snippets of this in the Stanford rape case, but that’s again a whole other article), the American education system devalues learning, leading to a lack of respect for education that ultimately circles back to the essence of the first point: kids aren’t expected to excel academically, so why would they?
Please don’t take this as me saying sports are bad. Almost every single one of my friends participated in high school sports and I know they’ve had a wonderful time. I myself played basketball competitively for many years and loved it. But my point is that the American education system is almost obsessive about sports in a way that no other country is, and it’s negatively impacting our education system. And don’t tell me this is the only way to raise Olympians. China, what many consider the antithesis of the American education system, has won just as many gold medals as the U.S. in Rio so far. (Okay, I know this is a stupid point to make because our team kicks butt at the Olympics, #GoTeamUSA, but the idea is that we know the goal of our school system isn’t to send kids to the Olympics--the point of school is to help kids learn/so they can effectively *live* in this competitive global economy--and if you think so otherwise, you’re probably part of the reason why the U.S. is not churning out the type of competitive workers it used to.)
3. The American education system makes too many excuses
One of the most enlightening things that Amanda Ripley talked about was how American teachers and schools make excuses all the time. This is what she means: In many states, even implementing a mandatory statewide high school graduation test is controversial. Officials don’t want to “unfairly” deprive kids of the opportunity to graduate. They’re too afraid kids aren’t “prepared.” But these are all excuses. Overwhelmingly, when these tests are finally implemented, the graduation rate doesn’t change. Sometimes, it even increases. That is, many American education officials don’t give students enough credit. In another example, Amanda Ripley asked a Finnish teacher about students’ backgrounds. The teacher eventually said that one girl’s family was in an extremely difficult financial situation but stressed that she was an amazing student. The teacher avoided thinking about the girl’s background too much to avoid becoming too lenient on the girl. The girl excelled both in school and in helping her family. Most importantly, her excellence in school will help her in whatever she pursues, allowing her to find a career that will help her family more immensely than whatever she could’ve done as a teenager.
In the U.S., when a student doesn’t understand something on a test, they ask the teacher. I’ve seen the teacher just outright tell the kid the answer so many times that I’ve lost count.
Finland is ranked number one in the world in education. The U.S.? Embarrassingly low.
This all ties back to the first point I made. American school systems are so focused on coddling kids that they don’t realize they’ve totally underestimated the kids’ abilities. This makes kids feel like there’s no need for them to excel past the ridiculously low standards they’re held up to, which leads to such a lapse in critical thinking skills and the ability to learn that when the company that makes apple pies for McDonald’s wanted to create jobs in the U.S. by hiring American workers for its factories, it could not find enough competent people. The CEO ended up having to open a factory in Finland to find skilled workers. The U.S. may have been able to work with low levels of expectations in the past, but in today’s global economy, we can no longer afford to make excuses for not allowing our students to achieve their potential. We can no longer be so afraid of them “failing” that we lower standards to accommodate nonexistent barriers.
I worked three jobs in 8th grade to help support my family. I had classmates whose families brought in 6-figure salaries. If the excuses that many American school districts make are true, that your background will hinder your ability to succeed, then I should’ve been struggling in my classes and my richer classmates should’ve thrived. But the opposite happened, and I argue it’s because my classmates were raised in a system that told them mediocre is just fine whereas I learned from a young age that education is to be treasured. Yes, China’s education system has so, so many flaws. But one thing it does right--and one thing that every country ranked high in the world on education does--is that it has a culture that respects education. In Finland, getting into teacher’s college is like getting into schools like the Ivy League, Duke, Notre Dame here--it’s an accomplishment. Not a choice that will land you a career with pay so low that often the brightest/most talented in the U.S. won’t even consider it as a career choice. And to have smart students… you need smart teachers.
Obviously, this is an extremely general view of the American education system and many schools tackle the problems I’ve mentioned above exceptionally. But not enough do. That’s what Amanda Ripley--and now I--want to reiterate. For all its strengths, the American education system is far from flawless.
P.S. I feel like I have to say this because I know people are going to accuse me of being ungrateful for the opportunities I've had. Of course, I'm ridiculously grateful to be able to go to school every day and to have had so many wonderful and intelligent teachers and administrators and school board members. But if you truly think education is something so precious that people should be grateful for it, then why wouldn't you want to work to make sure education gets the respect it deserves?
