Education has always been a mystery to most of the United States. However, after reading The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way by Amanda Ripley, there was a dramatic change in the way that people viewed and heard about education. It opened peoples’ eyes to show, “Which countries were teaching all of their children to think, and which were not” (24). More specifically, which countries took education more seriously. In her book, Ripley incorporates three Americans, by the names of Kim, Eric, and Tom. By gathering information about these kids’ personal experiences from traveling to other countries and back, she is able to display how other countries have increased their students’ skills by becoming more strict within their standards and curricula that they teach their students. Her information not only shows about their experiences, but how they treat education. Also, how dedicated their students, teachers, and parents are towards education.
In Kim’s case, leaving her state was an escape from the life that dragged her down every day. When she got to …show more content…
They played video games, texted in class, and watched television (191). The difference was, how serious they took their education. In the United States, “Most principles knew their ratios of low-income and minority kids by heart, like baseball players knew batting averages” (162). When the three kids went back to the United States, they said that they felt much more welcomed and warm, but that’s not the way to get good grades and become smart. The kids in the other countries did not have a relationship with their teachers, that was their teacher and they did not share any personal information like American teachers. That is one of the reasons why Finnish, Polish, and Korean kids all have good study habits and ultimately good test scores, and also, why they are a part of being “the smartest kids in the
In Kim’s case, leaving her state was an escape from the life that dragged her down every day. When she got to …show more content…
They played video games, texted in class, and watched television (191). The difference was, how serious they took their education. In the United States, “Most principles knew their ratios of low-income and minority kids by heart, like baseball players knew batting averages” (162). When the three kids went back to the United States, they said that they felt much more welcomed and warm, but that’s not the way to get good grades and become smart. The kids in the other countries did not have a relationship with their teachers, that was their teacher and they did not share any personal information like American teachers. That is one of the reasons why Finnish, Polish, and Korean kids all have good study habits and ultimately good test scores, and also, why they are a part of being “the smartest kids in the