She shares that South Korea uses hagwons or private tutoring schools that have created a culture where students spend all day at school and study until their bedtime just to attempt to score in the top 2% and achieve university acceptance. She reports that Finland takes a different approach. Finland’s teacher education programs are rigorously lengthy and very selective as to who is accepted. In her report she finds that Poland like U.S. has a high rate of poverty, yet the country has greatly improved their academic outcomes. Poland reforms focused on more funds for vocational school that reported under-performing academic outcomes while intensifying education curriculum and standards. Outside these countries idiosyncrasies, the one underlying commonality of these top-performing countries is that they use rigorous educational expectations and standards that are reliable with testing that maintains significance for the students’ future …show more content…
Their data table presents USA with 23.1% childhood poverty and we can conclude that it is much higher than other countries leaving only Romania 2.4% higher. It is shocking to know U.S as a superpower that has the second highest poverty rate and it is among the riches nations in the world. How can this be? Robert Putnam presents ideas that the increased gaps for those that have and those that do not is directly related to the breakdown of communities and families in his book “Our Kids”. He shares experiences of students, families, racial and class differences from each of the four U.S. quadrants from the 1950s to our current decade. It is a rather sobering account that provides evidence of cultural gaps within American societies. He shares an account about two black girls that are left to raise themselves after their parents are killed due to debauched lives and gang relations. One of them is given a scholarship opportunity but struggles navigating her way through the post secondary educational systems and drops out. Putnam points out that she has desire, ambition, and intelligence but lacks the support systems related to cultural capital needed to attain social mobility, (Putnam,