World's Smartest Kids Analysis

The video World’s Smartest Kids was very interesting! The author, Amanda Ripley talks about how intrigued she was to learn about the world’s smartest children. During this presentation, she focuses on one of the girls that she followed during her year studying abroad in Finland. Kim, grew up in Oklahoma and was able to raise enough money to travel to Finland and study in a rural school for one year. At this school, Kim quickly realized that one of the reasons why Finland’s children were so smart was because the work that they did in school and for homework was much harder than the assignments back in the United States. She also noticed that even though the students acted the same in both countries, the children of Finland respected the education more than those in the United States. Another aspect of Finland’s educational system that varied from the U.S. was the limited amount of technology in the classroom. Teachers …show more content…
She found that for one, the teachers in Finland are required to go through a very rigorous teacher preparation program. In fact, only 1 in every 20 prospective teachers actually become certified to teach in Finland’s public schools. Amanda also found that in most countries is it socially valuable to be smart in school. In other words, children are looked fondly upon if they are succeeding in school. Finally, Amanda was able to participate in a PIZA test, which is one of the many standardized tests given to students in Finland. This test, unlike the standardized tests in the U.S. is mostly short answer. It is rare to find a multiple choice question on said test. Furthermore, the questions on this test require students to think critically about the information provided. Therefore, it is not uncommon for one test question to have 15 correct responses. Students must use their critical thinking skills and details in order to answer questions