Having been a recipient of public education in both the US and abroad....I found this to be of interest.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/b...st-kids-in-the-world.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Poland kicks our ass. POLAND!!!!!
Thanks for the article.
Its is one among about what I'd estimate to be about 8 billion that repeat the same mantra, but I found this paragraph most interesting:
Kim soon notices something else that’s different about her school in Pietarsaari, and one day she works up the courage to ask her classmates about it. “Why do you guys care so much?” Kim inquires of two Finnish girls. “I mean, what makes you work hard in school?” The students look baffled by her question. “It’s school,” one of them says. “How else will I graduate and go to university and get a good job?” It’s the only sensible answer, of course, but its irrefutable logic still eludes many American students, a quarter of whom fail to graduate from high school. Ripley explains why: Historically, Americans “hadn’t needed a very rigorous education, and they hadn’t gotten it. Wealth had made rigor optional.” But now, she points out, “everything had changed. In an automated, global economy, kids needed to be driven; they need to know how to adapt, since they would be doing it all their lives. They needed a culture of rigor.”
This is extremely poignant, but if wealth makes rigor optional, then why is it that economically disadvantaged American students seem to have made rigor MORE OPTIONAL?
But not ALL economically disadvantaged students and not all wealthy students have made rigor optional: Some already have a "culture of rigor." Some have do not seem to be relying on a "safety net" (parents, trust funds, and government).
