Heather Norris
The
Smartest Kids in the World: Final Exam
In the book, “The Smartest Kids in
the World,” by Amanda Ripley, Tom, Kim, and Eric all leave their American lives
and educations to tread off to foreign lands and explore what makes the
education systems so effective in countries ranked highest according to he PISA
test created by Andreas Schlechier and Thomas Postlethwaite which is intended
to rank and measure the skills of young adults ages fifteen years of age.
However, this was no ordinary foreign exchange trip. Amanda Ripley was a
reporter who despised doing stories about the education system. That is, until,
she had received an assignment on a major character who was destined to change
the face of the Washington D.C. public school system. Her curiosity had peaked
by that point, and she was determined to find answers and solutions to the
cracks and crevices of the Education systems all over the world. She wondered
what factors and variables in the lives of children regarding their upbringing
and circumstances affected their ability to have a quality education. Her first
step towards easing her curiosity was to assign three American teenagers of
different backgrounds into three different countries ranked among the best
according to the PISA in order to have them report/ record their experiences
for research purposes. Eric, who left his comfortable life in Minnetonka,
Minnesota to go to Busan, South Korea for a second senior year. While his
friends were away at the colleges of their dreams, he furthered his education
as well as fulfilled his own curiosity regarding education in different
countries. Coming from a Private Educational Institution ranked among the highest
in the United States and finishing off his senior year achieving near the top
of his class, one would think he’d be well equipped for any intense learning
environment. He was not prepared for what he signed up for. His new found
insightful discoveries regarding the extreme contrast between the supposed
mediocre School System in the United States, the highest ranking countries, and
how each achieves such esteem proved to be the most fascinating of them all.
Eric knew what social and cultural
customs to exhibit in order to survive in North Korea, but it seemed that
nothing could’ve prepared him for the intense and thorough nature of the Education
System. Entering into his first day of school, coming all the way from the
United States, Eric was welcomed with, literally, an entire hallway of
screaming fangirls awaiting a new face to ease, what appeared to be, an endless
cycle of the daily mundane. While Eric was techniquely choosing to redo his
entire senior year, he was assigned, by the administrators, to a classroom
environment with underclassmen. This was not due to any lack of intellect on
his part, but a lack of social interaction he may have received had he been
placed in his own age group. They had explained to Eric that the juniors and
seniors who were closer to his age group do not talk with anyone because they
are so consumed with their studies. In Korea, the tests which kids are required
to take, do not simply determine whether they can even get into college, but
what caste they are put into. Only the top one percent of students are accepted
into Korea’s prestigious Colleges, so it is culturally drilled into the minds
of students that they must do well in school in order to succeed. On Eric’s
first day, he entered a classroom filled with what appeared to be normal,
talkative, technology obsessed teenagers. As the teacher walked in, the
students quickly put away their toys and talks for class to begin. Not exactly
wide eyed, Eric soon began to notice the odd fact that a few students had
fallen asleep during class. Eric was expecting the teacher to yell and scream
in discontentment, but to his surprise, she grabbed a stick with a stuffed animal
attached to the end and lightly tapped (“love touched”) the students to wake
them up. He wondered why the students were so tired and why they didn’t get
yelled at by the teacher for falling asleep during her class because he knew
that, in Minnetonka, falling asleep in class would’ve resulted in either public
humiliation, a seriously stern lecture, or a detention. While students in South
Korea spent up to twelve hours studying, Eric got to go home after a mere seven
hours in school. The school claimed that “They didn’t expect him to go through
such a rigorous process because he is not used to it.” rigorous process that
included school for eight hours, tutorials with teachers for two and a half
hours, and two and a half hours in tutoring at hagwons. The students took their
learning so seriously and slept so often during actual school hours that a
majority of them carried arm pillows that allow them to sleep on their desks
without discomfort. The purpose behind the studying was just as sinister as the
act itself. In Korea, it seemed that if you were not at the top percent of your
class in school, you were considered a failure at life because in order to have
a fulfilling life, according to the Koreans, one must maintain a GPA higher
than the mountain tops.
To think that Koreans gave up the
chance at a social life and free time as teenagers baffled Eric because in
America, school had the potential to be fun with all of the extracurricular
activities. Instead of socializing a football games, singing in choirs, playing
in a band, playing baseball, or playing football, these kids just studied all
of the time. He thought to himself how miserable it all must be. It baffled
Eric to think about how much of a difference the system was compared to the
United States. Was this the price that Koreans pay for such high testing scores
on the PISA? What was it doing to the minds and futures of the kids? In
America, teachers were paid very little, and didn’t even have to have a degree
in some places. There was more of an emphasis on extracurricular in some states
than actual classes, and studying didn’t seem necessary if one was in basic
courses vs. AP or advanced courses. Here, in order to be a teacher, one must
have graduated at the top ten percent of their class and gone to college, couldn’t
get into pretty much any college if one scored lower than the top one percent because
there were no extracurricular anything, and always studied to assure a place in
the top percentile. It seemed to tip the scales in terms of balance. The
education director in Korea knew that the system was unhealthy and unethical
and took measures to lessen the constant emphasis on the unhealthy habits that
students felt necessary to form. Eric breathed a sigh of relief when he found
out that in his time working with the education system, the number of hagwon’s open
for business went down. It seemed as though times were changing for the future
of Koreans, and it was time to accept a different way of thinking about
education.
With regards to the solution of the
education system, it is so important to find balance between the emphasis on Extracurricular
and Education as a whole. In order to make children want to learn and succeed,
one must hire teachers who are effective vs. the coach who had to go through secondary
schooling in order to be able to teach. Countries need to reform the System
from the inside out. By setting higher standards for who runs the classroom,
one is not only setting higher standards for the students, but for the
administrators as well. The balance comes with engraving into the minds of
children at a young age that school comes first, but it’s okay to have fun for
at least an hour a day. Make it culturally known that neither extreme is going
to result in the healthy minds of engaged students or a thriving system as a
whole. Balance is the key to healthy, productive minds and the most esteemed
education system a country can have.http://kkallas901.blogspot.com/
