Name: The Smartest Kids in the World
Rating: 4.4 (20 reviews)
Author: Amanda Ripley

Introduction

What’s in it for me? Discover why you need to be a coach to your children.

Think back for a second: what was it like when you were in elementary school? Who was your favorite teacher? Do you remember what the classroom looked like? Was it a pleasant experience or did you have to be dragged to school every morning?

Whether we liked it or not at the time, school is an integral part of a child’s life. What’s more, the education that children get also carries a profound societal significance: well-educated children make for productive employees, and productive employees make for a robust economy.

No wonder then that many countries follow the results of the tri-annual Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) closely. They are eager to know how their country’s education system stacks up against the rest, and more importantly, what can be learned from those that perform best.

In these blinks you’ll discover, among other things,

Why there’s a special police force in South Korea to stop school children studying after 11 p.m.
Why you should be your child’s coach, not their cheerleader, when it comes to education
Why even the students feel that the US high school curriculum is too easy

Key idea 1 of 10

The PISA test was a new kind of critical thinking test for comparing nations’ education programs.

Everyone knows that a nation’s future depends on its children and on the education bestowed upon them. This is why countries across the globe have always been interested in comparing their schools and education systems.

In 2000 a new kind of test was introduced for this purpose: PISA.

Developed by the OECD, this test was meant to measure 15-year-old school pupils’ abilities in three areas: reading, math and science. But PISA differed from previous tests in that it was specifically designed to test students’ critical thinking abilities rather than what they had learned by heart in the classroom.

For example, students were not required to remember math formulas themselves, but were provided with them in the test. They also had to interpret and analyze new information from, for example, graphs and written texts, and then use that information to solve novel kinds of problems they had not encountered in the classroom.

These kinds of questions were meant to measure the students’ problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.

Why?

Because these skills were deemed to be the most important for students if they were to thrive in the demanding, modern workplace.

Indeed, this notion has been borne out by later data: economists have found a near linear correlation between the PISA scores and the long-term economic growth of a nation.

It seems then that better critical-thinking skills translate directly to increased productivity. The obvious knock-on effect of a productive workforce is that it attracts companies seeking good employees, thus attracting investments and further boosting economic growth in turn.

No wonder all eyes are on this new test.

Key idea 2 of 10

The PISA test has revealed some surprising differences in the abilities of students across the globe.

As the results of the first PISA test were unveiled in 2001, a shock wave traveled through the education field.

Countries such as the United States and Germany were surprised at their comparatively low scores, while the top-performing country, Finland, was equally astonished by its high standing.

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Key idea 3 of 10

Korean school children study all day long, under pressure to make it into the country’s top universities.

The school day in Korea is very different to that in the Western world:

Though classes typically last from morning till around 4 p.m., as elsewhere in the world, in Korea students stay in school for another five hours to study for college entrance exams independently.

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Key idea 4 of 10

In Korea, hagwons provide better quality teaching than schools because they are at the mercy of the market.

If you were to walk into a class in a Korean school at 10 a.m., you would probably be surprised: at least a third of the students would be asleep.

In fact, many students are so overwhelmed by the demands of the long days of study that they sleep during school classes, preferring to save their energy for their later lessons at the hagwons.

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Key idea 5 of 10

Korean parents take on the role of the child’s coach, American parents that of the cheerleader.

As you’ve no doubt surmised, Korean parents are somewhat notorious for their tendency to push their children hard when it comes to academic achievement.

But more importantly, they take on the role of coaches in their children’s lives when they are young. In fact, they consider educating their children to be part of their job as parents.

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Key idea 6 of 10

The Finnish education system relies on the high quality of teachers.

As noted before, Finnish students have gotten consistently high rankings in each PISA ranking since the test’s induction. But in contrast to South Korea, Finnish students do not study all day and night. So what explains these high scores?

In short, the Finnish teacher education system.

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Key idea 7 of 10

Poland drastically raised its PISA rankings by making reforms like the introduction of standardized testing.

Another interesting country in terms of PISA results is Poland, as it has managed to greatly improve its PISA standing since the advent of the test, now ranking alongside the United States despite high levels of child poverty.

Let’s examine how this was achieved.

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Key idea 8 of 10

The standards of the United States’ education curriculum should be raised considerably.

Let’s examine how the United States might implement some of the measures used in Poland.

Firstly, the standards of the curriculum should definitely be raised.

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Key idea 9 of 10

The United States is not reaping the benefits of standardized testing, and is tracking students too early.

What about the second major reform the Poles implemented: standardized testing?

In short, it seems to be a very beneficial practice.

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Key idea 10 of 10

Final Summary

The key message in this book:

To improve the sorry state of the education system, the United States must adopt measures like a more rigorous standard curriculum, more consequential standardized testing as well as delayed tracking of students based on performance. At the same time, more must be demanded of teachers. Parents too must play their part in their children's education by acting as their coaches.

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The Smartest Kids in the World summary