The Smartest Kids In The World

The Smartest Kids in the World

By Amanda Ripley

Along with the rest of America, I have been thinking this weekend about things that I am thankful for. My education is one of the things that came most prominently to mind. There are a couple of reasons for that: (1) I had a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner with fellow medical students hosted by two professors and (2) one of my former professors, who was a gifted and kind teacher, passed away this past week. These two events made me think about how much the tendrils of my education have reached into all areas of my life, shaping my attitudes and my worldview, introducing me to wonderful people that I truly love, and allowing me to find work that is challenging, rewarding, and exciting. It's hard for me to imagine who I might be without the influence of the people and places that have educated me through all these years, and this weekend, I felt very grateful for their time and teaching.

Although, being honest, I spend a lot of time thinking about education in general, and my education specifically. Perhaps this is a side effect of being in the 23rd grade. Perhaps it's the residuals of that summer I spent in Teach For America training. Either way, education is a topic that I've been interested in for a long time. I've had my eye on this book for quite a while, so when it turned up on a bargain table and I had a gift card, I picked it up.

The Smartest Kids in the World takes the conversation about education away from local politics (that so often dominate the conversation in America) to look at differences from an international perspective. Ripley follows three American exchange students: one each in Finland, South Korea, and Poland. Through the experiences of these students, Ripley talks about the differences in educational systems around the world, and the corresponding differences in international test scores. She focuses primarily on the PISA, an international test that requires critical thinking as opposed to wrote memorization.

The author is a journalist, and the book feels more like an (extremely) long form article than anything else. It skims the surface of these issues rather than going into great depth. There is not much here that even a peripheral watcher of education like myself hasn't thought about before. She doesn't tell nearly enough of the stories of her representative students to make them feel like real fleshed out characters, squandering an opportunity that could have allowed her to say something new about these issues.

So, read this book if the following ideas sound new or interesting: Teachers in Finland are more rigorously screened and trained than those in most other nations, and their work in the classroom reflects this intellectual strength. The extreme high pressure end-of-high-school exam in South Korea is associated with a lucrative test prep industry, stressed and sleep-deprived students, and parents who think of themselves as "educational coaches." Expectations and peer attitudes influence school performance, and tracking students early leads to poor outcomes for the lowest track. Grit, hard work, and a willingness to stick with it when things get hard are all as important as pure brains. Most other nations in the world do not have nearly the focus on athletics that Americans do, and in many nations, there is no such thing as a "school team." Rigor and high expectations lead to better student performance around the US and around the world, regardless of socioeconomic factors. (Shout out to TFA! I recognized that one.)

Overall, The Smartest Kids in the World is an acceptable general interest read. But for me, the most enlightening thing in the book was Ripley's repeated observation that no nation is satisfied with what they've got. (Apparently one of the things that you hear traveling the world talking about education is people from all around the world complaining about their local educational system). If you've thought about this a lot, this volume is too slim to offer anything new. However, if you haven't thought about education much before, this is an accessible introduction that gets to some serious issues not always mentioned in discussions focused on the American system alone.

And yes, it left me feeling extremely grateful for a number of things: parents who read to me as a child and encouraged my love of books and words and science from the first, what little bit of grit I've got, and Miss Porter's - a place where I was truly challenged in ways that made me a better thinker. I am extremely grateful for all 23 grades of my education so far, and for the long weekend off that allowed me to read something about education in between all the education I'm still getting in pediatrics and neuroscience. Appreciation for the process is sometimes the best motivator... so back to work I go.