-- Posted by mcdouga at 1:24 am on April 28, 2008 OECD's latest PISA survey of 15 year olds in 57 countries finds Finland in the top spot followed by Hong Kong-China and then Canada. Yet the world's richest nation scores significantly below the OECD average. United States scored an upper rank of 24 out of the 57 and a lower rank of 35 out of 57 countries. What is the problem with America's education system? http://www.oecd.org/document/60/0,3343,de_2649_201185_39700732_1_1_1_1,00.html -- Posted by Radon at 1:53 am on April 28, 2008 Hey, where's Sweden? We should be up there. Anyway, cheers to my Finnish brothers. Top notch education over there, no question about it. If I'm not mistaken they have a heavy emphasis on practical applications (especially within the realm of natural science). The whole "show don't tell" philosophy. -- Posted by norock at 6:36 am on April 28, 2008 Those tests are a bit unfair, though I do not deny that the typical american school is behind many others. In places like china and many other eur-asian countries, children get weeded out since elementary school. The intelligent ones go on, the less intelligent go on to learn a trade. In middle school, the very intelligent go on to better schools, the rest go on to learn more skilled trades. so that, even at 15, the kids in schools are generally only the very smart ones. Also, america has that little "no child left behind" policy, which not only stunts the speed and depth of material covered in classes, but also ensures that even kids with no potential or drive for education HAVE to go to school. -- Posted by sunnypepper at 3:58 pm on April 30, 2008 You get graded from grade 1 in America, right? That might be a problem. The kids might only care about getting a good grade, instead of what they should be caring about, learning the stuff. It's too much focus on competition. In Finland, I believe they have grades from sixth grade. Then they have learnt that too accomplish something, you have to LEARN it, not just remember it from the day before and then forgetting all about it, or cheating on tests to get a good grade. However, Norway has grades from 8th grade, but our schools aren't doing too well...