The Smartest Kids in the World - And How They Got That Way

Well researched content. Providing real life examples made a world of difference and made it closer to home since I have my own who will be entering middle and high in the next few years. Scares me at the same time helps me look at the right place for solution to this most important crises of our times in my opinion.

A delightful read backed up with solid facts. What was most interesting was how beautifully and seamlessly the author has woven in statistics and important pieces if information in a story form following the lives of different teachers and students.
It would be interesting to see what research has to say about a country like India where the gurukul system existed for the longest time ever and now it's a race to stay on top of things with parents and students aiming high for excellent results at 'board exams'.
Good book!

Amazing Book, Amanda gets deep down into several school systems to figure out first hand what is going on. Would liked the book to be a little longer, but definitively worth the read to all education enthusiasts. It is quite fun and not heavy as similar books.

A great and thought provoking read. Clearly illustrates the different approaches and pluses/minuses of education in other countries - Finland, South Korea, & Poland specifically. I particularly appreciate the stories of the US exchange students as they studied abroad in those three countries. An important book to read to understand how American education compares (and what it delivers) compared to other leading nations.

A book that every teacher, parent, and tax payer should read. As a professional it made some of the teaching methods in the US much clearer, and showed ways that could make giant steps in improving our whole educational system to better instruct the student and teacher. An easy and interesting read for anyone.

This is a very eye opening and yet confirming book about the short comings of the American Educational system. We need to make drastic changes in order to prepare our students to compete on the world stage. The author highlights the short comings and the need to increase the rigor and our expectations for our students. The insights given by the students in the book, especially those given by students studying in America from other countries should be alarming, addressed and incorporated in to the planning for the upcoming school year. It is very clear in this book that we need to require more from ourselves as adults/educators and the students in schools all across the country.

Recommend this insightful book for parents and those interested in children's education in the U.S.. All children can understand math concepts if introduced early in a rigorous classroom led by a teacher who understands and can express math concepts. Children need informed parents and both need teacher organizations and politicians willing to allow our system to progress. The author follows American students in schools in Finland, Korea, and Poland. Class size, money per pupil, tech toys, and family income are secondary to the quality and standards of teacher education and the system for rewarding teachers. Students will respond and learn any discipline.

I found the following of exchange students to be a refreshing approach. It allowed for the real stories to emerge. What struck me though was the one dimensional focus one academic achievement at the expense of the other extr curricula activities that mould young people. For example sport school plays etc are seen as deviations from the academic goal of rigorous critical thinking. To me the ideal is a system where both are seen as important and are mutually supportive.

The book identifies the main drivers of performance in education across societies. It is amazing the role that self-discipline and will power have in determining the success of students. You also cannot underestimate the importance of well educated, well trained teachers who can serve as providers of information, direction and mentoring for students. The book also speaks clearly about having a coherent strategy, adequate funding and appropriate autonomy. Easy read, but very informative. I think she's got hold of something here.

Interesting analysis of different school systems, but not sure how relevant this still is, as results on the test have changed significantly. Does have lessons for American education, however. If teachers don't demand perfection, it is unlikely they will get anything close to it.

This book is good in that it follows several exchange students and gives their experiences and highlights pros and cons. It gets to be one of those books where the point could be made with a lot less verbiage. Again it sparks ideas and other ways of looking at all aspects of education here in the USA.

Amanda Ripley resists the temptation to give a simple explanation to a complex phonomenon. She approaches the question of how kids become smarter by looking at the kids and where they live, rather than at test scores. It does not read like a text book from ED 101. It reads like a series of Magazine articles skillfully edited to create a coherent narrative. As an educator I found it to be authentic and thought provoking.

Very interesting information about the world's educational system and the shame the United States should feel for their lack of not keeping up. We spend more money then the other countries but we are behind. Sounds like the US lacks desire and we are lazy with the gifts we have.

This book is very is very well written combining factual information for the reader wanting to know what the differences are between the US and other leading education systems and anecdotal storyline of real kids as they try out each others school experiences. Definitely a good buy!

I found this book riveting yet so complex because it's about a topic and stories that dint have Disney-sequel endings. The stories are so real, and the data they tell is so fascinating....a must read for educators and CARING parents.

I happened to stroll around three high schools in my neighborhood within two weeks after I read this book. The sport facility in those school are world class, better than that of my college, best in Taiwan for research; The book reflects the hard truth about US high school - the academic expectation is not critical, but the parent involvement through school sport events are much more important. School is for education by studying hard, and the kids get the wrong message.

The children of the world are all on stage together, and provided they have the support to stand there the studious, hard working students will lead the world, irrespective of their country of origin. This book is a dramatic testimony of what can be achieved in education.

Following 3 American high school students during their year abroad in schools in Korea, Finland, and Poland is a brilliant concept. Amanda Ripley really delivers an insightful and fast-paced survey of what really works and why in education across the country, and what the US can learn.

This is a good book with some insightful discussion of the topics. However, it only touches the surface and makes some assumptions that do not hold true for the United States. Nevertheless, the book does make some good and valid points; things that the United States will have to look at and consider to improvement its educational system.

I liked learning about things that worked well. I would love to read a follow up to the book. Based on the findings, a school that infers X from the book and implements. Can it be successfully in inner city?

As a father of two school age children wondering about their education quality each school day, Amanda's book has cut through a lot of noise and confusion I experience. She has compared at a human level why some education systems work and some fail. Her valuable insights come through in a fun fast clear read. Thank you!

The need for rigor and respect for teachers in US schools is well argued. Though, I felt diverting from the discussion and comparison of school systems to personal issues of exchange students was unnecessary. I understand the desire to create a narrative, but it was too obvious and it came across as reaching.

A well-written & very interesting book. The research was reported objectively but illustrated nicely with anecdotes and observations, while the perspectives of the exchange students brought home the immense differences between education systems worldwide. As a teacher, I read it with equal parts of hope and frustration, especially as so many of the points in this book seem to contradict opinions I'd come to consider as facts. Worth reading.

As an educator, I found the book interesting, informative, and disturbing. What will happen to our children when they are unable to compete in the world economic community? We absolutely must revamp our educational system in the U.S.A.

This book was extremely helpful in taking a look at three very different educational systems in comparison to the United States. Many lawmakers and politicians only look at test scores and wonder why we don't score near the top, but this book by Amanda Ripley give a little insight as to why these countries are doing much better on international standardized tests. Ms. Ripley also does a great job of identifying why American students seem to struggle with the international test even though they clearly have more technology and resources available to them via the classroom and the teacher.

I love the analysis that Ms. Ripley conducted by following three exchange students to Finland, Poland, and South Korea. What is interesting is that we did not find a cookie-cutter system, but rather, three unique ways to approach the question of education. I think the only issue with the book is that I don't believe it's highly suggested as to how to fix the problem in the United States. The change to the Common Core curriculum has been a hotly debated issue, even politically, but as an educator, the state tests that we are seeing now are definitely more challenging than what students have seen in years past. Ms. Ripley does highlight some of the challenges that schools face in trying to implement changes and how frustrating the process is for education reform.

I also enjoyed the analysis that Ms. Ripley did in identifying the differences in what parents value in the American school system as opposed to the systems of Finland, Poland, and South Korea. I think her account is spot-on, as many high schools are much more recognized for athletic achievements than academic achievements. This is a problem that does not happen in European schools because sports are not part of school. Students participate in club athletics that would translate to "rec leagues" in the US. I do wish we could have a little more from the recommendation side on how we could better prepare students and teachers in increasing academic rigor, as many schools confuse rigor with "more work".

Overall, very informative read, and if you are interested in how schools function in other parts of the world, this is a must-read.

It reveals what a child needs in the education. It is honest feedback, scheduled in-depth syllabus, good teachers, parents that coach, and less fuss about sport.
I wish the book can cover more education superpower countries and make less reference to the states.

Everyone involved in education, including parents, should read this book. Until we, as a nation, hold our citizens to a higher standard with regard to education, we run the risk of our country becoming nothing more than a sea of mediocrity.

This book should be read by anyone interested in education. It demonstrates that we should never underestimate our children or their ability to learn. It also presents realistic and attainable ways to greatly improve our education system in the U.S.

Everyone wants to know how to do education right but as Amanda Ripley points out, there are many factors when it comes to creating smart kids and a successful education system. She follows three American students who spent a year going to school in Finland, Korea and Poland, the three most successful countries when it comes to test scores on PISA (An international test that doesn't only test knowledge but also problem solving and critical thinking skills). One of the big points that came up and really rang true for me is that if the position of being a teacher is not highly respected and teachers are not put to rigorous standards, it translates directly to the quality of education that students will get. We have to make teaching a better paid and better respected position. There are other factors of course, but giving a teacher and excellent education and then giving the teacher autonomy and room to direct his or her class how he or she sees fit, there are bound to be better outcomes.

I recently read Amanda Ripley's "The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way" and was glad someone did this work. Yes, I knew that advocates for gifted children or advocates for teachers' unions would get their hackles up over many of the points that Ripley made. They might say that clearly she doesn't "understand" the needs of gifted children, blah-blah-blah. Clearly she doesn't understand how "unfair" it would be to keep "normal" people (i.e., those who weren't the best students themselves) out of teaching with her observation that schools must have the smartest and best trained teachers from the population if their students are to do well, become smart (i.e., live and learn up to their potential).

Ripley’s book is about high schools in the United States, Finland, South Korea, and Poland.

But, what Ripley wrote resonated with me, as I know it actually will with many who do understand the needs of the gifted, whom I will specifically discuss at the end of this. Here are a few reasons:

• Ripley advocates changing university teacher training programs from one of the lowest thresholds for admittance to a threshold no lower than the top third of their high school graduating classes.
• She advocates continuing supervision, mentoring and education for the teachers once they are hired to teach.
• She advocates letting the teachers decide how to teach, what to use to support those lessons, and how to decide if their students are learning what they’ve been taught. Remember, the teacher continues to be part of a team system that offers support, input, feedback and encouragement to him or her.
• She points out that the smartest kids in the world know how to use what they have learned. They know how to apply it and interpret when to apply a concept, thought, idea or skill. Real life. Thinking skills. Reasons why we just learned something.

I used to teach elementary school. I joke that I was among the last of the generations of women who thought their only career options were nurse or teacher. I chose teacher because, in my experience at that time, I knew I’d be on my own, make my own decisions, and not be bossed around by say, a doctor (the way nurses were). Remember, I grew up during a time when girls were supposed to understand that the constant use of the male pronouns was understood to mean both male and female. Well, we didn’t actually understand that, but I digress.

So, two things have changed mightily since that time. First, smart women have tons of career options, so far fewer of them choose teaching. (Keep in mind that the low pay has been unappealing to men for a long time, and as most men always had the option of any career they wanted, few ever aspired to become teachers compared to women). Second, today’s teachers are micro-managed, told exactly what to teach and how to assess for whether or not their students learned. I assume there have continued to be good teachers who worked around the system, and I applaud them, of course.

So, what about gifted children and their needs?

When their teachers are smart, creative, and allowed to make decisions based upon the needs of the students in their classes, all students truly do benefit. Ripley is opposed to ability grouping. In many ways, so am I. Almost any topic or concept can be taught at many levels. It’s how you individualize the same topic. It’s how you enable students to work together, choose with whom to work on certain topics – and on different days! It’s the deep understanding, mastery and love of the topics that a smart, well-trained teacher brings to the students. It’s the nerve, creativity, and the “why can’t we do this?” attitude that smart, well-trained teachers bring to their schools when they are empowered to do what needs to be done.

Ripley’s book is about high schools. Most people focus on the quality of our high schools and I personally think that it’s the elementary and middle school levels that need the most change. Just putting it out there.

So, yes. I liked the book, I liked the investigation into this topic that Ripley did when preparing for the book, and I recommend it.

Everyone wants to know how to do education right but as Amanda Ripley points out, there are many factors when it comes to creating smart kids and a successful education system. She follows three American students who spent a year going to school in Finland, Korea and Poland, the three most successful countries when it comes to test scores on PISA (An international test that doesn't only test knowledge but also problem solving and critical thinking skills). One of the big points that came up and really rang true for me is that if the position of being a teacher is not highly respected and teachers are not put to rigorous standards, it translates directly to the quality of education that students will get. We have to make teaching a better paid and better respected position. There are other factors of course, but giving a teacher and excellent education and then giving the teacher autonomy and room to direct his or her class how he or she sees fit, there are bound to be better outcomes.

I recently read Amanda Ripley's "The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way" and was glad someone did this work. Yes, I knew that advocates for gifted children or advocates for teachers' unions would get their hackles up over many of the points that Ripley made. They might say that clearly she doesn't "understand" the needs of gifted children, blah-blah-blah. Clearly she doesn't understand how "unfair" it would be to keep "normal" people (i.e., those who weren't the best students themselves) out of teaching with her observation that schools must have the smartest and best trained teachers from the population if their students are to do well, become smart (i.e., live and learn up to their potential).

Ripley’s book is about high schools in the United States, Finland, South Korea, and Poland.

But, what Ripley wrote resonated with me, as I know it actually will with many who do understand the needs of the gifted, whom I will specifically discuss at the end of this. Here are a few reasons:

• Ripley advocates changing university teacher training programs from one of the lowest thresholds for admittance to a threshold no lower than the top third of their high school graduating classes.
• She advocates continuing supervision, mentoring and education for the teachers once they are hired to teach.
• She advocates letting the teachers decide how to teach, what to use to support those lessons, and how to decide if their students are learning what they’ve been taught. Remember, the teacher continues to be part of a team system that offers support, input, feedback and encouragement to him or her.
• She points out that the smartest kids in the world know how to use what they have learned. They know how to apply it and interpret when to apply a concept, thought, idea or skill. Real life. Thinking skills. Reasons why we just learned something.

I used to teach elementary school. I joke that I was among the last of the generations of women who thought their only career options were nurse or teacher. I chose teacher because, in my experience at that time, I knew I’d be on my own, make my own decisions, and not be bossed around by say, a doctor (the way nurses were). Remember, I grew up during a time when girls were supposed to understand that the constant use of the male pronouns was understood to mean both male and female. Well, we didn’t actually understand that, but I digress.

So, two things have changed mightily since that time. First, smart women have tons of career options, so far fewer of them choose teaching. (Keep in mind that the low pay has been unappealing to men for a long time, and as most men always had the option of any career they wanted, few ever aspired to become teachers compared to women). Second, today’s teachers are micro-managed, told exactly what to teach and how to assess for whether or not their students learned. I assume there have continued to be good teachers who worked around the system, and I applaud them, of course.

So, what about gifted children and their needs?

When their teachers are smart, creative, and allowed to make decisions based upon the needs of the students in their classes, all students truly do benefit. Ripley is opposed to ability grouping. In many ways, so am I. Almost any topic or concept can be taught at many levels. It’s how you individualize the same topic. It’s how you enable students to work together, choose with whom to work on certain topics – and on different days! It’s the deep understanding, mastery and love of the topics that a smart, well-trained teacher brings to the students. It’s the nerve, creativity, and the “why can’t we do this?” attitude that smart, well-trained teachers bring to their schools when they are empowered to do what needs to be done.

Ripley’s book is about high schools. Most people focus on the quality of our high schools and I personally think that it’s the elementary and middle school levels that need the most change. Just putting it out there.

So, yes. I liked the book, I liked the investigation into this topic that Ripley did when preparing for the book, and I recommend it.

This book explains why America's educational system is falling behind those of Finland, Korea Poland, and many other countries. Our children are expected to know a lot, but are not taught to THINK ! State-wide testing creates dull pedagogy. American teachers are trained; Finland hires schools hires the brightest college graduates, pays them well, and trusts them to create stimulating.curricula.

This is a brilliant addition to education policy literature. Not only does it offer stunning insights that will be useful to those tasked with forming education policy in the US and elsewhere. The material is also presented in a way that is easy to read and remember. Along with key and compelling statistics it is laced with poignant stories of US students studying abroad in the education "super power" countries and recounting of the experiences of foreign students in the US. The US is on a rapid downward trajectory as far as it's ability to develop our kids' readiness to compete in the global economy. Many answers to our challenges and certainly the key questions confronting us are presented in this book. It should be required reading for every educator and parent in the US (and elsewhere).

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The experiences and opinions of the young men and women gave particular insight into where we are going wrong.
I recommend this book to any individual who wants to view the educational successes and failures of the world through the eyes of the youth actually going to these schools.

As journalist, Ripley uses alternative ways for researching student performance in schools around the world (Korea, Finland, and Poland) through collaboration of three international interchange students, who lived for an entire year in those countries. She studies accurately the foundations of PISA proposal, virtues and limitations, wondering if this test can really do what it promises: to evaluate critical thinking. She took personally the test and concluded it can do something much better and that's important. The analysis is enormously interesting, with a charming journalist flavor, showing ups and downs of schooling: virtues from Finland (the best system), tutor industry in Korea and pitfalls in teacher education in Poland. We get a very good practical idea from each system, because a journalist want always to see what happens.

Ostensibly, this book starts out as case studies of three US students who go abroad to experience education in "more successful" countries than the US, where success is defined by country ranking on the PISA language and math results. These case studies are touching, often interesting, but very uneven - they really are a hook for a much broader examination of the factors that seem to correlate with the relatively poor standing of the US (especially in math). As an educational psychologist, I would say some of the research references used to support these factors get sloppy - still there was much that in the book that's worthy of reflection and action. Her emphasis on rigor is important - yes, a lot of academic content is difficult, not intuitive, and we do students a disservice by letting many of them get away with self-messaging early on that they just aren't good at some kinds of critical knowledge and skills. Her critiques of our country's overemphasis on school sports and unsupportable spending on technology also seem laudable. Sadly, because most of us are not going to be able to change anything major about schools anytime soon, I think Ripley's interpretation of PISA's parenting surveys actually are the most interesting and actionable. Besides the obvious advice that parents should read daily to young children, I really liked the point that parents should regularly talk to their children "about things larger than themselves." (This seems especially important in our social media preoccupation with "self" age.)

The one part of the book I found really disappointing was when Ripley tried to point to examples of schools that were doing the right things in the US. She gives examples from the BASIS and Success Academy Charters. These schools report very high achievement scores and graduation rates, often serving neighborhoods with significant poverty rates. While these claims are technically true, they are distorted because of extremely high student attrition rates (e.g., always look at the size of the 12th grade graduating class relative to how many 9th graders entered). Most of these students didn't move away - they were "encouraged" to leave when their behavior was at odds with expectations and/or their test scores didn't allow them to matriculate to the next grade. Furthermore, these schools have extremely high rates of teacher attrition - teachers usually are paid less, work longer hours, are given less prep time, and often aren't certified (leaving aside the whole issue of relying on staffing from TFA). Holding up these schools as examples seems like a great irony, and the author did not do her due diligence. Surely, the most important take-away from the whole book was that the three comparison countries had outstanding, well-respected, and relatively well-paid teachers. Finland got them by closing down most teacher prep schools and being highly selective of those who were admitted to the few outstanding schools left - and then training them superbly. Korea got them in free-market conditions where the best teachers gravitated to the hagwons rather than the public daytime schools. Poland got them by opening a whole new tier of schools that attracted better applicants. Bottom line - the US is not going to improve via a few charters that staff with underpaid, burned-out teachers - the author should conclude with her earlier argument that all US teachers need come from our top tier of graduates, get in-depth content and in-class training, and get much higher salaries (and the status that will follow).

Amanda Ripley does a great job of blending statistical data with case study experience of high school students who have participated in the foreign exchange student program. I have recommended this book to each of my friends who have expressed an interest in the U.S. education system.

I really enjoyed reading about the other countries systems, especially their LACK of emphasis on sports in high school. It is so engrained into our culture that I never really thought about how much it takes away from a rigorous academic experience. What other country hires a "football coach" hoping he (yes, HE) can also maybe teach math! That's just stupid.