They also don’t take 3 months off per year from school, an obsolete legacy of America’s agricultural past.
Since the elites want every man, woman, and child working, they don’t want those three months for summer off. It makes parents want to stay home with their kids and not work. Not to mention, children used to work in this country up until about 75 years ago when the school systems pushed to make school mandatory.
That's the way it was in Japan, where I raised my kids and sent them to the local public school except for the oldest who was left-handed and we sent to an international school run by the Catholics.
The biggest difference is what goes on in the classroom. My middle daughter, who was in about the middle of the pack on math (as reported by the Japan equivalent of our Iowa basics tests) was suddenly in the 94th percentile when we moved to one of the better school districts in Pennsylvania.
They actually got better American history instruction in the Japan public school system than they did here. OTOH, they didn't have time to learn about sexual deviancy being normal and normalcy being deviant, LOL!
Well, I didn’t grow up on a farm, but the life lessons I received during summer vacations were just as valuable as anything from similar lengths of time at school. Working, 2 summer stints with the Youth Conservation Corps (work, but quite an adventure, too), a 3 week family trip looping through the Western USA...
Don’t get me wrong, I studied hard and did very well in school. And through plenty of direct experience it is clear to me Asian kids generally ARE more successful academically than typical American kids. But, is that summer vacations, or is it our schools, and even more is it crucially family situations & input, not to mention many other social inputs? What would the comparison have been in the 1950’s or 60’s?