It is the Caste system in India that holds it back.
That’s surprising. Every Indian I know is sharp as a tack and highly engaged in education. Of course they’re either immigrants or here on student/working visas. I’m not sure about your assertion regarding the U.S. educational system though. While I think it’s absurd to compare everything a nation of 300 million people do to, say, Norway, our system is nevertheless deeply flawed, our scores are substandard in many categories, and our dropout rates are becoming epidemic in some localities. The schools in places like Detroit are a national shame. I think your statement was true 50 years ago, and historically speaking, I think we’re doing okay by the standards of very large nations, but there is massive room for improvement and each day brings another story of bureacratic ineffeciency, union greed, and inane political correctness that further diminish what was once a great system that lifted many out of poverty.
I'll have a pint of what you're drinking.
“For all the slings and arrows hurled against the U.S. educational system, it is still empirically without a doubt the best in the world...”
And it could even be better if we actually taught kids how to read before 4th grade and taught them how to do arithmetic without a calculator before college.
But no, that’s asking too much of the ‘educators’, so we force parents to do it - either themselves or through after-school programs. The parents that cannot do that (either don’t have the money, or actually believe the ‘best in the world’ propaganda) wind up zombies for kids. The minorities, of course, get screwed the worst, as they often have no options for escape.
Other than that, all is fine here...
I didn’t read the article in detail, but in much of Asia public schools are useless, and every responsible parent who can scrape together the tuition sends their kids to private school.
I’d expect public school students to fare very badly, and pull down the averages.
This article and the responses fail to account for the non-neutral political, cultural, and religious content and consequences of education.
Axiom: It is impossible to have a religiously, politically, or culturally neutral education either in content or consequences. **Impossible**!
Government should never have such control over the minds of the future voters of America. Every day children are forced into godless classrooms and forced to think and reason godlessly. They must just to cooperate with the godlessly secular curriculum. How could it possibly be otherwise?
Also...Our nation's socialist system of schooling is the very definition of a socialist-entitlement program. Simply by attending children risk learning to be comfortable with socialism. Gee! If the voting mob and government police force can give them tuition-free schooling, why not use that power to get **lots** of socialist goodies? All it took to produce Franklin D. Roosevelt for four terms was one to three generations of voters attending socialist K-12 schools!
Finally, government schools are **compulsory** for all those children whose parents can not ransom them by paying the jizya of homeschooling and private schooling expenses. And...Since government is running a price-fixed cartel, and setting its price at tuition-free, it creates a hostile environment for the creation of private schooling. Many counties in this nation have NO private schools for this reason.
Government schools condition children to be comfortable with government compulsion, and once in these “schools” all their First Amendment Rights are trashed minute by minute by government functionaries. In many ways, children ( whose only crime was being born) are treated like prisoners.
Personally, I have recently made a decision. Our nation's system of socialist and godless schooling is soooooooo evil, that I will not have a government teacher for a friend. I am DONE! Government teachers are too evil, too stupid, too much of a Useful Idiot, or too loyal to their paycheck rather than their so-called conservative or Christian principles, for me to have them for a friend.
Our nation's socialist and godless schools are such a threat to our nation's continuing freedom, that I fear we can not last even one more generation of future voters attending these pits of godless socialist indoctrination. I believe it is **that** serious!