At least 90% of the young US population is not smart enough to benefit from such education. That’s why we have government provided daycare...also known as public schools.
In Japan, a kid’s only real job is to do well in school. In larger cities, where most live, admission to high schools is competitive. Parents spend money to send their kids to after-school schools—cram schools to improve their chances to get into a good high school. Doing poorly in school is not only a disgrace to the kid, but to his family as well.
Now contrast that with America. Many parents and even educators are saying we push students too hard. If a student doesn’t get good grades (forget about actually learning anything) why it’s everyone’s fault except the kid’s. And in many places, as the article points out, a major function of the school is to ‘keep the kids off of the streets’ as opposed to actually educating them.
China is and will continue to be a force to be reckoned with. It is likely the only ancient civilization still functioning intact today. Its culture has valued eduction for thousands of years, its population is blessed with very high IQ, and maybe for the first time in its history it is able to afford to educate most of its citizens. There are what, four or five times as many Chinese as there are Americans, so with education so widespread now, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there are so many Chinese engineers, scientists, mathematicians, etc.
The biggest advantage we have is freedom, but we seem to be in the process of tossing it away.
“In Japan”...the average IQ is 103.
In America it’s below 95.
Young kids of color coming up now (Hispanics are over 50%, Blacks another 12%) are cursed with an average IQ close to 85.
Again, there is no quality or quantity of education that will make a difference to these kids. Most will never be able to make change or understand anything they struggle to read.
It’s farcical.