Reply to The latest ranking of top countries in math, reading, and science (PISA 2016)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I personally experienced European and Asian schooling, one of my children went to school in France, and my kids are now here in MCPS.

The math (and writing) curriculum here is NOWHERE NEAR as rigorous and in-depth as the ones I experienced or my son experienced internationally.

Here they pass students as long they have gotten basic rules of computing down. Not so in other countries. We were set problems to challenge us, so that the difficulty wasn't the computing part or application of simple mathematics, but more deconstructing the problem and seeing how to implement a solution.

Same for writing. Here in middle school all they required of students is  a few paragraphs. I was writing essays by then, and woe to students who couldn't spell or clearly articulate concepts with rich vocab.

My point is that the US curriculum is a mile wide and an inch thick, where other countries teach less concepts but go more in-depth so that students are taught to THINK.

What's lacking in the US K-12 education are critical thinking and rigor, and it shows... it gives a multitude of young adults who "know" things but are incapable of connecting the dots to form and express interesting thoughts. The ones who make it to graduate school are the few who have developed this on their own or through their families' more stringent intellectual standards. Actually, there are a lot of international students in US graduate schools, and I've noticed that they're usually top of the class!
[/quote]

Agree. The US is trying to cover too many things and as a result isn't teaching any of them well.[/quote]

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