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

Amanda Ripley

Aug 2013 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

How do other countries create “smarter” kids? What is it like to be a child in the world’s new education superpowers? The Smartest Kids in the World “gets well beneath the glossy surfaces of these foreign cultures and manages to make our own culture look newly strange....The question is whether the startling perspective provided by this masterly book can also generate the will to make changes” (The New York Times Book Review).

In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they’ve never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words, and to thrive in the modern economy. Inspired to find answers for our own children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embed­ded in these countries for one year. Kim, fifteen, raises $10,000 so she can move from Oklahoma to Finland; Eric, eighteen, trades his high-achieving Minnesota suburb for a booming city in South Korea; and Tom, seventeen, leaves a historic Pennsylvania village for Poland.

Through these young informants, Ripley meets battle-scarred reformers, sleep-deprived zombie students, and a teacher who earns $4 million a year. Their stories, along with groundbreaking research into learning in other cultures, reveal a pattern of startling transformation: none of these countries had many “smart” kids a few decades ago. Things had changed. Teaching had become more rigorous; parents had focused on things that mattered; and children had bought into the promise of education.

Ratings and reviews

I am a victim of a diversified and unstructured public education system. More importantly I am a parent, who like other parents, want to see my child perform well in life. This book highlights several changes that the Unted States should make in order to improve our educational system and give our children a better shot at life in a new world.

Amanda Ripley compares US education system (and students) against three education superpower - Finland, South Korea and Poland. She emphasizes that students must understand the importance of education and how education will affect their future. Furthermore, she also concludes high performance can only be achieved through rigour from both the teachers and the students themselves.

Best book I've read in a long time!! Parents need to get behind this. Students need to get behind this. Most of all, our government needs to get behind this!!

About the author

Amanda Ripley is the New York Times bestselling author of The Smartest Kids in the World, High Conflict, and The Unthinkable. She writes for The Atlantic, Politico, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.