[yarian]

While I agree that too much of a good thing is a bad thing, I disagree with the spirit of the article. Yes, children should not be adults. But let's face it, America's percentage of overbooked, stressed, kids is nothing compared to the overwhelming masses which are under-challenged and not interested in school or learning. The U.S. is so far behind in education--having school years much shorter than the top countries like Finland and Japan--that overworking our kids should be the last thing we are worrying about.

Malcolm Gladwell makes a point about [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerted_cultivation] Concerted Cultivation in his book Outliers that I think is very appropriate to the topic at hand.

One more thought: If a child from China read this article, he would probably laugh. I say, work our kids harder! Damn punks...

[dmm]

| The U.S. is so far behind in education

How did you develop this hypothesis? What does it mean to be ahead or behind in education? Anticipating some of your answers. Is it really meaningful to compare the test results of the US to those of Finland? What are the reasons for the differences between the test results of Finland and the US? Is a few more weeks in school really the best reason you can think of? Are you aware of the fact that if you only consider white people the US compares much more favorably to European countries, in fact score better than 30 of them in one particular test? Why do you think that would be?

Those are some of the questions that come to my mind when considering the issue. This is something I think about a lot, especially since I starting dating a elementary special ed teacher who has shared a lot of her experiences.

You can't consider these international test-score comparisons without also addressing the diversity of the US. In particular blacks in the US still score significantly lower than everybody else. Why is this and what are we going to do about it? Just declaring it to be "racism" isn't enough. If it's racism, what kind is it? What does this racism actually look like? If racism is still present in schools it is probably unconscious to those perpetrating it. I sincerely doubt it's just racism.

I don't know.

[natnat]

I think poverty may have a bigger effect on test scores than race. If you break down the PISA scores by state, the three lowest performing states are Mississippi, New Mexico, and West Virginia. While Mississippi has a huge black population, New Mexico is only 2% black and West Virginia is only 3%. While New Mexico is 44% hispanic, West Virginia is almost entirely white non-hispanic. One thing these three states have in common, though, is that they are all very poor.

There is definitely a correlation between a higher population of blacks and lower test scores. But there is also a strong correlation between higher rates of poverty and lower test scores, and a very large number of hispanics and blacks are poor.

Black students in Massachusetts perform much better than black students in Mississippi. Virginia, which is nearly 20% black, is one of the top-performing states, while West Virginia, which is 96% white, is near the bottom.

While the US is richer than most of Europe, our income inequality means that we have a much higher poverty rate. When you control for poverty, the U.S. outperforms every other country tested.

[yarian]

But "controlling for poverty" is the same as saying "if you assume that the US was something else without some of its key flaws then"... Do you see that this line of thought goes nowhere?

[cema]

It may be a flaw, but it appears not to be a flaw in ''education'' but elsewhere.

[wladimir]

if you only consider white people the US compares much more favorably to European countries

But if you compare only white people your statistic is meaningless. For example, by focusing on white people you (on average) focus on the people that are more well-off financially.

The US is so far behind on education because the US has a lot of poor people. Which is easy to explain as poor people can't focus on education as much because they have survival on their mind all the time.

I'm sure it will become easier to educate people if they no longer need to struggle and fight to survive, so it's best to start with addressing the gross inequality. With that, crime levels will go down as well.

[yarian]

It's not just that more class time in the summer would--if used appropriately--lead to more learning. It is also that better-off students learn much more over the summer than their poorer counter-parts. Thus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_learning_loss

[olalonde]

Let's not confuse schooling with education.

> I say, work our kids harder! Damn punks...

Perhaps schooling is what needs to be worked out.

[tokenadult]

Backing up what you said, where the United States really falls behind in international comparisons is in direct comparison of students from prospering families, or comparison of students who have college-educated parents. See

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG10-19_Hanushe...

for considerably more detail. The United States has a much lower top end of achievement in its population distribution than most other OECD countries.