The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way by Amanda RipleyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I think I am rather late coming to this particular party. I tried to read this book once before, but I didn't manage to finish it. This time, I read all of the main text. I did not read all of the appendices and the notes, which take up more than one-third of the full length of the book.
I have very mixed feelings about the book. On the one hand, I completely agree with the need to raise the quality of American teachers. I have taught with far too many of them who were only marginally competent to teach their assigned subjects and/or grade levels. I have actually worked with math teachers who were teaching the math for their particular lessons incorrectly. In one lesson, a young boy in the class pointed out the error that a teacher was making and he was roundly criticized for it. He was correct. Since I was just subbing (to keep an eye on two kids who had been accused of harassing others in the class), I kept silent during class, but I pointed out the error after the end of the school day. The teacher was not grateful.
Another minor thing, but it has been a pet peeve of mine: I do not believe in posting examples of kids' work on the walls, corridors, or web pages, if the work is not excellent. If there are grammatical or spelling errors, they should be corrected, before posting the work. It doesn't hurt to insist that the honored work be correct and worthy. No, you do not have to post work for every child.
I have also seen the value of school climate. It makes a huge difference if the other students in the classes/school actually seem to value working hard and doing well. My own children benefitted greatly from this when they attended a magnet high school. The whole school culture supported serious study and kids weren't made fun of for taking their work seriously.
And, I have personally attended school in a foreign country (Germany, in my case). Though it was 50+ years ago, I did see the value of disconnecting sports from schooling. Kids still did P.E. and some of them participated in competitive sports, but competitive sport was largely disconnected from the schools. [This may have changed shortly after I finished my year there, as my younger German "sister" actually did volleyball in connection with her school.] This has the effect of altering the main purpose of the school: it isn't for amusement and rubber stamping attendance, it is for learning.
The problem I have with the book (and you knew this was coming, didn't you), is the negative view of tracking. I agree that tracking can be problematic to students in the lower tracks. But you can't just magically hope that all of the students will be capable of achieving the same high standards, even with help. My own personal history would have been much different, had I not had the advantage of being placed in a class for gifted students. At the beginning of 6th grade, I had begun to completely underachieve. I was getting Cs and Ds in class and had lost all motivation to do well. My parents were both educators - my mother, a teacher, and my father on the local and county school boards. They got me into a program for gifted students. And I felt as though my mind was waking up from a deep slumber. After that program, in junior high and high school, I was in the top "track" for all subjects, except social studies. Even so, I still had little trouble getting mostly As in school. I never learned to really work very hard, to study something carefully, to think and analyze texts beyond just the superficial. That would prove to be a huge problem when I finally went (after my year in Germany) to a top women's college.
What I am saying is that gifted students need to be challenged, too. They need to have work that is HARD for them, work that they have to apply themselves seriously to, over a reasonable amount of time. They have to have the chance to fail and then come back from that failure to do better, when they learn to work better. I am not sure how to make this happen without either radical acceleration or some form of tracking.
Perhaps teachers in Finland or Poland or Korea are good enough to make this happen. I didn't see it in this book. And I don't see it in many other places I have looked. I know it is not popular right now to insist that some kids need harder stuff. Yes, this book says that they all do. I can support that. But until I see some consideration for gifted, exceptionally gifted, and profoundly gifted kids, I remain skeptical as to whether better teachers, more demanding curricula, and better school culture will be enough for everyone.
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