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Title details for The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley - Available

The Smartest Kids in the World

And How They Got That Way

by Amanda Ripley
Kate Reading
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
How do other countries create "smarter" kids?

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.

What is it like to be a child in the world's new education superpowers?

In a global quest to find answers for our own children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embed-ded in these countries for one year. Kim, fifteen, raises $10,000 so she can move from Oklahoma to Finland; Eric, eighteen, exchanges a 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.

A journalistic tour de force, The Smartest Kids in the World is a book about building resilience in a new world—as told by the young Americans who have the most at stake.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 13, 2013

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781452696119
      • File size: 222398 KB
      • Duration: 07:43:19

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Here's a book about global education that has an interesting twist; it follows American children who are attending schools in other parts of the world. Along the way, we meet reformers, wealthy teachers, and students who get no sleep. Through their experiences, we see how other countries approach education and how, perhaps, we can make our system more effective. Narrator Kate Reading uses a commanding, official-sounding voice that is at odds with the tone of the book. She is clear and enunciates every word, but her voice is sharp and intense, which makes her sound louder and more severe than she needs to. It's as if Reading is aiming at sounding like a professorial educator; whereas, the text suggests a less formal treatment. R.I.G. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from July 15, 2013
      Though the U.S. spends more to educate its students than almost any other country, its teenagers rank 26th in math, below Finland (third), Korea (second), and Poland (19th). Yet in “a handful of eclectic nations... virtually all kids learning critical thinking skills in math, science, and reading.” Setting out to discover how this happened, veteran journalist Ripley (The Unthinkable) recounts the experiences of three American teens studying abroad for a year in the education superpowers. Fifteen-year-old Kim raises $10,000 so she can go to high school in Finland; Eric, 18, trades a leafy suburb in Minnesota for a “city stacked on top of a city” in South Korea; and Tom, 17, leaves Gettysburg, Pa., for Poland. In addition to these three teenagers, Ripley interviews educators, students, reform-minded education ministers, and others. In riveting prose, Ripley’s cross-cultural research shows how the education superpowers value rigor above all else; the “unholy alliance” between sports and academics in the U.S.; why math eludes the average American teenager; what parents in the educationally successful countries do; and how the child poverty rate doesn’t necessarily affect educational outcomes. This timely and inspiring book offers many insights into how to improve America’s mediocre school system. Agent: Esmond Harmsworth, Zachary Shuster Harmsworth.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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