Amanda Ripley

Prologue: The Mystery

The real mystery was this: Why were some kids learning so much—and others so very little?
Then one day I saw this chart, and it blew my mind.
A great education by the standards of suburban America looked, from afar, exceedingly average.
Without a high-school diploma, you couldn’t work as a garbage collector in New York City; you couldn’t join the Air Force.
The Korean system was driven by testing, and Korean teenagers spent more time studying than our kids spent awake.
I decided to spend a year traveling around the world on a field trip to the smart-kid countries.
When I finally came back to the United States, I felt more optimistic, not less.

Part I: Fall

It seemed to be common knowledge that parents were AWOL in our schools.
His biggest problem was expectations; they were, he said, too high.
Neither saw education itself as the primary problem or the main solution.
Apparently, every kid in Finland got a decent education, regardless of how much money their parents made.

“Have you ever shot anyone?”
Once again, at least a third of the class went to sleep.
For the last two years of high school, the International Baccalaureate program had challenged him in a way nothing else had.
That’s where they did most of their real learning, the boy said.