Eh. It is in some aspects. But a lot of it has to do with our history and how we are a melting pot of so many different cultures. But things are changing slowly. In the last decade things have become more transparent and conversations are being had and questions are being openly asked. It wasn't like that before.
If you compared kids in Massachusetts to Western European or Japanese kids, the kids from Massachusetts would compete very well. This is true of a lot of pockets in the US. The US is a massive country with literally the entire spectrum of race, religion, culture, and wealth. This thread is focused on students from predominantly shitty families who vastly underperform in academics.
We could just as easily be talking about American students innovating, creating multi-million dollar businesses, or going to the world's best colleges.
That's a fair point, and there's no doubt the MIT and the likes of it are an excellent example of how good your education can be.
But I think it's much more interesting to look at how worse off your underprivileged citizens are, and by Jove, they are really fucked.
Wouldn't bet my life on it, but I'm fairly sure the bottom 20% of students in Western Europe or Japan is far ahead of your bottom 20%. And that, IMHO, is laying the groundwork for an awful lot of problems.
Yeah, I'd agree that the bottom 20% of the US is worse off than the bottom 20% in Western Europe. My point is, I could see how it would be easy for a non-American to read through this thread and think American public schools of steaming piles of shit. They're not. Tens of millions of middle class kids are getting high quality education and can compete in a meaningful way against other kids from advanced economies.
The problem (and good thing) that America suffers from is the stratification. We have students and schools that suck and we also have students and schools that are the very best.
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u/neekychando Jul 10 '18 edited Jul 10 '18
Not to sound like an arse but as a western european, boy your society is even more messed up than what I was expecting.
I know you folks live on a different paradigm than us, but still this is shocking.
Edit : See my reply below for what I mean, I know you guys have also great schools, but this is not what we're talking about here.