Are kids in other countries smarter than American kids?

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Proficiency tests pretty much show American kids are slightly smarter than lichen. Americans scores are usually among the lowest in industrialized nations which is blamed on a failed public education system. So are you impressed with the kids in your country? Do smart adults have more kids in your country or what do you think is the reason for disparity?

I think more and more kids in America are giving up, despite the big economical advantage we have compared to the rest of the world. They're afraid of trying harder.

Hell, it easier for me to get a job when that happens.

From my experience, UK kids have a larger vocabulary than US kids.

True. Most of my peers are slightly higher up than monkeys, and are more caught up in petty social situations than actual work.

The people with drug & alcohol problems tend to have the most kids in my area. I think the welfare system is partly at fault for rewarding people with checks for having kids that they don't bother trying to raise. My mom was a teacher at an underpinning school & lots of the kids who had behavior problems & learning problems; parents were on welfare & drugs like crack & some of the parents actually bragged about how they tell their kids to give the teachers hell so the parents could get more welfare money & get the kid on medication like riddlin that they would always forget to give the kids in the morning

There was actually a documentary on PBS called "Country Boys" that follow two high school boys, one with dysfunctional, alcoholic and addicted parents, the other living with well off grandparents. The mother of the first boy was actually caught on video telling the boy if he didn't do something to prolong his probation, or if he graduated high school, it would interfere with their benefits. You can guess which kid did better.

too many people are pumping out kids, and who have no business being anywhere near children. there are also too many teachers here who have no business in the classroom around children. an educational counselor once confided in me, that in america, the bottom one-fifth of academic achievement scores were from american teaching candidates, but when he was in germany he noticed that teaching candidates there generally score in the TOP fifth of all students. of course i am in no position to judge the veracity of that particular factoid but just the same it doesn't surprise me, judging from the (clicky) dismal results of teachers' test scores who had to take the same tests they administered to their students.

Not impressed with the kids in my country; in the UK also, as in the US, the less fortunate people socio-economically have more kids. Given things like the amount of antisocial behaviour, and the rate of teenage pregnancy - just two factors that came to mind though I'm sure there are others that didn't - I'd hardly say kids in the UK are much smarter than the US.

I have strong suspicions that the UK and US stand on a tier a little below other leading/developed nations, and that Western Europe, Canada, East Asia and Australasia have a clear high ground over them.

That's because those kids are more concerned about the opposite sex and who's having sex with who than they are about their studies. Also being that the US is a Hollywood nation, that doesn't concern me. More emphasis is put on looks than education.

Exactly . Sexuality (and the hypocrisy towards it) is an area where we stand a step below the rest of the developed world. As nations, the US and UK may be closer to a developing than a developed country in this regard.

I don't think the issue is that American kids are less intelligent; rather, learning and education are neither presented nor perceived as "desirable" or "interesting" or "entertaining" in this country, so no real effort is put forth to obtain them. Also, the way the education system is set up, everything is "dumbed down" to the lowest common denominator--hence the whole concept of "social promotion" (pass them on so we don't make them feel bad). Add these to the fact that the old saying "those who can't do, teach" is unfortunately VERY true (I taught for a year & remember my education classes in college as a joke--I had a 4.0 & never opened the books for any reason other than idle curiosity. The standards for education majors were lower as well, requiring a 3.0 GPA for everyone else & only 2.5 for education majors--& plenty of them STRUGGLED to get that!), & the entire problem is pretty well self-explanatory. They aren't stupid, they're just being failed by an almost irreparably broken system.

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Perseverance seems to be a virtue that Americans are no longer taught. Instead, it seems that an over-reaching sense of entitlement is being instilled into American children from an early age. Thus we now have adults that seek instant gratification along the "easy road" to success, rather than putting in 20 to 30 years to earn the luxuries they want.

[/opinion]

I am not sure about that. I met stupid people in all nations I have been in. What really bugs me about the American education system are the various sports teams which seem to me to be more popular than the educational events. I'd say you need to cut down on them and other pointless waste of time first to get a better education.

I had a kid from a country in africa in one of my classes and he was off the charts smart.

I could rant all day about my peers, but here are the main reasons for why I hate this educational system (and prefer homeschool)

Rather than create an unusually long post, my (partial) list of grievances can be found at my blog, which is accessible from my profile. Until I post something else, it should be the newest entry.

Anyway, I agree about the general lack of intelligence in American students. Why else would I have an academic rivalry with a European transfer student in a higher grade? It makes me feel like a political prisoner.

That is so true, and I think it's pretty much the same in the UK.

A lot of kids seem to know what sort of life they want (good job, good wage, nice house etc) but with little notion of how those things might be achieved, and that lots of people try really hard and may not achieve those things even so. A lot of kids are wrapped in cotton wool and no one seems prepared to tell them a few home truths. I've no idea how we got to this situation.

As an aside to another post above, I can understand why some individuals prefer homeschooling but it is illegal in some European countries and I can sort of see why.