Analysis Of Alfie Kohn's We Are Number Umpteenth

Many people know that the U.S. does not rank very high in education. You hear about how they are always trying to improve education, but they still fall short of where they strive to be. In Anu Partanen’s “Finland’s School Success, What Americans Keep Ignoring” she addresses this issue. She points out what Americans are doing wrong, what Finland is doing right, and how the U.S. can improve the education system in many ways.

The United States is one of the best country in many areas such as technology and health care or education, but compared with other develop nations, the united states education system is still behind many country including United Kingdom, Japan, China. America’s standards of education are far lower than several other countries, because the American public education systems is less effective, students are lack of motivation to learn. According to Michael Moore, in the book Idiot Nation, and John Taylor Gatto in Against School, they argue that the education system in the United States is deeply flawed. America’s schools having a poor curriculum, many facilities are in bad conditions and lack of resources that students need to learn. The

The United States is considered to be one of the biggest powerhouses in the world, but when it comes to education in the U.S, we’re consider to be average. How is it that other nations who aren't as powerful as the U.S, be ahead us in education? Examples of these nations are South Korea, Finland, and Poland. Amanda Ripley sought to find an answer to this question.

Through these actions, we see that the disparity in quality of education is giving the sense to students that they are not valued; we are not making education the most important thing, this showing children that they are not important (“Children in America’s Schools).

American exceptionalism is a concept that has been valued by Americans who find every aspect of this country to be exceedingly better than other nations in the world. This concept was analyzed by a French writer named Alexander de Tocqueville in his work of literature called Democracy in America, in which he wrote that those who found the U.S. exceptional believe it is progressive within all of its systems. Since his exploration of the topic, views on America 's exceptionalism have plummeted over the past centuries. A major reason for this decline is the failure of certain systems, such as the U.S. 's educational system. America 's education system stains their self-professed exceptionalism due to how expensive it is to gain knowledge and the high importance placed on test scores as opposed to knowledge retention because it have adopted a standard that does not help students nor educators. The U.S. has a series of acts that upholds high standards for all children as well as it is not well funded. Funding goes directly to the pursuit for high test scores rather than giving it to schools for teachers to do their own assessments and lessons. Teaching then becomes a grueling task for teachers. With tuition on the rise every day, many freshmen find themselves unprepared for the workload because they

One of the biggest overlying pieces of this article, is the narrative brought into view within the first few sentences- American Exceptionalism. People everywhere, disregarding their views on the problems in the school system, agree that America is the best in everything else, therefore our schools should be top-of-the-line and produce high achieving scholars that can compete with anyone from around the world. It doesn’t matter that there are students coming from all different types of backgrounds- we need to be on top. Putting the idea of this narrative in the beginning of the article, the author sets up the option for the reader to try to see why reformers are set on fixing the “issue” in our system. We want to be the best. Have pride in our

The top academically performing countries are shanghai, singapore, hong kong, and south korea, meanwhile there is America which is ranked 30th among the nations around the world. This is a result of our social emphasis on sports instead of in school learning. “93% of South Korean students graduate from high school, compared with just 77% of american students” points out Amanda Ripley. She claims this is a result of our country prioritizing sports and schooling differently in comparison to that of the Asian countries. We tend to put more energy and money into sports programs in our school, whereas South Korea puts more pressure solely in academics. Any kind of sports their students participate in are outside programs not part of schools or their funding. Ripley also expresses that “we would not look so different from South Korea or, Japan, or any of a handful of Asian countries whose hypercompetitive, pressure cooker approach to academics in many ways mirrors the

America’s once revered schools are no longer the greatest in the world. This may seem unbelievable to most, but the truth is, America no longer leads the world in education. Schools are shutting down at an alarming rate, and it is easy to see why when one looks at some of the many flaws in our educational system today.

Our nation is LAGGING in academics compared to other nations, such as South Korea, Finland, and Japan. According to Emmeline Zhao (2012), the students of the United States scored lower on academic tests compared to other countries. However, the United States is not the worst performing nation. Its academic growth is lacking (Zhao, 2012).

The United States was just recently ranked 20th of the top twenty education system in the world, according to World Top 20 Project, and in American eyes, that is like getting last place. Ever since the beginning of time, humans have always competed against one another in various competitions (Human Rights Advocate, 2017). From trying to conquer the world, there are still some trying to do that today, to simple acts of athleticism or brain power. From the space race to the Olympic Games, and now the education race. Countries are trying to see just how hard they can push their youth to learn and become successful so that the country as a whole can benefit from their new human capital, but research can show

Schools Really Falling Behind China?" All Things Considered 26 Jan. 2011: n. pag. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 7 Apr. 2017.

I started my research by looking at articles about America’s education system. I used the keywords “American education system,” “American education spending,” and “Global education rankings.” An article from the CBS News explained that the United States ranked first in spending per student. However, an article from the Guardian showed that we were only 14th in education. This was intriguing because it raised questions of efficiency in our system and what other nations were doing better.

“Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future” proclaimed former United States president John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Since children will shape the future, education is there to shape them. Education enables learning, interaction, and development. Education is available all over the global and each country has a different system for schooling. In comparison, the United States spends more on education than any other country, estimated at $809.6 billion by University of Southern California. Since the Unites States spends the highest amount on education, most would make the implication that the United States is the leading education system around the world. This is false. As expressed in the article

It is said that U.S. schools are in no way ready to compete with today’s global demand. In a PBS documentary on America’s Schools in the 21st Century, many foreign countries have a superficial idea of U.S. schools. It is believed that U.S. schools are top of the line and state of the art, when in actuality many are average or below average in terms of educational processes building facilities, and finance. Americans have the tendency to think that foreign countries teach around the United States and that English is the most common language spoken; but the truth is Chinese is the most common language. In other countries like China, students hold education at a much higher regard that do U.S. students. There seems to have a greater work

Have you ever wondered why our country is ranked low in comparison to other countries when it comes to education? Our country is said to be the best country in the world; yet when one takes a closer look on our system, defects are bound to be found. Take a look at our education for instance. We have the least productive schools in the nation. The truth is that the board of education has dumbed down the system due to a decrease in testing averages.