Smartest Kids in the World- Part one

In response to Mrs. Stevens' blog,

Amanda Ripley's book, The Smartest Kids in the World, is quite interesting. She delves into the lives of 3 students who go off and do study abroad for one school year in three different countries. Now, this is interesting because these students have no idea what they are getting into. Yeah, they may have a slight idea, but they don't understand the complexity of how Finland, Poland, and South Korea all work with their students inside the classroom. 

While I was reading the first part of this book (chapters 1-4), I was so interested in the way the students had been conducting themselves in the different countries. I think the country I was most interested in, was South Korea. It was so fascinating that one test was what judged what would happen throughout their whole life. I also thought it was quite odd that the teachers were completely okay with their students sleeping within the classrooms. I would have reacted the same way that Eric did while he was in the classroom. He was so confident when on his way their, but when he actually got to South Korea, he had ended up being a little concerned with the way things were going with the classes.

Even though the system for South Korea is a little weird, I would like to have some kind of system where you were pressured to get your life sorted out. I would like their to be a stricter system in the United States, because there are quite a few people that are just messing around, and don't want to figure out what they want to do with their lives, so having a system where your school can kind of lead you in that direction, would be pretty cool.