The U.S. education system works, mostly
April 16, 2010
Now that Delaware and Tennessee have been awarded the first grants from the federal Race to the Top Fund, education reform, and the corresponding assumption that American schools are abysmal, is back in the news.
Along with the idea that Americans as a whole are stupid, this is one of the most pervasive myths—both in and outside of the United States—and it seems foolish to deal with this myth without handling the other. And while all of my readers that did attend public schools in the U.S. may be shaking their heads and wondering what someone educated in Europe can tell them about American schools, read on, and you'll see how it looks from the other side.
In order to write this article, I enlisted the aid of one of my friends who is legendary for his less than stellar opinion about his time in California's public school system. While most of what he said cannot be repeated here for risk of offending someone or losing my column, the one thing that he