Do Korean students agree with Amanda Ripley about their educational system?
The NY Times has a review today on the front page of the Book Review--and a featured podcast -- of a new book called "Smartest Kids in the World" by New America Foundation fellow Amanda Ripley. The review was written by another New America Foundation fellow Annie Murphy Paul. While through twitter, Paul says that she disclosed this connection to the NY Times book editors, they went ahead anyway in assigning her the review (and podcast.)
Unsurprisingly, Murphy Paul has written a rave review of a book with a highly questionable thesis: that the South Korean educational system, in which students sleep in class because they have spent so many hours after school in expensive "cram schools" that families spend nearly 20 percent of their disposable income paying for -- and which causes huge stress on kids, is better than the US system because this strenuous competition makes them stronger and more able to succeed in a global economy.
This violation of acceptable journalistic standards should be protested to the NY Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan atpublic@nytimes.com.
I guess she doesn't count all those Korean families who choose to uproot themselves and move here to escape the pressures of their educational system. Or the fact that youth suicide rates are extremely high, attributed largely to academic stress -- so much so that suicide is the leading cause of death forSouth Koreans age 15-29. Here is an excerpt from Murphy Paul's NYT review:
Ripley is cleareyed [sic] about the serious drawbacks of this system: “In Korea, the hamster wheel created as many problems as it solved.” Still, if she had to choose between “the hamster wheel and the moon bounce that characterized many schools in the United States,” she would reluctantly pick the hamster wheel: “It was relentless and excessive, yes, but it also felt more honest. Kids in hamster-wheel countries knew what it felt like to grapple with complex ideas and think outside their comfort zone; they understood the