From OP link-
"The author’s third stop is Poland, a country that has scaled the heights of international test-score rankings in record time by following the formula common to Finland and South Korea: well-trained teachers, a rigorous curriculum and a challenging exam required of all graduating seniors. In the city of Wroclaw, Ripley meets up with Tom, a bookish teenager from Pennsylvania, and discovers yet another difference between the schools in top-performing countries and those in the United States. In Tom’s hometown high school, Ripley observes, sports were “the core culture.” Four local reporters show up to each football game. In Wroclaw, “sports simply did not figure into the school day; why would they? Plenty of kids played pickup soccer or basketball games on their own after school, but there was no confusion about what school was for — or what mattered to kids’ life chances.”
It’s in moments like these that Ripley succeeds in making our own culture and our own choices seem alien — quite a feat for an institution as familiar and fiercely defended as high school. The question is whether the startling perspective provided by this masterly book can also generate the will to make changes. For all our griping about American education, Ripley notes, we’ve got the schools we want."
The author focuses on culture which does have some effect. The article also mentioned in some parts of the world, they have a homework curfew (10:00 pm) so kids don't study all night long. With all these things mentioned I see nothing mentioned about how America has produced, by far, the largest chunk of innovators in the entire world. I have a strange feeling most weren't those kids with a book in their face 24/7 or those kids writing endlessly about those innovators. No, because many of our innovators are the movers and shakers. Those constantly engaged in scientific play and those who are curious about how things tick. Taking things apart and putting them back together again. Those that have a well rounded education that keeps kids curious and ENGAGED. Naturally, that is not sitting at a desk all day long with pencil and paper in hand. Below is a good article-
Snip-You might think the Chinese educational leaders would be happy that their kids are scoring so high on these international competitions. But they’re not. More and more they realize that their system is failing terribly. At the same time that we are continuing to try to be more like them, they are trying—though without much success so far—to be more like us, or like we were
before we began trying so hard to be like them. They see that their system is quashing creativity and initiative, with the result that it produces decent bureaucrats and number crunchers, but very few inventors and entrepreneurs. In response to the same PISA report that led Duncan to his “wakeup call,” Jiang Xuaqin, director of the International Division of Peking University High School, wrote this in the Wall Street Journal: “The failings of a rote-memorization system are well-known: Lack of social and practical skills, absence of self-discipline and imagination, loss of curiosity and passion for learning. … One way we will know when we’re succeeding in changing our schools is when those PISA scores come down.” (Italics added) [2].
Be Glad for Our Failure to Catch Up with China in Education | Psychology Today
