The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

Amanda Ripley

Agu 2013 · Tantor Media Inc · Dinarasikan oleh Kate Reading

Tentang buku audio ini

How do other countries create "smarter" kids? In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they've never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words, and to thrive in the modern economy. What is it like to be a child in the world's new education superpowers? In a global quest to find answers for our own children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embed-ded in these countries for one year. Kim, fifteen, raises $10,000 so she can move from Oklahoma to Finland; Eric, eighteen, exchanges a high-achieving Minnesota suburb for a booming city in South Korea; and Tom, seventeen, leaves a historic Pennsylvania village for Poland. Through these young informants, Ripley meets battle-scarred reformers, sleep-deprived zombie students, and a teacher who earns $4 million a year. Their stories, along with groundbreaking research into learning in other cultures, reveal a pattern of startling transformation: none of these countries had many "smart" kids a few decades ago. Things had changed. Teaching had become more rigorous; parents had focused on things that mattered; and children had bought into the promise of education. A journalistic tour de force, The Smartest Kids in the World is a book about building resilience in a new world-as told by the young Americans who have the most at stake.

Tentang pengarang

Amanda Ripley is an investigative journalist for Time, the Atlantic, and other magazines. She is also the author of The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes-and Why, the basis for a PBS documentary. An Emerson Fellow at the New America Foundation, she lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and son.

Kate Reading is an Audie Award-winning narrator who has recorded hundreds of titles in many genres. She has received numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, in addition to being named Narrator of the Year and Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy.