Case Study: Why Asian Countries Always Do Better Than Americans Academicly

Do you ever ask yourself why Asian countries always do better than Americans academically? In a study, done by two Sociologist published in PNAS, shows that there is an achievement gap between Asians and American students. This fact alone gives us a profound notion. We have an ineffective educational system. Carol Dweck and Kathy Seal, two talented authors, did some research on how we, Americans, value talent so much and how it affects our children academically. Americans cling on talent so much that we overlook the whole picture. In our education system, we keep track of our students’ ability and intelligence which results in sorting our students into categorized groups which is a rampant obsession all around the United States. All these

A child with a growth mindset relish challenges and are resilient to setbacks. They have an open mind to anything. In her research, Dweck reveals that “students with different mindsets cared about different things in school. Those with growth mindset were much more interested in learning” (Dweck 2). Here, the author emphasizes that if we help our students grow a growth mindset we will turn their focus in learning than just in looking smart in class. They will be genuinely open to learn new things. Given this information, we teach our students how to develop a growth mindset. Growth mindset workshops will be the best way to do this but to make this more available to a large number of students we should provide our students with this computer based-program called Brainology. It will help our students on how they will make their brain work better and it will also help them learn something new every time they use this program. We should brief our teachers on how they can capitalize this program to help our students develop a growth mindset. When we make this more available to our students, it will help them pull ahead in their

Tracking is when we divide our students according to their ability in class. We put students into categorized groups. For instance, we place “smart” students to the top class and “dumb” students to the lower class. When we do this, we basically give up on our students. Why don’t we abolish this kind of educational system and let our students grow together in the same classes? Look at how the Asians do it. A Japanese teacher presented them a problem on how to solve the area of a rectangle. After a good amount of time working on it, smart students found nine different ways to find the area and the slower students benefited on hearing the smart students present their idea. James Stigler and Harold Stevenson, two psychologists, did some research on how Asians students are pulling ahead than American students. This study reveals that “The scores of fifth graders in the best-performing American school were lower than the scores of their counterparts in the worst-performing Asian school” (Seal 1). This sheds new light on how poor our education system is. They don’t have tracking in Asia. This is why they are pulling ahead. Tracking doesn’t really help our students. As a solution, we should eliminate this kind of educational system and we, as teachers, should see our students equally that they all can learn. We should also encourage our students to face harder tasks so that they will develop a