Expert Answers How Schools Work Around The World

I'm Rebecca Winthrop, global education expert.

I'm here today to answer your questions from the internet.

This is Global Education Support.

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Potential_Law5289 says,

Which country has the happiest students?

There's really two ways to look at this.

You can look at children's wellbeing,

or you can look at student satisfaction.

And children's wellbeing-the UN has a measure for this.

It's mental health, physical health, skill building,

like literacy, numeracy, and if kids make friends easily.

And we know that topping the charts

is the Netherlands, Denmark, and France.

These countries have kids

who have really high levels of wellbeing.

The second way to look at it

is a question of students' life satisfaction.

And there is something really strange going on

when you look at a whole bunch of countries' data

around 15-year-olds' life satisfaction compared to adults.

The richer a country gets, the happier,

or higher life satisfaction adults have,

which makes sense.

You can get more groceries,

you can buy a car, maybe go on vacation.

But the opposite is true for 15-year-olds.

They report less and less life satisfaction,

and the researchers identified

that it was education doing it to them.

Learning intensity was the problem:

that schools got way more competitive.

Kids started feeling like they were in a pressure cooker

as countries got richer and richer.

So that's another way to look at happiness in students.

A Quora user asks,

Is AI in education at a crisis level?

We know that over 80% of teens in the United States

say they use AI for schoolwork,

and that's just shortcutting their learning.

And we also know that it's really hard

for teachers to keep up.

So young people say,

No, we're not supposed to use AI,

but if an assignment is boring

or I'm short on time, I'll use it.

And I'll take, for example, my essay,

and I'll break it into three pieces,

and I'll run it through three different chatbots,

and then I'll put it back together

and run it through three different AI humanizers,

which, in case you don't know,

you stick your AI-generated content in and say,

Make me sound like a seventh grader.

Put in some typos and take out the fancy vocabulary.

And then I turn it in

and I never get caught by my teacher.

So yes, it is at a crisis level.

One thing that makes my head explode

is when people go around and say,

Well, we need to teach our children to use AI responsibly.

Really, what we need is responsible products

to be on the market.

It's as if I left my six-year-old child

at the dining room table,

and I had a plate of broccoli and a plate of brownies,

and I said, Don't eat the brownies.

I'll be back in eight hours.

Kids are gonna eat the brownies.

So we need better products.

@WWJ950 says,

Should school still have snow days now

that students can do remote learning?

Heck yes.

Do not take the snow days away from kids.

The most important reason

why we should still have snow days is that it's fun.

Kids need joy.

They need unpredictable things.

And there's nothing like waiting to see

if school's gonna be canceled the night before,

and when it is, you just get super excited,

and you put on your mittens and hat

and take your sled and go out the door.

We need that.

WickedKing94 asks,

Is AI actually helping students learn,

or just helping them avoid learning?

This is the million-dollar question right now.

We've got narrow AI use, which enriches learning,

and wide AI use, which diminishes learning.

So narrow use is teachers using AI

to make interesting lessons.

It's AI being embedded in assistive learning technology

for kids with learning differences like dyslexia.

That is narrow AI use.

It's controlled, it's vetted content,

and usually teachers are the intermediary.

The problem is wide AI use.

Wide AI use is when young people

are spending lots of time talking to ChatGPT

or any other frontier model, chatbot, or AI friend.

And those are tell-not-teach machines.

And when kids spend a lot of time talking to them,

there's a lot of problems that come up.

One of the things we worry a lot about is

cognitive stunting.

So this is when young people

don't necessarily have enough

deep learning experiences to really develop

the independent learning skills that they need,

because actually learning to think

is like learning to ride a bike.

You have to do it yourself.

And we know from lots of studies,

especially on brain imaging,

that when young people are using ChatGPT,

even if they think they're just getting help,

kids don't remember what they even wrote

a couple days later because they haven't actually done

the deep, effortful thinking.

So we really want to shut down wide AI use

and hone in on narrow AI use.

Neves783 says,

Do schools in Japan literally not employ janitors

or in-house cleaners?

If so, does it mean the students clean everything,

including the toilets?

That isn't true.

Schools in Japan definitely have janitors,

but kids also clean.

But it's not necessarily about cost-saving

for janitorial staff.

What happened is, after World War II,

community contribution is part of the Japanese curriculum.

And the reason Japan did this

is they wanted to cultivate an ethos of citizens

that would help contribute to the public good.

So every day across Japan, kids in school clean the school.

Daily cleaning.

They take mops, they mop the hall,

they wipe the windows,

they clean the chalkboards, they clean the desks.

I love this practice

because it shows kids that they are valuable

and their contributions matter,

no matter what age they are.

A Quora user asks,

How does education shape

people's view of society and their place within it?

We know that, for as long as we've had school systems,

the type of policies we have

subtly tell young people what is valuable.

One of my colleagues

did a whole study of the Jordanian curriculum.

She was trying to figure out

why there was such a low level

of female labor force participation

and found that every picture in the textbook

of women and girls was of them

getting prepared to be married.

And every picture in the textbook of men and boys

was of them entering the workforce.

So it shapes how we think about ourselves

and social norms pretty strongly.

Pan0Pancakes9 says,

What do you mean American high schools don't have recess?

Well, unfortunately, this is true.

Many, many schools in America

are having less and less recess.

This includes elementary school

all the way through high school.

Most high schools have a lunch break,

but not a lot of time between classes and not recess.

In fact, over the last two decades,

40% of school districts have been reducing

or eliminating recess.

And the American Academy of Pediatrics

in the United States is so worried about this

that they've put out guidance, saying,

Bring recess back, because kids need to move.

We know this.

Kids need mental breaks from studying.

Recess actually helps kids do better academically.

So it's a flawed logic.

The reason schools are removing recess,

they're saying,

Oh, we need to maximize time for learning.

It doesn't work that way.

Little human beings need to move.

My own kids, when they were in first grade,

their schools went down to 15-minute recess.

And I can't tell you how many calls home I had

about my son running around and causing havoc.

And I kept saying, Let him play more.

Solution.

Obsolescenza says,

What study methods do Chinese students use?

Chinese students have a range of study methods

that they do, and they study a lot.

One thing that I love is they have a mistake notebook.

So instead of just keeping track of right answers,

they also keep track of the mistakes they make.

And they write down the mistake they made

and how their error in thinking got them there,

so they know not to repeat it

and what the right answer is,

and they review it regularly.

Another thing that Chinese students often do

is study in a way that is self-testing,

not just rereading material.

Let me show you what I mean.

If you have a textbook

and you've read the material already

and you're studying for an exam,

rather than just rereading the passages passively,

you can quiz yourself.

The passive way is: I take my highlighter

and I reread the whole chapter and I highlight things.

It doesn't stick with you as much.

What's better is self-testing,

which is a form of retrieval where you open it up

and just take a couple sections,

take a look at sort of the top headlines really quickly.

And then, before you reread it, you close it,

take your pencil, and you write down what you remembered.

And then you open back up and reread again,

this time a little more slowly,

but not super thoroughly, but a little bit more.

You do your three sections, close it again,

and then you fill in the gaps of what you missed.

And that is the way that they remember so much

in such a short period of time.

A Quora user asks,

How do most schools handle cell phone

and tablet usage while on the school grounds?

I recently visited a school where the principal told me

that they're getting rid of cell phones

because they tracked and found that 80% of the fights

in school started online with kids using their cell phones,

largely in school as well as out of school.

And so now there's a big global movement

to take phones out of schools.

We see kids putting them in pouches

when they enter the front of the building.

We see kids having to have their cell phones

in their backpacks.

Some schools let kids take the phones out

during recess and lunch.

I am not a fan of that

because one of the main things you want

is kids to be interacting eyeball to eyeball,

shoulder to shoulder,

running around and talking with each other

rather than on their phones.

Parents also should be wary of cell phone distraction

when it comes to homework and studying.

If you're at home and you're a kid

and you're trying to do your homework

and your phone is next to you face up: the worst grades.

If your phone is next to you face down,

your grades are a little bit better.

If your phone is out of sight,

but still within your area of reach,

your grades are better yet.

But the kids who get the absolute best grades are the kids

who chuck their phone into another room altogether.

It really is incredibly distracting,

even to know your phone is around you.

Kids constantly take breaks.

AccomplishedFee2145 asks,

Tell me about kindergarten curricula around the world.

What should kindergartners be learning?

Kindergarten curricula around the world is super different.

In the United States,

you have a lot of kindergartens

that are really pushing academics down into very young ages,

particularly things like literacy and learning letters

and trying to get kids ready for first grade.

Other countries like Finland

really focus on playful learning.

These kids are outside.

They're making forts.

They're learning about nutrition.

They're talking about their families.

They learn things like self-regulation.

So turn-taking, which is great

from playing and getting someone else's perspective.

So all of those really important things

that aren't necessarily academic skills

are crucial to learn in kindergarten.

A Quora user asks,

Why do some countries

seem to outperform the US in education?

And what's being left out of these comparisons?

The United States is not at the top of the rankings.

We're about 34th in math and ninth in reading.

Some states and some schools are at the top of the charts

with the top performers in the world,

and others are really, really far below.

Part of the issue is that the United States

really has high inequality,

and a lot of times schools are funded

by local property taxes, in part.

So if you're in a really wealthy community,

those schools are really well resourced,

but if you're in a poor community,

you have much fewer resources.

So what is being left out?

There's things like entrepreneurial spirit,

which is measured across countries.

And that's the idea

that you have the confidence and the gumption

to take an idea and translate it into action.

And we know countries that are really high on math

are pretty low on entrepreneurial spirit.

And some countries who are really low on math,

like the United States, are high on entrepreneurial spirit.

There's some countries in the middle

that are both good at math and have entrepreneurial spirit,

like the Netherlands and Australia,

and that seems like a good place to be.

Nikola_Turing asks, How does a poor country build

an education system from scratch?

Do you do it from the inside out?

When you strip away all the things

that make education education,

the thing that is left is not fancy buildings.

It's not even necessarily textbooks.

It's a teacher-student relationship.

And you start classes

wherever you can find a safe space,

under a tree or in a living room

or some other type of shelter.

You definitely work on academics,

but you also have to include art

because kids who have been displaced

or faced a wide range of traumatic experiences-

this is not the time

to be punishing them for not turning in their homework.

They need a safe place where they can draw, sing,

be with other kids to process what's going on with them.

One good example is in East Africa

and communities displaced from war.

And there were hardly any books,

no real school buildings,

but there were people who cared a lot about kids

and had some education themselves.

And they would gather the kids every day under a tent,

and they would get every kid to bring a stick.

And they would practice writing

and learning their letters by drawing in the sand.

That was how it started.

And then you just build from there.

PizzaLover911:

What does play-based actually mean?

Great question.

I love play-based learning.

Kids, and frankly all mammals, learn through play.

And there's free play,

which is when your kids go outside in the park

and they run around and they play tag

or they play cops and robbers,

and kids are learning a lot from free play.

When they role-play,

they're learning to take another person's perspective.

They're learning that they're not the center of the world.

They're learning how to collaborate.

But in education, we often use guided play.

In middle school, I've seen educators

try to teach fractions through basketball.

Instead of the three-point shot, it's one point,

then you get a half point and a quarter point,

and kids are playing fraction basketball,

and man, they learn how to add their fractions,

and they understand fractions really well

when they're playing basketball.

CharacterStrong asks,

Teacher burnout can be a symptom of systemic issues.

So true.

How can schools better support educators' wellbeing?

All the evidence shows

that the number one indicator of kids' success

is how good their teacher is.

Teachers need not only to be paid well;

they also need time to prepare.

They need time to grade.

They need time to get inspiration

and bring innovation into the classroom.

And for most educators around the world,

actually being a classroom teacher is almost impossible.

Imagine if you're a doctor

and you had 30 patients come to you all at the same time,

and you had to look across them

and immediately diagnose in 45 minutes

what was wrong with each of them,

and then have a follow-up plan for each of them each day.

That's what teachers have to do.

It's incredibly hard.

So there's lots of things

that we can do to support teachers.

One, we can give them breaks.

Two, we can pair them up with other teachers

so they can share lessons,

give them opportunities to travel and get inspiration.

Three, we can really support team teaching.

We know that teacher wellbeing increases

when teachers have a bit of a cohort to teach with

and share their inspiration and their troubles with.

MrDeach27 says,

If you were designing a school from scratch,

would you copy the traditional model

we followed for so long,

or would you do things differently?

I would definitely do things differently.

And the reason I say that is

I just went on a big study tour

with my co-author, Jenny Anderson, in our book,

The Disengaged Teen,

and we found that kids are engaging in their learning

in four different ways:

passenger mode, achiever mode, resistor mode, explorer mode.

10% of kids between third and 12th grade

are coasting along,

doing the bare minimum in passenger mode.

Kids in achiever mode

are really trying to get the right answer.

And in a world of AI, where you have lots of answers,

they need to learn about how to ask the right questions.

Kids in resistor mode are checked out.

And what you want is kids in explorer mode.

That's what's going to prepare them for a world of AI.

When kids are in explorer mode, curiosity meets drive.

They become really invested in the learning journey

and internalizing the learning

because they want to master it.

They're interested.

They get better grades,

they have better mental health,

and they're prepared for a world of AI.

And less than 4% of kids say

they're regularly in explore mode

in middle school and high school in the US.

So we definitely need to do something different.

For example, we should start rewarding kids for trying,

but not necessarily succeeding.

We know that when kids spend a lot of time

in achiever mode, they start becoming risk-averse

because they're only indexed on their grade.

Okay, that's it.

That's all the questions for today.

Hope you learned something.

Till next time.

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