I don't know what is wrong with American education. I do know it has nothing to do with exams and score keeping and learning a pre-set education. I am extremely well educated, as are my peers who attended the same system. As are kids in Finland and most of Europe.

We taught how to read and write and add and subtract. We are then given classes in history and geography and science, and we have to learn that rote fashion in order to remember it.

At the end of the year, we write exams. If we pass, we go up to the next standard. If not, we are left behind. Kids seldom failed. In my 7 years at junior school, only one kid failed. In my 5 years at senior school, nobody failed.

The end of the year tests determined whether we knew what we learned or not. By the time we left school, we could write to a published standard, were bilingual and trilingual, knew world history (except American which wasn't very important in those days), etc.

School teachers kept notes on all of us, and we did IQ tests. Those scores and records were passed on to whatever new school we went to, so that all schools had a complete record of our work.

Americans place far too much attention on both self-actualisation and preparation for corporate cosumption. I was shocked when I went to college in the USA to discover that businesses determined what students learned, and that students were forced to do some work together. In my time, we would have been expelled for cheating if we had done our homework with someone else.

What kids should be taught at school is how to read, how to write, how to find information, how to add and subtract, history, geography, and the various sciences. This has nothing to do with either self-actualisation or business.

t is simply an educaiton.