I think you should carefully considering what the the US school system is (consciously or unconsciously) designed to produce before answering the “is the American school system producing stupid citizens?” question.

There are so many to blame- students, parents, teachers, school systems, all of it is working against us. If teachers are afraid to enforce discipline in their classes (by which I mean sending disruptive children out of the class and gaining respect while creating an environment that will work for both the teacher and the student) and students are allowed to be indifferent there will be no improvement. The fear of being sued by over protective parents for excluding trouble students or raising your voice (not to mention the fear of the students themselves in some cases) will continue to defeat the most motivated teachers.
I agree Wizard, we should be looking at what works elsewhere and start adopting them- some must be useful within the US.

good to live in Switzerland =P

Excuse me, my native langue isn’t English, but shouldn’t it be “…can THERE be any…” instead of “…can THEIR be any…”?
I don’t know if this says anything about your education system…
greetings from Amsterdam!

Soooo…. competition = good. Glad it took them 40 minutes to tell me that one.

The only lesson that I learned from this is to question documentaries that make the people they are “against” sound stupid. Especially when they cut what the people have to say every five seconds. The responses given by the supporters of the teacher’s union sounded moronic, and didn’t even ANSWER the question asked by the host. This leads me to believe that more was said, but maybe not shown. Or, they possibly cut what they said and then tailored it to their own views.

I do agree that there are fundamental problems within the school systems of the U.S. This could be due to competition, curriculum (which was not even addressed), etc. However, I believe that learning about these problems takes much more background research than this documentary provided.

Also, the host talked in a manner that made me feel as stupid as he tried to make these kids look.

Conclusion? : Reasonable for the general television viewer. Bad for the genuinely interested and concerned. Overall, lame.

Personally, I prefer real documentaries.

I see nothing wrong with a voucher system. Attach a voucher to each child at birth and let their parents decide where they will spend that voucher. I am in favor of unions most of the time, but this has gotten far out of control. We need competition to spur innovation, and accountability to promote better performance. No other union I know of gets these kinds of concessions. This is the most important thing we can do for our children, our global image, and most importantly our country. Why are children not required to learn how our political system works? Why are they not required to register to vote before graduating? Is it possible that the political machine knows that an ignorant public, a nonvoting public is less of a threat to the status quo?

@ Jessica

What competition? There is no competition. You are required to go to the public school within your area, unless you can afford a private school. It is clear that the teachers union is out of control, much to powerful. The only real question is why does the US government allow this to happen here. The answer in my opinion is because they know that an ignorant, misinformed, nonvoting public is best for them. If they leave the system like it is they can continue to stick some charismatic guy in front of the American public and he will get elected. Not on his politics but according to how much money he has to spend on commercials, how cute he or she is, what there religious views are. None of these things should matter to the voting public, but they do. Over and over we elect people based on there morality and how big of a spectacle they can create on tv. Instead we should be asking what there economic policies will be, what there foreign trade ideas are, who will they nominate for the supreme court, etc. These things decide how we live everyday, not whether or not the candidate is baptist or catholic, or who had the better and more frequently shown tv commercial.

I meant the ones that appear early in the film… No discipline whatsoever

this documentary is disappointing. as an educator, i had hoped to see a well researched, fairly balanced overview of the pub.ed system in the US, and all i really seemed to see was pointless union-bashing.

the doc didn’t even start off well. he took us to several schools around the country and proceeded to lament the fact that most administrations wouldn’t let them film in the classroom–and the ones that did only let them film the “good” classes. this is seen as bad. well, why wouldn’t they do this? who wouldn’t want to show off their best and brightest? misbehavior would be embarrassing for the school, the parents AND the students. who would blindly allow this?

secondly, they tell us that, on a test they administered to some students in jersey vs belgian students, the american students’ scores were dismal, while the belgian students’ were much higher. but i am left wondering: were those scores averages? how did the WORST belgian student do? what does ONE standardized test in ONE class really say about any pub.ed system, anyhow? all we know now is that this particular group did better than another particular group. were they all even the same grade? were the classes AP/european equivalent? they go on to note that, on the “international test” americans can’t even beat so-called “poorer” countries. so? why does he even mention that? the relative wealth of the country isn’t always a viable marker for student successes. how do their “poorest of the poor” students do vs america’s “poorest of the poor”, anyway? how big are their classes? how far away from the home do the students have to travel to get to school? are there a lot of single-parent households? do their students travel to school tired and hungry, and thereby distracted and difficult to teach?

privatization MIGHT work, but people tend to forget hugely important factors that really determine much more than “choice” how well the students will do. obviously, parent participation is enormous. i felt sad for the woman who complained that her 18-year-old couldn’t read but i couldn’t help but wonder: where was she for 18 years? my siblings and i learned to read at age two because my mom taught us how, AND i went to a public school, AND i’m a product of a single-parent household, so what was her deal? next, giant classrooms full of students (35+) are overwhelming for even the best teachers. there’s a reason why, in college, the more difficult the class is the smaller it tends to be. also, backwards administrations that force archaic and silly curricula on teachers are a problem too, as are admins. that expect teachers to make their 8-4 into a 6-10 (without extra pay) and then simply fire the ones that protest this (that is why we have unions!).

all of these factors explain why charter schools work better: parents very invested in the education of the students (interested enough to look for a “better” school) + smaller classes + happy and less-stressed teachers + an administration that trusts its educators = students that have support at home, more attention from teachers, and thus better scores. this is why taking a macro view of the charter system and declaring it “better” is almost silly: it’s important to note WHY it’s better, not just that it IS, and try to implement those things into the current system.

anyway. that’s my $.02 .

It is the same way,unfortunately that here in Australia, the education system is dominated also by extreme union socialist left , running the public schools, and pretty much brainwashing them, right from the start with there own agenda.Thanks to all the teacher’s that  I know, that work hard to do the right thing to teach them well. Working with some teenagers, I was stunned to find,that some could not read legible instruction’s or rudimentary math’s etc.,How can that be? they could learn more , if the they had a fair chance!!!!! The teacher’s here get 10 wks. paid holiday’s and and unbelivable working conditions also. cheers!

The lower scoring children in other countries are culled out of the system by the time they reach high school level.  Lower achieving kids are re-directed to vocational training.  Here in the U.S., ALL kids are in a compulsory standardized schooling situation.  This, therefore, brings the average of test scores down in the U.S.A. as compared to the “creme of the crop” foreign kids.  Don’t get me wrong.  There is also the alarming phenomena of this culture of stupidity being cool in America.

The lower scoring children in other countries are culled out of the system by the time they reach high school level.  Lower achieving kids are re-directed to vocational training.  Here in the U.S., ALL kids are in a compulsory standardized schooling situation.  This, therefore, brings the average of test scores down in the U.S.A. as compared to the “creme of the crop” foreign kids.  Don’t get me wrong.  There is also the alarming phenomena of this culture of stupidity being cool in America.

if you want to know just google it 

the USA is 32 end in the world IQ test .

sure nothing to be prod of