costa rica geography
In general terms, is education outside the U.S.A. better?
Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to make this sound in anyway demeaning to Americans. It is just an observation:
I did preschool in Nicaragua and first grade in costa rica. I remember that my teacher in Nicaragua taught me that neat hand writing and good manners was essential for my success. In Costa Rica, I learned addition, substraction, division, and multiplication while also taking music classes to learn how to play the flute and read the notes. Also, I took classes on world geography. When I came to the United States, it was a bit of a schock that in second grade, the kids were starting to learn addition and substraction and had no music or geography classes. Also, some of the students had horrible hand writing.
As I grew older and shared what I was learning with my father I found that he was doing far more advanced topics than what I was doing at every grade level. Now an adult, I find that even a lot of adults don’t know any geography. What do you think?
When it comes to grades K-12, I believe most schools outside of the US have a better curriculum. These schools are very demanding of their students, so they force them to do a lot of homework. I went to school in China for several years, and there we usually have few hours of homework daily. Here in the US, homework is limited to around 30 minutes, because students complain too much and adults don’t think that they are helping the students by assigning more homework. But from personal experience and common sense, the purpose of homework to is to increase intelligence. I guess that’s why the US is not as good compared to other nation’s schools. BUT that only applies to k-12. US have some of the best universities in the world. People invest so much money to these schools (private universities) that they only expect to educate and raise the smartest people. Also these schools provide students with so many accessories and facilities that students can explore their interests.
So overall, the comparison between schools in the US and outside have to be separated. Grades K-12 needs improvement, while colleges are amazing.
Texas A&M Soltis Center for Research and Education in Costa Rica