Education in America

Recent studies showing American students are academically inferior to their international competitors has raised alarm that America is falling behind and raising a generation that will no longer be able to compare to their European and Asian counterparts.

This, however, is not a fair comparison because American students live a different lifestyle than foreign students and hold more responsibilities as they grow older that takes some of the focus away from academics. High school students in the United States are encouraged to be the most well-rounded students they can be in order to stand out on college applications.

Foreign countries put a higher expectations on their students when it comes to academics and there is more focus on doing well in school as opposed to balancing time between multiple activities. Since this is the case, foreign countries will continue to improve and climb the academic ladder since their students are spending more time on school work than American students are.

In "High Schools in America: A Complete Disaster," Laurence Steinberg lists the United States' last place rate of college completion as a reason America is being passed in the academic realm, but in stating that a large percentage of college students drop out after one year, he fails to include that the most popular reason for dropping out of school is that the student could not afford it. This explains why America ranks last in college graduation rates, because American colleges are on average more expensive than college in every other country in the world.

Instead of blaming American high school students' poor performance on boring classes or difficulty of curriculum, we could blame the fact that American students could just be less motivated than foreign students. As high school students, Americans are focused on looking good on paper so they can get into a good college. Even some good students do not value learning as much as making good grades so they can get...