1 Bimester Down & Here's to Kinder, Gentler Education

All tests are graded, recorded, and ready to pass back. All that's left is some recuperation (that is what they call it here) of a few students who scored below 70% on the exam. The principal was talking to me about how the recuperation would go. I suggested I pull out some of the questions I considered most valuable in terms of the concept behind them and ones the kids seemed to have more trouble with. I whittled that exam down by two thirds of its content in a matter of minutes. And at a quick glance I don't think there is a lot I  am tossing away that would be of much service to the kids in the future if they had it stored in their cerebral cortex.
I read the following on the Center for Education Reform Newswire today:
"A TROPHY FOR EVERYONE. For every action, a reaction. For every yin, a yang. For every Waiting for Superman, a Race to Nowhere. Are our kids facing too much pressure in schools today? The producers of Race to Nowhere sure think so. Too much competition? Too much achievement-based focus? But what does the rest of the world think? If we were a foreign government, we might push this movie into every theater in the US with the hope that the message would stick and we could keep gobbling up formerly American jobs by the millions. The data certainly doesn't bear out the premise of the "film". If anything, the US is far from putting its best foot forward. The powers behind the documentary are scared, and they should be, but not because our kids risk a life of too much pressure. They should be scared because jobs are hemorrhaging to India and China and we are on the verge of a becoming a second-rate country when our kids can barely beat Latvia in science. In the real world, not everyone gets a trophy."
I haven't seen either movie and generally I am a big supporter of Jeanne Allen and the Center for Education Reform, but I think they have grabbed the wrong end of the bloody job hemorrhaging stick. If we could get some guarantees from several million Americans that they are willing to work for the same pay and conditions that the Indians and Chinese are working for, I think we would see a real turn around in the loss of jobs.
I just looked through several of the world rankings of countries for various things on http://www.photius.com/ (country rankings). I didn't see India or China ahead of us in many academic areas. China does far surpass everyone in GDP (gross domestic product), but they have over 4 times our population. India has about 3 times our population and our GDP is 1.5 times theirs. There was an interesting ranking of counties' Global Peace Index. Countries are ranked based on several (I counted 23) criteria - everything from perceived criminality in society to deaths from conflict outside the country. If you compare the list of the top performing 'academic' countries with the top countries in the Global Peace Index, they are very similar. Maybe there is something to a kinder, gentler education system.