Each of the nations that consistently outrank the United States on the PISA exam provides their students with a comprehensive, content-rich education in the liberal arts and sciences. These nations differ greatly with regard to how they accomplish this goal. Some have a national curriculum and standards but no tests, others have both, and some leave everything up to the states.

So what is the common ingredient across these varied nations? It is not a delivery mechanism or an accountability system that these high-performing nations share: it is a dedication to educating their children deeply in a wide range of subjects.

In a report recently released by Common Core entitled Why We’re Behind: What Top Nation’s Teach Their Students, but We Don’t, it lists the subjects each nation requires in compulsory education. But it is the raw material—the excerpts from national curricula, standards, and assessments—that conveys the richness of education in these nations:

• Fourth graders in Hong Kong visit an artist’s studio, study Picasso’s Guernica, and analyze the works of modernist sculptor Henry Moore.
• Finnish 5th and 6th graders study how the invention of writing changed human life and the impacts of the French Revolution; they trace a topic such as the evolution of trade from prehistory until the 19th century.
• Seventh graders in Korea are expected to know not just about supply and demand, but about equilibrium price theories, property rights, and ways to improve market function.
• Japanese 7th to 9th graders “conduct experiments regarding pressure to discover that pressure is related to the magnitude of a force and the area.”
• Eighth graders from the Canadian province of Ontario are expected to create musical compositions, conduct, and know musical terms in Italian.
• Dutch 12th graders must know enough about seven events connected to the Crimean War to be able to put them in chronological order.
• Canadian 12th graders in British Columbia are expected to identify the author of the words: “Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” and to what Admiral Nimitz was referring when he said: “Pearl Harbor has now been partially avenged.”
• On a Swiss examination 12th graders write an essay analyzing JFK’s October 1962 proclamation that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The report goes on to say that in recent years, America has increasingly embraced education policies and practices that have made our children’s education narrower and more basic. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is part of the cause of this, but is by no means the only culprit. Says the report, ”We must join our desire to compete with other nations with a willingness to learn from them. Common Core hopes that the materials assembled here will encourage that desire to learn.” For the complete report go to http://commoncore.org/_docs/CCreport_whybehind.pdf

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