Wait, the US overall is ranked 18th out of approximately 50 countries (on the first chart for Math + Science). Obviously some American demographics are doing better, but across all demographics, the US scores are not excellent and not near the top.
According to the chart, the American scores amongst the internationally high performing demographic categories are exceptional. The overall score is only dragged down due to demographic categories that perform low internationally.
It's nice that that partition (ie: ethnicity) seems to cheer people up (or perhaps not, depending on how one thinks about it).
On the other hand, there's probably some partition - even if it's preference of {boxers, briefs, lingerie, 'commando'} - for any academic field by which one nation is better for each part.
It is possible that every group of immigrants to America is better at baking strudel than its corresponding group in Germany. Still more likely to find good German strudel.
> On the other hand, there's probably some partition - even if it's preference of {boxers, briefs, lingerie, 'commando'} - for any academic field by which one nation is better for each part.
This is not at all self-evident and if any such factor so strongly correlated with academics, it would be born out in real life and society. "Smarter people like vanilla over chocolate ice cream." The only reason race has come to matter so much is that it IS such a massive factor on one's life experience, whereas having brown hair vs. blonde hair does not and causes far less controversy.
The list of attributes that correlate to academic performance is long and picking from them is arbitrary. Eg:
{ People who study, people who cut class }
Country A: one freak Nobel laureate who likes to study, and a million citizens who scrape by but cut class.
Country B is the inverse: a million studious citizens, and one class-cutting deadbeat.
A's single Nobel laureate scores better at Math than than B's million nerds, and A's million deadbeats score better than B's sole deadbeat. Now country A is better at Math.
The point is that euopean americans perform strongly compared to europeans, asian americans perform strongly among asians, and black americans perform strongly compared to majority-black countries. Each demographic as the top of demographic peers internationally.
Most countries don't release fine-grained data but yes when you compare against other countries that are essentially ethnostates – Japan, Poland, few others.
Yes, and I don't think this is racism any more than other DEI/education initiatives that focus on one demographic more vs. another. Everyone talks about trying to get more blacks into gifted programs or selective high schools like Stuyvesant. This is scoping the problem, nothing more.
18th out of 50 is not excellent for a HEGEMON country that essentially rules europe, south america, and half of asia. I imagine Britain was better than 18th out of 50 during the height of the british empire.
States by and large originated as a means to organize violence at scale, so it's not surprising that the most successful ones historically are also the best at that specifically.
It's strange to me that relative performance would even be a primary factor for defining performance as "excellent". You could be number one on the list and still deeply unsettled if performance is dropping or stagnant. I would want to focus on generational improvement targeting say 10%-20% improvement across the board every 10 years or so.
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