" At the moment, there are thousands of schools around the world that work better than our own. They don't have many things in common. But they do seem to share a surprising aesthetic.
Classrooms in countries with the highest-performing students contain very little tech wizardry, generally speaking. They look, in fact, a lot like American ones--circa 1989 or 1959."
Perhaps this is not entirely coincidence. For myself, I doubt that the classroom environment itself is that alchemy, though that's certainly possible. Rather, I suspect it's the mentality behind the visible arrangement.
maybe they have teachers that teach and students that learn? Contrast this with modern squeezably soft approaches such as group therapy and "maybe if you think hard enough, you'll derive 2000 years of math all by yourself!"?
Oh, and competition? That may hurt somebody's widdle feewings, so can't have that. Better to let them get crushed once they leave the cozy confines of academia than prepare them for it in advance.
And we can't possibly bring aspirin or a butter knife to school. Zero tolerance and all that.
Contrast that with my nephew's school in Shanghai, where every kid's grades are posted on a big board after every major test, trigonometry is studied in the eighth year, and kids bring ginseng tea to school. (He does go to a top school in Shanghai, but so do several million other kids at the top of the Chinese academic pyramid).