Where is India? :-|

Where is India? :-|

Originally shared by Avinash Kaushik

Your response will likely be: Look we, USA, is still #1, rankings don't matter!! OR Good lord, the sky is falling, the sky is falling!!

The reality is likely somewhere in between. I found this simple 2x2 to be quite interesting as I'd not seen happiness and school performance plotted this way.  

It was so surprising to see the standard belief that all those hard working students in Singapore, China, Switzerland etc. might be wrong. They report being happy. (Your cue: Complain about how terrible surveys are at extracting true sentiment!)

It was delightful to see Vietnam in the top right box. They have made substantial changes to their education system, so great to see their high rank.

For us, US, it presents at least some food for thought. We invest a lot in education. We should do better. There are no easy answers though, and the entrenched politics of the issue, on both the Right and the Left, will make it impossible to actually do something about it. Sadly.

How was the matrix created: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s triennial international survey compared test scores from 65 countries. Happiness was ranked based on the percentage of students who agreed or disagreed with the statement “I feel happy at school.” Test scores were ranked based on the combined individual rankings of the students’ math, reading, and science scores.

Source: http://goo.gl/etvMuL