British pupils taught by Chinese outpace their peers in experiment

I'm all for better education - but this compulsion for everyone to excel is a problem. Not everyone wants to excel academically - and they shouldn't need to. I think the problem is that we have set up an economic system with winners & losers - and where the cost of losing is high. In the USA the top 1% has about 90% of the wealth - and those who don't win can face real poverty and real hardship. Really, we live in an era when everyone can have a good life - if we can fix our economic system.

It's funny how they gravitate to things people will hate for why it worked (extreme hours)

Where as we know things like rote learning, large classes and not wasting time on critically thinking work from experimental results.

But somehow these became not PC.

Critical thinking is fun and there's no reason school can't also be fun. All of ones life should be fun, not just the adult years.

But because people have been brainwashed into thinking these things are 'better' the whole system has suffered rather than a healthy middle ground.