A case study in global high school education and why the US has been falling behind other countries in educating its kids. Smartest Kids in the World follows US exchange students across three countries, Finland (#1 in the world), Korea (#6 in the world), and Poland (#19 in the world) to examine what they do differently from the US. Tl;dr: all put a premium on education, teaching is a sought-after and prestigious job, and standards are much higher than in America. Each example teaches something different: Finland balances school and having a life, Korea works twice as long/ hard, and Poland quickly rose above the US in a ten-year timespan. This was an incredibly insightful peek into the different mechanisms of education but underscores how fall the US has fallen, especially in math (which is the single highest predictor of future success).