Education across the globe

Hearing the stories of two international students today was very eye-opening for me. While I wasn't impacted as much as I thought I would be by their stories of assimilation, I found it very interesting to hear about two different countries' models of education. Obviously, in the United States we are aware of an increasingly global community and workforce, and we know there is a serious lack in the achievement of our students compared to those overseas. But it seems to me that we pay too much attention to those "gaps" and not enough to the way others do things. It got me thinking that maybe if the education policymakers of America sat down with students and teachers from other countries, kind of like we did today, maybe we'd have a better idea of what we need to change. There's nothing wrong with taking ideas from other communities/societies, building upon them, and fitting them into our own system. I also think that those of us in the teacher education program don't get enough exposure to different models of education. Perhaps that is why I found the examples of Ghana and Japan so interesting. I'd love to learn more about how other countries educate their children and maybe try to find things we can incorporate into our seemingly inadequate education system.