This documentary aspires to offer a study of education worldwide, but it lacks in economic and cultural context.
As summer ends and families agonize over how to send children back to school safely, we receive an education documentary that was plainly produced before the pandemic. “The Smartest Kids in the World” aspires to offer a study of teaching methods worldwide, but the documentary (on Discovery+) contains little rigor. It’s a dippy lecture in motion.
Inspired by Amanda Ripley’s book of the same name, the documentary introduces four American teenagers planning to study abroad for a year. We are told that their chosen destinations — the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland and South Korea — far surpass the United States in education. This calculation comes from PISA, an international learning assessment. On what this mystery exam contains, however, the director, Tracy Droz Tragos, spends no time at all — the first of many curious omissions.
As the students become immersed in overseas high schools, the movie pairs their stories with talking-head speculations from Ripley, who rhapsodizes over the foreign systems. In Finland, class autonomy empowers students. Switzerland offers enriching pre-professional opportunities. And the value South Korea places on education inspires a drive for excellence. Ripley’s ideas are interesting, but they are conveyed in swift succession and in broad and basic terms, giving the impression of a series of flashcards dispensed for memorization.
Sometimes, Ripley’s notions diverge from the students’ experiences. When Jaxon, struggling with his Dutch curriculum, chooses to drop out and return to the U.S. early, the documentary declines to probe the cultural barriers to his ambitions. Later, Brittany, studying in Finland, marvels that the country pays its students to attend college — a crucial gesture at the economics of success that is left hanging in the air, unanalyzed.
Listening to students is “the key to understanding how we’re doing and what’s possible,” Ripley proclaims early in “The Smartest Kids in the World.” The documentary fails to follow this advice, and its smartest points suffer for the mistake.
The Smartest Kids in the World
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Discovery+.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
