4 ms·

Actually, I'm just surprised that the U.S. is ahead of Germany in both categories. Naiveté on my part?

• wolfgke 14y ago
  As far as I know (I was born and live in Germany, but please correct me if I'm wrong) the German education system is known for a great variance in performance of pupils. This means there are some pupils that perform very well, but also some that perform very poorly. These extremes are more pronounced than in comparable countries. Many people say that the education system is cementing the social hierarchy: if you are very well educated, your children will mostly become the same, but it is rather difficult for children to move up the social ladder if they have poorly educated parents. Because there are many top performers the German economy has enough skilled personnel to be competitive (what to do with the less well educated is a much-debated topic - because of the distinct German health and welfare system the status-quo leads to less social tensions than it would probably in the U.S.). TLDR: it is plausible that the U.S. is ahead on average. The German education system is probably better on the top performers and worse on the bottom performers.