With the haul of gold medals by the US in the last Olympics stood up aside where the US ranks in education does it seem the US is more focused on sports and competition than education?

Sure, but there are many other much more relevant-seeming signs than that that the US education system is wacked.

Also, education measures are about average performance, not about peak performance. Peak performance measures favor countries with higher populations. So the measure is skewed not only by being about something different, but by being a very different type of numeric comparison, anyway.

Not to me. I don’t think the government is funding sports is it?

^ I don’t think the government is funding sports is it?
The USOC gets their money from private sources, which points back to the original idea of the focus being more on athletics and competition than academics as there is no academic equivalent to the USOC. Being it is a ”people funded” entity, the people seemed to be more focused on making sure the US has elite athletes more than elite mathematicians and scientist.

But of course! My dad was a music teacher and the sports dept. always got money for stuff while the music dept. usually got zilch. (All of the school board was coaches or wives of coaches.)

There are kids that succeed and achieve greatness academically that would be on par with an Olympian but no one has figured yet how to sell commercial advertising at $1,000,000 per 30 second spot for the Mensa Competitors. The cool part about the brainiac super achievers they do it naturally no steroids needed.

You are mixing and matching elite athletes and elite academics with mass education statistics and rankings. An evaluation of one by viewing the results of another is not valid.

If you want a real comparison, look at the preponderance of Nobel Prizes given to the US researchers, compare that to equivalent weighting of Olympic medals.

If you look at physical fitness of US junior high and high schools students as a whole, I argue the US is as woefully behind in sports/physical fitness as it is in education.

Best under 12 football team in the world is FC Barcelona.

As far as public schools. The government clearly doesn’t value education that much. My state is always in the absolute bottom of academic achievement. Since I was in school here. All that’s been done is ;classes are easier,overall grades are manipulated or curved by raising value of easier subjects. They also made lower grades sufficient for moving forward to higher grade levels. The results are slightly higher graduation rates, which looks better from far away, but the students are far more ignorant than they should be.

This isn’t because the kids are getting dumber. It isn’t their fault.

The disparity between what a 8 year old Chinese student is required to have learned at their age versus what an American student is required to have learned is astonishing.

America seems to have some of the lowest educational standards in the developed world.

It isn’t just sports prioritized. Many things trump education, for some reason.

^^My guess is your state, maybe it is Mississippi, hasn’t cared about public education overall in a general sense since desegregation. Even before that k-12 education probably wasn’t as valued as it was in other states. Let alone for many years the state wasn’t educating whole segments of the population, and then when it started to it wasn’t close to being an equal education in many instances. For sure, whatever state you are in, there are pockets where the K-12 education is good, but MS is still using corporal punishment in some schools, it is a fairly poor state, it doesn’t have an influx of adults who are highly educated to influence education, and the taxes are relatively low.

MS, and states like it, are behind, because the history of poverty and not educating the population is taking generations to overcome and it pulls down the average. Add in that at this point the people with money and power don’t dare use the public system for their own kids, and fundamentally don’t want to shell out money for other people’s kids. It’s not a great scenario for improvement.

Is it really sports or academics?
It fascinates me how people tend not to question exactly how the data concerning a country’s educational scores are gathered. It is such a frustrating subject. Try not believe all of the hoo-ha being thrown around by those who bank on the public’s lack of knowledge about those educational scoring stats.
In some countries*, children are given National Tests. Not like the current modes used in the testing of students in the US by the profit-making companies of today in State Standardized Testing, but rather a National – across the board Test.
These tests in some other countries are administered in the latter Elementary and beginning Middle School grades- [or for those of us who ever used or understood the term: “Far Out!” ?? In that era, Elementary School- but definitely Before Junior High School. Point being; Fifth to Sixth grades in their development At That Time in history.]
Children at this point/age in certain countries, it is believed that they need to be steered in their life’s choices concerning their future. After this testing battery, those who score in a certain percentage are steered towards a more work-related vocational school, while other scores are fast tracked into a more intense academic-type schooling. There is no question, just a score. Woe be it to those who have a bad testing day, are tired, hungry, or those testing poorly because of different learning methods and maturity.
Who the hell wants or knows what they truly want to be as a ‘grown up’? OK- a few do, many don’t and never will. Some want to try everything. Like me! Who’s to say, in today’s world, that the job you aim for will still be current when you finish training or school?
Later on down the line when the test scores of the various countries are compared, the scores of the more academically-inclined groups from those countries are the Only scores used when compared to that of the US ‘all-inclusive’ student testing score levels. It will never be equal in their measurements. How could they be?
If you take into effect the various educational methodologies of Each separate state and areas of the country and total all of that, it makes a big difference in outcomes and reputations of students doesn’t it?
Slippery slope when comparing the academics levels of the US students in today’s world.
Sports- I honestly don’t know how one would measure that. What baseline? Anyone?
Excellent Q!
*- No, I’m sorry. I can’t differentiate which countries. Current tasks and responsibilities bar me from doing so. It is an area interesting to take a look-see, if interested. A hot potato issue for sure.

I’ve always found it odd how fascinated Americans are with chasing, throwing, or kicking balls around.

@ForHatesSake There are a few million Europeans and South Americans who are jumping up and down and saying what about us? We LOVE to watch round bouncy balls kicked back and forth across well groomed grassy areas too! Soccer/Football is the number one sport in the world and barely gets air time in the US.

@Cruiser I suppose it would have been better if I just said “people” instead of ‘Americans’. But since I am American and am in our culture, I was using that as a reference point.

@Cruiser I suppose it would have been better if I just said “people” instead of ‘Americans’. But since I am American and am in our culture, I was using that as a reference point.

@Cruiser […one has figured yet how to sell commercial advertising at $1,000,000 per 30 second spot for the Mensa Competitors.
Maybe the start has to be branding brains and education as something sexy as they did way back when where the movers and shakers were the educated and not the blacksmiths, mason workers, and farmer.

@zenvelo If you want a real comparison, look at the preponderance of Nobel Prizes given to the US researchers, compare that to equivalent weighting of Olympic medals.
Nobel Prizes are given by a committee of people, to score high on a test you have to do that from your own brain, no one can decide to count your answer as correct to up your score if the answer is indeed wrong.

@Hypocrisy_Central I am old enough to remember the excitement Bobby Fisher brought to the game of chess in the 60’s and EVERYONE wanted to be like Booby and play chess. The nerdy smart kids finally had a platform to proudly stand on.

@Hypocrisy_Central Apples and oranges, yo keep comparing apples and oranges. Yes, they are both round fruit, but I said compare Nobel Prizes to Olympic medals, then compare school fitness to school test scores.

Please understand my answer before you critique it.