South Korea has one of the best academic systems in the world. At the root of the South Korean system is the process of ‘learning by rote’, a method which many academics would consider to be educational without merit. It certainly cannot be seen as a suitable method for encouraging students’ higher order thinking skills. But as a writer says, It may have the world’s best academic system in terms of results, but results aren’t everything! It depends on how you count.
By standardized test scores, the two best countries are South Korea and Finland. What’s interesting, according to those who’ve studied it is that they take a kind of opposite approaches. South Korea’s primary education is highly structured, emphasizing memorization, long hours and lots of homework. Finland, on the other hand, apparently has a much less structured system, which emphasizes critical thinking, curiosity and real world applications. I think the constant in countries with the best education is that they attract the best and most skilled teachers, usually pay them well and give them a great deal of support.