Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

I’ll be in San Francisco on Wednesday for the NewSchools annual summit. That afternoon, I’ll be hosting a discussion about what America can learn from the best education systems in the world.

The panel features Sir Michael Barber (formerly of McKinsey and UK P.M. Blair’s administration, now at Pearson), Jon Schnur (former education adviser to Presidents Obama and Clinton, now at America Achieves) and Joanne Weiss (formerly head of Race to the Top and now Chief of Staff to Ed Sec Arne Duncan). All of these people have visited schools around the world and spent years trying to figure out what works in America.

I’ve moderated a lot of panels, and I have to say that many of them were dubious in some way: too many people, the wrong people, an unanswerable question, etc. But this line-up has the potential to be truly fascinating, and I am very excited to hear what comes out of it. Hope to see some of you there.

Sometimes when I tell Americans I am working on a book about the smartest countries in the world, they assume I mean China.

I don’t mean China. And I won’t, not anytime soon.

It’s true that teenagers in Shanghai, a huge, booming city in China, trounced teenagers on every continent on an international test of critical thinking in math, reading and science in 2009. Their performance was remarkable. Truly. In math, their poorest kids outperformed our richest kids.

But concluding anything about China from Shanghai’s results is like using test scores from Minneapolis to make assumptions about Detroit; one has almost nothing to do with the other. Millions of school-aged Chinese kids are not enrolled in school—still. Millions more do not have access to anything approaching a decent education. Children of migrant workers often cannot get the papers they need to attend city schools, so their parents must pay for worse-quality private schools. All of which begs the question: How well are Shanghai’s schools really doing if large numbers of lower-income kids are systematically refused entry?

A nice reality check from BusinessWeek:

Fifteen-year-old Zhan Haite, whose parents hail from relatively poor Jiangxi province, was born in the city of Zhuhai in Guangdong province, where her parents first worked. When she was 5 they moved to Shanghai, where her father now installs phones. After attending primary and middle school in the city, she was refused entry to high school because she is still registered as a Jiangxi resident. She got national attention in the media late last year after she organized an online campaign to change education restrictions on migrant workers’ children. “I want to end the tragedy of migrant children having to go back to the countryside to study,” says Zhan.

During my recent obsession with tracking kids’ boredom on Twitter, I’ve naturally been wondering which country has the most bored kids.

Of course, this is hard to find out—for about a thousand reasons, most of which are boring. But the closest thing I’ve seen to an imperfect answer comes from the OECD’s 2002 Education at a Glance report. The survey asked 15-year-olds around the world if they “often felt bored” at school. It’s worth noting that “often” and “bored” are words with very different definitions depending on the culture you live in…but let’s play along for now just for kicks.

Across the developed world, 1 out of every 2 students (48%) said they often felt bored at school.

But that was just the average. The percentages varied quite a bit from place to place. The most boring country? Well, of the 32 nations in the study, Ireland took last place—with 67% teenagers reporting that they often felt bored. Greece and Spain did just about as badly. In the U.S., 61% of high schoolers said they often felt bored—not the worst, but above average relative to the rest of the globe.

Oddly, Portugal fared best, with only 24% of 15-year-olds claiming to be frequently bored. There seemed to be no correlation between a country’s overall education outcomes and the boredom index. For example, countries with teenagers who dramatically outperform our own on tests of critical thinking in math, reading and science (Finland, Canada and Australia, to name a few), have just about as many bored kids, relatively speaking.

The full report is not easily available online (though you can see the relevant chart if you search “bored” in this document.) A more friendly version that includes fewer countries is here.

On Friday, I took a break from doing my taxes and spent one hour monitoring Twitter for the words bored, class and school. I expected to see a few posts; instead I saw a galaxy. All over the world, kids were posting—at the rate of about 1 per second by my guess—about how bored they were in real time.

The sheer volume—and outrage and creativity—of their laments was part awesome, part tragic. I wondered what would happen if we could somehow capture all that energy, all those empty hours?

For now, unsure what else to do, I have documented an hour of grievances, from 2 to 3 pm ET on March 15, 2013, to remind adults what it is like to be made to wait or be silent or do mind-numbing tasks of no import. (Note: This is not even close to a comprehensive list.)

By the time I get out of school today I will be a pro at all the games on my phone! #bored @KenzleyWilson

Watching Big Bang theory in math class #bored #whereareyouspringbreak instagr.am/p/W44gpHl3oU/ @c_partyrocker

When class is pointless.. #shouldnthavecome #bored @Kenzers_96

When I call my mom in math class.. #bored @MerMer_Paige

I hate watching movies in class. #bored @bekkachrist

In English before #Bored #Netherhall #School #Lewis #Southwell pic.twitter.com/Kr4pg9bnjb @Lee_Farish

Survived math test this period…I think. Now gotta live thru next 4 periods til spring break! #OhYeah #Bored @jayna_lei

Been in class for 10 minutes and I already finished the assignment that is supposed to take 60. #bored @KilliynHope

Caught me slippin , #what #i #do #in #school , #texting #bored #bummmmm instagr.am/p/W4z1jxHcOM/ @Ayo_Judayy

Wish my mom could come pick me up from school..#Bored @CaitlinWilkie1

Documenting time passing during class #bored #timegoesbysoslowly instagr.am/p/W4yfi6r65X/ @juliaa_nicole

This class can end anytime now! #Bored @motorgabe707

I haven’t done anything in school all day besides take the [Ohio Graduation Test] #Bored @AnnaReneeSadows

Can we just skip to the part where school is over and it’s summer? #school #summer #bored #hatewinter #iwantsummer #now @jamiestark16

I’m so glad my mom is making me stay at school since I’m not doing anything in any of my classes. #sarcasm #bored #annoyed @amariiee13

At school. #Bored @Raccccheeeel

Bored in class…. #sleepy #bored #tired #school instagr.am/p/W4ws6Axf83/ @Cster_

This is what I do when I’m bored in class #bored #school pic.twitter.com/z9u9suB0An @ChristineLangg

Math class, #bored @rachyboom1234

English Class #Bored #BadLighting #Whatever instagr.am/p/W4xu7wJkLt/ @_TheNamesShania

You get the idea. The bottom line is that if you did a word cloud for kids’ Tweets from school, it would probably look like this.
   

Buried in a NYT story about niche online classes (on sites like CreativeLive) was this line:

“[T]wo of Hollywood’s largest talent agencies, Creative Artists Agency and William Morris Endeavor, have invested small sums in CreativeLive that signal their interest in using the company’s service as a new outlet for their celebrity clients.”

Here’s why this matters: Two of the country’s most unique and potent exports are higher education and Hollywood. Until now, they had little reason to intersect.

But online classes are different than the in-person kind: Not only do they have a huge potential profit upside, given the ability to attract tens of thousands of students worldwide, but they are, at their best, performances. No one likes to say this out loud in academia, but it’s true: the most impactful MOOCs are also entertaining. The teacher does not need to be a singing, dancing, joke-telling maniac, but the teacher does need to be riveting, one way or another. The production quality needs to be high. Or the students will evaporate, clicking off to Facebook or Twitter or one of the many other online classes multiplying on the Internet.

Enter Hollywood.

If these industries combined their talents intelligently, the U.S. could dominate the online learning marketplace for decades to come. But that’s a big If…