The US won the math olympiad this year, and is pretty much always near the top. You might want to check out where certain highly praised European countries tend to come in every year by comparison.
The US has one of the highest GDP per capita levels, at $56,000 (#5 for 2015, behind only a few tiny nations), to go with one of the highest median incomes - you don't accomplish that without some amazing education output. The US leads in nobel prizes globally. The US leads in general innovation, R&D, and sheer scientific output. Its universities are productive in that regard in ways nobody else comes close to. Its economy is also one of the most productive.
The US leads in space, space tech, aerospace, medtech, biotech, pharma, software, Web, Internet, mobile, agriculture, entertainment, defense tech, is one of the leaders in computing hardware, and is also one of the leaders in pretty much every type of energy technology. It's also the world's #2 manufacturer.
So yeah, the US does a lot of things really really well. You don't accomplish all of that, and manage to produce such a massive economic engine for over a century, with extremely high output levels per capita, without at least a decent education system to go with it - which is why so few countries can match up to the US economically or scientifically.
Do you by any chance have a handy link to such a list, that was not compiled by Americans?
http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2015.html
First page of Google.
(That is, if they are the same, then I would expect the US to have more occurrences in the highest levels simply due to statistics.)
In the top 50, 18 are US schools, 10 are in the UK, 11 are from other former British colonies (Hong Kong, Canada, Singapore, Australia).
Isn't elementary school a notorious exception? That's what the parent and grand-parent posts are talking about.
The guy was merely corroborating the original post, sharing some of the absurd things he was taught in school, and was downvoted for it. Doesn't seem like a very friendly thing to do to someone who's engaging in the discussion.
Shall we stand by mute while someone is bullied? Either that or be bullied ourselves for speaking up to stop it? If that's it, then I don't like your policies. I re-edit the post to conform to your policies. Then I'll show myself the door, thanks.
HN members usually downvote when something is incorrect, even if it was not my fault but the teacher who taught me that.
I usually make mistakes and get downvoted for them. What I was taught about Windows NT had some inaccuracies in it and got downvoted for that. If you look at my history every once in a while I got downvoted and get used to it. But I get upvoted more than downvoted so it averages out.