You should be careful about these kinds of tests as they don’t measure things like critical thinking or creativity but clearly, the US is far from being number one.

Critical thinking and creativity are often brought up in this context, especially when it comes to high scores received by East Asian countries and I always wonder how much of this is just Westoid cope.

I've heard a lot of white people claim that Asian education system is too focused on rote learning and doesn't teach critical thinking or creativity but you only have to look at Facebook and Twitter to see the general state of Western "critical thinking". As for creativity, obviously that's really hard to quantify, but an absolute fuckload of popular entertainment comes out of Japan, South Korea, and (more recently) China.

And I'm not accusing you of being racist at all, but the whole thing with creativity and critical thinking really mirrors the "goldilocks" theory of racism where white supremacists claim that black people are stronger physically and Asians are smarter but Whites are the goldilocks blend of strength, intelligence, and creativity.