How many americans did it take to invent the atomic bomb? Is this a representation of the majority of americans?
U.S. near the bottom on schooling/test scores
- Thread starter mikenostic
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You didn't invent flight. And you imported foreigners to split the atom for you and to develop your rockets.
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To be fair, there are many very smart people in the US. And US students who make it to university/college tend to catch up to and in some cases surpass their equivalents in other countries, so it seems they can overcome the generally poor school system.
And as for the "average" American? Well, I'm not completely convinced of their intelligence. This is the land of creationism and Fox News and climate change denial, after all.
We have our guns, though!
Well, what about the "average" Frenchman? Or the "average" Aussie? Or the "average" Pakistani? Or the "average" .....well, that "average" anyone in any nation in any part of the world?
Baron Max
And aircraft carriers, and bombers, and missiles, and submarines, and... Well, the best of almost anything that anyone on Earth can imagine.
It's pretty damned hard not to be proud of the accomplishments of the USA ...there's so freakin' many!
Baron Max
Exactly. We should take up the reins of manifest destiny and continue it forth that all humanity might enjoy our splendor.
Yeah, maybe. But it might be a better option to just kill off all those who don't like us, ...THEN... allow those remaining to enjoy our spendor.
Baron Max
You don't need to know English to do math, silly. It's the same in Spanish.
oh? if you were taken as a very young child to France and put in a classroom you would just dazzle everyone with you mathematic skills and that would be it. forget about the fact fact that you cant read the questions on the test or have never seen anything like them even if you could read.
they do catch up but that takes years and the statistics probably support this as things even out in higher education classes.
superstring01
Moderator
It's a country of 300 million. On a purely technical level, if you assume that 80% of the population is ignorant and "less educated" out of highschool than their European or Japanese counterpart, that still leaves 60 million people to do all that amazing stuff you hear about in the USA.
While I'm not a betting man, I'd be willing to wager that the numbers of "intelligent" and "well educated" people graduating from American schools is probably closer to 40% (which still leaves 60% sickeningly uneducated). Projecting that statistic backwards, it would put the number of people at equal or better education at 120 million people.
~String
Actually Baron is quite right. The US heavily exports foreign specialists, at least in the academia. Starting from the Graduate level, an over proportionate amount of foreigners pop up. This, surprisingly also includes faculty.
From what it appears is that most high schools in the US compare unfavorably to other countries. And after teaching my first freshmen year at the uni here I can only agree. I guess the main issue is that quality-wise the schools in the US are very diverse, with unfortunately the mass of it being at the bottom. Essentially there are similarities to China. The education there is/was for the best part rather shitty, but with a billion people, even if only a small fraction is highly educated, numerically they will surpass many other countries with better systems. The US with 300 million will still chunk out a significant number of highly educated people (that probably are too clever to end in academia...).
The question is whether a higher standard of education is favorable or not. Apparently importing is still cheaper.
From what it appears is that most high schools in the US compare unfavorably to other countries. And after teaching my first freshmen year at the uni here I can only agree. I guess the main issue is that quality-wise the schools in the US are very diverse, with unfortunately the mass of it being at the bottom. Essentially there are similarities to China. The education there is/was for the best part rather shitty, but with a billion people, even if only a small fraction is highly educated, numerically they will surpass many other countries with better systems. The US with 300 million will still chunk out a significant number of highly educated people (that probably are too clever to end in academia...).
The question is whether a higher standard of education is favorable or not. Apparently importing is still cheaper.
But they just started doing this recently. What my little brother learned in 3rd grade about 5 or so years ago, while more advanced than what I was doing back in 1996 or so, was not pre-algebra. We don't know how these kids are going to adapt. Some of them seemed so burnt out already, 3rd graders shouldn't have senioritis. But its not just math, they expect little kids to write essays and do science projects that really are more on par with a jr. high. They're too little to understand anything so their parents do all of the work and the kid learns nothing. It's sad, I still vouch for an overhaul of the education system, it could be so much better than it is.
Cutsie, you're right, papers on topics such as "What I Did Over Spring Break" are much too advanced for young children, hell they're still assigning that in some LAS classes to various fellow students who are in my SENIOR CLASS IN AN AMERICAN UNVERSITY.
More realistically, it shouldn't be that harsh to expect children to learn how to write at a young age. Even in college, most people I know in my gen. ed. classes can't formulate a paper or even a paragraph to save their lives. Intro - Body - Conclusion. How hard can that be?!?! Gives me an advantage though because I'm an engineer but I still write "stellar" papers compared to the rest of the chumps in "Intro to Drama".
Blows my damn mind...
More realistically, it shouldn't be that harsh to expect children to learn how to write at a young age. Even in college, most people I know in my gen. ed. classes can't formulate a paper or even a paragraph to save their lives. Intro - Body - Conclusion. How hard can that be?!?! Gives me an advantage though because I'm an engineer but I still write "stellar" papers compared to the rest of the chumps in "Intro to Drama".
Blows my damn mind...
missed this one.
Having been in the trade for some 30+ years... couldn't agree with you more.
Not only do they not know the math, but a general lack of knowledge with fixturing , methods , tooling and even what some of the G&M codes are.
But they all feel like they should be programmers, after all they took that one MasterCam class that was offered.
Part of the problem is that most employers don't take the time to invest in training for their employees. I'm not talking sending them to school either.. but even something as simple as having the lead guy take some time to explain things to the button pushers, who want to learn...set aside a hour or two a week and just do examples when nothing is running. It would save a lot of redundant questions.... but no.. put em on the 300K HMC .. and let em loose???
Then again, someone gets to design the push-button systems, and if that someone is the same nationality as the worker, then it's just a matter of an educational gap.
I kinda wish there was more common sense in manufacturing as well. I'm on an aircraft design and construction team at our school (UAV-sized, lord knows they wouldn't let us stick people in em, lol). You know shit's gone to hell when the grad students forget that motors actually produce torque and, as a result, rip the shit out of the plane and the $500 motor when they try to spin up the prop in their engine mount, which, not being designed to support much torque, twists right off the plane. They ended up having to ask us undergrads how we'd do it, and of course we showed them because, well, I dunno, common sense, which sadly isn't common any more...
*sigh*
I kinda wish there was more common sense in manufacturing as well. I'm on an aircraft design and construction team at our school (UAV-sized, lord knows they wouldn't let us stick people in em, lol). You know shit's gone to hell when the grad students forget that motors actually produce torque and, as a result, rip the shit out of the plane and the $500 motor when they try to spin up the prop in their engine mount, which, not being designed to support much torque, twists right off the plane. They ended up having to ask us undergrads how we'd do it, and of course we showed them because, well, I dunno, common sense, which sadly isn't common any more...
*sigh*
Not very glamorous I can assure you. The average Aussie has the intelligence of a door knob. Australia had to import the intelligent people from the United States.
James R has already answered your second question in post 42, but I might add: Once the US could buy foreign brains. Now China is buying them from the US -Staffing up 50 Harvard/MIT like new university centers. 6.1 million new Unversity students will graduate in China soon. In current economic condition this is a problem. See
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2220484&postcount=115 or the full Economist text at:
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13446878
As to how China is dealing with this.
Of course it is not true that "all Americans are undereducated compared to the rest of the world..." but many are as basically they get little chance to climb out of their "no books in home, semi-illiterate parents etc.” environment in most city schools, which also have more rats that books. At end of WWII the US and to some extent England were the ONLY military powers of any significance. Most other countries needed to build homes, factories etc. not super-sonic fighters.
Sweden illustrates this point well: They let the Germans just walk thru in WWII (to attack Norway) with no resistance or destruction in Sweden. Soon after WWII, Saab was building and selling super-sonic fighters, which that tiny country is still selling today* – but soon it will stop as it cannot compete with the bigger firms – I.e. Once you have a lead it is very hard for others to get the scale needed to catch up or even stay in the military hardware business. (Israel has a great deal of external help, high education standards, and strong local motivation to be another exception.) – That is a large part of your answer too.
That said there still is one more, often overlooked, but important factor answering your first question: The US was not destroyed by WWII. Instead it was industrialized and inspired to study sciences, and the GI bill let many do so. Also WWII expanded its labor force as "Rosy the riveter" left her apron at home and went to factory work. Rosy may have gone to college to get her Mrs. but she got educated too. Rosy joining the work force added a lot of brain power to it, even in the field of research.
SUMMARY: The US got to be militarily dominate as a consequence of WWII, not by better educated brain power, as you assume / infer, but in spite of its lower general education standards.
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*Brazil will buy some new fighters soon. Saab’s plane is a serious contender – one of three on the short list. Based on value for the money, I expect the French, with high volume production economies compared to Saab will win, Saab will be second, almost win, and US will be a distant third. (US will not sell the full electronic warfare system - so you pay a lot and do not get much extra value.) US is losing out in other technical areas of economic importance too. For example the Digital TV formates of US, EU, and Japan are different and incompatible - Last year, after several years of testing all three, Brazil selected the Japanese system and the rest of South Americal will very likely go along. This is billions of dollars lost forever by the US's much inferior technology. Again US was a distant third and the EU a close second. (Japanese system is best for mobile to Ipod etc use. EU is best for multiple channels (in different small countries) not interferring with each other and US was in all aspects inferior to both.)
Perhaps the brain that could have made the story different was in a black body, which got bitten by a rat in an intercity school and dropped out to sell drugs and now sits in jail at cost to US tax payer of more than an Ivy League college education.
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So did I....
I was an A student in almost all subjects, until highschool. Then as a teenager you know school comes second to hanging around with your friends. Even when I didn't try very hard I still pulled off really good marks.
Put it this way, if I had come home with a D I would have got an ass whipping.
Funny a lot of my son's friends bring home D's and they are rewarded with every gaming system, cell phone, Ipod on the market.
Parents are really screwed in my opinion these days. It is not any surprise the grades are so low with these kinds of parents letting things slide so easily.I know what my kids are capable of, their teachers know too. It isn't acceptable to get a D in this house and you certainly won't be rewarded with anything.
It's funny one year my older ones first semester grades were slipping and I knew he could do much better. I expressed my disappointment and made him a deal.
For every A he got the next semester I would give him $20.00.
I was out $100.00
I had a friend tell me that the variability of the US educational system is higher than Europe's. America produces the smartest and the dumbest students in the world.
A couple. reasons.
1) Children are children, not rational, reasonable beings. They understand punishment and reward, but not much beyond that. They're a little above dogs.
2) A kid has to sit down and learn thing to actually learn things. It's hard to learn stuff when you're busy ignoring the teacher, jumping around the classroom hopped up on ADD and poor parenting. And it's hard to get the kid to sit down when you can't properly incentivize him
A couple. reasons.
1) Children are children, not rational, reasonable beings. They understand punishment and reward, but not much beyond that. They're a little above dogs.
2) A kid has to sit down and learn thing to actually learn things. It's hard to learn stuff when you're busy ignoring the teacher, jumping around the classroom hopped up on ADD and poor parenting. And it's hard to get the kid to sit down when you can't properly incentivize him