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US Losing its Scientific Dominance
ScaredSilly writes "The New York Times is reporting that the US is losing its dominance in the sciences. They cite lowering research budgets, increased military spending and 'reverse brain-drain': fewer techies staying in the US after school. I personally think that our comparatively crappy K-12 educational system, and an increased dominance of military research over core scientific research plays a big role. (It's easy to get DARPA, DoD and DoE funding, but difficult to get NSF funding). What do you folks think?"
...and now the fact that I went to the US to study will be a liability rather than an asset. Truly, America is declining... Are you guys SURE you want shrub-chimp hybrid for four more years?
The situation reminds me of 1600s Spain, frankly -- the big consumer, the people who crossed an ocean to "conquistar" (black?) gold. So, has the US entered its decadence phase finally?
"But the American share, after peaking from the 1960's through the 1990's, has fallen in the 2000's to about half, 51 percent. The rest went to Britain, Japan, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and New Zealand."
:)
Great news
I love New Zealand
Webmaster of Infoweb
The education system in this country is a mess. Sure there's a few bright spots here and there, but for the most part it has fallen apart into arguments of political correctness, violence, and debates over evolution vs. creation. More school funding is given to non-science activities such as sports, instead of funding a new science lab.
SmashTech - No smashing of tech involved
from the DOD and other areas because they have modernized their websites and bid / awards area. Most likely this is because of the money they receive from the government, but running a small scientific firm I know that I get at least four mailings about how to apply for DOD grants for scientific research while I get none from any other government agency. I have appled for grants through NSA and others so they have our company information. I think science in general in the public sector is poor. The whole thing, from NASA to NSA to their websites looks like it was developed with the 1960's in mind. Beyond medical and geographic reasearch, public scientific information and research is very limited.
There is a rage in me to defy the order of the stars, despite their pretty patterns.
With the newer better EU, and the technological progress of the far eastern region coupled with the sudden roll of cultural trendsetters, the US could easily settle into a new roll as the greatest trailer park in the world.
Not to mention that the US has to hitch space rides with the Soviets nowadays. Tough times for close minds.
I wonder if the post-9/11 paranoia has something to do with it?
One of the US's major strengths in research has always been the ability to attract top scientists from all over the world, but with the more and more draconian immigration and visa laws it's becoming harder and harder for foreign scientists to work in the US...
So tell me, honestly. Why should someone blindly, without question, love the United States of America?
What is wrong with constructive criticism? If a country is so great, its merits should easily be able to withstand any criticism.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
If you are on a university campus this morning...take a look around; it's no big suprise. Even more so, sit in on some general credit classes...or hell, *simple* college math courses. That's not to say those on higher levels aren't there, but damn, it just seems as though there is a huge influx of...just well, morons. Graduating too many highschoolers thinking they are headed for 13th grade. Sad really....we have so much potential to do better, but we can't get the fucking congress to fund education to the top of the list. We'll get our paybacks soon enough :(
11:21am, "MSNBC Looks At Patent Abusers' Victims"
12:15pm, "US Losing its Scientific Dominance"
Well duh! Let's spend a load of time doing science, I'm sure we won't have to spend millions on a legal defense when somebody sues us for using an obvious idea...
Hmmm, actually there's a lot of science and engineering that goes into military spending. You'd be surprised at some of the great minds they have here where I work (at a defense contractor). The military, although sometimes it has some crazy ideas (Star Wars), is almost always on the tip of new technology and they're usually the first to get and test technology before it (ever) becomes commercial - ARPANet anybody?
Also, it seems that less Americans want to go into the sciences - they'd rather do easy, joke majors in school like Communications or Psychology... and even further before that, in elementary and middle school, being smart and interested in science/engineering/reading isn't "cool" and people tend to shun those types, while elementary/middle schools abroad tend to rever the more intelligent students.
Everything else is globalizing as the field levels across the world. Economies, education, I dont see why we should be so surprised of the same in the field of science.
What with the lax educational system that the U.S. seems to have, not to mention to grossly misappropriated funding by Federal and State gov'ts, it comes as no shock that the country is falling behind others in the realm of scientific research
America is the epitome of short attention spans, loud colorfull comercials, and above all, the need to convince our children that spending is the most important thing they can do.
The corporations that are supported by politicians that YOU DIDNT BOTHER VOTING AGAINST helped this happen. If your child is too busy collecting pokemon cards (because you have been guilted by society into working 60 hours a week to buy them) to pay attention to petty things like math or science, well... tough luck.
Quit lowering the education standards in the US so that anyone that wants to go to college gets in. Not everyone is entitled to go just because they want to. Give me a break. Colleges are offering remedial education to those who do not meet the minimal accepted criteria for getting into college in the first place! Colleges have become a business and education is not a priority. Pay college graduates for what they've learned not just because they can toss a football or slam dunk a hoop.
No, I don't blame family values; I just want to call attention to how much time politicians spend talking about family values, and how little about other kinds of values.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'm wondering if the use of university as a standard educational step, a High School v. 2, instead of an institution if you are so inclined to study an advanced field may have something to do with it.
Not that there are too many philosophy or business majors out there, but because someone has to teach them. Instead of putting money into RA's, grad students must be pooled into TAs and untenured professors (probably those with the most recent education, more reason to do cutting edge research, and none of the mental roadblocks to do it) have their time eaten up teaching them.
Especially in the new liberal education where everybody has to have some computer skills, etc. So instead of two sections of 30 non-chem chemistry courses, you have 25 totally 300+. Same resources, spred thinner.
People (read: parents and some academics) might not like the idea that college isn't a panecea or that going to college and not reading James Joyce doesn't hurt you in our adult life (everybody here remembers the major themes of Finnegin's Wake right?). Modern society works partly because people can specialize. So let them do so: let the physicists hack physics, not intro courses or three class workloads, etc.
Naturally this may play back to the crappy K through 12 making people think that college is necessary... eh, just a thought.
What is music when you despise all sound?
..and please for the love of fuck, VOTE in November people!!!!
I'd say misallocation is a big problem. I'll be living quite comfortably on an NSF grant for two of my five years in grad school. The stipend amount is 175-200% greater (yes, that's about double) the average in my field. True, it's only for two years, but they could have made it a lot smaller with no complaints (funding for the other three years is above average, too).
G
I don't believe it's where the funding goes that's the big problem. I came from a school district that had pleanty of money for all areas. It just wasn't cool to be smart. The smart kids go teased and beat up. Who wants that.
There is also an increase in laziness in the US. Kids today don't want to work hard for anything. Just take the easy road. I know because they are my friends. They think I am nuts for reading and working hard at things.
So, in K-12 education it's not cool to be smart and you get torn into if you are added with the US laziness equals less qualified people to do the jobs
Example: in college engineering 4 of the top 5 students were foreign. Either Arabic or Asian.
Evolution or ID?
Doesn't brain drain refer to smart people leaving their country for brighter shores? If so, this is brain drain, not reverse brain drain...
We're using a tool that arose out of some DoD
Research...
I, personally, think it's a side effect of "offshoring."
I work in the College of Engineering at a large university. I haven't seen the actual statistics but my impression is that the MAJORITY of our students are citizens of other countries. Why is this, you ask? It's because American kids are SMART.
Engineering is a DIFFICULT field of study. So are Computer Science, Math, Chemistry and Physics. We have students who graduate and HAVE to go to graduate school because they can't get a job in the US at the B.S. level. They (the jobs) have all been "offshored" to India, China, Malaysia and other low wage countries. American kids are just too damned smart to work as hard as they have to in order to earn a degree in the hard sciences or Engineering if there's no payoff for their four (in most cases five) years of grind.
Just my US$0.02
utter rubbish
I've begun to notice that entrepenuers are following the design and production. This business model is generating hot beds of innovation out side the country. If you follow the history of technological innovation, the production and design areas are critical. Sarnoff, Menlo Park, Xerox Park, Silicon valley, etc. You can't design in a vacuum and being near the technicians and engineers that actually make what you are working on is essential.
The way our military is currently structured, I can't believe that anyone would consider loosing scientific dominance would not be a matter of national security.
Our business here have this wierd notion that China and India are second class academically so it is okay to outsource engineering and techinal work because American's will always be the innovators. I have always thought that this was stupid and I'm seeing now that this is simply isn't true.
Every year there is a huge influx of morons into first year.
:P
And also, every year there is a huge *outflux* of morons from first and second years who finally realize they can't hack it.
Every decent university sees this. They encourage it. Hell most overbook themselves on the basis that only 65% of students stay past their first year.
The reason? Why turn away a morons first year tution?
"We stand at a pivotal moment," Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader, recently said at a policy forum in Washington at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the nation's top general science group. "For all our past successes, there are disturbing signs that America's dominant position in the scientific world is being shaken."
I thought science was the one area where there should be no borders. Why is it so disturbing that other countries are doing well in scientifical-type stuff?
Mr. Daschle accused the Bush administration of weakening the nation's science base by failing to provide enough money for cutting-edge research.
Okay - this is ridiculous. The graphs cover 20 years - 1983-2003. Bush has been in office for ~3 years. Explain again how this is his fault...??
PS I'm not defending Bush - I'm defending basic math skills.
Oh, and here is a link to the printer-friendly version. Kudos to the submitter for including a link to the reg-free version.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
As long as "the powerful" (whoever they may be) have the attitude that we have a "global economy" and that market forces are the only consideration, similar trends will continue.
The trend of offshoring computer work alone will tend to hurt the U.S. economy over the long haul, while driving people to other (probably non-techical) lines of work.
It's time that policy change to reflect the reality that the U.S. can't afford to lose leadership in science and technology, or it will inevitably become a second-rate power. It should also be remembered that military leadership can change very rapidly these days - one breakthrough could completely shift the balance of power. Military research is as (or more) important than any other kind.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
The primary problems lies in economics. Most advanced students in science who don't actually *love* what they are doing plan to leave science. If not for industry (which is still science), then to IP Law or consulting. Most grad students simply don't want to be poor for another few years after receiving their Ph.D. A lot of this perception in remaining poor is fed by the lack of research funding and the very real salaries that 1st year postdocs receive. When looking around in the scientific community, many foreign nationals abound but few Americans actually remain. Following their American Postdoctoral training, most of these foreign nationals inevitably return to their home country.
My family has been working as teachers and staffers in my town's public school system for almost 30 years. In those 30 years, the school budget has been approved only 28 times. No one wants to pay for education. However, people are more than happy to pay for our HS's absurd sports program. Every year the administration tries to move money from sports to academic programs, but outraged parents always reverse the decision. Last year the administration faced such a budget shortfall that they put a referrendum out to the town - Cut the sport's budget by 50% or cut music/wood|metalshop/arts/home-economics entirely from the budget. Guess which one the people chose?
The DoD will fund a lot of different things. Many different scientific areas. Not just bombs and missles. They fund so many different areas because most of the Military isn't guns and missles. It's logistics. They fund materials, methods, health related things and more. They may get used by the DoD later but they can have many purposes. They are a great springboard for science.
Evolution or ID?
Dominance Down!
Dumbinance Up!
* Film at 11 *
the US will have lost its dominance except militarily. we will not have high tech jobs, all workers will be working at service jobs, and the only way we will not fall apart is to, at some point in the next 2 decades, do a structured pull back from the level of influence and projected power we currently have.
I personally think that Europe is headed for the same fate and the 3rd world due to sheer numbers and industrial output will have surged into the same power league as the EU and the US.
this power struggle will be the cause of the 3rd world war, after which, the balkanization of nations and cultures will begin to disappear and we will come together as a planet some time near the end of this century.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I've been running around colleges for a bit now (the idea was to transfer as often as possible and get a feel for different parts of the country) and have to agree. Take an engineering course, I'm guaranteed to never be the only foreign student. Take an economics course, chances are I'm the odd person out for being from Italy (which occasionally makes things amusing, since I get away with Yakovisms)
That the MTV generation would be a bunch of mindless drones. The USA have bred their children to be stupid
Damn, I left my good sig in my other pants
The article implies that "the rest of the world is catching up" when the EU (to which the US can be compared in terms of population and living standards, although schools/health/workers rights etc. in the US have a long way to go) has been ahead for several years, judging by the graphs.
I stole this
Our culture is becomming exceedingly more materialistic and money-driven in my not-so-expert opinion. Consequently, people are shifting towards jobs that pay higher and better. Among the most popular majors here at Princeton are (last I knew) Economics and Operations Research & Financial Engineering.
To me, the problem is, people view a job as something you do to make money, and there isn't that much one can do in the pure sciences beyond research (unless you're exceedingly lucky/brilliant and come up with some essential new product) which for the most part, in my limited knowledge, doesn't pay that well compared to other things one can do w/ a similar education (science/engineering people are VERY desired in the financial industry which often pays VERY well).
Solutions I have come up with: a) make culture less materialistic - not happening anytime soon; b) give a lot more funding to pure research so that it'll pay better and also be easier to do - bigger budget means getting more of the toys you need for your experiments
Europe and Asia are ascendant, analysts say, even if their achievements go unnoticed in the United States. In March, for example, European scientists announced that one of their planetary probes had detected methane in the atmosphere of Mars -- a possible sign that alien microbes live beneath the planet's surface. The finding made headlines from Paris to Melbourne. But most Americans, bombarded with images from America's own rovers successfully exploring the red planet, missed the foreign news.
... er, Spanish ... er, British ... er, American, damn it! ... cultural arrogance. We've been the most powerful country in the world in every way -- not just militarily, but scientifically, economically, culturally, and politically -- for somewhere between six decades and a century, depending on your specific measure. We're used to thinking of that state of affairs as though it will last forever, as though it were personally handed to us on a silver platter by God Himself. But it doesn't work that way.
... but there were and are other nations fitting this description that didn't get so far. The reverse is also true; consider that (just barely) within living memory, a small island in the North Sea controlled the biggest empire the world has ever seen, and its language and culture are still the closest thing to universal in human history. A nation's position on the world stage is primarily determined by its culture.
IOW, the real problem is Roman
Ideally, of course, it doesn't matter where the knowledge is -- knowledge is knowledge, and an American is not diminished if the latest miracle drug or neat gizmo he uses to make his life better comes originally from outside our borders. But it adds up over time. Part of the reason for America's dominance of most of the 20th c. was simply that we were a huge nation with lots of natural resources
We are not, hopefully, going to turn into Russia: a Third World nation with nukes. But if we don't pay attention, we are going to see the permanent decline in living standards for the average American, in not only relative but absolute terms. This trend has already begun. That's not the future I want for myself and my children.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It does simply boil down in the end to a total lack of government concern about the education system.
Most states have lowered the amount of funding they are providing to education at all levels.
From K-12 through the college system the amount of funding is in constant decline and is doing nothing more than hurting the youth of america today and hurting america as a whole in the future.
If that were not enough, those students who are actually prone to creative and/or intelligent thought are often stifled by a system that looks more like the Special Olympics with the every student is equal approach that prevents them from advancing at the proper pace.
5 Ways to Improve the system:
1. More available private school systems
2. More funding for education programs
3. Allow students with talent to advance
4. Advanced schooling for aforementioned students
5. In college, more research opportunities for undergrads.
The last one may seem a bit iffy but I can state from personal experience that I would have loved to get more time actually working on stuff in my field and be left out because I wasn't a grad student yet.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
"Reverse Brain Drain"? No, when people you've educated tend to move away, its simply 'Brain Drain'. Canada has been suffering its effects for years to the US. It just so happens that it used to be the US was the beneficiary of brain drain in other countries. That would be the 'reverse'.
This is not a sig.
The article - which I read most of - isn't saying that people in the US are getting stupider. It says that people outside of the US is getting smarter... Quite a different issue, and for the species as a whole, a good one.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
As a Grad Student rushing/hating to finish his Master's Thesis, I think I can offer something here.
Typically there are two sectors where research is done, academia or industry. In the USA, Industrial research unfortunately is usually the first to take a hit during bad economic conditions as we are presently in. Furthermore although some companies still do longterm innovative research that may not yield results for many years, this is becoming less common. What little research is still being done is done more for immediate application based work.
The traditional research for the general betterment of society without much regard for profit happens in academia. Unfortunately, academic research is suffering recently in the US. First as mentioned, due to the recent emphasis in defense funding and more grants available from DARPA, DoE, DoHomelandSecurity, research is focused into the application/results based work these agencies require rather than the open knowledge for discovery's sake approach of the NSF.
Furthermore, the core element of academic research are the Grad Students that do all the grunt work. In the US, most Science/Engineering grad students are international students. Given current visa restrictions, harrasement and a host of other problems, international student applications to the US have dropped significantly. This is having a noticable impact on research in universities.
Finally, meaningful R&D is now not exclusive to the US as it was a few decades ago. Many other countries are now making breakthroughs, or striving to establish resesarch institutions. For example, Indians know that their outsourcing days are limited, either 'cause either the outsourcing trend will stop or someone else (Phillipines, etc) will do it for even cheaper. So their next big thrust is to bring R&D into the country.
Nothing too organized there, just a few random musings that I thought could add to the discussion.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
It's hard to dominate in science and math without a good foundation. I suspect that a general lack of focus and attention on our pulic K-12 school system is what is really hurting the US.
At the heart of the matter is how schools are funded. We can see the issue slowing heating up as some funding programs are being called "unconstitutional." See Kansas and Ohio , and Vermont.
I suppose it all comes down to money in the end. There is a good chance that the next generation of kids will have a better understanding of copyright law than of science.
I asked a guy I worked with to write a C function to compute the distance between two points.
He didn't know how. So I wrote the formula down for him.
"What's that", he asked, pointing to the symbol for square root.
I asked if he had a high school diploma.
"Of course", he exclaimed.
Now, how does someone get through high school not knowing what a square root symbol is?
Then there are the smart kids that get bored after going over the same material year after year. Why? Because Johnny half-brain needs the lesson again. And since we're all just have to be one big happy group of robots, all the same, well, we'll just have to wait for him to catch up so that we're all equal at the end.
There's plenty more to complain about. Am I bitter? Sure. I was tested gifted. I was a clever kid. I should have gone to a university when I was 18. Instead, I was going to summer-school just to graduate.
Why? Because the lesson of public education isn't education, it's busy work. Well, I didn't need busy work like Johnny half brain to understand the lesson. My punishment for understanding the material without doing all the busy work was failure.
I was intellectually a free spirit and I wouldn't follow their plan.
And I payed for it. I'm still paying for it.
Since when does military spending result in a lack of research into pure sciences?
Hello: Cryptography, Atomic Energy, COMUTING, space exploration.
I meen the list goes on and on. Granted they aren't interested in finding the answeres to the universe, their trying to build a better way to kill eachother. But there are some greate laws of physics to be learned in killing one another; not to mention medical sciences, that wind up curring more people than killing.
As far as US schools being dismall, well the truth is they are getting pretty bad everywhere in the world. Time to think about single family incomes and home schooling.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I don't know if we previously performed better, but for the past 7 years, when I've been tracking a few of the world wide computer science challange competitions, I've always felt conflicted about the fact that even the most prestigious U.S. C.S. Universities (MIT, Stanford, etc...) never achieve higher than 4th or 5th place. Inevitably, there are Russian, Chinese, or Indian universities that whup our butt.
Yet, people live and die to go to these U.S. Universities, and never consider going international.
Mr. Blair thinks the American education system is the best thing since sliced bread. We want one just like yours.
Anyway what do you want science for when you have MacDonalds?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Here in SA you need pretty good school marks to get into university, and most people do not have a degree, nor is it considered unusual not to have one. Is there perhaps a danger in the US that with so many people studying, the ones who will truly excel and increase your research output are being bogged under by those who are there "because they can" and not necessarily because the degree and research is what they want to do in life?
Daar is nie 'n lepel nie
In the US also has something to do with it. During the cold war for the most part scientists were respected members of society because they were the ones whose inventions would embarass the Soviets(well, try to anyway). However, after the cold war ended, they culture started to turn on scientists and treated them as geeks who could not function in the real world.(Sinbad commercials not withstanding) Girls were also(to a certain extent) turned away from science, as it wasn't "feminine". /.rs love what we do, but how many can say they are honestly appreciated? The best and the brightest could always just go get an easy business degree and make a lot more money and put up with a lot more crap, because our culture stresses business as being the most important facet in our economy. However, look at places like India where, from what I have read, parents are very pushy in getting their children to become scientists/mathematicians etc.
Also, in the US, scientists end up doing a lot of work and yet for the most part get treated like crap. I'm sure most of us
When you add that into what posters have been saying about the huge bull in the living room that is military spending, we wind up with this. It seems like a vicious cycle too, the more scientific research moves overseas, the less reward there is for going into a science field, thus less people becoming scientists, thus more research moving overseas.
The K-12 system does have problems, however I think the current system to address these issues is grossly inadequate. While tests are important, a one-size-fits-all test alienates the truly gifted because they are bored(and because schools have to spend what little money they have on getting the rest of the students up to par, thus many of them are starting to slash gifted education programs). It also does not help students with what science really is, the scientific method. In all the labs we did in high school, we were basically told what the result will be, and we just had to go through the motions of doing the experiment and recording data values(and if they didn't co-incide with what we wanted we just fudged the data) This is backwards. Students should be encouraged to go to the lab first. First get them to list what they think will happen(for example, for grade school kids, drop a ball from 10 ft and record the time, then drop the ball from 20 ft and record the time, get them to guess how much longer it will take to drop from 20 ft versus 10, I bet a lot will say 2 times as long, then have them drop the ball and record what happens). Then after everyone has tested their own hypothesis, teach what really happens.
The strength of the American school system is creativity, it's weakness is rigor. We should not have to sacrafice one for the other.
and in order to do it right you have to have people who really want to learn it, and live it.
Our culture does not tend to produce such people. America tends to think on the very, very short term (this is an inevitable consequence of allowing corporate/profit oriented thinking to dominate our culture) and it should come as no surprise that the get rich quick philosophy by which we define success is incompatible with good scientific training. There are always some people who will be scientists, but if you want a lot of them you can't just do nothing to promote science and then expect results.
Frank Herbert said it best - "short term decisions tend to fail in the long term". We constantly make short term decisions - we don't accept anything except instant gratification. So as a consequence the hard, long term skills tend to go undeveloped.
The question we need to ask ourselves is - do we care? I don't mean you or me, but as a country, and as a society, do we value science and other difficult skills enough to give up some of our short term gratification attitude in order to socially promote the long term view? If not, then the result is inevitable. I rather suspect we don't care, as long as our quality of life doesn't drop. The future isn't of much interest to America - we're too busy living in the present. Until that changes, and we start to value long term thinking and decisions (like putting ATTENTION, not $$, into education - $$ are just a feel good measure and do nothing to solve the real problem) we will continue to fall behind.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Be reassured..
Here in France, the government has been accused lately of waging a "war on intelligence" - namely, despising any research that doesn't have short-term results. I know a bunch of really smart people who have 'fled' to the US to get 3-4 times the amount of R&D gear and salary that they could get here.
We used to cope by having smart people 'flee' from Eastern europe for the same reason (in France, they get 3-4 times the funding they'd get back home). Now that Europe just welcomed 10 ex-USSR countries, this hole will get plugged as they (rightfully) catch up with our economy.
The 'public' research model doesn't seem to work so well anymore. This is in sharp contrast of i.e. the pharmaceutical and medical sector which invests billions in R&D and gets even more billions back from the market, but protected by a ton of patents that prevent so-called "developing" countries from affording any sort of medication.
Something in between should be studied - research funded by private companies but with maximum 5-year spans for patents before they become public domain or something. Any corporation with decent marketing skills should be able to recoup R&D several times in such a window. The fact that people can hold on to inventions for 25 years or more is ridiculous.
"It just wasn't cool to be smart. The smart kids go teased and beat up."
How is this a new phenomena?
-m
It's funny to read because here, in France, people keep telling that is *our* students who are running away to the USA.
So, the question is: where are the students, in fact ?
I personally think that our comparatively crappy K-12 educational system, and an increased dominance of military research over core scientific research plays a big role.
Thanks for your opinion, but the fact is that a significant amount of innovation trickles down to the public sector after initial development for the military. The classic example is the Second World War. For better or worse, I think it's useful to have an actual customer/user available when inventing something. With the DoD, you are guaranteed to have that (and the DoD is interested in much more than just fancy killing machines themselves - as others have mentioned, see the Internet, radar, HUDs, etc).
Why would students take math?
Math causes more problems in public schools than it is worth. Students who do not grasp the concepts have their self esteem suffer and don't feel very good.
Personally, I believe that math and science courses should be reduced in schools. We could teach more tolerance classes and fire science teachers to buy laptops for kids.
Laptops can do the math that students can't. Anything that the laptop cannot do can be outsourced to India.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
In the white suburbs and rural white areas the schools are world class. For example, the Iowa public school system is ranked among the best in the world.
The REAL issue is that science and engineering are frowned upon in the US because of the relatively low pay for amount of education required. Also, there is very little career advancement in those professions.
We rock at everything else right? I think the problem lies in the society. It's more important to be morally upstanding than to be intelligent. The US is in a steep downward decline towards stagnation, shunning any effort to change, which will ultimately destroy the country and force anyone worth keep to leave, should it be allowed to continue. Which is ok... I've always wanted to live in Europe.
The brain drain is happening and there are many factors.
Schools, the drug culture, politics and parents just not giving a shit. Luckily I live only 3 hours from Canada if things get too out of hand.
-EB
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
Surely such academics staying in their 'home' countries reduces the lure of the US as a 'brain magnet' and reduces the number of US citations, publications and awards? If it gets too serious is there a the danger that the US will lose its critical mass of overseas brains and never regain it's 'brain magnet' status? Is this an unforseen consequence of the 'war on terror'?
According to the charts in the article the fall off in Doctorates in Scientific fields occured in 98-99. Additionally, By the mid 90's we could say we started to slow down a bit overall in the sciences.
I don't find that all too surprising considering I graduated HS in 92 in the Seattle area, I distinctly recall most "techie" people I knew at that time getting CS degrees so they could get a job at the Death Star in Redmond. I went the artsy route and worked on video and CD-ROM games until the web started to catch on big in 98 and transitioned to that world. If you look at the charts, the fallof is most pronounced during the dot-com boom.
While this is pure speculation, I think the rise of "computer science" stole some of the thunder of the "hard sciences" such as Physics, Engineering and Biology. If I recall corrrectly, Universities have seen enrollment in CS majors drop dramatically in the last couple years because IT isn't "it" right now.
In that light I don't see the article as doom and gloom.
These days, bio and nano technology are starting to take off.
Both these emerging industries rely upon strong education where as "computer science" as far as software and especially web development do not require advanced degrees such as doctorates.
So I'd expect to see the US showing some of it's former dominance in a few years from now after the HS grads get hip to those industries and sign up for the schooling.
It's always been easier to get military funding (ever wonder why it was called (d)arpanet?); the real question is what the US has specialities it. These probably include space, aeronautical, naval, and optical technologies. Tech dosen't just mean computers, despite what /.'ers think ;-) ...
Simon
For whatever reason, it is not politically possible in the US to push through a need for the government to create an "information superhighway" or a national highway system for motorized vehicles for infrastructure (actually, a footnote if someone really is interested in the national highway system's creation would be to look at national railroad strikes from the Great Upheaval of 1877 to Truman having the US army seize control of the operation of railroads in 1950 due to a looming strike). It seems the only way it's possible to get the government to spend money is to manufacture a need for "national security" so the national highway system is for defense, teh Internet is for defense and whatnot. Other industrialized nations do not have this problem, and much has been made about how this is actually economically damaging to the US. For example, Europe directly funds Airbus, while the US must fund aerospace research by having Boeing manufacture military planes, and then spend money transforming that technology to commercial aerospace. That transition due to this uniquely American problem costs the US, and lets other industrialized countries gain due to this quirk.
The US has dominated the world for decades economically, but nowadays the EU, with its common currency and economic borders down has a GDP the size of the US, and a currency worth more than the dollar. Asia's economy has crises from time to time, but has grown and is growing at an enormous rate. With Japan as the solid base, South Korea behind it, China and India behind them, and the Asian tigers behind them, there is some stiff economic competition and there is no way the US will be able to match the growth rate of the region, even with CAFTA. I see current US leadership (Republican and Democrat) flailing to maintain a US world position that it can no longer hold, the only thing the US dominates in currently is military because that's where all the spending is. The bottom line is the US is having trouble realizing it is no longer ruler of the roost in terms of having the economic dominance it had decades ago, and I think this will have to be learned the hard way in terms of and economic (and thus military) collapse of some sort at some point.
1. An administration that restricts basic research based on religious principles. I'm mainly thinking stem-cell research, but there are other areas as well. (51 comments and no-one has mentioned this yet?!)
2. A lack of corporate interest in basic research. If a project doesn't show some return for shareholders in the near-term, it gets no love. This attitude has had a stifling effect on non-government funded research.
3. Shoddy treatment of objective science. Okay, call it bashing, but I have to say that the Bush administration's treatment of science has been apalling. If the research doesn't support the agenda, the scientists must be replaced by industry shills.
4. Lack of funding for basic research from government. This has being going on for longer than the current Bush administration, but it echoes the corporate trend of demanding short-term results. If a program is unlikely to show benefit within the current election cycle, it's hard-pressed to find funding.
5. Complacency. Without an external "threat" (the Soviet launch of Sputnik), science programs like Apollo are hard to fund. This applies in both the government and corporate arenas.
I wish I had solutions to go with my observations.
Bander
What we need more of is science!
I agree that the public school system is in a terrible state and needs major reform. My own belief is that the reason for this is that public education has two goals that are in conflict with each other. The first, of course is to prepare students for college, and in this respect secondary education is just some groundwork. The second goal is to try to provide a broad, basic education so that everyone can at least function in society. The result of trying to mash these two curricula together can only be pain and suffering on both sides.
I would not blame Public Education entirely...
What disappoints me about the US is its screwed up immigration policy. I am University educated and hold a degree in technology. Classically what the US would like. I once tried to immigrate, but learned that all I could get is an H1B. The H1B would allow me in the US while I might get a greencard. I looked at that and said no way as I would like to build a life.
Then I read Business Week and read the article, "Aliens: A little less alientated". Essentially it talks about how illegal aliens can get bank accounts, driver's licenses, mortgages, etc. I just read that and shook my head. I am not shaking my head at the aliens, but the fact that the aliens get so many rights. On the one hand I want to do things by the book and become part of society. Then I read the way to do it is become an illegal alien in the US. IT JUST DOES MAKE SENSE...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
The education system in this country is a mess. Sure there's a few bright spots here and there, but for the most part it has fallen apart into arguments of political correctness, violence, and debates over evolution vs. creation. More school funding is given to non-science activities such as sports, instead of funding a new science lab.
And the whole culture of offshoring jobs. Anyone with any brights knows that to get tech work now, you have to go overseas. What's the point of the ones who DO get a good education, and succeed at what they do even trying to make a life in the US now, when so so many of the good jobs in their field are being sent off to other countries?
The only solution for them is to move to the countries where the offshoring is going (To india or asia for example) or move to a country that isn't so heavily into offshoring yet (UK, Australia, south africa).
Offshoring is one of those things that has follow-on effects that nobody much cares for when making the decision to do it. A company might offshore on the principal that if US-side workers want to compete they'll have to compete with the rest of the world.
All that happens is the US-side workers MOVE to the rest of the world. "If you can't beat them, join them" may never have been truer.
When I came here at the age of 16, one of the biggest cultural shocks for me was that among people my own age, intellect and doing good at school was not encouraged.. even mocked.
...
Those who are born here in the US probably don't even think about it, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that it's incredibly stupid that when someone does well on a test, his reward is getting called a geek by the basketball players, who are on top of the social ladder.
And this stuff doesn't stop at college, when retards who can throw a football get automatic A's in their classes, and get a diploma and a million dollar contract handed to them (maybe I'm exaggerating there, but you get the point).
And with that kind of social values, what the fuck else can you expect from American education system? The opportunity to learn is there - our university system is one of, if not THE best in the world - but
I can't speak for any other country, but in Russia kids wanted to become scientists and astronauts [up until the 90's, but that's another story]. Here unfortunately, kids just don't want to become scientists, or engineers, or anyone of that sort. They want to become Brett Favre, 50 Cent, and Donald Trump (not that there's anything wrong with wanting to become a billionaire).
So my point is, until we will WANT to excel at science, we won't - it's as simple as that.
People think that by throwing money at the problem it will go away.
Money doesn't ever fix anything...
For instance High Schools are a place of social idoctrination more so then places of learning.
There are still places you can get wonderfull education, but they are private. Public schools are controlled by beuaracrates that want to fuffill feel-good BS like anti-drug education (proven over and over to be 100% inneffective), eviroemental and social bullshit.
That's were the money is going to! Why would giving the schools more computers fix this issue?
My little brother may not know how to spell properly, or not know the basics to geometry and triginometry, but DAMMIT he knows not to smoke pot, change diapers just incase he becomes a teenage dad, and he coughs loudly every time we go to eat and somebody across the room smokes a cigeratte!
Now that's what I want! A bunch of social robots telling me that SUV's kill baby seals. Hell they couldn't name you the rights garrenteed to you in the constitution but they know socialist health care is wonderfull and their teachers need to be paid more!!!
Of course 2 + 2 = 5 sometimes, but after all, that's what computers are for. It's not like they have to think anymore!
Poor Nations Stem Brain Drain
US Exports Knowledge Overseas
Will Military Research Yield New Public Sector Products?
You get the idea
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I think the laziness factor is the big one. I went to the Naval Academy, supposedly an institution that only accepts America's brightest well rounded "leaders of the future" and I lost count of the number of times I heard statements like "2.0 and go" or "Poli-Sci and fly."
The real wake up call was getting stationed in Japan and travelling around SE Asia. I simply couldn't believe the work ethics I saw. You can make all the jokes you want about Japan producing mindless robots, but the guys who worked for me didn't just stay after hours until the job was done, they stayed until the job was done right. Most of them were pretty damned creative and willing to try new things too.
I've always been impressed with America's ability to fight back to the top when we realize we are the underdog. The question simply is, when are we going to wake up?
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
And to take this problem further, why are kids thinking everything will be handed to them on a silver platter?
Oh yeah, that would be where the parents come in. Somehow, at some point, maybe it was when both parents had to start working, it became better/easier to just give the kids what they wanted rather then laying down the law.
I can understand, it must be hard to come back after a 60 hour workweek to a screaming kid, a spouse who also had an exhausting workweek. Would you have the energy to deal with all that?
-- taking over the world, we are.
It just wasn't cool to be smart. The smart kids go teased and beat up.
Is this actually true? I'm from the UK, and there is a stereotype of the American geek as small, weak, beaten up, no girlfriend etc, but I've wondered if this is accurate.
In the UK, (at least, in my highly subjective experience) this doesn't happen. I'm really geeky, and am recognised as such, but I've still got a lot of friends/girlfriends/social life, and I, nor any of my friends get "beaten up" or teased for being intelligent/liking science/computers etc.
Maybe it's a cutural thing?
Maybe science in the U.S is declining (especially in recent times) due to the fear surrounding the "scientist." Consider this, the stereotype of a scientist during the industrial revolution was a nut in a lab with crazy ideas making things that blow up, and eventually developing some revolutionary machine. Nowadays, amature scientists are persecuted as drug dealers and bomb-makers for terrorist organisations, and information and scientific equipment is hoarded to governments and corporations, with individuals needing to obtain a "licence" i.e be considered worthy of conducting research. Its becoming increasingly like the middle ages, with the U.S government and the corporate pigopoly acting like the church back then, preventing people from discovering things that challenge their power and hoarding knowlege to themselves.
In decades past many scientists went to the US to escape oppression and government control.
In the US they were free to publish, free to discuss among their peers, free to do the research that was important to them.
Anyone who follows the news these days can see this is changing. There is much more government scrutiny in all areas of life, and that freedom is beginning to erode.
If things continue along these lines, Russia will eventually be freer than the US.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
Intel's latest Xeon chip "Whitefield" will be designed 100 percent in India with its name coming from an industrial township on the edge of Bangalore.
Just had a conversation in my workplace last week about this. One of my coowrkers grew up in Korea, until age 12. He says, back then, they beat the kids when they did not perform. If a students grades went down, they would get a stick across the calves or across the knuckles. If the whole class went down, everyone was beat.
I'm not saying we should beat our kids, but one can imagine that type of enironment did not foster laziness. Perhaps our kids need some better motivation--although I would shy away from corporal punishment.
Problem is, this boom was seriously unsustainable.
What we are seeing now is a readjustment to the more normal situation, but we are still doing substantially better than pre-WWII levels in terms of science spending/graduates/jobs. I don't necessarily believe this is a zero-sum game, our investment over the past fifty years has paid off very well, and I think we are a better nation and a better world as a result.
Just to give an example of pre-WWII science job market: Feynman's first job was as a plastic chemist, and he spent some time as basically a mechanical engineer (albeit a high-powered one) before he got into the Manhattan project. The point is, only for the past 50 years has there been much money at all for "basic unapplied" research.
One of the biggest German political magazines, the Spiegel, has a story about this topic in German. Here is the automatic translation into something similar to English.
... ohhh, I should ask too, I guess.
Personally I do know at least one person that won't be allowed to study in the US anymore. She is listed in one of those mysterious lists and as a consequence isn't allowed to study in the US anymore. She can't figure out how and for what reason she came into that list. Perhaps she knows the wrong people like some of my friends and
Yes for inventions and improvements this is a good idea.
But basic research is less product related.
What is the commercial value of knowing which way a helium atom spins, or how much closer we can get to absolute zero.
How that will later effect us we can't even guess at now.
Let's see, outsourcing whitecollar professionals... banning key areas of some scientific fields such as stem cell research....
Who's left in America to be nominated for the Nobel?
Whoever might be eligible, should move to have their name placed on the endangered species list. But, this is just my observation.
In a country with extreamly f*ed up patent rights and a president who wants to ban stem-cell research, which could save millions of lives, what the hell do you expect?
it's a sig, wtf?
One of the reasons our schools are ineffective is this: If we had standards, a lot more kids would flunk out of school, putting more criminals on the street.
The reason for that is that parents don't teach a work ethic. School is "uncool", and work sucks.
In the short term, raising standards would create more delinquents and criminals. If we did introduce standards it would take more than a few generations to undo the damage and bring the passing rates back up.
Many students do poorly in school due to lack of work ethic in their parents. Many students, such as myself, do poorly in school, because school really sucks, due to the lack of work ethic in other students. (I did great in college.)
Many teachers see this and feel like it would be futile to try to fight the status quo.
In the USA (but also some other western countries that are trying to be friendly to USA) a lot of "advanced" science is getting harder to do due to new regulations and due to "unspecified terrorisim risk". For example, things like Aerospace (e.g. the new zealand cruise missile project and also the fact that its almost impossible to get any civillian air vechicle thats different from whats gone before approved by aviation authorities), Rocketry (the ongoing pressue by model rocket groups for the restrictions on model rocket fuel/motors to be lifted), Nanotech, Cryptography (even today most countries advanced enough for such things to be worth considering still have restructions on the importing, use and/or exporting of cryptographic products and after 9/11, some countries actually became more strict under the guise of "preventing terrorisim") and such all seem to face various levels of pressure.
Also, governments dont care about science (unless its something they can use to build a better army to blow up other countries such as IRAQ with)
Plus, industry doesnt care about "new ideas". There are lots of smart people out there and lots of "nifty ideas" for cool things (some of which there is a market for if only someone cared enough to take it from "nifty idea" to "product you can buy") that could make peoples life easier and better.
Another cause is the anti-scientific, anti-intellectual Bush administration, along with a long-term rise in the influence of religious fundamentalism and other forms of superstition and ignorance throughout American life.
These are hard fields of study. But when that is what interests you, and you have a natural aptitude, it isn't impossible.
Other fields can be just as hard and challenging.
If you go to school, in a field you don't enjoy, and aren't good at, it will be hard.
Jobs, yes they can be hard to find, but there are lots out there. You think it is hard to get a job with a degree in your field, try to find a decent job as a HS dropout.
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you.
Why is it wrong for the US to vet students, scientists, and other immigrants coming into the US? How many of the 9/11 hijackers were students?
Sorry... we were complacent once, and the terrorists ate our lunch. I'd be highly pissed if we blew off that hard lesson and went back to the old way.
New realities, folks... better get used to them.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
As a scientist in the US, I have to say the biggest fixable problem is the ridiculous immigration policies that have been adopted after 9/11. Sure, public education needs improvement, but most of the world's smartest people never have and never will be born in a country representing 6% of the world population. The lab I work in has three Europeans, one Chinese, one Australian, and two Americans (including me), and it's great. The success of the US scientific enterprise has been (and should be) dependent upon concentrating the best talent from other countries in one place, and the US is going in the wrong direction. I personally know plenty of foreign students and postdocs getting screwed, and news has gotten back to their universities. A friend of a friend was barred re-entry into the US from Portugal after a speeding ticket and forced to drop out of the top theoretical physics PhD program on the West Coast. A coworker has been unable to visit home (China) for six years because if she leaves the country there's a 50% chance she will be denied re-entry for a six-month waiting period, which would destroy all of her experiments. A very good friend of mine was in deportation danger for smashing a guy's car window (the guy deserved it). There was a component of the Patriot Act that required attendance to be taken at all graduate school courses, and a missed class by any foreign graduate student (including Canadians) to be documented and justified.
It's a testament to the strength of American science that foreign applications to US grad schools have decreased by only 25% in spite of the ridiculous situation placed on us by the current government. Funding issues and stem cells aside, things have to change in November.
Yes, it is deliberate fraud.
If the educators are the kind of people who are routinely dishonest to get more money, you cannot expect them to be the kind of people who want do a good job.
I think its time to move.
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
This is a side-effect of the 'greed is good' culture of the 1980's. It used to be that a car manufacturer was about making cars, a movie maker was about making movies, etc, and if they did a good job at what they were about, money came. If they were also good about handling their money, they were profitable and got the chance to make more cars, movies, etc, and make more money to keep doing it.
/. crowd would like to extend it to recorded music, too.
After the 80's this shifted. Whatever you made, it was about making money, and cars, movies, or whatever simply became a way to get the money, but the money came first. The corollary of this is that top management USED to be car or movie men (or women) who also knew how to manage money. Now top management BECAME money men (or women) who *might* also know something about cars or movies.
There are two net results out of this:
* First, it leads our young adults to chase money instead of chasing cars or movies, for careers. It actually denigrates the act of creating cars and movies in favor of managing the money to fund those cars and movies. The best and brightest go where they perceive the best careers are.
* Second, it leads to inferior products. Since those at the top are not really car and movie men, (or women) they don't have the best instincts about their products. Hence you tend get 'follow the herd' products. I can't do too well with the cars, but with movies you get sequel-itis, comic book adaptations, and Michael Crichton movies. Not that Crichton's books are bad, or make bad movies, it's just that you get *too much* repetition of known-good formulas. (Nothing wrong with a known-good formula, we need new stuff, too.)
I've used the samples of cars and movies. I'm sure the
Other causes:
Advertisers and the people to hire them may not even admit it to themselves, but they tend to want to turn us all into consuming idiots who buy their products without thinking. Hence advertising which attempts to bypass the consiousness and go for the glandular reactions.
Another part of the 80's money culture: Get the quarterly report looking good. Research is a drain on this quarter. Of course it's good in the long run, but we must 'balance' the long run against the quarterly results. Guess which way the balance usually ends up tilting.
In the long run, a culture works as long as the most competent rise to the most responsible positions. Education is seen as key in our culture, and we have 'tried' to make it available to all. Aside from the fact that we haven't 'tried' hard enough, take a look at college: It's the gate to the top positions. If you want to take this as a class warfare issue, it's in the interest of the wealthy for colleges to be expensive. That way only the children of the wealthy can qualify for the top positions. In that light, it's simply enforcing a class system while paying lip service to equal opportunity and objective standards. But the real sin to our society is the smart, poor kid who can't afford the education while an academically mediocre rich kid can, and gets the associated opportunities.
Enough.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
K-12 education may not be great, but there are still plenty of smart, qualified American students out there. More than the college/university system can handle... every college has more applicants than it can accept.
If the K-12 system suddenly improved, the college/university system wouldn't have the capacity to absorb the additional students anyway.
As for our science/engineering dominance declining, you can put the blame on offshoring.
Why study science or engineering if you know there won't be a job for you when you graduate? Those are very demanding, challenging fields... there are fields that pay better, involve less work, and are less likely to be outsourced.
That's also why there's a "reverse brain drain"... foreign students come here for an education, then go back home where they can live like kings on $5,000/year from U.S. companies doing offshoring in countries where the per capita income is $500/year.
Beats having to compete in the collapsing U.S. labor market.
Well so far citizens of the US or of other countries are giving their opinion, but the person to ask would be the Foreign Exchange Student! Why? because they've gone to school in their country and the USA and would be better to give an opinion as to who has the better education system along with the homelife of the host family giving insight into everyday family life (both sides) and are they more prepared to take on life in their country, the USA or somewhere else.
The dominance of military research is nothing new in the U.S. The U.S., with its very strong belief in free market economics, has always had a hard time with federally-sponsored R&D. In the past, however, we've always done it, yet called the vast majority of it military, even though it often wasn't. Military research floated all boats, the way that space research does. [Similarly, we don't directly subsidize Boeing's production of airliners, the way the EU subsidizes Airbus, but we do give Boeing big contracts to build military aircraft.]
:-)
IMHO what has changed recently is that military research sponsors (notably DARPA) now call for very short-term turnaround in research results. Typically they like to see substantial results from a project in six months now. This means that there are new difficulties for using DARPA funding for basic research.
At the same time that military funding has been emphasizing short-term versus long term research, industrial research labs, and general industrial support for research, have collapsed. Essentially, corporate funders have been deterred by examples like Xerox PARC, Bell Labs, and IBM labs. They don't believe that corporate research generates results for the funding enterprise. This suggests that research must be funded as a social good, like highways, etc.
Unfortunately, military and enterprise funding for research has gone away at precisely a time when ideological sympathy for funding social goods through taxation is at an all-time low. And, of course, the federal budget is squeezed between tax cuts, recession, and the war effort. On the up-side, we don't have to balance the budget any more...
And to take this problem further, why are kids thinking everything will be handed to them on a silver platter?
But I'm sure every generation for the past 200 years has said that, "Kids today aren't willing to work as hard". It can't have been true every time, or otherwise we would have died out by now.
Oh yeah, that would be where the parents come in. Somehow, at some point, maybe it was when both parents had to start working, it became better/easier to just give the kids what they wanted rather then laying down the law.
That makes a lot more sense than the usual assumption that it's just some failure of will on a large scale. The question is what do you do about it? Unless the economy gets so good that one parent can stay home it's not going to get better. And I think the chances of that are very, very slim.
I went to High School in the seventies, the class valedictorian was by far the most respected student there. He was not in any sports but was the nicest guy in the entire school. He is now our family doctor. Things are different today, it's not that we didn't have some of the same things going on. But today it's just more extreme. People got beat up in school or about something that happened at school that never got settled, not often but it happened. Today people get killed in school,not often but it happens. There is a big difference. The popular songs talked about alot of things. Sex, drugs, love etc. Now I hear songs that talk about popping a cap in someones ass. Or a dead girl friend in the trunk. Things are different, while alot of themes are similiar, it's just alot more extreme.
A little arrogant of you isn't it?
A Psychology degree isn't just psych 101 you know. There is real statistics, research and innovation in psychology as much as any of the more traditional sciences.
Just because you don't have the knowledge & experience to comprehend what these people do and why it is valuable doesn't mean it isn't important.
Two points.
I have an engineering degree, and friends in psychology.
Almost any degree can be turned into a joke or real program with the proper selection of courses.
Real issue is that kids in US Schools see no reason for work. Why get a Bachelours Degree when the only jobs are at the Minimum Wage. Why get a Maters or Ph.D. when you are not even chosen by the stalf?
Reason is Opportunity. If Opportunity is there people will go to the jobs.
Another reason is Media. Sports are better because they have a grater $ to effort ratio.
Maybe it's a cutural thing?
My impression is that the peer pressure is much stronger in the USA because of the competitive nature of the society. If you're not a "winner" you're a "loser". That mentality isn't so prevalent in the UK.
American culture does not value intellect. In a country dominated by dogmatic religion and banal entertainment, anyone with half a brain is looked down upon for wasting tax dollars or being too "nerdy." Image is what matters, not content.
U.S. schools focus on passing limited tests that show nothing about creativity; teaching real problem solving skills is much less important than shoveling students through an impersonal and over-wrought system.
When was the last time you saw the President lauding a group of scientists at the White House? Unless your research is focused on new and creative ways of killing people, you're pretty much ignored; religious ideology replaces the scientific method, and society devolves into polarized camps that react rather than think.
Perhaps I'm too blunt, but I'm tired of watching my once-great nation devolve into an international bully, abandoning its legacy of achievement.
All about me
"c me and free me" was the saying at my school. But this has always been the way, its not a new trend.
We know Japanese work long hours. We also know they don't work nearly as hard as Americans.
I do not agree that laziness is a major issue, as much as greed. Management is the number one issue.
Managers or CEOs make almost exclusively short term decisions to make themselves look better; Then they leave for a better job before the piper has to be paid.
America is capitalist, but we are becomming short term only capitalist. Mortgaging our future on almost every single issue.
I have no doubt that our primary education is at fault for the lack of strong math, science and analytical thinking skills in the US, and the institutions are colluding to dumb-down our students in math and science every day.
Case-in-point: Our single most important indicator of student ability, the S.A.T., is administered by a unabashedly profit-driven agency, the College Board. The Board has proposed a major revision to the test beginning in 2005 which will raise the total points possible to 2400 by tacking on an essay and a grammar section, while eliminating analogies (the closest thing to a real 'logic' quiz on the verbal section) and quantitative comparisons. The claim is that this shift is designed to (*cough* increase fees *cough*) better address learned knowledge of students, rather than raw ability (the test was initially intended to be sort of a IQ test you could prepare for).
So what are we saying to kids? 2/3 of the MOST important indicator of student ability tests language (and just white america's OWN language!)? 2/3 of your time as a student should be devoted to learning how to read and write in english? Is it really that hard, or important, to test students on the ENGLISH language as a primary indicator of their potential? The fact is this: schools are increasingly prone to test what they know students are good at, and what better way to soften up scores than add an entire section which, by nature, must be graded on complete subjectivity? Schools *know* they cannot teach math/science well, perhaps due to students' reluctance to embrace the subject, perhaps due to the pathetically low salaries and disrespect the average american pays to primary school teachers...so they just test what students are good at, and do it in a way that is so fluid that they can literally raise the scores of a nation with this "essay dial" whenever they need to answer to the neo-conservatives and the bitching liberals.
Universities have seen all forms of gov't grants diminish. It's hard for universities to get funding for research. Why is funding shrinking? G. W. Bush thinks that private companies should be picking up the tab...
So, unless you're researching something that Monsanto (or any other large corporation) is interested in, you're going to have a hard time finding grants. This is the sad truth.
But, I think a shot at government funded research is missing the target. And, the military research budget as a portion of GDP, is nowhere near a high. It is more visible because they've made the bid process less secretive, but overall, still relatively low in comparison to other time periods in the last 50 years. But, the government has never even been the majority player in research. Private industry has been behind the majority of the research efforts in the US.
Don't forget that we're about 15 years into the aftereffects after the transition away from pure research by many of the large private firms. With the exception of a few stragglers, most corporations now have firm policies that all research must be aiming at a clear corporate payoff. So, true blue sky research has been heavily cut by private industry. This was the shortsightedness of the '90s. We heavily shifted research towards the short term. So we essentially pulled researchers off the task of making fuel for the future, and put them on burning the fuel of the past. This gave us a blazing decade, but has left us with ruins.
The NRA and other teacher unions sold every state legislature the biggest falasy ever. You have to have a teaching degree to teach, not a major in what your teaching. When I was in school, (HS Grad '74) all the teachers had a degree in what they taught (math, english, history) and a minor in education. Today your lucky if they have a minor in the subject.
Add all the feel good crap like not flunking someone because it might damage their self esteem. Devaluing grades and diplomas by passing people through no matter what. No self discipline in the students(read lazy).
The problem is obvious, the solution will take a minimum of the 40 years it's taken to screw it up. Meanwhile we produce a couple generations of lazy people with no common sense or ability to think creativly.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I don't think it worked.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
If you can't handle the coursework, either work harder, or have the insight to get out of that major.
Nobody is good at everything... personally, I had difficulties with some coursework in college. I liked engineering, but realized that my natural proclivities would make an undergraduate degree in engineering a herculean task, so I took a different track in something else that I enjoyed (I had planned on pursuing graduate studies in medicine either way, so no harm done).
Nobody is good at everything, and that's just the reality of life. Some people will never work any job but manual trades, while some people become Stephen Hawking... hold onto an objective standard and wash out the non-hackers.
Sorry to offend the self-esteem crowd, but either you can do the job adequately, or you cannot.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I am a grad student in computational neuroscience, and I just wanted to follow-up on some of the points.
:P
:)
Doing almost pure theoretical research on how the brain works, I see a definite skew in what parts of our research are actually funded. In the last few years, I have submitted numerous proposals to NIH/NIMH (Health/Mental Health) and NSF, as well as other sources. I have gotten very few of them (less than 15%), and the reason that is always cited for the rejection is that there is only a small portion of the proposal dedicated to direct medical applications or pharmacology. Granted, this may be the fault of my research focus as much as the particular study group that reviews the application - but I think this is plain wrong. Especially when I see the other side.
Part of our lab works on taking lessons learned from the brain, and implementing it in an intelligent device. I won't say which (as some of it is patent pending) but the research is entirely funded by the office of Naval Research. Now, they are not funding the brain research itself, but are more interested in an "intelligent" device to find and eliminate targets of interest in the battlefield. I find this completely deplorable. Why should millions of dollars of government money be dedicated to this, while research focused on actually understanding the world around us (which is what I always percieved as one of the main goals of science) is left for crazy scientist locked up in their basements writing their manifest?
Ok, to stop the whining, let me finish by saying that I don't know many countries outside the US that would have the money to fund more abstract and theoretical pursuits. If you look at percentages, of course they are dedicating more - but the US is still the biggest source in terms of sheer dollars available. It just needs to be redirected
Cripes, you must be in a weird part of the UK, or the school system has totally changed since I went through it there ;-) Geeks with girlfriends? Never!
People want Sports teams and Computers in classrooms.
They don't care that most kids can't count, they get calculators in grade school. Music programs are expensive, and the average joe doesn't understand the value of them.
Lots of people have the attitude "I didn't do it and I turned out okay, so my kid doesn't need it either."
I know of kids who got out of required courses because their parents didn't think it was important. They skipped the foreign language requirement to go to play in the gym.
The lower education system is awful. Not for lack of money, but because helping the minority of intelligent children excel is not a focus - instead it's to have everybody be equal. Equally incompetent. Military spending has always pushed research. There is a lot of cutting edge control system and signal processing work happening right now. It just takes time for those technologies to evolve, get declassified, and trickle down to consumer products.
They may have had "pleanty" of money, but they must have run out before they got to spelling and grammar.
a lot of the research has been outsourced to the lowest bidders in other countries. So of course US organizations are going to lack in research if they do offshore and get p*ss poor results in scientific research.
Our US education system is a joke, kids want to be rappers, skateboarders, sports starts, divas, singers, gangstas, video game heads, etc. Anything but math and science careers like Scientists and Researchers. I partly blame:
#1 Parents for not being strict enough on their children and teaching them a value of a good education and career choice.
#2 Teachers for not encouraging students to do better, or caring enough to guide them and help them to reach their potential.
#3 State, Local, and Federal governments for cutting back on education so they can fund "Pork" projects like Sports Statium building for billionares.
#4 Businesses for refusing to hire US citizes and instead offshoring those jobs, which discourage US Citizens from getting into those type of careers.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Yes, it is true, there is a lot of peer pressure to not be a stand out intellectually. But to be a stand out in sports, thats A OK.
I think sports figures don't intimidate anyone. We all get over a physical beating. But smart students everyone sees as future rich people. And we are all constantly abused by the rich, and its not so easy to get over.
One of the huge problems scientific career paths have is the fact that "corporate" work is much more profitable. Sure, there's tenured faculty positions and high-paid research jobs at drug companies and such, but it's hard to convince someone to go to grad school for 4+ years, do postdoc work and eventually get hired for permanent work only to find that their peers are making much more than they are with less work.
I pursued a science degree during my college education, and now I do IT work that's totally unrelated to it. One of the reasons was that I was good with computer stuff, and it paid much, much more than what a starting analytical chemist or other similar job would pay. On the plus side, science education really does help develop your logical thinking skills...I think scientists make the best sysadmins just because they actually plan things and can troubleshoot well.
Yeah, because the extensive military funding for science research is a totally new thing introduced by GWB. It sure hurt us in the 50s and 60s, I'll tell ya.
The post WWII US dominance was due to military funding of the cold war and the so called "spunik generation". Americans who went into science because of Russia launching the first rockets.
US mainland received no substantial attacks during WWI - so the economy dominated the world. More money was left for corporate R&D.
Asia - in particlar China + Taiwan will dominate the end of the century scientifically if degrees are any indicator. 1 in 6 Chinese degrees go to Engineering or Science. Most US Phds in sciences go to Asians (Primarily Chinese). They are increasingly heading home after finishing their Phds.
http://xminc.com/mt/archives/oil3.pngThe only question is that historically Chinese have not focused on basic research - prefering practical applications of technology such as the steelyard, abacus, ceramics, papermaking, printing, the compas, oil rigs, etc
I can't say I have actual numbers for this, but in my experience, both Americans and Japanese put the same amount of energy into their work. Where you see a difference is the mentality that their work must be done right and on time... in Japan, the greater-good mentality pushes everyone to work as hard and as fast as they can. In America, the individualism approach tends to make the over-achievers work harder, and the rest just cruise along at mediocrity.
Looking at the broader picture, I think that in a lot of cases, the American school and support system for sciences probably produces a lot of very talented people, but they're less interested in serving the country that helped them than they are in furthering their careers (by moving abroad etc). Which is not a bad thing. In a choice between having a stable life working for a foreign company and staying at home and living in uncertainty, any well-educated talented person would have to choose stability.
It's a question of making the work environment at home more friendly to talent.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
I don't know how prevalent that is in the US either. You also have issues of selective memory. But you also have other socially frowned upon attributes (besides intelligence). I mean, if someone is intelligent and ugly, then I'm sure they'd get picked upon more.
:) Actually, I had plenty of friends on the football and basketball team and I was on the chess team and stuff. I even went to an inner city ghetto school. Maybe I'm just fortunate...
But I always got good grades but I never had problems in school. If people picked on me, I was too oblivious to notice maybe
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
Yes, this all sounds horrifying on the surface -- but has this been proven scientifically?
I'm going to put my best researchers on this right away and I'll get back to you in five years with the results.
Wait a minute, what the... where'd all my researchers go?!
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Is this actually true? I'm from the UK, and there is a stereotype of the American geek as small, weak, beaten up, no girlfriend etc, but I've wondered if this is accurate.
I can tell you from personal experience that this is accurate, at least in high school. But then you grow up and then people realize that nerdiness is a good thing. You get stuff women really want: earning potential and stability.
In exactly that order.
Ahem.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
I meant, uh... real life Karma. Yeah.
As long as the US has a superstitious, creationist president interested in fighting "the evil ones" and persecuting "those who are not with us", the decline of the American Empire will continue. As long as moneyed interests control scientific revelations and are able to supress them to advance their outmoded alternatives, the US will continue to flush itself intellectually. As long as suprestitious, fearful, hypocritical, money-grubbing, war mongers are running things in the US, the fall of America will continue. And I can't say I feel sorry for a people, half of which being stupid enough to vote for Bush.
Based on absolutely no evidence at all:
I blame intellectual property, copyright, and patents.
Now you go.
Maybe we can start having decent kids if families can afford to have one parent stay at home.
The problem isn't entirely schools and teachers. Sure, they can be contributors - but like most problems there are multiple factors.
The single, largest factor is the child's immediate social group. Typically starting with parents, branching out to siblings, then to cousins & friends. If this social group puts no value on an education, does not read, is not curious - then the child is almost guaranteed not to develop much intellectually. Oh sure, there are exceptions, but just that.
And the parents can almost completely compensate for a poor school system if they want, here's how:
1. restrict all non-productive distractions. This includes television, gameboys, and computer games. In my household there is ZERO broadcast television, ZERO non-public radio, ZERO gameboys, and about 2-4 hours of computer games a week. Some folks think this is hard it isn't - you especially realize this when you find that your children never beg for toys around christmas time - they just don't see the commercials.
2. read stories to your children every day. There's a wealth of great children's literature, and I have yet to find a pack of boys that could resist for a moment a reading of Kipling's Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Once the television is off, once you start reading the good stuff, and there butts will be solidly planted. You can give them paper & pencils to draw with as well. BTW, I'd consider the fun authors to read: Roald Dahl, Kipling, EB White, Grahame, Mary Norton, Sid Fleischman, Elenor Estes, Joan Aiken, Louis Sachar, Walter Brooks, etc. Oh yeah, and if you've waited until your kids are 15 to start this it might not work. Sometimes it does, sometimes it's too late.
3. Provide them books as gifts
4. Fill the house with books
5. Spend time with them at the library every week
6. Help the children find interesting ways to approach homework
7. Encourage good grades (with allowances tied to grades, etc)
8. Pursue your imagination with them: just do things that are fun and interesting that they can learn from: - bulid a trebuchet - travel to a foreign country - every night read a poem - join a story-telling group - just use your imagination I've got two boys that are in the top of their class in a pretty good school system. We never pushed them - we simply read to them. That's all it took. Once their imaginations were engages the rest happened all of its own.
The single biggest reason that most children leave school with a poor education - is probably that their parents assumed that they could simply "out-source" the responsibility of education to an institution. I suppose this is a recursion problem isn't it?
American is no longer a free country, and the intelligent among us do not want to put up with it. President bush's soundbyte politics is only the icing on the cake. The american flag has become a whip cracking across it's people's backs. People are getting fed up with getting harassed by steroid laden cops constantly pulling everyone over. We do not want to pay the social price of the drug war, never mind the war on terror. Many people are finding it more attractive to live in places like ireland, germany, and canada. I myself just quit my job and am moving to canada for this reason. keep on rocking in the free world the school sytem is too slow for my children
As an American that spent a year of high school in Sweden (and also spent time teaching English in Japan), I'd say Sweden probably has the best K-12 system. Although, it's only K-11 really.
/.'s intelligence, high school probably wasn't too hard, and university was (perhaps) a bit more challenging. In both Sweden and Japan it was reversed, work your ass of in HS and you get into a "good" uni and then you don't need to do anything really. Again, that's just anecdotal evidence.
I went to the 2nd biggest HS in Sweden, and they had a practical section and the more academic section. Meaning everyone took certain courses, but outside of those you either learned a trade or did more history, econ, etc. Perhaps it was because I didn't fully understand all the social intricacies, but both sets of students seemed to mix well, and there didn't seem to be any tension between the students. Compare that with America where those that learn a trade are typically looked down upon by the college bound students.
Furthermore, Sweden has high standards, but they don't seem to control the student's lives like in Japan. Having not attended university in either country, from what I hear it's the opposite of America. In the U.S., if you've got the average
So really, no system is perfect, and money isn't the answer no matter where you are.
Life is just a series of decisions. People have become so split in the U.S. it's amazing we can accomplish anything at all. On the one side, you have people who work and try to prove themselves by doing the best job possible, and you have those for whom existence is all they need. Then sometimes you have people like me with contrary goals - want to work and get ahead, but also want to spend as much time with my family (and doing my own things) as possible.
Recently, right here on Slashdot, we had a lot of discussion about the 35 hour work week. I don't remember how it came about, or what the main topic was, but I got into a lengthy discussion about how I abhorred the very idea - if I wanted to work hard to get ahead, and sometimes that means working more than 40 hours (with no extra compensation, just the desire to do the best job I can), then please let me do so. We don't need the government restricting how many hours I can work.
I was actually met with resistence. A lot of people don't want to get ahead. They want to get by, and if they can do it at 35 hours a week, then they'd be happy if the government stepped in and required that employers cannot have people working more than 35 hours. Meaning that it's not optional. The government has already decided that 40 hours defines the workweek, and anything more is overtime... now some people want a maximum number of hours allowed to be set.
I don't know where everyone else works, but people where I work do plenty of overtime (mostly compensated, I'm the only one in my department on salary). They don't do it just for the money, they do it because we have drop-dead deadlines and they need to finish things, but what amazes me is, even after a long day and the possibility of overtime, they will nit-pick about things that most other people wouldn't notice and they spend time fixing every little problem they possibly can.
I know it's probably the exception to the rule, but I wanted to point out the contrast that you can see... we're becomming the nation that shuns hard work and belittles those that work hard as "tools."
Stupid sexy Flanders.
"I'm from the UK, and there is a stereotype of the American geek as small, weak, beaten up, no girlfriend etc, but I've wondered if this is accurate."
Like all stereotypes, this has an element of truth. In this case, it's a large element of truth. I'll answer each element in turn:
1) American geeks tend to be smaller and non-violent (I'm 5'8" and 170 pounds, somewhere around "average" to "small"), and tend towards software development because I'm not particularly drawn to physically demanding activities. This in itself is a relative distinction because an overwhelming number of American males in my age group are "large" due to all the huge amounts of extra fat they carry.
2) When I was growing up in the public school system, I was teased, taunted, picked on, and generally made to be a borderline social outcast because I didn't play sports (which is extremely boring stuff). I tended towards intellectual activities, something which was highly frowned upon by my peers in the U.S. I ended up learning Okinawan Kempo just for the psychological terror it inflicted upon the school bullies. A short demonstration as part of a required class presentation (subject matter was at the student's discretion) was the key to freeing me from the "targets" list.
3) Not having a girlfriend is hit and miss, as it is in most walks of life in America. Being the brunt of cruelty does a lot to damage one's self-respect, and therefore one's ability to interact with other people and with the opposite sex. Not being a part of the mainstream opens one up to this type of cruelty in America. There is also the matter of a small pool of desirable and available women, part of another very true American stereotype: more Americans than not, of both sexes, are grotesquely fat.
So yes, it's largely a cultural issue. America has turned into a cesspool of worker bees happy to pull in a small weekly paycheck in exchange for not having to stress their brains too hard.
It just wasn't cool to be smart. The smart kids go teased and beat up. Who wants that.
There is also an increase in laziness in the US. Kids today don't want to work hard for anything. Just take the easy road. I know because they are my friends. They think I am nuts for reading and working hard at things.
We send our kids to school expecting the schools to overcome our culture. Our culture is lazy. Our culture values television, movies, and sports over intelligence. Parents inadvertently raise their kids to be lazy and to have no interest in learning. Parents don't think smart is cool - they think beauty or athleticism is cool. That passes right on to their kids.
I just finished reading The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (a collection of various things Feynman said). When he was a kid, his father used to teach him to learn by teaching him to question everything. Instead of just saying "that bird is a robin", he would ask what makes that bird different that the other birds. They would then observe the bird's behavior and try to deduce reasons for what it was doing.
Example: in college engineering 4 of the top 5 students were foreign. Either Arabic or Asian.
These are cultures that value hard work and discipline. Sure, you can make the stereotype that Asians are smarter. It's not likely that they are genetically smarter. It's much more likely that they are raised with different values.
We need to start embracing responsibility and discipline. We need to start valuing hard work over luck. There is much reward in working hard and accomplishng great things. Everyone is all about the almighty dollar and not about accomplishment.
With drug soaked brains the 60's generation completed their 'long march' through the educational institutions and turned an excellent education system into a pile of steaming crap. The answers to questions like 2+3=? are settled by easily manipulated group opinions, regardless of the truth. If the group thinks 2+3=6 then 6 it is. Combine that with emphasis on 'self esteem' regardless of accomplishments and the disaster is complete.
Now things are so politically correct that in an atmosphere which claims respect for "diversity", it is diversity from far left theology that is not tolerated. If your opinion isn't aligned with the far left then you have no access to the campus forum. Amazing, considerings the hippies protested loudly their 'lack' of free speech by replacing discourse with vulgarity as they rampaged through public buildings.
Now, the chickens have come home to roost.
In the long run it's probably better to have the rest of the world foot some of the heavy lifting R&D bill. It will certainly help minimize the up and downs of funding associated the changing research priorities of a single country. It's time we stop thinking that the only way we can stay successful as a country is keeping every other country down.
The other positive is that this will probably drive up the value of an advanced science degree in this country. With less "insourcing" of foreign talent, those of us left here will advance science degrees should reap a bit more respect and pay. That our we give up on R & D and basically become a country of investment bankers and lawyers, slowly destroying ourselves
There is a definite trend of US politics having a detrimental effect on science.
The current issue of Scientific American mentions the censorship and blatant manipulation of facts by the current administration in order to further their political goals.
It is quite funny to see that someone is actually worried when their favourite country (USA) is "losing" something when the actual amount of new innovations is growing. It feels like someone thinks that in science those "other" countries do not count when they make new innovations. Standard NIH case. I find it very hard to believe that USA or any other country is losing something important if those new innovations and patents are not made there. There is always the possibility that something really good doesnt get invented at all. Like the genetic research which I believe is legally limited in the U.S. So I think it is better to lose the dominance because this technophobic time is making research harder in many western countries.
We have passed a critical point in our progress as a nation. No longer is there economic incentive to build products here as we can outsource the factories and labor to other countries. Ideas follow the means of production. If there is more production in other countries, there will be higher standards of education and higher quality minds in other countries.
We must learn to accept and integrate the new standards of globalization into our society. The question of location of means-of-production should not depend on lowered cost, but rather on benefit to society.
An obvious example would be technology and China. Yes, costs are lower for Americans but the Chinese are destroying their environment. A large element of "recycled technology" recovery occurs in China and most of the toxic products in out technology are released into the local environment. Search Google sometime for the terms "technology toxic byproduct China" and you'll be amazed by the material.
Means-of-production should be located where society can locally benefit via increased employment, etc. Until nanotech duplicators are created, we'll have to live with the status quo.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Just to play devil's advocate (I think), has it become unrealistic to have one parent work and one stay at home?
Or has consumer culture made it seem like you have to have both parents working to get a new TV, new car, etc etc.
I've seen families with both parents working who still have credit debt.
Maybe we should try and just live within our means, even if it does mean not wearing the latest fashions, etc?
We make so much money compared to the rest of the world, yet we seem to be working more and more. How can that be? Shouldn't we all be rich enough to enjoy, at the very least, our families?
-- taking over the world, we are.
"The question is what do you do about it? Unless the economy gets so good that one parent can stay home it's not going to get better."
I agree with the original posting but here is the rest of the story (caution flamebait) --- Why are the parents working so hard to give the kids everything. The brain drain is because kids and parents think they need to have everything and have it given to them because they deserve it.
Jobs go overseas because they people there are cheaper for the SAME work. The IT industry is grossly overpaid, that is why jobs are leaving, not lack of skill. Kids do not study because they get everything they want and see college as a right not a priviledge. College is just a checkbox on the resume these days. And then 5 more years of indentured servitude as a Graduate Student? Why do that, when you can get everything you want handed to you. Americans lack the work ethic of people who have worked for a living.
Americans need to live with less, give less material things to their kids and more time to their kids. That is why foreign kids often get ahead. I'm an American and it pains me that the US is going to have to become a second world country before Americans remember that the nation was founded by hard working immigrants.
DARPA, DoE, DoD, NSA, JPL etc. have done great science - science that will go down in history as groundbreaking - on their budgets.
The USA may be losing its dominance as far as "science" goes - i.e. if you take every scientific discipline as equal in utility and then delineate nations' scientific populations without prejudice, it is. But add the weight of "useful" - as in, has produced tangible benefits to humans - and the USA is still mightily dominant, with no competitor in sight.
A significant number of great advances in science and medicine have been incidental to military research; that's a fact. The entirety of the materials comprising your PC? All of it is a result of military research in some age or another. It's a sad fact, but according to history, humans only really come up with revolutionary technology when they need it to commit war. Successful, peaceful civilizations always have stagnated at a technological plateau, until either a raiding party or a trade route came their way.
It's less about whether both parents work and more about what values and priorities the parents instill in their children. Both my parents worked for my entire childhood and teenage years, but they read to me at an early age and set a priority on education. Growing up, it was never a question in my mind whether I would go to college, but only where and what I might study.
Back in 1950, one might note that the U.S. was responsible for half the world's GWP. In 1965, it was down to 25%? Was this a collapse in the American economy? No -- it was Europe and Japan having sucessfully rebuilt from bombed-out postwar husks into a restored industrialized powers. Sure, the U.S. "lost its industrial dominance" in that it was no longer so far ahead of everyone else, but the only way to keep it would have been to militarily force the Europeans and Japanese to stay backwards.
Similarly, in the last 20 years we've seen South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore emerge as modern economies, and India and China reduce the stultifying power of socialism on their economies. The resulting development has been met with an increase in the amount of science and engineering they produce. Sure, the U.S. "lost its scientific dominance" in that it is no longer so far ahead of everyone else, but the only way to keep it would have been to militarily force the Asians to stay backwards.
How can I claim we've stayed even? Well, when we compare ourselves scientifically to those who were fully developed countries in 1983, we're still ahead, as pointed out in Time Europe.
The U.S. science establishment is still healthy. It's just that the science establisments in Asia are no longer invalids.
Hehhe, damn whippersnappers.
-- taking over the world, we are.
The education of our children is paramount to our long term national security. It is the liberals that want kids to "feel good" while failing. Teachers that do not do the job, are sobotaging the future of america. Caving in to whiners is going to destroy this country. There must be some accountability. We have short term goals, we must have some short term accountability. Kid fails in school, kid fails to qualify for tax credit. No welfare for low kids with bad grades. Bonus money for math wiz kids.
Alot of times it's true. It's the rare case which it isn't. I was/am a geek and am built like a linebacker and played football. I hung out w/ the jocks and the geeks. The biggest problem is that geeks tend to spend most of their time learning/getting better at the intellectual(or whetever) side of things. And believe it or not I think this is the problem. I found that I got lucky and was ok because I worked at the stuff I was bad at, and not what I was good at. I hit the football field, hit the weight room, got to be sociable and know the other side. As a result I was respected by them. The typical geek (and i may get flamed for this but oh well) is somewhat scared/timid, and will retreat to that which they know best and get better at it, and shrink from the rest of the world. In order to change the stereo type, we need to fit in and get better at what we're not good at...
Anywho, just a long random rant.
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
Work ethic is one of the biggest predictors of student success. For years, I have helped students who have it succeed and those who are lacking it fail (no matter how many meetings, chances, extra help, etc I give.) Unfortunately, it is a moral taught by parents, and the school system has little impact in that area. I am never surprised when I meet the parents of a failing student and find that the parents are no different from the student. I guess breeding is everything.
A half century of elevating athletic stars to godhood and excusing them any and every crime imaginable. Or pandering to anyone who happened to win the genetic lottery and be born beautiful.
Decades of worrying whether a schoolchild has his chi focused instead of making sure he or she can add two single digit numbers in their head.
And letting the clique situation in schools to progress to the level of the Lord Of The Flies hasn't helped, either. When I was in high school, I saw teacher actively engaging in making some students outcasts (usually because they were smarter). I can't imagine what it's like now with the "let's all be mediocre" mindset.
One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space, you can't go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, uh, with fractions - what are you going to land on - one-quarter, three-eighths? What are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something? That's dialectic physics.
--- Ban humanity.
It's the end of the world as we know it, it's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine! We are the new Rome. Not one empire in human history has survived throughout the ages. They all come to an end and our turn is coming. It's not just our education system that's failing us now. It's our government, it's our disconnected population, it's peoples interest in TV shows or sports or other entertainment over real world events. We're doomed. If you're smart you'll leave.
I find this to be a very interesting subject and think many other people would as well. A book called 'what counts' should be essential reading for any math teacher, or anyone else interested in how the brain processes mathematical concepts.
At least in America, highschool is more about learning social skills, etc.
:)
Unless of course your a shy kid, that would like to fit in, but gets picked on for being "the quiet kid".
Note that, to avoid flames from the Manager-Apologist camp, one has to explicitly point out what the problem is. Management makes short-term decisions, which means they completely ignore the long-term. Thus, instead of spending money on basic research, or even any research at all, they spend it on marketing campaigns, creative accounting, and themselves.
What's the point of Geometry?
Now I know what a rhombus is?
Now I can do a geometrical proof?
Geometry is history, not math.
There has to be some other form of math that this time would be more effectivly devoted to.
Some type of logic course, perhaps.
"Proofs" are one of the few justifications people give for geometry, anyways.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
i work for a university well known for its graduate science programs. i was talking with a phD student from india the other day, and asked if he was going to return to india after he was finished with his degree. he said - yes - eventually - but that he was going to stay in the u.s. long enough to pay off the debt he had accumulated from grad school.
i also have a graduate degree. of the four american students in the lab i worked in, two of us have gotten degrees (in cell biology) and then have left basic science research to work in other fields.
I've worked on both sides of the table, sort of. I've done work for a consulting firm in DC, and was an SE in a Board of Ed with 30,000 students.
The fact is that for all the money spent on education over the last 30 years, test scores haven't moved. AT ALL.
The main problem? There are simply too many hands in the pot. Right now, most school systems get local, state, and federal money. And all of them have different requirements! Where I worked, it was nothing to bus the students around to make as many schools as possible 90% free lunch in order to get more federal money, for example. The others were made into "Magnets", so that although they didn't get that money, they got the initial magnet grants, etc. However, because the city votes for one party and the Governor is of the other, they got less state funds, etc. It's all a big money shuffle.
What needs to be done:
* Abolish the Department of Education, and put everything on a STATE level. Why not a local, do you ask? In my town the BoE already takes 62% of the town budget! I'm not willing to trust an ex-teacher-turned-Selectman with the checkbook. Too much like giving the fox the key to the henhouse.
* The state would handle all bidding for contracts. There is *so much* pork and waste in this area, it's awful. For example, the same bus company serves two adjoingin towns where I live. One town pays nearly 20% more per bus (that's times several trips daily, folks) than the other, because of the wording on the bid!!
* Abolish the unions. They do some good, but more harm than anything else. The poor preformers are saved/coddled/kept around, and the excellent are held back.
Just my $0.02
-Markvs
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
The majority of songs on the radio are about sex, love, drugs, etc. Yes, there are some violent songs, but there were violent songs in the seventies as well. Ever hear of Black Sabbath? The Rolling Stones?
Nothing has changed in music, man, nor in kids' attitudes. Smart people DO still get respect if they're not smug about it and have other aspects to their personality. Just because TV shows it the other way around doesn't mean it's true...I can't tell you how many times my brother has talked about some new friend in high school and rounded out the conversation with "He's really smart, too. He gets, like, all 90s and stuff."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
On Education, Specifically:
And then on Computer Science in general (could be extended to 'science'):
Thanks,
--
Matt
You make the decision as a couple that some things are more important than money and possessions. You deliberately allow your standard of living to be lower than it could, otherwise. My job enabled us to keep my wife home with the kids, though we don't have all the toys, travel, clothing, and house we might otherwise like.
Even now when my kids come home - from high school - there's about a 15 minute window when they spill their guts. IMHO, it has been terribly important for my wife (or me, but it generally falls to her) to be there when it happens. After that 15 minutes they clam up and generally act like teenagers, though more polite and hard-working than many I see. She also works part-time, but in a job that lets her have that contact with the kids at the end of the day.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You seem to indicate that they claimed the 40% pass rate was racist. Is that true? or did they claim the content of the test was racist?
Yea, my mother made the school pass me to the 7th grade too. Kind of hard for the school to fight it when they have sucky teachers. First get good teachers, then you can feel safe sticking firm to your standards.
School vouchers is BS. Most students in America go to public schools. By the way, they use the _SAME_ teachers private school next door uses. Plus the private school pays less. School vouchers can only lead to the dismantling of public education, putting school in the hands of profiteers.
All organizations have to be watched for corruption carefully. Un-monitored unions can simply allow The Powers to pay off one person as opposed to hundreds.
King of the Hill is one of my favorite shows. However, if perhaps our history books were not terribly biased, people would not be offended. Especially considering Mexico is our neighbor and they have different views on the Alamo I am sure. For example, one of my high school history books showed an African slave and his wife walking happily back from a local stream with a fish on his line. WTF?
Good teachers will do good work. We only have to give them good tools.
> We know Japanese work long hours. We also know they don't work nearly as hard as Americans.
Don't equate working long hours with working hard.
Having worked both in America and Europe I find the Germans work the har4est. They put an enormous amount of effort in while they are at work, but when the whistle blows they go home.
.....like the DMCA and Patriot act(s) will no doubt drive researchers away as well. Thats why most reverse engineering is already done elsewhere.
As a substitute teacher, my wife has spent a fair amount of time in the classroom. She sees kids with NO educational support at home, and most of them have no chance in the classroom without it.
She sees behavior problems in the kids - and the parents. In the old days, get in trouble at school, and you're in trouble when you get home. Years ago, our son was having some problems in the classroom, and his teachers were stunned to see us back them up, and have him in hot water at home. That used to be the norm, and now it's not. She's had male teachers ask her to call out a girl for dress code violations, because they're afraid of getting sued. (The same girls in a Vermont Winter ask why the place is so COLD - wearing their spaghetti straps and exposed midriffs.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I think that if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't have entered a technical field. Its great money comparitively when you're first starting out, but then it tops out when you're in your 30s. Most people change careers then.
Now, in the past generations, the techies had lifelong jobs at IBM and GE. In this generation, we're all getting fucked. Its not surprising that attitudes regarding scientists have gone down.
Scientists/engineers are just a slightly more expensive cog in the machine.
If you think the level of violence in Black Sabbath or Rolling Stones songs are comparable to what's being played today, you're out of your mind.
My wife and I decided to make it go on one income. I work and consult, frequently putting in 60 hour weeks. But my children have a consistent parental presence, a caring atmosphere, and no silver platter.
My oldest frequently asks why daddy works so much. It has been a great opportunity to teach her about work ethic and priorities. We are doing the best we can to train our children to be very different from the modern, stereotypical brat. I'll let you know how it worked out in about 15 years.
Isn't this like bitching about the lack of diversity in Nazi Germany?
The USA under the neo-cons is a militaristic imperialistic bully. The days of the USA as the center of Enlightenment are long past.
If you want your kids to have a chance of excelling, you'll need to take responsibility for their education yourself. You'll have to keep the administration firmly under your thumb, you'll have to make sure that your kid's doing his homework and you'll have to drill it into your kid's head that if he isn't challenged by the coursework, it is his responsibility to demand more advanced material.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Though I agree that our K-12 system is abysmal (I have twin 12 year olds going through a "GOOD" public school that uses calculators by 4th grade!) that has little to do with a science brain drain in the US. How many high school seniors are being hired to work as scientists? The intelligence of those that choose to go to universities hasn't dropped. It's the loss of reasonable jobs for scientists outside of the government or academic areas. Even if someone loves science (which I do) why take the chance of doing something that's very difficult and trying for low pay, NO appreciation, and a nice lay off when you're 50 and finally making a good living. Now you're overly specialized from 30+ years of doing work in your field and you have no where to go. That's a bright future isn't it?
I've seen it happen too many times. I would never encourage my sons to go into the field of science, especially research and I have friends in other fields that say the same. Hey, become and accountant or an MBA. It's easy and you don't get layed off at 50 (you do the laying off)..
This is the result of the failure of democracy. Democracy created a society where the dumb can rule the clever. That is because there will be always more dumb people than clever people.
Also, democracy introduced the notion that everyone is equal which is clearly not the case. People are different. This creates jealousy among the majority if a few people distinguish themself from the masses.
The real values of society are completely destroyed by democracy. We should return to Natural Order where the qualified people receive esteem and position in society (aka the wise man of the village in the old times).
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
I don't necessarily agree it's the "work ethic" as people here in the US typically work over 40 hrs (laborsta.ilo.org) and take far less vacation time than other countries. This may in fact be dissolving the basic "family unit" which traditionally has helped guide us through to maturity and success.
With our techshare diminishing and our workload increasing I think we are the ones who are becoming mindless robots.
Also I heard an interesting thought from an old interview with Isaac Asimov on PBS - He mentioned that the modern idea of "education" has become something that you "finish" or "complete" rather than pursue throughout your life.
"What do you folks think?"
At last, yankees realised the truth.
Since saturday, united Europe has 450+ millions of people. Much better educated than usians. Within a few years, U.S. economics could not compete in technology.
Perhaps, America will become an agricultural second world country?
There you are, staring at me again.
homeschooling is NOT the answer. homeschooled children either come out academically great (and/or religiously brainwashed to hell, but i'll say no more about that aspect of it for the moment), but this is for a simple reason: the process is self-selective. those who are excited and passionate about home schooling do it, and thus no wonder their kids turn out better than average.
homeschooling simply doesn't scale to a population. period.
I had to fight off a bunch of guys till the 9th grade. Then most people would talk to me only if they needed help with something. I didn't hate them but we weren't friends anyway. I did have a girlfriend all throughout high school but we met at chruch. Also since my girlfriend and I went to different schools no one believed me at my school anyway.
Each geek has there own experince. i know some didn't have any probelms,and others would get picked on even by other geeks.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I think the main difference I see is the ability of parents to really be involved in their kids lives. Families these days tend to be either split or two-income. In either case, any parents around to care for the child are off working. And that's okay, the problem is that now someone else must care for the child.
:)
So what happens is that the person now caring for the child doesn't feel like they have the same amount of control over that child that the parent does. They can't spank or yell or punish the children as may be necessary. The parents can do it when they get home, but are often too tired or don't even find out about their child's problem behavior.
So what happens? The child gets away with lots of little stuff here and there all the time. And that results in spoiled children. And spoiled children don't like to work hard and think things should be given to them. And this translates through to adulthood.
So now you've got kids in school who aren't disciplined properly & don't know how to work. I don't know about you, but when I was a kid I sure didn't "want" to learn what the teacher was blabbing about. I wanted to go play, or read, or play a game. I sat there because my parents made me & the teacher made me. I was disciplined.
I don't see how a hard-working & disciplined adult could possibly result from this situation. And it gets worse with more money & more stuff. How do we fix it? I don't know. Maybe ship everybody to the farm for some good ol' hard work.
I don't believe it's where the funding goes that's the big problem.
I agree with this as well. Most schools could use a little bit more money, but if you were to double the school system's budget, you wouldn't solve half their problems.
There is also an increase in laziness in the US. Kids today don't want to work hard for anything. Just take the easy road. I know because they are my friends. They think I am nuts for reading and working hard at things.
No, there have always been lazy people. The problem is that, these days, we let the people who don't give a crap about their education mess it up for everyone else. You said it yourself: The kids who actually do well get teased. It's not that they're lazy, they just don't want to get beat up. Combine that with all the PC nonsense about how "honors classes make the other kids feel bad" and everyone is learning to the lowest common denominator. The problem isn't the money or the kids, it's the organization and management of our school system.
Example: in college engineering 4 of the top 5 students were foreign. Either Arabic or Asian.
Yeesh. What a terrbile example:
Have you ever considered, that this is representitive of the world's population in general?
As someone who just graduated from a top engineering school, I can tell you that the asians weren't any smarter than us white guys.
Life is too short to proofread.
A whole lot of folks think that they need both halves of a couple to work, however in many cases (obviously not all cases) one partner would actually do better staying home. If you make a strictly economic decision (some people prefer work to home, that's a different case), you will want to compare the full opportunity costs of working.
Several areas of great savings through not working are child care, commuting, extra vehicles, food preparation costs, income taxes, and wardrobe costs. It's fairly common for the savings in these areas to be much larger than the second income. However, to achive these savings requires that a "workweek" be put in by the at home spouse (cooking, shopping (checking for sales), and caring for the children. It's worth it for people to at least look at the potential for savings.
If work is an escape from the rigors of the house, it might do to try some alternative careers. The lady who cut my hair as a child worked out of a studio in her spare bedroom. Another potental is through a home sales thing that takes place evenings/weekends (Avon or Tupperware or something similar).
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
We know Japanese work long hours. We also know they don't work nearly as hard as Americans.
Now that is funny. People assume that Americans work the hardest and are the strongest in various areas. What the NY Times article is pointing out should be a wake up call for most.
Things have changed. It really suprises me how much they have changed. One of the richest people I knew personally was a billionaire, literally. He was my Great Grandfather who was also President Trumans right hand man. In an interview he once responded to the question of how he obtained his wealth as: "The key is to work harder than everyone else and you will succeed." Up until the year 2000, I would have agreed with that statement.
There are two falicies to his logic though. There is the first falicy which is opportunity must be present for that to work, and secondly that you have a clear view of how much everyone else is doing so you can do better. What this article points out is that we have ignored the work other countries do.
Your comment on how Americans work harder was the case in some generations. In the youngest and up-coming generation, I do not believe that is the case. Look at the mentality and work force that is coming up. Where is the emphasis on higher education, in particular graduate studies?
Part of the problem I believe comes from the mentality that the youngest generation was raised with. They are the product of a highy successful, rich and full economy that is now crumbling. Many of them have the "World owes me" attitude. What they fail to realize is that noone owe them anything and being lazy will not pay off.
So to your statement, even though some people work hard, the average person in the work force in the US does their 40 hours and goes home. They don't put in long hours for free. I routinely have to put in 60 hour weeks and longer if emergencies arise. I also have to tell myself that it is ok and that I shouldn't make a big deal of the fact I am salaried and will NOT get compensated for those hours.
In other countries, they don't have to tell themselves that. The compensation for innovation, hardwork, and effort is viewed differently in other cultures.
root 10956 5164 0 Oct 22 - 0:23 sendmail: rejecting connections: load average: 70 (isn't sendmail just too kind)
In the UK, (at least, in my highly subjective experience) this doesn't happen. I'm really geeky, and am recognised as such, but I've still got a lot of friends/girlfriends/social life, and I, nor any of my friends get "beaten up" or teased for being intelligent/liking science/computers etc.
It depends on the mix of income backgrounds. You hear of kids committing suicide because they were bullied for being academically successful in the small town ("townie") schools, where the career path for the majority of students is to go on the "social" and do casual labour. That doesn't happen in the exclusive or dominantly middle class schools, where the ethos is to prepare everyone for university.
It's more of a financial thing.
> Dumbinance Up!
Quoth the Prophet:
The only thing he got wrong is that software was the first thing we outsourced. So that means we're down to three things. As geeks, RIAA and MPAA are off the list.
So - if we value our integrity, we must realize there's only one long-term career option open to us - deliver pizza. For the mob.
It's true for middle school. I used to get beat up all the time for being geeky, until I beat the shit out of a kid. I was really embarrassed about it...he was half my size...but I was told by everybody else how awesome it was.
Incidentally, the beatings didn't make a lick of difference. I still loved science and math. I still dressed in florescents and wore a fanny pack. At one point, I even started donning pocket protectors in protest of this flagrant anti-intellecturalism.
In high school, mostly everybody just left me alone. And that's how I liked it. In the classes I cared about, what the fuck do I care what people thought of me? I ruled every computer science class that school had, kicked ass in Spanish and Chemisty, Bio and Physics, and did my best in English Literature.
A few times, I'd get offhanded anti-intellectual comments. Like when I was discussing particle physics in the locker room, or the time we were making up dumb haikus at lunch. I always responded with scathing contempt, some very clever insults, and the occasional threat. But I never got any takers. Once a guy muttered "freak" at me under his breath while passing between classes. I followed him to his next class and wouldn't leave until he apologized.
I had a few friends, and that was enough. What's great was, by the time I was a senior, I had flexed my individuality to the point that I had gained the respect of a lot of my class. I was hardly Mr. Popular, but I could get a date if I wanted. And I knew how to calculate the torque at an arbitrary point on a rotating disk.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
As a US grad student, I'd like to point out that DARPA is not some malignant blackhole consuming academic knowledge at the detriment of other of the known world. 1) DARPA pays the bills. It's one more source of grant money, without which many grad students would not have funding. If I didn't have a tuition waiver, I might not be in school; I'm sure this is true of many others. 2) Not all DARPA research is clandestine. All the whitepapers published by my research group are available through journals, etc. 3) DARPA research isn't soley military in nature. For instance, I work on task planning for UAVs. This problem parallels the machine shop planning problem, and has many industrial applications. Now, I'm not saying that a lack of NSF fuding is good, as with most anything the optimal formulation requires balance. So, yes I'd like to see more NSF funding out there. By observation I must concur that most grad students are internationals. I have no problem with this, but it does suggest that their are fewer US residents than internationals pursuing advanced degrees (unless of course there are countries where they have more Americans than locals) Now if most research comes from acedamia (and I'm not sure if it does) this means US research is essentially a leased commodity, it depends on other countries exporting students to us. If this commmodity is important to the US (and it should be) we need to take steps to make sure we have good trade agreements (ie non stupid visa laws) and are not overly dependant on others (send more locals to school)
The solution? It is not the economy, it is the choices that the parents make. When parents realize that they are sacrificing thier kids well being to the alter of "I must have a bigger house, and SUV", they might relize they do not need two parents working full time. Why have kids if you cannot spend the time with them to raise them? Kids today are just another check box to many people. Spouce? Check. SUV? Check. Bigger house? Check. Children? Check. Happiness? ummm?...
In high school i was just mocked incessantly for being a geek. In college I was still mocked occassionally but everyone would be my friend when they needed computer help.
My last year of college (jan 03-dec 03) I did a social experiment. When I talked with new people I expressed my interests as being motorcycles, mountain biking, that I was a Business Management student (I am), etc, but I never mentioned computers.
Not only did girls stop asking me to fix their computers all of the time, I started getting laid.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
What does the science lab do? It costs a hell of a lot of money with no return for the school system (at least in a short term/micro view) . Schools want to be viewed as prestigious institutions, and the number one way to do that is through athletics.
What about spelling-bee competitions, science fairs or debating competitions? Don't US high schools have those, just like as in Canada?
This doesn't come as a surprise at all.
For decades the United States have relied heavily on immigration to sustain their technological dominance.
In the fourties, fifties and sixties they had the top notch european scientists which either fled europe during world war II (e.g. Einstein) or were "picked up" by the allied forced after the breakdown of Nazi germany (e.g. Wernher von Braun). Also the increased military spending during the cold war added much to the technological and scientific leadership.
And nowadays the united states benefit from Immigrants leaving China, Korea or India to come tu the US. And there are still enough euroipean scientists which choose teh US because of the excellent working conditions there compared to most european countries. Try a scientific search engine of your choice. A high percentage of the scientific papers you'll find there have at least one co-author which is not a american.
Mind you this doesn't mean that there are only immigrants doing your scientific reasearch but the US relies heavily on those brain drain of other countries.
Alas since 9/11 the US is doing everything it can to stop those immigrants from coming over to their country. Strict immigration laws. Surveillance of immigrants from countries which might be allied to the axis of terror or which didn't bend over when the US asked, etc. pp.. The first casualties of the "war on terrorism" were those scientists which wanted to work in the US.
So immigration has dropped 25% percent in the last year and the Ivy-League Colleges and Universities are already complaining because student echange programmes are not very much sought after. Many of my colleages who two years ago wanted to go to the US are now considering to work elsewhere.
The american educational system is not able to produce enough scientifically skilled people to satisfy their own demand so immigration of highly skilled people is vital to their economy.
With all the sanctions regarding immigrants these skilled people turn to other countries and are lost to the US.
Jeff
p.s. just to prevent spelling and grammar flames: I am not a native speaker.
Actually, Military Research generates TONS of practical invention...always has...
Microwaves being a great example, so I think that point is nothing more than an ignorant politically motivated statement.
I believe the K-12 issue is much more of a reason. But beyond that, I think our extremely binding IP Rights/Lawsuits situation is the single most reason to blame for our decline.
When you have patents like "The use of alphabetic characters on top of buttons..." and then lawsuits for any device that uses buttons with letters on them. You have no need to even wonder why technology and advancement is being stymied in the U.S.
- theSaj
I am looking to go back to school for a law degree after my last two jobs were outsourced to India. Both my little brother and sister have no interest in going into the sciences as there is no future in it. In fact, my brother, who would start college in 2006, sees no reason to go into massive debt by going to college at all.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
> but they're less interested in serving the country that helped them
> than they are in furthering their careers (by moving abroad etc)
I'm sorry but I just don't see that. I've lived in the US for twelve years now and I don't know anybody who moved out of the US for their career's sake. This criticism could easily be addressed at western Europeans though, such as Germans or Brits, who often take a US job at the drop of a hat. This leads to their (on average) better public school and university system benefitting the US.
Perhaps I'm not speaking for the mainstream. My public school district (203 in Naperville) scored #1 in the world in science and #3 in math on some standardized tests we took (this was a few years back.) But the American education system is respected worldwide. Why else do you think we have so many foreign students coming to American colleges?
In my school, if you made it into the advanced classes, you got teachers who cared about teaching (usually) and students who cared about learning. If you didn't, then you were with folks who shared your less ambitious mindset.
I went to China recently to teach English. Teachers are respected there. Parents canceled their vacations so I could homestay at their house and their kids could get some extra practice. Everyone worked these kids hard with little time to play. (There were lots of good looking, intelligent 21 plus girls because fewer people had time to date in college. Ah, heaven! *grin* )
I think the first solution to our problems is stratification. Don't cancel the advanced classes! Forget 'ending social promotion' as the solution to all our problems. We don't need to hold some students back. We need to allow those students who can excell to do so. The effect, in the end, is the same, and more politically viable. The only real downside to this is that a High School diploma becomes devalued.
I've had other friends who are teachers. Trying to motivate American students in the inner cities is next to impossible, many times. They want to do only the work required to get a H.S. diploma and do auto repair or whatever. And you can make a halfway decent living that way. In other countries, manual labor pays dirt. These economies have no minimum wage laws. Kids have to work hard in school or they hit the ground, hard afterwards.
What America needs is a culture that respects education, both in school and (more importantly) outside of school. <sarcasm> And thankfully, those in political power are working on creating the viscious disparities of wealth that provide this motivation. </sarcasm> Yay!
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
One of the big driving forces in R&D during the Cold War was in fact military spending. This was a time when US tech was dominant. The post Cold War drop in military spending that occurred during the Clinton years gave us two things, a balanced budget and huge cuts in military R&D. Unfortunately the reduction in military R&D spending was not made up with increases in the civilian side. Now military R&D is being heavily funded again this factor will improve. It isn't a negative as the Times thinks.
Another thing to be aware of is that the US is the world leader in R&D spending as a percentage of GDP. The fact that the tech gap is closing isn't really reduction in US R&D spending, but more increasing GDP of other countries, and the increases in R&D that go along with that.
As far as schools being the problem, that's poppycock. Maybe K-12 isn't the best, but the US has a LARGE number of top flight research universities, yet they can't get US students to major in technical fields. Why? Supply and demand. There just aren't enough jobs in the tech fields, and salaries are not attractive enough. It's the same reason that CS enrollments have dried up.
Another really negative factor is the way corporations work in the US. CEOs are judged on quarterly and year over year results, so any project that lasts more than a year isn't going to affect the CEOs pay quickly enough. Most R&D takes 5 years to go from lab to product. Another factor is the great uncertainty associated with fundamental R&D. You might have a great new tech, but is your company going to be able to sell it? If you look at the history of these things it is pretty common for a company to invent something really great, but find that they can't take advantage of it for one reason or another. Xerox PARC is a great example of this sort of thing. When I worked in R&D, I found that all of my patents were eventually sold to competitors for the simple reason that my company's strategies changed over time making the projects less interesting to them.
Because of these problems with commercial R&D I don't see any solution other than government funding.
In America, smart kids are not cool. In fact, they are liable to get beat up. In many cases, the smart kids who continue to study hard do so only because they're too small to play football or basketball or don't have musical talent enough to play in a rock band. How does this kind of mentality arise?
The powers that shape our culture (media, advertising, big business) have a vested interest in making sure that the citizenry are a bunch of uncritical consumers -- people who will ultimately buy the goods that the market pushes. Since non-artisan, commodity goods are the easiest to produce in volume (and thus the best engines of capital), it is these, along with a general consumer lifestyle, that are marketed heavily (glorified, if you will) in portrayals, analyses of and references to our culture that bombard us every day: movies, music, television news, magazines, etc., both content and explcit "advertisement" formats.
It is in not the interest of capital and its engines to produce scientists, thinkers, or other critical consumers who will only do "research" that is not profitable in the short term.
It is in the interest of capital and its engines to produce uncritical drones who will work in the same product mills that they also support with their earnings, never noticing that a continuous percentage of their time and labor (cleverly disguised as "profit margins" by these product mills) are skimmed off the top by the ultra-wealthy.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
It appears we have created huge attractive salaried for non GDP professions.
Lawyers as a class contribute very litte to the GNP - but they enjoy high and protected wages.
Doctoring (hate to say it) but doctoring is a statistically self defeating enteprise (We ensure the ability of the weakest genes to survive and procreate - increasing the number of weak genes and polluters - creating more desease, war, famine, and additional work for doctors) This is challenging - but doctoring does not affect the quality of life as much as (for example) good plumbing.
I think we over invest in technologies beyond the point of diminishing returns.
Look at cars and roads - wider roads means faster commutes means more people move away from work creating longer commute, more congestion - and finally the need for more cars and more roads.
We are spending our wealth in self-defeating enterprises. (Welfare encourages larger families of dependancy minded)
etc
AIK
This book was written by Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America's classrooms.
This "dumbing down" was done on purpose, and she has the paper trail to prove it. hard to go forward as effectively in research when the defaultposition is to brainwash the kids into being corporate moo slave consumers and statists instead of just a quality education.
Then look at the trends in finance where we developed the technique of corporate raiding, junk bonds, hedge funds and derivatives, and lying at top levels of the economy as a proper business model, and you can see that the get rich quick, something for nothing attitude has become more important than actually researching and producing products and services as the top priority for the nations "business community". There's no way around it, long term research won't equate a "postive cash flow" in this quarters statements, so they abandoned it. When eventually it lead to a severe decline in profits (as it was bound to), they switched to outsourcing what they could, in sourcing cheaper labor for that which couldn't be outsourced, and bribing politicians more to keep laws passed that would maintain short term profits over longer term profitability and stability.
Now look at something else, back to the children, we've also seen the most curious phenomenon of the forced drugging of children in the schools, to go along with the deliberate brainwashing and dumbing down. Been going on a long time now, now it's quite normal, but it was simply unheard of just a few decades ago, it's totally new, and completely wrong. I think it's funny as all get out, I can drive into town and go by an elementary school, outside they have a DARE sign, when inside 1/4to 1/3 of the students are drug addicts on purpose. The irony is delicious but disturbing, because few of the parents and even fewer of the JBT "drug warriors" can see it.
And my pet peeve, the thoroughly ridiculous emphasis on schools being the farm teams for the major professional sports leagues, and addicting generation after generation of people into their complete scam profits machine. And it's not just the schools, look at any local news broadcast in the evening, 1/3 of the total non commercial time is devoted to this "bread and circuses" to keep up the addiction. How much of that news time do you ever see any reference to the hard sciences, or anything actually intellectual compared to the scores for the "big games"?
We lost it culturally on purpose, it's not good enough to be our own smart workers anymore, we need managers, marketers, entertainers, middle man skimmers and gamblers, and most importantly, mercenaries-but not deep thinkers or actual productive workers. Our foreign policy now, both civilian and military, is based on L
Here is my outlook on Education in the U.S.
Who ever said that schools are funded enough is living on a different planet. In Maine, and to my knowledge most other states, High School teachers make less money than a Manager who works for McDonalds; why is that? If you want kids to take school seriously, you better damn well have teachers who can answer their questions (e.g. we should be hireing Masters for our teachers not Bachlors) and we need to re-think the way we teach. In most schools, we teach democracy but preech dictatorship. The school staff is constantly trying to control the students forcing them to rebel, forcing the teachers to tighten thire grip-- it's a downward spiral.
All too often brilliant kids "slip through the cracks" because the classes are only taught to tailor to a single style of learning. For athletic students, it's not uncommon that their "coach" talks to the teacher and lest them slip by classes... creating one click, then you have the kids who are bored with the material (not fast enough) another click (note these kids often do bad because they simply dont bother) then you have the "go with the flow" kids who do everything their told and are disliked by the other groups because they're selling their souls to satan...err the school board.
I could go on for hours listing problems with todays school system but instead I'm going to assume that you (the reader) are an inteligent being (to a certain extent, granted you probably did attend american schools...)and throw out some ideas on how to fix things:
Eliminate "Grades" as in Kindergarden, Freshmen, Senior... etc. This is a stupid concept. Why should we hold back a student from learning higher level Mathmatics because he/she is not so good at English or History? Let each subject have it's own level system and let the student advance at his/her own pace. E.g. Mathmatics level 5, English level 3, History level 8, etc. Eliminate the grouping of age with subject matter. Do this, and you will find that peer presure of not wanting to at a low level will start to make kids WANT to learn.
Let the students decide what they want to learn. The student should have an assigned Mentor (each mentor should have a limit of 10 or so students at once) which they can talk to for guidence and information. It is up to them to take the initaive to choose the course they want, choose the professor they want, and do what the professor requires for them to advance. Teaching style should be a pleathera of differnt styles with focus on individual attention if needed. E.g. secudled lectures (not too often, but long enough to get things done, like 3 hours), Labs, Trips, Recomended Reading/Viewing, etc. The student should be able to get everything he/she needs out of the text book; everything else is to help if needed. One-on-one meetings with the professor during office hours are recomended. It is up to the professor to determine weather the student is ready to advance or not, be it by interview style orally, by writen exam, or by project. None of the actual tests will go into file, instead (for quality assurance) a writen (noterised, and signed) report/certificate will be writen up (each unique, no standard form) giving a detailed review of what the student knows and that he/she has met the level requiements... Checks will be done on professors at the higher levels (if the professor teaching the next level of the subject determines that the student is not ready they must file a report on the previous professor, so many infractions and the professor risks loss of license and job)
This will teach american students that:
THEY need to take inititave (nothing will be given to them)
They need to WORK for what they want
That they ARE good at something (e.g. subject that they excell at)
And through the process, have a better idea of what they want to do in life.
Of course, this is just fragments of a plan of mine... most are against it because it requires that children be remov
Time magazine had an article in January claiming the exact opposite situation, that US laboratories and departments were the destination for thousands of European scientists. Here are two quotes:
"Some 400,000 European science and technology graduates now live in the U.S. and thousands more leave each year. A survey released in November by the European Commission found that only 13% of European science professionals working abroad currently intend to return home."
""In soccer, if you're great, another team can buy you." Science is the same, and the big buyer is the U.S.: in 2000, the U.S. spent 287 billion [euro] on research and development, 121 billion [euro] more than the E.U."
The full article is here
Wouldn't it just be a brain drain?
Woman are concerned with FINANCIAL stability... not just stability. Get it straight man!
To begin with, yes, there are some teachers who shouldn't be in the classroom. However, I would say that this number is at worst, the exact same percentage as people in any field. Where I teach, I'd say there are about 3 teachers who should have found a different job a while back, out of a staff of about 75.
Those who want to abolish teachers unions have a point. They do tend to keep those who should go. But without the unions, teachers would be expected to be at every single school event without any extra pay. I've been at schools with bad contract negoations, and teachers were expected to supervise football and basketball games, work ticket booths, work consession stands, and clean up afterwards just to keep their jobs. All this while they're expected to get their master's degrees, keep educated on current trends in education, and in their subject area. What other profession are you expected to get up to your master's degree, but clean tables as well? If it weren't for the unions, it would be worse.
Next comes the pay. Again, with all the education, yet so little compensation. What other profession would tolerate it? People demand qualified teachers, teachers who have degrees in their subject areas, yet get upset at paying for someone who has that level of knowledge.
I'd also like to mention the students. In case any of you aren't around teen-agers on a regular basis, let me share with you. They are not always easy to deal with. I'm not saying all kids are bad. It is a difficult and confusing time in their lives, and this often leads to frustration, and they share this with whoever they come in contact with. It is also a fact of human development that teens concentrate more on themselves than anything else. They expect adults to both understand everything about every aspect of their lives as they see it, while at the same time, they don't wany adults to have anything to do with their lives. Find any human development book that discusses Freud, Piaget, and Erickson and you'll get a better picture.
Finally, there is a general trend in the US to spoil our kids. I think it comes from the depression. People were kids then decided they didn't want their kids to grow up like that, so the baby boomers were treated better than any generation before them. This has mutated into parents blindly backing their children, sometimes in ways that are not int the child's best interest. The most irritating example I run into is the old standby "I don't understand.". I've seen kids successfully pull this with their parents on the simpelest tasks. One student in my algebra class refuses to do any problem that will require him to write down more than one step. The same kids who will play "Prince of Persia" for 5 weeks straight to figure out how to get past a difficult section refuse to take 60 seconds to read a word problem, and possibly another 30 seconds to think about it.
The fault lies everywhere, not with just one group, or one person. Until everyone starts doing their jobs like they should (politicians, teachers, administrators, students, and parents), things are going to continue to go downhill.
Time Europe recently had a A article about European scientists emmigrating to the US because it was easier to do science there than in Europe (less bureaucracy in the US, though we're catching up).
Exit, pursued by a bear.
At first I read that last sentence as "What do you, fools, think?
A Freudian slip?
You can't handle the truth.
Let's not be Polyanna here. The simple reality of today's 'music' and culture is far, far different than it was 20-30 years ago. And this is again, even more removed from the culture 20-30 years before that.
Yes, aspects of racism and injustice have been dealt with (or at least recognized as a problem), but it's been replaced increasing violence and ignorance in other areas. None of which furthers the cause of education. The music is just the reflection of a sad reality.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I am not shaking my head at the aliens, but the fact that the aliens get so many rights. On the one hand I want to do things by the book and become part of society.
The jobs you would occupy are threatening to the educated and monied class of the US. The jobs illegal aliens occupy are not. The monied class wants a pool of exploitable labor, not people who could give them real competition.
blog
http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/scientist.html also discusses this topic.
Yeah, after I posted I thought it wasn't quite phrased right. I know there are a lot of people who stay in the US and work for foreign companies remotely, because there aren't as many quality jobs for American companies. I know a few people that moved from Europe to the US to work for a company that ended up doing most of its work for a European corporation.
I don't know that the whole argument of scientific leadership really works as well in these times, upon reflection. If half of a major US firm's workforce is based in India, is that an American science leader, or an Indian one? If an American company is really just a shell for a European corporation, who gets the "credit"? Half the people I know in the tech industry these days work for companies outside the country they live in, but I'm not sure how they'd be counted.
I'd say the days of the US dominance in science is over, only because it's getting harder to pin down the criteria for counting.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
They just want the quick profit. Corporate research does not go after breakthroughs. Govt-sponsored research, OTOH, can go after breakthroughs, because it is not driven to obtain quick profits.
The USA has become a corporate vassal, whereas the other Western nations still look to govt sponsored research.
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
Agree with everything in your post except for this.
If I had a screaming kid and an exhausted spouse, I wouldn't work 60 hours. I'd work 80. Work would be a refuge.
Heh. I started out making a quick joke, but I just realized that's the perfect description of 3/4 the people at my last job. As a bachelor (+1, Redundant, this is Slashdot) I think I know why they resented me to much. :)
Its a lot easier to blame it on everyone else then take some responsibility. Thats why you hear so many complaints about being beaten up and harassed.
Sure it happens but in my experience a persons intelligence, work ethic, and areas of interest have little do with it. Back in highschool most of the people in my AP and advanced classes were involved in school either in atheletics, cheering, or school government. I guess the point is most bright, intelligent, people are not harassed and being an achiever is not the cause of the problem.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
Maybe the reason kids and schools are more worried about social activities and sports is because they want to have successful careers!
In America, MBAs think scientists and engineers with master's degrees who make as much as MBAs are overpaid. And since MBAs make all the decisions and have all the power, well you figure it out. Students are doing just what their culture rewards. Technical prowess is usually a one-way ticket to the middle class (not knocking it, personally I'm happy that way) but many of us Americans are gamblers and want a chance at the big time.
I was actually met with resistence. A lot of people don't want to get ahead. They want to get by
Is there anything wrong with that? Life isn't about work, and it's not about making money. If you've worked enough to put a roof over your head and food in your belly, then enjoy the sunshine on your face and grass against your soles. You've earned it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It just wasn't cool to be smart. The smart kids go teased and beat up.
America has a long history of anti-intellectualism, even though it is science and reason that has carried this country so far. It does't help that the current administration is anti-science and anti-education (I don't care what they say, look at what they do...cut stem cell research, take down information on government web sites, make it harder for low income students to get loans, the list goes on...).
"Public schools doesn't exist to educate. They exist to contain kids while parents are at work."
Exactly. Education is easy: it doesn't take long to teach kids the basics of reading, writing and math, then with a good library and Internet connection they can educate themselves.
Schools exist to keep kids out of the parents' hair, to teach them to be mindless drones who do what they're told, and keep teachers in comfy, well-paid jobs when many would otherwise be lucky to qualify for burger-flipping, and universities exist to charge kids for a piece of paper that will qualify them for highly-paid middle-class jobs.
The sooner tax-funded schools are eliminated, the better off we'll all be. They benefit no-one other than control freaks and the schooling bureaucracy.
But it's proportional. Rolling Stones:Lawrence Welk::Marylin Manson:Rolling Stones
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I came here 20 years ago, enrolled in college, went to graduate school, and then stuck around.
First thing that surprised me was the number of students enrolled in "pre-college" math classes.
Then, even when I was grading senior class homeworks, I was dismayed with the prevalence of formulaetis.
When I was teaching, my students wanted everything on a silver spoon. If homeworks were not cut-and-paste from the text, they were too hard. If the exam was not cut-and-paste from past homeworks, it was not "fair", and so on.
Heck, where I grew up, homeworks and exams were almost always something that had no direct answer in the book, and required me to do some thinking. Students sometimes flunked their classes, and getting out of high school required passing a rigourous national test.
So, I am forced to conclude that by the time students get out of high school, very few have any learning skills, and most have had their learning skills and curiousity worked out of them. Look at young children, how much they want to learn, how curious they are, and how many questions they ask, and compare to the high school graduate who wants everything on a plate.
If you work more than 35 hours a week to make SOMEONE ELSE rich, you are a tool. There is nothing a manager likes to hear more than you think the company's profits come before your social life or health.
If you work 40+ hours running your OWN BUSINESS, then you should be commended for your good work ethic. You are building your skills, wealth, and the economy. Nothing wrong there.
Would you accept less money to spend more time with your family? Obviously not, since your compaint is that people "aren't working hard", since they don't log enough hours.
Let's have an experiment. I'll work a 10 hour week in a coal mine. You work a 40 hour week debugging. The pay will be the same. Let's see who is considered to have "worked harder". If you really think you work harder programming, let's trade- you could use those extra 30 hours a week with your family, right?
Is this actually true? I'm from the UK, and there is a stereotype of the American geek as small, weak, beaten up, no girlfriend etc, but I've wondered if this is accurate.
In the UK, (at least, in my highly subjective experience) this doesn't happen.
That's because all british are small, girlish, and weak.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
>Maybe it's a cutural thing?
I think so.
One of the difference between US and Europe (well at least France) is the way sports is handled: in US, guys who are very good at sports at the "star" of their university, in France guys who are very good at sports usually goes to separated specialised schools..
Bad spell-checking in the original post aside, I thought that was a pretty obvious joke, but what the hell.
Maybe that was stupid, or maybe you were to stupid to get it. I don't know, I don't care. But 'nuff off-topic siblings.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Domestic issues revolving around poor K-12 education are a prime reasons why US students are falling behind. The education system is weak and the culture celebrates ingnorance, victimization, and celebrity. None of which motivate individual accomplishment. The world is becoming a relatively safer and freer place. There is less incentive for anyone to stay in any particular place (or to flee a place) due to politics, resources or war. Scientists use to immigrate to the US; now there is much less reason for them to do so. Mobility is key. Most knowledge workers can set up shop just about anywhere today. A major university or research center can be found close to almost anywhere. The internet allows universal scientific colloration and dissemination of information. A scientist could live in Deli, or Little Rock and still work with the best minds around the world.
Well, if we would stop allowing all the tech jobs to go overseas, then perhaps schools would start tecahing it again.
They just are not teaching what isn't going to provide an income for their students down the road..
Then it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy, if no one is trained, there are not going to be any jobs..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
India has the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and getting into those requires a level of preparation not found anywhere in the world. The bootom line is : Have an uniform examination based on technical questions where the brightest will succeedd..Unlike USA, where money empowers education or tests like GRE which are non-technical and prove nothing..So, n o wonder the Indians are moving up..Wake up USA..We can surely do such a thing and our MIT/Stanfords will have the cream too !!!
Life if self-defeating because eventually you die anyway. So why bother trying?
Those are very intresting ideas. Most of which I agree with.
I would like to make a few observations I have made working in various countries.
Most people do like to go home at 5:30pm. Regardless of the country. In the Uk, I never saw people working late, even in the tech culture. I worked in a building with 3 other software companies, and i was actually surprised at the laxness and lack of REALLY long hours people tended to put in compared to what I was used to on the west coast.
Lots of western european countries have laws in place to protect smaller companies, such as retail stores. Try going shopping for a TV on a sunday afternoon in even a city like Zurich. in 2000, it was not really that possible. AFIK it's still the same in Germany.
We have 5 software engineers working for me on a project we are doing. This is the 3rd project we have taken (major) and the second company the guys have worked at together. They have no problems working weekends, nights mornings, whatever.
IMHO the hardest working people I have ever met are eastern europeans. Of course, keep this in mind, i have only worked with a few dozen in Bucharest Romania, Ukrain and Poland. (After doing offshore dev teams for almost 6 years, you stick with what you know). These guys run circles around most american or european groups I have worked with. They code because they are hungry and we pay them -very- well (pretty much a western salary), we don't treat them like cheap labor. I guess if i was working for the equivilant of 200k dollars per year, I would be working my ass off too.
Anyway, the point of what i am saying. Don't discredit or generalize a generation as a whole. I hear my friends in europe saying the same thing about the younger generations that live there. I have been saying the same thing about my 17 year old sister. Imagine what your grandparents where saying about the people growing up in the 70s.
There will always be hard working people that learn to capitalize on their situations and environment. They will learn to take advantage of their skills, and domiinate their areas of influence. I don't think history has disproven that only 3-5% of the population will succeede in that way. I doubt that much will change as time goes on, and there will always be people that are splashed with a cold blast of reality and rethink what their goals are.
As for brain drain out of the United States. i believe this if it's visa workers going home, but not americans. I believe that most that leave will be back before long. I actually, don't believe for a moment that a lot of people are leaving the country for jobs off shore. Having been working in europe as an american for about 5-6 years, it's hell. It's only gotten worst since 9/11 and the generalizations that people abroad make about americans in general.
I am sure glad to be home.
My oldest frequently asks why daddy works so much. It has been a great opportunity to teach her about work ethic and priorities.
"Because daddy doesn't want to be on his deathbed and regret that he didn't spend more time at the office."
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In other countries, being a K-12 teacher is a highly respected profession. In the US, K-12 teaching has deservedly earned itself a reputation for being a haven for marginally competent individuals. When a profession lowers it's standards far enough, all the smart and competent people bail out because they don't want to be associated with it anymore.
Now it's all about what you can't do (be lazy, be unpatriotic, let the foreigners beat us, etc.).
Some of the most interesting people I know are people who would be judged to be lacking by the current administration so I think people should get back to that whole "land of the free" thing and live their lives however they want.
> They don't do it just for the money, they do it because we have drop-dead deadlines and they need to finish things
In my opinion, if people need to work overtime to meet the deadlines, it most probably means that you have bad management (or lazy employees). It is too easy for the upper management to ask the employees to do overtime "for the good of the company". The hard part would be for them to hire as many people as are needed to complete the project on time. That would even create more jobs, but of course, less profit for the shareholders.
Personnally, I will not give up my life (outside of work) because my bosses can't manage projects and employees without asking for overtime. I probably won't be rich, but I'll enjoy life while I can. The only way I'll work overtime is if I was unproductive and the delays in the project were caused by my actions.
But you hit the nail on the head on the contradiction of the parent psot so this might as well be +1 inssightful
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
You could take it one step further. If you look at Nobels as an indicator of leadership, the US are clearly ahead. Yet a very large percentage of the scientists winning those Nobels for the US are actually foreigners doing only their doctoral or post-doctoral studies and research in the US. The secondary and tertiary education that layed the foundation for their critical thinking was usually acquired in their home countries. So you have to wonder what was more important: their foundation education, or the money that enabled the research? Ideally both, but looking at the list of US Nobel Prize winners, I'm wondering if China, Germany and Russia would not be better off financing a bit more research at home to stop this brain drain to the US. Germany in particular has the resources but has been loath to put money into high-risk research with questionable ROI.
Regarding national dominance, given the globalization of the market place it's hard to pin down a particular nationality on any of the large players anymore. In particular in the high-tech field you get ingredients from all over the place. If you look at high-profile products like airplanes and cars, they're a standardized grab bag of components from all over the world. Even traditionally national brands don't really indicate country of origin anymore. If you buy Siemens or Bosch components in the US, they were most likely manufactured in the US, using components designed in Europe by engineers educated in the US--or vice versa, who knows.
There's nothing wrong with just getting by if that's what you want, the problem is when you want the government to enforce a policy that restricts my ability to get ahead by working harder.
There are a lot of jobs you can get that will pay the rent and put food on the table. For some people that's not good enough. If the government enforces a 35 hour workweek (that means no MORE than 35 hours allowed, period, like they did in France), then you are restricting my ability to work for someone willing to pay me to do a job.
So why do some people want the government enforcement? Because then they don't have to worry about losing their job to someone willing to work harder. Too f'ing bad!
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The US economy is in such a bad shape that other countries are the ones who are innovating. And because the USA has such an expensive currency, the work is outsourced to places like India and South Africa.
I made a post previously about this, but got moderated as a troll (not without reason), but the replies only went to prove my point rather than refute it.
Americans in general have unjustified pride and arrogance based on past performance when it comes to technical expertise and quality in production. This is becoming less and less of a truth and more of a memory, but the arrogance lives on.
Moderating this down or arguing the point is like sticking your head in the sand. The truth is American education is less than adequately focused on education and more on entertainment/sport/politics. I know some pretty cool Americans, but most of them have fled the States. (as the article suggested)
Wake up people... if your economy stutters, small 3rd world countries usually die. The world (wether we like it or not) depends on the stability of the US$.
Another UK/US cultural difference there, then. I'm 5'8" as well, but I weigh 140 pounds, and would also consider myself 'average to small' build.
You must think in Russian.
Man, I wish I had mod points today!
Sure, we have had a pretty bad showing in our fights with the two weakest countries in the world, but reality is something smart people have to worry about, not True Belieivers (tm) and Patriotic Americans (R). Embrace your inadequacies, ignorance really is bliss. :-)
Except in countries like Japan and Brittain, homeschooling isn't even an option, IIRC.
What IS the answer is strict federal controls on education. Let's face it, putting education in the hands of local officials may have worked 30 or 40 years ago, but things have changed since then.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The smart kids go teased and beat up. Who wants that.
Well, the obvious answer is that the less intelligent students have learned at home that validation comes from putting other people down. Not a sustainable model for a society, IMHO.
But this brings up a good point.
If society as a whole wanted to improve its overall standard of living as much as possible it would recognize that the most intelligent 5% of the population has given them 50% of the ideas that have promoted progress overall. And it would try to take as much advantage of this as possible.
A better learning environment and one which is not needlessly slowed down for the benefit of the average and below average students could be provided to those students who would be capable of achieving a lot more.
Set up special schools and programs to make the most of the best students. (I'm probably not the only nerd who was able to kick back and relax, who was bored to tears seeing repetitive math education in elementary and middle school.)
Once those students get out into the working world, they'll contribute back manifold discoveries, inventions and ideas. What we're doing now is morally equivalent to the Cultural Revolution in China, where an entire generation of intellectuals was lost as many of them were put in prison or forced to work on farms to gain a proper appreciation of the working class. You see the same distrust of intellectuals everywhere. "Damn college kid thinks he's smarter `n everyone!" Yes, I'm smarter than a lot of people - that doesn't make me a better or superior person. Just smarter.
Meanwhile, increase the investment in education for all the other students, too! Increase investment in Head Start, day care for working mothers, school nutrition programs, etc.
Finally, make education tuition free. Get rid of fees and make the only requirement for entrance and continuing education be sufficient academic performance.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
There is a very simple reason why science and math education, indeed all education, is poor in America:
Quality of educators. It's a no-brainer. Anyone who is proficient in science or math is not going to waste their time teaching at the elementary or high school level.
Additionally, (and this is true of education in general), it used to be that many professions were closed to women, but teaching wasn't. Consequently, our best and brightest women used to be school teachers. This is no longer true. The brightest women, just like the men, are going into other fields.
Proverbs 21:19
I am 6'4", was 260 in high school, now 330 but can press another 100 pounds than i could in my senior year, i guess it's about even... /is/ gay), beaten up, et cetera ad nausum. I'm one huge fucking Paddy, but it didn't matter... they picked on me for being Irish, too.
I was riddiculed, called "gay," (it turns out my best friend and the "hardware kid" in our duo
It was Columbine that got people to leave me alone. All the real pyshical attacks happened in jr. high school. columbine happened my freshman year. i am known gun enthusiast and 2nd amendment advocate with ties to the Republic of Texas (I live in Virginia though) and IRA. After Columbine, no one wanted to take a chance because they were affraid I would kill them all. I perhaps would have, had I been continuously subjected to beatings by groups. I have no qualms with revenge, as I can just confess and get myself out of being hellbound. Besides, if women can kill abusive husbands premptivly before the next beating and get off as "self defense," I am sure I could argue the same. It wouldn't have been a "massacre" as much as a "targeted strike." These days, I'd just blame G.W. as being a bad influence.
In my senior year, my best friend, who was the most beautiful girl in school (a goth chick thogh, so not popular; was runner up and won "spirit" award (don't ask me how) for Miss Teen Virginia) and I started "going steady." this spared me all of the emotional trauma of being called "gay" or not being included in anything.
I also learned to play guitar. You should all go learn an instrument. This is what got her to go with me after 5 years of asking.
If the sci-edge is being lost, I think it is due to misdistribution - but not the kind commented on by the submitter. Hard science now has to compete with many softer and ambiguously useful softer sciences. For instance, I am in cardio Epi, and our studies take enormous amounts of money, but continue to yield marginally smaller and less significant results (the big results were probably found from 1945-1985). Yet, they still are funded for amazing amounts. Behavioral epi studies are even more expensive, and very often yield anything but null results. Yet, money keeps flowing. So, harder sciences must compete with these fields and many others that are interesting, but do not help us keep our edge.
The cultures (even Americans have a culture) is different. I'm American but at times I can stand back with the rest of the world and look at how stupid some are -- but then I remember every country has its idiots. Back onto topic:
:)
I loved computers. I loved them so much that I spent most of my middle school days helping the Novell Administrator keep the network running smoothly (I was like, 12, and all this was DOS still). I was so taunted, that I would hide in places so I wouldn't be chased down. I had bones broken, quite literally, because I rathered the computers over the idiots. I had a few ribs broke from being tripped for a laugh (landed on the corner of the desk, really fucked me up that day). I was jumped when walking to Gym. I was a VERY small kid.
Now I see those people.. working at Burger King.. most don't remember me, but believe me, I remember them. I do sometimes gloat to myself.. at how even if they go out and get shit faced all the time, I still will be far more sucessful then they will ever be.
And the dream of shooting an RPG into their face still happens sometimes too
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
"It helps when you criminalize the same hard working immigrants today, that your grandparents"
???
It sounded pro immigrants to me. Then again I could be missing somthing.
Since when did science belong to the US as an object to be defended? The sort of mind set that wrote the article and supports its premise is the mind set that resultss in the excessive politicization of science and causes some of its best minds to have to waste their time competing for power in order to compete for money in order to do science which they no longer have time to do because they're busy competing.
And, despite the wide recognition of the failure of the "publish or perish" paradigm, it continues to be the single most important factor in judging someone's scientific worth, while the value and implications of much of that make-work science is ignored.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Yeah, but it's HIS CHOICE to be a tool, if that's the choice he wants to make.
The problem is not only the music (or lyrics) but the entire "merchandise" that surrounds it.
- Musicvideos
- Internet
- TV News
etc.
Are all influencing the way the world is perceived. So even IF the lyrics haven't changed that much the impact they have clearly has changed because the context in which they are absorbed has changed.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
"D's get Degrees" is the refrain I heard at my University. Of course, for any class that was related to your degree, you needed to scrape together at least a C. For most anything else, a D would do. There was definitely an attitude of doing just what was required to get out of there.
Slashdot Required Reading
I fail to see how increased military spending on research is harmful to our scientific base. DoD & DoE spending on military related technology has directly supported a great number of very capable American researchers. And let's face it, researchers with the resources they need to pursue their desires are the beating heart of our tech base.
IMHO, it has been the decline of research in the non-silicon commercial sector that has most rapidly depleted our tech base. I think this could very easily be correlated with our eroding manufacturing base.
Because mommy and daddy decided mommy can stay home and take good care of you and not ship you off to the child warehouse to be neglected.
And before you assume I live a lavish lifestyle, I need to tell you I live in a mobile home, in a virtually rural area, and make less than 50k a year. I make time in my schedule to be with my children. It isn't as much as I would like, but at least my children don't have to ask a childcare worker why both mommy and daddy work so much.
--no, we won't become agrarian. Average age of professional farmers who own their own farms is now in the 60's inside the united states. We have a lot of corporate farming with basically employees, but even that is now being off-shored as fast as possible to other nations with extremely lax pollution controls and labor standards. Rural work is being destroyed on purpose in the US, from food-agriculture to forestry to mining.
I work for a guy who's a major farmer (among some other businesses), even his farming business requires him to basically be an employee of a single large conglomerate. He simply wouldn't be able to produce and market without it, it's almost impossible except at the opposite end of the scale, the small labor intensive organic farmers out there, who fill a decent niche market. The corporation tells him *exactly* what and how and where and when to do his farming, I mean down to the smallest detail. You'd be shocked how complete the control is, and zero deviation is permitted, and even then the profits are evaporating.
But, even those small "organic" guys products wil be poofed within a decade as all the new GM modified crops (including terminator gened crops, by far the worst of the bunch) are introduced around the planet. this is being done on purpose as well, to develop a global food monopoly. Think about those ramifications. Air cross-pollination will kill off (and I mean kill, as in destroy, wipe out, make extinct) all the major commercial food crops except those produced by a couple of international corporations. Combine that with the deliberate global trend to privatise and control all the fresh water sources, you can see where that is going.
If you look at our business and political trends, it's military-expansionist outward looking, and the further creation of the uber controlled police state "justice system" internally. That's our two major growth industries now.
Sometimes, where overtime is endemic to a particular workplace, I'd agree with you, but sometimes it simply doesn't make sense to hire more people. In my line of work things are relatively smooth most of the time, it's just certain periods of high work loads, usually because people come to us at the last minute.
At other times people are idle enough to do continuing education (or simply R&D) while waiting for the next project. It wouldn't make sense to double our staff for those peak times, only to have twice as many people idle at other times.
Moreover, while we do hire freelancers occasionally, a lot of projects require the core people working on them. Just read the Mythical Man Month by Brooks, you can't take a job that someone can do in 80 hours and expect to do it in 40 with two people. Returns diminish with each added person.
To make my case clear, I work in television production. So I work a lot of overtime when the director of a live show decides he wants some new graphics for TONIGHTS show. Hiring another programmer (I do the interfaces) would be pointless. The people I work with are artists (3D and otherwise). Our problem isn't that we don't have enough animators, it's that customers come to us at the last minute and expect work we budgetted 4 weeks for to be done in 2 or 3 (in other words, they missed the deadline for bringing us the material to work with, or reviewing and certifying our work). Now that stuff has to be on-air on a certain date. If we say "no", they go somewhere else from now on. That doesn't help the animators or me.
Now, in other parts of our studio, people love the job because of overtime. There's not really a whole lot you can do when a live sporting event runs long. Our crew call for a POST game show is four hours BEFORE the start of the game. People aren't running around working frantically, they're usually getting free meals, reading books, surfing the web, we even have a half-court outside for people to play basketball, all for the hour or so that they will work at the end of the day, and sometimes they do some preproduction (maybe another hour worth of work). You can't hire more people to avoid that.
So you are showing an exteme position - I hardly "give up my life" because I work overtime. I have two kids that I spend a great deal of time with (according to statistics I've heard, I spend at least 5 times more time with my kids than most dads). In fact, I'd say that it's BECAUSE of my hard work that I get to do things like leave early on Tuesdays and Thursdays to watch my son in his martial arts class. How many dads do that? I'm typically the only father there. So it's quite a load of BS that working hard, and working overtime, necessarily means I'm missing out on anything.
If you want to just "get by", then that's fine, just don't drag me down with you, and don't ask the government (like they did in France) to enforce some maximum work hours on me. You live your life how you want to, let me live my life how I want to.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The statement that 'we know Japanese don't work nearly as hard as Americans' is presumably based on high output per worker, i.e. GDP per worker. This number is known to be huge in the United States, something like 16x that of China adjusted by purchasing power parity.
There are 2 factors going into this kind of gap:
The first is marginal productivity of effective labour, which is related to education and most importantly technology available to the worker. This is not about how hard the person works, but about how much output comes out of him or her (i.e. factors like burnout would decrease rather than increase this figure, even though they represent harder work). The largest advantage the US has over many other countries (though not necessarily Japan) is higher quality of capital stock, i.e. higher technology per worker. This is particularly true when you have many of your service sector workers doing things like IT, which produce a massive contribution to GDP, versus people in factories producing a fairly small contribution to GDP.
The 2nd and more important factor however comes from how GDP is measured. GDP works like a 'value-added' measure; every time something is sold for more than it was bought or produced for, that counts into GDP, as it is considered new value being produced. Now, trade only accounts for something like 10% of US GDP, fairly small right? So why is it that US companies have such extensive investments in 3rd world countries and US foreign policy is so directed to protecting them? Because when you import a pair of shoes at $1/pair and resell them at $100/pair, you've just created $99 of value domestically while only $1 of it goes to trade. The point being, the US economy depends on this, and what you're doing is creating value out of thin air (by actually ripping off people employed in maquiladoras in Mexico, sweatshops in Indonesia, etc) and then dividing it up between US workers as if they had produced it.
Japan also has lots of overseas investments, but not on the same scale.
The point being, don't assume that EITHER marginal productivity of effective labour, or especially (and even less) that GDP/worker actually represents how hard people are working; these are interesting statistics but they are not relevant to this.
The problem here is money. The only reason right now why anyone would go into a scientific career (in academia) is because they love the subject they're in. I'm currently an physics major at a big research university (ivy league). The majority of my friends who are physics majors don't plan on going on to graduate school and working in research. Part of the reason (I think) is the money. Why should I stay in school for an extra 5 years (at least) making barely anything and then have to deal with the low salaries professors get? Even doctors have something to look forward to. I often ask myself why I'm not just studying computer science (which I'm quite good at) so that I can get a job after (maybe) staying an extra year to get a masters and getting a good salary. For me its because I really enjoy physics. But a lot of people would just go with the more practical route.
What do I propose? The only way to get more people interested here is to increase funding. Make science an important part of government funding. Give students incentives to go to graduate school. Pay professors a good salary. Then I think more people would be interested in research.
It seems to me as if our North American society is moving away from a scientific society, to a food and entertainment society.
Hollywood is everywhere these days. Ask any kid "what do you want to be when you grow up?"
Chances are the kid will answer "I want to be famous!"
Plus we have cheap fast food at every other streetcorner...
Bread and Circuses anyone?
I think the stories of geeks getting "beat up" are probably exaggerated. In the U.S. many school districts have created specialty schools which are honors programs. My daughter attends such a school. All of the students there are nerdy, and the kids seem to have a pretty normal social life. Amongst themselves the smarter kids seem to get a lot of respect.
Nevertheless, I'm glad she qualified to go there. Her regular neighborhood school is a mess.
Proverbs 21:19
We're used to thinking of that state of affairs as though it will last forever, as though it were personally handed to us on a silver platter by God Himself. But it doesn't work that way.
Truer words were never written. The real cause of the rot is not the NEA, the public system, the liberals, or the conservatives. The blame lies with all of us.
I know, that sounds like a cop-out, like blaming "society" for the actions of convicted murderer. But, truth be told, we've had it so good for so long that we've come to expect the status quo. And we're not willing to invest in its maintenance, let alone its improvement.
How bad is it? Take taxation as just one example. Now, like it or not, facilities for the common good need funding. But the mantra "taxes bad" has been repeated so often in this country that many of us are not willing to pay even for the most basic services. Witness what happened in Alabama recently: The very conservative Christian Republican state governor proposed a referendum for a tax hike (how likely is that?). He pleaded for voter approval as the "Christian" thing to do. (And things are pretty bad down there. If you're involved in a road accident in a rural area, good luck: a state trooper, EMT, or other first responder might show up.. if at all.. in thirty minutes.) As you might have expected, the referendum was shot down in flames. Hey, "taxes bad", no matter what, right?
And that's just one example. You can trawl CNN or Fox or any other media source for examples of "sound bite" discussions and an utter lack of depth masquerading as intellectual thought.
In short, I think Americans have gotten lazier in one key respect: the ability to think critically. We're still hard working, but we've become so mentally lazy that it's impossible to discuss public policy in any meaningful way, let alone to Do The Right Things (tm), whatever those might be. Forget the emphasis on instant gratification and rampant consumerism; this is key respect in which our culture has failed us!
And we will get exactly what we deserve.
My family came here 150 years ago. Maybe I'll be the first one to emigrate if this continues..
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
We don't die.
We have children - who in turn have children.
We leave the planet to ourselves by way of our children.
Sustainable solution should not be ignored merely because of generational turnover.
AIK
It's not our education system.
It's not a "Defense Department gets all the funding" issue.
It's communication. Thanks to the internet, people can now share ideas much farther than they could, even in the 1980s.
The US isn't LOSING dominance, it's gaining partners! Now, a middle class guy in Brazil can read about amazing things being researched in the US (and elsewhere) and it my inspire him to something great!
I love it. It's awesome. It's the type of thing that keeps world wars from breaking out. Everyone wins!
-ave
...or maybe not.
I choose to be a "tool" because there is a mutual benefit.
People making wages get 1.5 times regular pay for overtime. Yes, it's cheaper for the company than hiring other people because of the other expenses involved, but for a willing participant it's a way to make a lot of extra money in the short term, and more likely to get better pay raises or promotions in the long term.
For me, I see no short term gains because I'm on salary. However, the long term gains are there for me as well. As an aside, our company switched policy this year about bonuses - and those on Salary got significantly more because we don't get compensated for overtime. And by significantly, I'm talking many times more, not just 50 or 100%.
Even still, I still take compensation time and have a very flexible schedule because I don't have to do time sheets.
So I'm a "tool" for the company which, in turn, is a "tool" for me. It's mutually beneficial. If it weren't I wouldn't be here.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Having been working in america as an european for about 5-6 years, it's hell. It's only gotten worse since 9/11 and the generalizations that americans make about europeans in general.
I too am sure glad to be home.
Science is in great hands, a quote from black bush, "...write this down. M. A. R. S. Mars bitches, thats where we are going, mars. red rocks."
lose != loose
Actually, I do care, but I think I can see why there isn't much focus on either of these today. We're surrounded by devices that make use of math and science, but abstracted away to the point where it's completely invisible (read: computers). Computers have become synonymous with "Windows", "browsers", watching movies, playing games, etc. To the Slashdot crowd, all of these things obviously require knowledge of math and science to be able to create these programs, but the one-click interface of most of these programs require practically no knowledge of, well, anything.
.sig for rent.
I think about how my daughter is growing up; she always wants to see the back of the camera because she thinks she'll see the picture I just took of her immediately. Everywhere I look, we've developed a one-click or single button solution to the "problem" because we want it now Now NOW! And when it's all abstracted away, you really have no idea how it works, and because you're so used to it, you don't really care.
So I can see that our zeal for instant gratification, ease-of-use, and a rather arrogant demand that everything be, above all else, as simple as possible will lead more and more to think of math and science as "the hard stuff" that they are simply incapable of dealing with because it requires thought and concentration, with no "reward" being given at the end, and no understanding of how it affects their daily lives. It's like schools that teach latin with the presumption that if you know how languages are put together, you will learn the derivations easier. Most simply complain that latin isn't a good language to impress chicks with, and study something else instead.
This
Management makes short-term decisions, which means they completely ignore the long-term.
You have rightly identified one symptom. However, the markets and business schools are driving that thinking. Analysts only care about today's profit. Immediate results are everything. And they keep reinforcing this notion to American investors.
By extension then, thinking long-term is frowned on. This is picked up in the business schools and pushed out to management types. It also clouds the thinking or freezes the action of the boardroom.
As a scientist, I have followed this trend with interest. I can't say that getting DARPA funding is easier than NSF funding, since I received multiple NSF awards but was unable to convince DARPA of the value of my ideas (perhaps not surprising since I study ichthyology).
Nonetheless, there are several aspects that do account for at least a major part of the trend.
1) cultural emphasis on academic excellence within the family and community is weaker in the US than say in Japan and Singapore.
2) change in science curricula so that for the most part science is not taught in public schools, but rather "science facts/trivia".
3) Public misperception of what science actually is (ie. hypothesis testing and proof by falsification). Consequently, the public doesn't really know what science is and often confuses it with technology. There is actually no money in science per se, only the potential technological and business spin-offs. This has been especially difficult for pure sciences, such as physics, in which advances are decades from potential commercial application.
4) Lack of priority toward funding science in all grades K-postgraduate in a sustained manner. Many science education "projects" tend to be short term, whereas very few actually extend through many years of a young scientists education.
5) Lack of teachers who are trained in science.
6) In some communities there is outright hostility to certain findings of science (ie the fact of greenhouse warming [hardly a controversy any longer among scientists] or evolution [certainly a fact that forms the basis of all biology, yet we see repeated attempts by some to supplant science with pseudo-scientific or religious views]). In others there is a fear of science (ie cloning research) because it is largely misunderstood.
7) Teaching science is not rewarded to the degree, say as compared to salaries of CEO's such as Ken Lay, who pumping up Enron stock before insider selling and bankrupcy at stockholder, bondholder, and taxpayer expense, even though the worst science teacher in the world has proved themselves vastly more valuable to society than Ken Lay type executives ever will be. The consequences of greed factor should not be underestimated. Unfortunately, we are bombarded by commercialism and the perceived value of wealth.
8) Rising levels of mercury and other pollutants and irritants in US communities that effect cognitive and behavioral performance (and the Bush administration wants to raise the allowable level of mercury in the environment).
9) Relative effect of rising standards abroad are changing percentages. It is more difficult for industrialized nations to improve there standing when other less developed nations are growing faster on a percentage (not necessarily absolute) basis. In some countries even small increases can result in a large percentage change (number of scientists produced/papers published etc).
10) TV watching is much higher in US households than abroad. TV is known to produce attention deficit disorders and other cognitive difficulties, especially in young children whose brain circuitry has not fully developed. Even in adults and older children TV watching encourages passive rather than active thinking. Understanding science and doing mathematical proofs requires prefontal lobe activity.
11) Failure to exercise also contributes, since the brain does not exist separate from the body. A healthy body (particularly at the metabolic level), given adequate nutrition is essential to proper brain function. Kids today are exposed to far more sugar laden foods that lead to obesity and cardio-vascular problems early in life and that effect brain development and function.
12) There has been a rise in infant mortality in the US (with a relatively sharp rise in the past 3 years), reflecting a host of illnesses and including malnutrition that afflict children and their cognitive development. Such illness early in life, can often lead to stunted b
Do you think the goal of medicine is to produce a more efficient, 'genetically good' human race? Actually I thought the whole point of medicine, and in fact most other economic activities (agriculture, etc) was to promote the well-being of humans as they exist, and their offspring, as they exist, not to engage in some kind of bizarre project in eugenics. Don't confuse means with ends; efficiency, economic activity, and even 'good' genes are all means to an end: the well-being of humanity. Letting people starve, even lazy people, is not an effective way to promote their well-being.
If you want an efficient system, try fascism. Yes, it's more 'efficient' than anything at increasing production numbers, getting rid of those pesky weak and sick people, etc. But there's a reason why the vast majority of people on the planet do not want it: because we're willing to put up with a few lazy people free riding on benefits and a little bit of slacking to have a generally better quality of, and respect for human life.
Ship tech jobs abroad and those majoring is CS and other tech areas will drop they're tech major for something with more promise. Didn't Gates find this out at MIT recently? There is more to the bottom line - or is there? I guess US leaders (including business) feel they can simply buy what they need abroad. However, what happens when there is no middle class to pay taxes so the government can buy the tech skills? OK maybe I'm going on a limb, but carry the pattern of outsourcing a few years and I might not be far from the truth - not to mention the large security hole this exposes to the US to.
i think this is highly interesting. whenever i talk to americans about it, i get the feeling that american high school is hell - a place where the small get bullied, the ugly girls are outcasts, and generally there is mobbing, backstabbing, and most importantly everybody gets judged by an arbitrary and cruel standard. the dark side of the american dream.
while i am pretty sure that is not all true, in the place where i grew up (Austria, Europe) none of that was an issue. at all. sure, there were people who didn't do well in sports, and people who were uncool (like myself in my later teens for not smoking or drinking or getting any girls) but in general, those people had their place and were never terrorized. we were all part of the group. we had jocks and nerds, but they would hang out together.
i am sure part of the reason is that the class system is very different: you get a group of 25+ kids, call that a class, and they stay together for 5 years or so, teachers come by to teach classes, and there is very limited choice in subjects. e.g. you spend all your time with the same people. and there are lots of social activities with those people.
i don't think that explains it though. UK has the same system as america...
I got my degreein Comp-Sci in 1984, but stayed on to get a teaching certifcation( didn't want to go into the industrial-miltiary complex of the time - and ironically enough the teaching post that i first got was to replace someone that went to Aberdeen, MD ). Taught Calculus, precalculs and programming.
Anyhow as part of the teaching certifcation process we had to take courses re history and sociology of education. The big thing that changed from the 60's to the 80's have a lot to do with what we see now: ( no order of signifcance)
1. parents railing ( and sueing) against students being held back a grade
2. Working jobs during school year that rob study time. 3. ( the one i found most telling and experienced while in school as well while i was teaching) that being smart is a talent, so studying is a waste and doesn't really help - ie the idea that since one cant be the best one doesnt have to waste time studying). This perversion of academic success is in my mind the biggest issue.
Of course, these are all generalizations but they exist. And there are other factors as well, all contributinig to this phenomena. this issue often does get hidden, because we do have a large pool of students, and a large pool of talented people that obscure the overall decline in teh educational system.
In my high school, people were mean to their own peer group. Outcasts were mean to outcasts. Partiers were mean to partiers. And never the twain shall meet.
Jonathan Pearce jonathan@pearce.name
3EAAFB2A http://www.jonathan.pearce.name/
It's hard to separate the various factors, but work weeks a bit over 40 hours is not what is damaging families. A century ago factory work hours were considerably longer than they are today. School children spend 30 hours a week in school which overlap work hours. Look elsewhere for family problems.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
People get what they want, what they really want, not what they say they want. A large number of US citizens want a hard core creationist school system and don't really care about the rest. Men should support their families, and women should be pregnant and meek. We should as a whole sing the praises of the Lord and the rest is details.
The rest of the points being made in this thread are valid but off the mark. Talk to the people who live around you and look at what you do yourself. Where have you put your money? Your time and effort. What have you been willing to sacrifice? This is how we know what you want.
Exactly how is questioning the scientific elite at any time in history "detrimental"? Many of the greatest discoveries came from just such opposition and debate.
SciAm has been a political organization for many years now (is it fair to say their inception?). They're working in their own best interests on many issues, which largely "tilt left" in bent. Hence, the attack on the current administration. It has much to do with competing ideologies that threaten long-standing, but still far-from-proven, theories in the biological and environmental sciences, along with ethical issues which history tells us are often tragically considered ex post facto.
The best way to raise the hackles of any scientist is to challenge their intellectual endeavors on any level. Refute their theories, threaten their funding, refocus research (money) into other fields - any of these tactics will kindle their ire. SciAm is but one mouthpiece. UCS is but one other.
And let's not forget the most important fact of all: This is a presidential election year in the United States. That, my friends, says it all.
If I worked in a coal mine I probably would not be willing to work overtime, but then if I worked in a coal mine I'd probably be part of some union that disallowed working overtime anyway. You are helping make my point, in a way, it's because of the nature our our jobs that we CAN work overtime without physical detriment.
As far as spending time with my family: first, a lot of people just out of college don't have families, this is the time of their life where they can work extra hours proving themselves in a competitive field.
Second, I work overtime when I have to, it's not endemic to my work place, it just happens sometimes, and it's precisely because I'm salaried that I have the ability to spend more time, overall, with my family - compensation time and flexible hours. I've stated it another response, from what I've heard, I spend at least five times more time with my children than most fathers.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Which is the whole point of having a free market - individuals can make voluntary transactions to their mutual benefit. If it's not to their mutual benefit they can opt out. Unfortunately some people (like the guy complaining about people being "tools") seem to think that they have a right to force companies to enter into non-mutually beneficial transactions (e.g. forcing the companies to accept 35 hour work weeks), or to prevent other people from voluntarily entering transactions that they complainer doesn't feel are "right".
I bet every kid on the street would laugh, knowing what I am refering to. The point is that today's know the movie, but have no clue what the message, or meaning of the song. There is always somebody else to blame for our faults.
We need to do less blaming after the fact, more mentoring before the fact.
"Just remember, it takes a village idiot." -- The Motley Fool.
I think you make some good points but I would be careful to not co-opt everything that comes out of your tv set. I think that the "world owes me" attitude was propaganda made up by the media precisely to combat the fact that younger memebers of the last 3 generations have cared quite a bit for those around them (starting with Vietnam protests). If you are someone in power and you are faced with a lot of young people who are mobilized against you, then you have to do something. So, starting in the 80's, the media started droning on about "the me generation", and it was largely successful, as quite a few people started to adopt this slogan and look out for number one. Next came Generation X, the "slackers" who worked 60 hour weeks during the 90's. But, I think this is a case of media manipulation, not an accurate assessment of the desire of today's youth, or any generation's youth for that matter. The process of complete demoralization usually isn't finished until one reaches mid-life, and so I think that the terms "slacker" and "me generation" better apply to older Americans than it does to our young. (note that demoralization has two definitions, the first refers to having one's spirit crushed, the second refers to a loss of morals, or in other words, becoming corrupt. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say, "I just don't care." when I describe something like what's going in present day Iraq. In that case, the 2nd definition applies.).
Also, one other point, is that in America we put very little funding into education. Most students are required to put an increasing amount into education. And, well, our high school system is an entire waste of time. So, I don't blame them for not wanting to "give back". I wish we had a society that cared more for it's young, rather than creating a bunch of anti-social automotons, but hey, that's America, richest country in the world.
As far as layoffs go, let's not kid ourselves, no one, and I mean, absolutely no one, not even people such as yourself, can compete with someone who is able to live on 10% of your yearly salary. It is absolutely impossible, and no one, not even the proponents of free trade, would expect an American to work for $6,000 a year, which would hardly be enough to provide a roof over one's head in a studio apartment in a small town, much less a large urban area. Even the proponents of free trade wouldn't say something as stupid as, "Gee, you just need to work twice as many hours per week, and then you might be able to afford food and clothing." The argument they have made is that other jobs will come down the pike, which hasn't happened.
I can't blame my fellow IT workers, many of whom dropped half a mortgage on their college education only to have their career evaporate, for not embracing another degree. Who in their right mind would take that kind of a risk on a degree, given the fact that the job market is so turbulent? I think the biggest problem is the fact that the rich in our country, who benefit from these highly educated workers, are unwilling to spend any of their tax dollars on educating them. Then, when things go wrong and they need talented, educated workers, they whine about the educational system. Well, there's a solution, spend your billions on education. There is no excuse not to do what other, poorer countries have managed to do much better.
I would agree with little brother on one point.
His teachers do need to be paid more. Teachers make such crappy salaries, it's no wonder good ones are hard to come by. I would love to teach, but since I would have to work harder and get paid about one quarter of what I make with a real job, it just isn't practical.
I went to boarding school in Malvern, in the UK. You are correct about the playground culture over there. I did not get beaten up for being a geek, but I did get beaten up for being the only American!
"The key is to work harder than everyone else and you will succeed."
The key is to work smarter than everyone else, not harder. That is the whole point of science and engineering, to discover ways of doing things that take less time and use fewer natural resources to produce comparable results, to move faster and to live longer so that we have more time to understand the world around us.
I was digging in the dirt over the weekend and it is the "hardest" I've worked all year, but not nearly the smartest (I won't get into the details). But people that say you need to work harder to get ahead are usually either not very intelligent or are trying to convince others to do work that they themselves would not do.
Working harder will just give you callouses, working smarter will get you wealth and happiness.
and gene therapy are the future at least in biological sciences. As long as that chimp is in office, reseach will lack behind and will move overseas. The world is not going to sit around and wait for GW or any one else...
In the 50's it was the rockefellars and whatnot. All the smart guys were famous.
For me growing up, I read all the time.. got beat up for knowing how to read. (jealousy).. That just fed me to continue.
Now, what role models do the young men have? Nothing of any worth. The women (who are by far surpassing men in every American field now) have many many role models and a lot to look up to. I personally cannot think of a public role model who is successful and smart and not villified by the media (think Bill Gates).
All these young kids have nothing just ignorant rappers and other leeches on society that should never be role models because they are be "subversive" for money. Today, the guy in a high school who listens to classical or something non-violent would be considered "alter".
Anyway, they are all doing the same things, everywhere you look and it is sad. I suppose the world will always need trash guys and janitors, but having an entire generation of them is just plain sad.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
This is the price to pay for wanting to be a lawyer rather than an engineer.
This is the price of GREED.
The typical geek (and i may get flamed for this but oh well) is somewhat scared/timid, and will retreat to that which they know best and get better at it, and shrink from the rest of the world.
You've hit the nail on the head. I was exactly this way growing up. I avoided a lot of social situations and spent my time around a small group of (equally socially inept) friends.
I think it's important for men to have a certain quality to their personality that's hard to describe. It's a form of aggression, recklessness, or self-confidence. You have to have the bravery to step up to the plate no matter what you're facing. Because trying matters most, even if you're defeated. You must be willing to put your safety on the line when it matters. That's character. You must also project the image of self-confidence. You must be sure of who you are and how you will allow yourself (and not allow yourself) to be treated by others.
I wish I had known this when I was growing up. I was smaller than everyone and constantly bullied, because they knew I would back down every time. I wish I could go back and tell that kid that he doesn't have to be bullied. Had I leveled the playing field with a 2x4, maybe I would have won, maybe not. And maybe I would have gotten busted for using a "weapon". But it would have ended the bullying then and there.
I'm teaching my sons the right way to be and act, so that it never goes that far for them. I'm teaching them to be strong, but compationate, agressive when necessary, but calm and even-handed in all things. In short, I'm not raising a pussy like my parents did.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Education in the USA is very "bad" (whatever that means) and has been for a long time. Yet the US leads worldwide spending on academic research by a far margin. The way the scientific system is set up means that there are great opportunities for scientists in the U.S.
So i think the lack of great basic education is being more than made up for by
1) scientists who get through the higher education system despite the difficulties - top people who can actually make a career in science as opposed to other countries where science is just not funded well enough (Europe...). Case in point: A professor salary in europe would qualify you for housing benefits in San Francisco. So scientist in europe either do it out of love for science, or they come to the U.S.... which leads to
2) immigrants. If you are from, say, Europe, you will make at least twice as much money and get better equipment and more interesting projects in America. I am sure this is even more dramatic a difference if you come from China or SE Asia. You also get more recognition, more publications etc.
I think the biggest threat for science in the U.S. is currently the immigration law. I speak from personal experience here.
It's a big hassle to deal with even if you are here perfectly legally, even if american businesses depend on you etc... I know many people with PhDs who are considering to leave because there is no room for them in the immigration law or there are really stupid restrictions (like: you can come but your wife stays home - which is what i am currently fighting with).
Well, I ment that Management makes decisions based on the short-term benefits without regard for long-term benefits/drawbacks. This is because that's what they're trained to do. And analysts only care about today's profit because... Analysts are, often, trained to be managers at some point.
The ever expanding duration of copywrite laws slows the distribution of information. The same with the expansion of patents to cover software containing trade Secrets. According to the constitution the congress shall have the power "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The longer these rights are extended the longer it takes the discoveries to become public domain. Thus countries that do not abide by our copyright and pattent laws gain an unfair advantage.
Arg! And this doesn't sound too terribly like a troll.
Ok. Listen unto me and repeateth:
Evolution is change in a species due to a change in the environment. There is nothing magical, nothing heretical, and nothing planned about it. We will not evolve into SuperGods just by waiting around a few million years. If our environment doesn't change, then we will be exactly the same come Judgment Day.
You do not and cannot know the ramifications of eliminating genes from the pool. A quirk today will be a lifesaver in the future. The gene that we think of as "weak" and "polluting" will be the genes that resist infection or the onset of a new disease in the future.
Perhaps simpler terms are called for. Take legos. Legos are genes, the building blocks that have collected together and streamlined over time to form us. Sure there are pieces that don't seem to fit, or that we can't possibly imagine a use for, but you'd sure be sorry if it's been tossed when you do think of a use for it.
By preserving our diversity, and encouraging it, we guarantee that we as a species will survive anything that our planet throws at us and gives us a fighting chance against anything from Out There that could be a little deadly to us critters.
I couldn't have said it better. My fiance and I are committed to go the private school route, and if we can't afford it we won't have children. That is how outraged we are about the public school system.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
I agree. However in doing so I think the rub is that our economy has absorbed the lessons of the assembly line too well. The market for people who can think and act correctly without a cattle-prod against their neck to keep them "customer focused" has shrunk to virtually nil because managers are more comfortable with a drone than a man any day. Now that every position can be filled with a certified, graded and bonded drone, even CEO's are mindless. Only the true masters* retain their own mastery; all others owe fealty to whoever cuts the pay-check and that's where free will dies.
Brain drain is just a symptom. As we enter the fourth age, our society is temporarily forgetting its "self" in favor of the perceived "necessities".
My point is that a labor market that crystalized around replacability has lost/is losing it's ability to keep itself fresh new and young with regard to ideas and minds. Ie, you can hire all the cool geeky Stanford MBA's in the world, but you can't force them to be as creative as Woz. Only God can create a Woz. And you can't emulate Woz no matter how many degrees you have unless you *already*have* that kind of beingness.
*People like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates and Dick Cheney.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Anti-intellectualism has geography as one of its factors. It could well be that your area is particularly harsh on expressions of mind. Believe me; I grew up in Toledo, Ohio -- a Third World country disguised as an American city ... so I know exactly what I'm talking about here.
... perhaps it was my stubbornness.
I'm sure we lose a lot of children to regional backwardness. I'm not sure why I survived the atmosphere of intense persecution of the "nerd"
All we can really do about such injustice is to live well as the best revenge, and from that, provide a port in the storm to those who seek shelter. Raise a flag and advertise your opposition, and perhaps you can start turning the tide. All a movement really needs is people who raise their fists.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
I don't normally respond at all to ACs, but since it wasn't what I'd consider flamebait, and real points, I thought I'd respond.
First, by working more you don't get ahead. It's an illusion. I saw too many people who got fired after a few years working 60 hours a week to believe that giving your time to a company is getting ahead.
It all depends on where you work. I don't agree with working 60 hours a week, every week, I'm merely talking about stepping up to get the job done and get it done right when you have to. If it's ALWAYS, then there is something else wrong with the methodology. I'd never work 60 hours a week indefintely.
Third, the objective of the 35 hours law was to create job. It was to force company to hire more people instead on relying on overtime.
And where we have France to look at as a study, it failed.
Also, you have to understand that countries like France have good social protections. I don't know what is the situation now, but, when I was there, if you got fired, your unemployment insurance would give you something like 90% of your salary for one year and then something like 60% for another one. This means that employees can refuse a job if they don't like it. And this means the government has to make sure people like their job.
I don't think people should get 90% of their former pay when they refuse to work at another job. That's just ridiculous... so you think it's OK for everyone else to pay you for not working because you wouldn't be happy with the job? Where I come from, you do what you have to so you can do what you want to... if that means taking a crappy job while looking for a better one, then that's the way it is. Maybe it's my work ethic, my upbringing; I don't like to be a burden on everyone else if I don't have to be.
I understand that you want my job. And you're willing to compensate the fact that you're not as good as me by working more... Sorry, but I won't let some inferior worker ruin society because of his personal problem. Too f'ing bad!
Well, leave it to an AC to post that, but I'll respong anyway; I don't want your job, I happen to love mine. And when I work overtime it has never been my "fault", it's been the fault of clients who needed last minute changes. By showing that I'm willing to spend the extra time to make clients happy, I'm rewarded with both personal satisfaction and financial and other compensation from my company.
If you work at a company that doesn't appreciate it when you go the extra mile, then too f'ing bad.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
See, now I'll have to work overtime since I answered this slashdot post :p
:) Not the "acts of pointy-haired-boss" one :)
:), but I will not cover for the incompetance of others. It is people who do so who drag the rest of us down by shifting the blame away from those who are responsible to those "lazy workers who won't do overtime" :) (I'm not saying you said that)
:) But, if all I do in a day is get up, eat, work, get back home, eat, go to sleep, I do feel that I am giving my life away. And unless it is justified logically and compensated, I won't be part of it.
First of all I do agree with most of what you previously said. But you do highlight part of the problem with improper management (sort of). In the exemple where clients come to you and want things done *now*, you say that you have to do it now (thus work overtime) or else face the possibility of loosing a customer. Because if you don't do it, someone else will. Because your client screwed up their time table, *you* have to pay the price now. Again, it is the people at the bottom of the food chain who pay the price for the incompetence of management/clients. That is what I feel is wrong.
I do agree that you can't hire someone with 5 minutes notice. And it is also true that hire another person won't help you go twice as fast. But, in my perfect happy imaginary world, if *everyone* told the client who missed the deadline that they *missed the deadline*, then things would start to change. The person that screwed up would hopefully get fired or be told to change. How are people ever going to be held accountable if there is always someone willing to take the bullet for other people's mistakes?
As for the live sporting event example, I feel that it is completely justified to be expected to do overtime. You don't just quit because the game lasts 10 minutes more. But that was expected when you signed on. It goes in the "acts-of-god" category
Btw, I'm not trying to just "get by" like you said. Understand this, I will work my hardest during the time that I'm at work (except now, I'll work it off later
I'm also not saying that overtime is evil, far from it
ummmm....have you gone to school for management? maybe the short-term only thinking is only taught at the undergrad level (and roughly 70% of the time at the masters level), but they also try to bash it into our heads that R&D investement is GOOD and long-term thinking is GOOD. Hell, maybe it's my cheap-ass diverse school ( http://www.metrostate.edu ).
I agree that management are trained to produce the greatest increase in share price for the company (this is how they personally are judged).
Analysts on the other hand, place a tremendous amount of value on R&D spending. That IS a long term effect.
The day a company announces increases in R&D spending, their share price will go up. This is because the money they are spending on R&D increases the probability they will develop something that could make a lot of money.
That's exactly why America is going down the fucking tubes. People use the intellectually lazy excuse that all candidates are the same. You may laugh at "the proles" but your elitist attude is EXACTLY why the NASCAR and God crowd has taken over the American political system.
Do you seriously think that Kerry and Bush are undifferentiated? Do you think that Kerry would have decided that the best way to take down terrorists was to attack Iraq? Do you think social programs that marry religion with social work would be emphasized so much in a Kerry administration? Do you think tax cuts at all costs would be Kerry's method of pumping economic growth?
Intellectual arrogance may make you feel better about yourself, but it won't do a fucking thing to change the state of American politics.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
For example, doing science in American university is hard.
Not because science is hard, but because the university expects you to spend all your work time on teaching students (which, with the low level of course materials nowadays, has usually little to do with ones research), sitting in commissions, etc.
The research is done mostly in spare time and by graduate students. Also, in some fields, postdocs can do research for 1-2 years, before they have to dedicate all their time to looking for a new job.
In contrast, in Canada for example, the salaries are smaller than in US and they have higher taxes, however, there are more grants and the required teaching is much less. Which attracts people who are more interested in science than making money.
From a point of view of recent PhDs, working in US means spending a lot of time on things not relevant to ones research with the prospect of getting tenure being very uncertain, while accepting a position in Canada implies having time to do research, grant for travel and social benifits (like good schools for children).
I find I dont really care about compensation(monetary) for working OT, but I do like to have someone above me notice that I stayed late, put the extra effort, etc. That is much more rewarding for me than cash, but cash would be nice too, of course. :)
No I didnt spell check this post...
I have to respond to this... sorry.
Far be it from me to defend parasitic lawyers (the majority are not... let's be fair), but some would argue that lawyers create justice, which is crucial for any civilized society. Now ambulance-chasing, trolling-for-dollars-with-TV-commercials lawyers? Oh yes... personally, I could easily do without those types.
As for doctoring (the profession I know best, seeing as how I am one), it's not about improving the gene pool. Good lord, man... I'm not a nazi (There it is... kudos to Mike Godwin), trying to build some kind of master race by culling out the weak. I'm in a profession where I help people; weak, strong, black, white, rich, poor. Einstein didn't talk much in childhood, and schoolmasters considered Thomas Edison "addled"... where would we be if we'd culled out those folks?
Also, I'm really racking my brain here, but I don't recall creating a single war or famine.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
IMHO, FAR too many high-schools spend WAY too much money and time on athletics. What's needed is a way of taking the "nerd" stigma out of science & technology. Competitions like FIRST are a step in the right direction. And then there is the Teacher's Union which IMHO is a real problem. You can't axe an ineffective teacher who's got tenure. Oh, and BTW, this problem goes to the university level too. We had a Freshman year General Chemistry exam. When out of 200 points, the mean is a 60, there's something SERIOUSLY wrong with the teachers. Then, there's the problem of too much emphasis on theory and not enough on practical applications which, after all, is what you need to A) get a job or B) start a tech business. Oh, and then there's a latency problem. The engineering university that I attended in the late 80s had an emphasis on defense related topics (who else uses Ada?) but the problem is that defense was in big trouble those days so you had a rough time finding a job. Seems like what's taugh these days would have been marketable skills five years ago but now is passé.
We ensure the ability of the weakest genes to survive and procreate - increasing the number of weak genes and polluters - creating more desease, war, famine, and additional work for doctors)
Doctors cause war? Eh?
Except for that, you're sort of correct but completely oblivious to the point:
Medicine doesn't make so-called bad genes a bigger problem. Medicine makes these genes irrelevant.
Also, keep in mind that many if not most of the benefits of modern medicine are realized well after childbearing age, and therefore can not have evolutionary effects.
This is challenging - but doctoring does not affect the quality of life as much as (for example) good plumbing. Respectfully disagree.
You can't tell me that "good plumbing" has improved our quality of life more than eradicating smallpox or inventing bubble-gum flavored amoxicillin or supplemental oxygen for people with emphysema.
"What do you folks think?"
I think that the U.S. is experiencing a wholesale social breakdown, not just isolated problems. I could give many, many examples of people who are having a very difficult time in life, but, if they are people you don't know, the examples might not interest you. So, I will use Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney and their families as examples. The voters in the U.S. picked them as the best people to lead the country. If they are the best, consider the problems of the average person. The social breakdown is the reason for the self-destruction of U.S. companies and for the unprecedented government corruption in the United States.
Both U.S. President George W. Bush and U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney are alcoholics. Dick Cheney has two DUIs and George W. Bush one:
George W. Bush DUI, 1st record of arrest
George W. Bush DUI, 2nd record of arrest
Dick Cheney DUI, 1st DUI arrest record
Dick Cheney DUI, 2nd DUI arrest record
DUI means "Driving Under the Influence" of alcohol. A DUI is a conviction for a very, very serious crime, a crime that endangers everyone on the road, a crime that often kills people. A DUI conviction means that the driver was so needing to pursue alcoholic behavior that he or she was willing to take a chance of murder.
According to Laura Bush and George W. Bush himself, she threatened to leave him because of his drinking.
Most people have little experience with alcoholics. If you know one, ask him or her about the information presented here. Alcoholics say that it usually requires "4 to 6 years" of driving drunk before they get a DUI. (If you want to investigate alcoholism, it's easy to find alcoholics and recovered alcoholics in the United States. Anyone can go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. In the small city of Portland, Oregon, USA, there are 27 AA meetings each week, three each day.)
You may have heard the saying "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic." This does NOT mean, "Once an alcoholic, always a problem drinker." It means that those who have become alcoholics typically have many, many characteristics of an alcoholic personality, and that those characteristics don't go away when the person stops drinking.
For example, alcoholics are often very socially engaging and likable.
Former U.S. president Bill Clinton was not an alcoholic, but his parents were violent alcoholics. You can read the book. Bill Clinton's misuse of sexuality is typical of the children of alcoholism-influenced families.
Here are some typical characteristics of an alcoholic personality. You can decide for yourself if they apply to George W. Bush. I have, however, supplied a few links to articles that support this view, and the books listed at the bottom support it also. Note that I've just pulled this information together by quick Googling as a very part-time effort. There is a huge amount of information available, too much to mention here:
Maybe, IF you had the option to make yourself rich instead, but chose to make someone else rich then OK, that would make you a tool. But if you didn't have that option, or did but did not realize it, then you're ignorant or unlucky but not a tool. Maybe the point was that the machines are oiled with the blood of the workers?
>>Yeah, but it's HIS CHOICE to be a tool, if that's the choice he wants to make.
Exactly. Let's say I collect taxes for the IRS. I'm doing something for profit not fun, I'm definitely putting more cash into the hands of my superiors by magnitudes than they put into mine, yet I go to work anyway. Let's say this makes me a tool. Assuming thus, can I still be a good person and engage in the civic discourse without reservation? Excepting that I don't have an axe to grind with my employer, I posit that yes, a Tool can still be an active citizen. Of course we all know that a Tool can also be a raging @--#013 too.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Let's not forget how hard it is to find a job in the sciences. I started out life as a controls engineer (p.e. license, etc.) I then went into computing since all the companies I worked for failed. With computing failing I work for a mortgage company. I have an MSCS and I teach college as an adjunct at night. We just hired a chemical engineer to be a business analyst. He is only a couple years out of college and could not find work. So tell me, why would anybody want to pursue the sciences in the U.S. Oh yeah, I did the defense thing for awhile but I did not like having to falsify documents. They told me I would be fired for accurate reporting so I quit.
I started HS in '79 and I'd agree with the fact that most of the popular crowd were also the brains though they definitely weren't "geeky". But the violence was there in spades and I think had started evolving from the violence my father spoke of in his high school.
We had one girl kill another with a butter knife in the school cafeteria for wearing jeans identical to the brand new pair she had on around 1980. I heard that the last knifing actually at the school (knifings happened all the time in the rural South outside of school,,, heck, we played "war" with real BB guns so a knife fight was a small step from enjoyable play) was between two boys in '76. Violence was considered on the decline actually, even with the death, which everyone viewed as an anomaly.
But, I see the death not as an anomaly, but as a result of declining violence. It seems that the vents have been removed in the current system and the result is that, when anger does boil over, its anger that has been suppressed for a long long time.
It's not just SciAm that has observed this creeping Lysenkoism either -- see also the International Herald Tribune, and that bastion of left-leaning reporting, the Washington Post (with the sub-head, "Changes Renew Criticism That the President Puts Politics Ahead of Science").
And by the way, do you consider any and all criticism of the President in an election year invalid by virtue of perceived politicking? Sometimes things are just wrong at any time.
"A lot of people don't want to get ahead. They want to get by..."
Get ahead of what, or whom, precisely?
I thinks there's plenty of room under the tent for the Trumps and Gates, as well as folk to whom a job is a means to get a nice little place and tend the garden on the weekend.
What were you expecting?
I completely agree. In fact I think if more people would just get over the "both parents have to work" idea, our whole country would be much better off and our childrens education would improve from having someone who really cares for them around to help them and encourage them.
and that bastion of left-leaning reporting, the Washington Post
ROTFL
All your base are belong to us!
I agree with you. Kids I know that were home schooled have a sickeningly high tendency to renounce evolution, and have been brainwashed as fundamentalist bible thumpers. It's very Children of the Corn-esque.
Or, to put it more simply: The world prefers extraverts. If you aren't one, learn to fake it. Oh, and don't be afraid of the ball.
I'd also like to add that sports are like schoolwork; they have to be worked on like everyone else. A little practice at home doing the basics like catching/hitting a baseball or doing a pull-up can prevent a hell of a lot of embarrassment later on when you have to do that stuff in front of your classmates. You don't have to be the best, but at least know the basics and you won't be picked last.
Indeed. I'm from Sri Lanka, where being a nerd doesn't get you disrespect, quite the opposite in fact. If you physically inept and anti-social you'll get a drubbing, but there is little corollation in Sri Lanka between nerds and those who get bullied.
Hmmm... maybe I need to be more specific. Let's say I work in the television production studio for a particular network (go ahead and say it, because I do).
Then let's say a "client" asks us to do something at the last minute for something that has to be on-air tonight. That client is from another division of the company (sports, for example, or network promotions... you know, the people who put the annoying little "bugs" in the corner of the screen while you're trying to watch a show). It's true that the person who waited too long to come to us would get in trouble if we didn't do it, but it's also true that that department might then start looking to outside vendors because now they can justify going "out of house" to have work done because we refused their last minute request.
I didn't say it was reasonable, it's just the way it is. Besides, like working overtime for other reasons, it can make you a more valuable asset to the company. In fact, it's those other screw-ups that make my department one of the stars of the company. I've very well compensated (my wife would argue otherwise, but then she's not particularly reasonable either), as are all the artists in my department, all way above industry averages (I'm in the upper 20%).
We don't just get paid extra, we're very highly regarded in both our company and our industry. And when outside people see the work we do, we tend to get more outside work, which is generally more interesting than inside work. It's a cycle that, even applied to other professions, can give back rewards to everyone involved.
I do agree that it sucks when someone who screwed up looks like a hero because other people pulled up the slack, but it's sort of a catch 22.
Now, in my personal position (I'm unique here), the artists in my department are my clients, so I often get sucked into that deal when they have to work overtime. But I actually like my job, and it very rarely bothers me.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
My last year of teaching (2000), the Senior class motto was: "Shoot for the moon and even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars." If that doesn't sum up the struggle for mediocraty that is our public education system, I don't know a better statement that would. After all, aren't kids today are entitled to a corner office and company car the day after graduation.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Anyone?
Anyone??
I think what this country needs is a few more "leaders" who understand the idea of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"...
I have a child that is a year or so away from entering Kindergarten, and another one on the way. I am leaving to go back to a better state (in the U.S.) where the public education sector has better funding. But, as i look for homes to buy and check the education rankings, I am disheartened. How many of you parents out there send your kids to public schools? How many send their kids to Montessori schools? Private? How many of you send your kids to a private school WITHOUT a religious designation?
I have an anecdote to add... when working overtime was bothering me, it was because I'd come in at 6:30am and leave around 3:30pm. My salaried position gave me that flexibility. But I had a supervisor who continuously asked me to work late, and it was almost always on Fridays.
So I went to upper management and requested a condensed workweek - M-TH from 8:00 to 6:30, and because of company policies about flexible hours and their agreement to the city about commuting (very congested city, very large employer), they agreed.
That was the end of my overtime problem. Like I've said in other replies, if it's endemic to the company, or in this case the supervisor, it's a problem. Otherwise I typically don't have a problem.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
America is not a very nice country these days. I grew up here, and I can't fathom the idea of staying and living here as long as a third of my salary is going to a government that seems bent on world domination and coercion of militarily weaker states. I am ashamed of where my tax dollars go, thus I feel morally compelled to leave. I am NOT the only one. Imagine how non-natives must feel!
Even though you're an AC, I agree with you. Or go to the Apple discussions and look at how many trolls there are. Or the BSD sections. We live in a society where people would rather spend their time trolling a meaningless discussion or starting a flame war than doing something even half-educational. And when I say half, I mean something as lame as watching something on the tube that educates you. Not real education like a textbook, or conducting experiments. What happened to kids buying science kits and burning chemicals to look at colors and studying why? Do people buy science kits anymore?
I actually have a lot more to say but deleted it because there's no sense in ranting. I'll sum it up: Next time you're bored, don't ask someone or something to entertain you. Go entertain yourself, maybe learn to like to learn. Yeah, that's right, learn to enjoy learning--that skill will serve you well the rest of your life.
I'm done now, thanks for listening. Carry on.
homeschooling is NOT the answer. homeschooled children either come out academically great (and/or religiously brainwashed to hell, but i'll say no more about that aspect of it for the moment)
But you're assuming the primary reason people homeschool their kids is religious in nature. I've never heard this. Usually it's to avoid a by-the-numbers education.
I did my highschool and undergrad in India. Back there, the people who were respected were not the jocks or the cool guys, but the smart ones and the toppers.
People looked upto the guy who went to science fairs and won prizes, and the guy who could solve differential equations by graphs.
Coolness was not a factor - how geniune a person you were and how smart a person you were was what mattered. Social life was not a function of how well you pretended or how well you could throw a ball - it was a function of who you were as a person.
Geek and nerd were used as complimentary terms - the smart ones were called "genes" or "genies", a friendly term respecting their intelligence and skills.
I come here and notice that being smart or good is being made fun of - this, despite the fact that I'm in one of the US's top engineering schools. The ones with the social life are the ones who show off or the ones who throw ball. Even here, being really smart or nerdy is looked down. People do not respect the need for some of us to be introverted and reclusive, and people are branded as obnoxious or stereotyped as nerds or geeks, most often in a derogatory manner.
Am I bitter? Absolutely.
I come from an environment where both my parents went to grad school, half the people in my family are PhDs and my uncle is a quantum physicist at CERN. When I was in middle and high school, I wanted to be a physicist or a mathematician. Social life was not an issue, it was always a given.
I thought that the US would be a haven for scientists and engineers, but I come here and see that except for some people in the academia, people do not really respect science. People like to use the work that scientists do, but do not like them - the populace is either scared or jealous of really smart people.
The haven that is equal for all that America once was is gone - today, all that I see is people who are scared of most foreigners, and people who discrimate against the very smart ones in your own country.
People like Jack Valenti are willing to sacrifice the rights of the smartest of America for the profits of a few. People want to justify that not going to school and getting experience is somehow better than people who work their asses through grad school. Money is your new God and Television is all that America seeks.
The guy who used to sit next to me in class and had won International Math and Physics Olympiad championships got a fellowship at CMU, but dropped out because his research needed defence approval. He is now in Tel Aviv working on the same stuff, with no hassles whatsoever.
As I write this, I see an ad on TV advertising for ITT Technical Institute saying how they will change your life, and saying how a career in IT will get you the hot babes and the cool cars. Is that why you want to do science? I wanted to do science because I loved science. I wanted to do science because since childhood, I enjoyed doing it. I did not do it because I wanted the cool cars or the hot babes (although, I did know that I will have a better salary than most and that did help a little).
If you want to set your system straight, look at the problems. Make sure the next generation knows that science and engineering saves lives and improves our quality of living. Throwing a ball does not matter, its not going to pay your bills when you are 40 and has no more entertainment value than a clown. Actors and entertainment artists are given importance. I do not see people going to Orchestras, I see people flocking to Britney Spears.
I grew up in an environment where USSR was India's friend, and had Russian comics. Misha was a popular one, and all the kids in my generation wanted to be like Yuri Gargarin. We all wanted to be as smart as Einstein. Kids wrote essays about winning the Nobel Prize. We grew up in an environment where our parents and teachers helped us make Tesla coils in our middle school, so that they can demonstrate the effects of electricity.
My school libr
Personally, I don't have a problem with vouchers for parochial schools.
Even years ago (this was back in the early 70's) religious schools didn't push their religion on you... at least the ones I went to didn't. I know because I was pretty much the only non-catholic kid at a catholic school.
However, as you probably already suspected, it wasn't totally a bed of roses, primarily due to the other kids. Nothing like being an outsider right from day 1... but they never forced me to sit through their religious classes, and they never forced me to sit through Mass. Instead, they allowed me to skip those classes. Unfortunately, when they were inevitably questioned about this by the other students, they told the students "he doesn't have to take this class... he's not catholic." (Yeah... great. Thanks a lot, Sister... thanks for singling me out even more.)
Even with the obvious downside, I'd still send my kids to a superior parochial school over a mediocre public one (and I'm still not catholic).
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
(It's easy to get DARPA, DoD and DoE funding, but difficult to get NSF funding)
Ever hear of the Internet? Created by DARPA?
How about advances in aviation, nuclear power, computers, ballistics, energy, batteries, GaAs semiconductors, emp and radiation-hardened electronics for space and medicine, the Hubble....
The list goes on forever. Although many of us will have issues with our tax dollars going to darpa/doe/dod, many of those dollars go into research that often gets returned to the public, sometimes with royalty-free patents, GPL, or even public domain.
I feel sick when I see people complaining about how they need two incomes while they are pumping gas for their luxury SUV that they use to drive 30 miles to work because they live on a 5 acre plot in the suburbs. Those aren't things you need, those are things you want!
My fiance and I have already discussed this and decided that I (I am the male in the relationship) will stay with the kids full time until the youngest is in school and then I will retrain as a high school physics teacher (I am currently a research engineer) so I can get summers off. To accomplish this we plan to buy a house that we can afford on her salary alone. My salary for the time before we have kids will go towards the education of our future children, and our retirement. We also plan on buying that house in a location that makes it easy for one of us to walk to work (she is currently getting her PhD in astro-physics and plans on being a proffesor, universities tend to be easier to live near...).
Anyway the important point is that you need to figure out what you need and what you want, and decide if what you want is worth the time with your kids.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
This is an intersting point of view you have, and I can see the logic to it all. You are kind of saying that the school system should also be designed to impart the experiental knowledge that those children will need for later life. I'd never thought about it like that before, but it's worth considering.
What I wonder though, is what are the valuable lessons we should be teaching. You place a lot of emphasis on competition, and I agree with that, but you seem less concerned about charity, goodwill, or equal opportunities.
Won't the fact that though the children whose parents couldn't afford crayons were still provided for, install the belief that everyone should be given a chance? If there are lessons in everything, and you can design a system to impart them, then I want a system that is ethically rich -- hard work is not the only ethic we should teach.
Noone said
a) overtime isn't, at least sometimes, a consequence of bad mgmt or org (or both)
b) people should overtime for free
c) everyone enjoys overtiming
The thing is - you have your own views/values, the next guy doesn't give a damn - he'll work same hard/smart as you, but 12 hours a day. There's no way one can compete with such person without doing 12 (or better 13) hours a day.
Talk about brute force cracking - all other conditions being equal, s/he will do more or better and sooner or later s/he'll get promoted (or get a raise).
At this point people who don't want to work 12 hours a day (maybe they have a life outside work, maybe they like excercise, whatever) may want the government to legally ban/restrict overtime work.
If this could be done worldwide, that'd be cool (still, people would cheat). Like this, it's just impossible and foolish. Instead of having some people work overtime, you get the whole company go bust because it can't compete with overseas rivals who do work overtime (say it's a labor-intensive business).
Usually (not always, not only) it's the Europeans laughing at the Americans, the Americans laughing at the Japanese (or Indians - name your bashed nation of the day), etc.
Then if you look at how badly countries are faring, the list reads upside down - Europe is doing worse and worse (unemployment, public debt, etc.), China and India are doing better and better every day.
"Getting by" is getting tough.
Even dilligent folks like yourself will soon find out that 8 hours doesn't cut it any more.
Or, another way to put it, in Asia, working dilligently 8 hours a day is "getting by". In couple of years, all places exposed to market forces will work by the same logic. Tough times, man.
If it was just bad education or less money for science we could fix it with a bill or two in congress. Unfortunatly this reflects a deep anti-intellectualism in america. If we want americans to be good scientists and engineers we need to make it desierable to be a scientist or engieneer.
This means more than paying them more. It means making them *respected* and not mearly perpetuating the mad scientist or nerd sterotype. Unless the United States starts electing intellectual figures (like tony blair rather than george bush) and stops making fun of nerds it will keep falling in it's scientific prowess.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Rather than directing the blame of our failing science culture to any particular institution or group, let's talk about the image of scientists and engineers in the U.S. The majority of the population doesn't find much romance or excitement in pursuing new science frontiers, or developing technology. These are also the fields which many people view as difficult and arcane. We scientists are the magicians of our time, dabbling in witchery that the public doesn't understand. And doesn't want to. Why should they, when they can dream of being athletes or rock stars, or fat-cat CEOS climbing the corporate ladder. Hell, even doctors have some romantic notions attached to their profession! Why are scientists and engineers any different? I think it's because we really do have intellectually challenging jobs, and the American public is not into challenges, at least ones that don't take more than a couple of hours on a grassy field. I'm not downplaying the actual responsibility and hard work that comes along with nearly all professions. It's the image of science that is suffering. I don't know the solution to this, unless education actually starts teaching relevant material and demonstrating it's utility early on. Computers, electronics, cars, and all sorts of high-tech gadgets need to cease being black boxes to the majority of Americans. Curiosity is the key. Seeking knowledge is not a past time of most couch potatoes who are glued to their mind-raping televisions, of which few know the science behind. To address the slipping of science in America, you need to first ask why people aren't more curious about the world around them, why they don't find romance in the discovery of new technological possiblities, and why they don't wonder about the laws governing our very existence. Science needs a makeover in America, to enlist youth in the ranks of scientists and engineers and to draw support (financial and moral) from the general public. How about we go on strike, to show them how important technology really is to them?
Sorta funny. The stoner kids at my school were the ones wearing DARE shirts (yes, everywhere, I know), but the superintendent didn't like it so he sent them home to change... :)
It's interesting to note that I just went to a conference where we discussed the "no child left behind" law. It requires 95% of the students at schools to take yearly tests in language arts and math and elem/middle/high tests in science and social studies. The school needs to post an improvement every year (even if they have 100% passing.) The consequence to this is losing funding, being taken over, or labeled 'inadequate.' Schools labeled inadequate are required to notify all parents of kids in that school and then pay for them to go somewhere else. The other school must accept these students, even if they have no room or resources. Failure is not an option. Schools need to change the pass/fail mentality and learn to help all kids acquire the skills they will need to be as successful in life as they want to be. Funding, good teachers and supportive communities help. I wish everyone who doesn't understand schools today would spend some time in a classroom or with a teacher.
I was curious, how is the cow?
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
So many of the article's examples describe the decline in physics research, without emphasizing it as such. Maybe now that the cold war's over, it's just that nuke-inspired physics research does not seem so essential. I would have liked more emphasis on biological trends, which seems to me to be the next big thing.
There are a lot of people lammenting the poor work ethic of this generation who are posting on slashdot instead of working.
A person should be rewarded according to the value of their work, not according to how much _more_ they worked than someone else. It's not supposed to be a zero-sum game, or at least that's what the capitalist fundementalists keep telling me.
The problem with the American science education system is simply put in two letters: PC I have a degree in Physics. I could barely get into any research internships, because I was a white male. I only got into one because I was working in the Shared Physics/Chemistry Laser lab at my college at that time, and my boss ran a NSF program. All of the research positions for undergrads were specifically for women or minorities. I called on the few that did not state in writing that they were for minorities or women (or better yet a minority woman), and they all verbally told me to not bother applying because they only took minorities or women. Getting the pattern yet? However, in my Physics classes, most American students were white male. So, given that most American students in Physics were white males, yet no research was available to white males, it is pretty obvious where the American decline in science comes from. The PC pendulum must swing back to allow everyone to participate in the sciences, and stop artificially bolstering any single group, whether by race or sex. On the plus side, I am now a happy Unix geek!
--"I'm impatient with stupidity. My people have learned to live without it." Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still(1955)
> Smart people DO still get respect if they're
> not smug about it and have other aspects to
> their personality.
People are supposed to be respected (or at least not beat up) just because they're people. That's supposed to be enough. It's not supposed to be a requirement that the intelligent people also have a personality that pleases others, or that others regard as cool.
It's SUPPOSED to work like this: You go to school, you don't hurt anybody, you fail your classes or you outscore the entire school, and either way you're not harassed or bullied. Period. The schools are supposed to make this happen. The fact that they can't always is a failing of our culture. Teachers are overwhelmed by kids who are, to a great degree, uncivilized.
Ronald Reagan said, "Why should we fund intellectual curiousity?" The reason should now be abundantly clear for everyone.
Creation science is both a cause and an effect of American intellectual decline. There are disturbing parallels between the rise of literalist Christianity in America and in Rome. In Rome, Christianity started as mysticism, mutated into a malignant populist movement suspicious of intelligence and learning, and ended up destroying the very knowledge needed to sustain the empire (the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria was but one of the atrocities committed.) Barbarism took the empire from within.
Someone should tell that chimp in the White House that the big military he likes to beat people with is entirely dependent of America being the first to discover things. You cannot be technologically superior if you don't have the science.
A lot of discussion here seems to be focused on the K-12 level... personally, I think this could all be redeemed if so-called "Higher Education" was still in place.
Unfortunately, today's universities and colleges seem to be more places of vocational training, rather than places to actually learn and be educated. Students go into college, and pick classes they think will best help them find a job, learn the skills they need. Quite frankly, I'm appalled by recent movements to abolish general requirement classes altogether, simply because they "waste time" and should be replaced by something "useful." Neither are students encouraged to explore. Individual department requirements for graduation are getting heavier and heavier, some coming to a point where grabbing a double-major in a four year span is almost impossible. My class was the last in my school's Economics department to graduate with almost no required knowledge of econometrics, and the basic requirements for that would take 16 credits. While I personally have been told that I don't measure up to what employers seek in an economics major ("No knowledge of econometrics? What were you doing with a policy concentration? Sorry, you're not quite what we're looking for."), in those 16 credits I've learned the entire grand history of the Roman Empire, complete with an impromptu Latin lesson, the origins and far reaching effects of myths in the world culture, and a fascinating look at juvenile psychology. I don't consider myself less fortunate in terms of job placement, since most of my friends with Comp-Sci or Finance majors spent almost as much time as I did trying to find employment (half a year).
I don't know if I'm just unique among my group of friends, but I was actually sad to graduate. Almost all the others I know couldn't wait to graduate and get away from books and papers forever. Does that say something about how high education has become in our modern society? After all, how can we expect a society to advance in the areas of pure science when the student interests are focused on "usefull stuff" that "helps me find a job"?
Basically I look at science/math performance in our schools, which every 2 years or so is compared to EU and Japanese kids' scores (we always lose big-time), then point to the focus on consumerism demonstrated by things like Pizza Hut contracts with schools and insane levels of advertising everywhere. Taken together what are these facts telling us? The future of this country is being taught that it's cool to buy lots and lots of stuff, but not to work for the money.
Then I look at the tricks our govt plays to keep us on top. Examples ... the US controls so many satelites flying over Latin America that US companies have used satelite imagery to pinpoint the best farmland and buy it. The native populations don't have access to these pics (at least they didn't 5 years ago when I read about this). Sweatshops, crypto export laws, IMF debt and regulations, and under Bush the military...without these type of "cheats" to slant the playing field in the US's favor I think we would fall rapidly behind the EU and maybe even China in the upcoming decade.
It looks to me like we are living off of the momentum of WW2 generation, and that momentum is running out. I know some flag-wavers are going to get pissed at this and maybe even tell me to love it or leave it. But insulting America is not the point.
The point is that when these congressional cheats are removed or overcome, I'm afraid the US won't be able to stand on its own two feet.
i go RAH-RAH, like a dungeon dragon
Oh no he didn't go and bite Busta!
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Have you been to schoo lately? IT does depend on where you go to school and to a large exstent wh you are in relation to the others kids, but smart people get teased unless their also athletic, then their worshipped.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Yes, the US is losing its scientific dominance, and here are some of the reasons why:
1) Most 'research' funding is not directed towards 'research' but rather, on development of incremental technological improvements in complex weapon systems. Most bright, creative Americans don't find this work very fulfilling.
2) Most scientific research requires access to facilities that are beyond the reach of individuals. Most non-military 'research' at large corporations is narrowly focused on making improvements to existing products. (Look at how much money Microsoft spends on 'research' and how little they have to show for it.) Public universities can theoretically still carry out research based on intellectual curiousity rather than developing an improved method of killing people but are limited by the amount of grant money available, the available facilities, the policies of the particular institution, etc.
3) Most of the best new ideas come from small privately-funded companies who are driven by a creative, visionary leader. In the past, such a company would come out with a revolutionary idea, create an entire new technology, and then proceed to grow and become wildly successful. Beginning in the early '80s, though, the regulatory climate in the US for large corporations began to change such that now, when some large corporation is threatened by a new technology, it either finds some way to run the new company out of business or else buy out the new company and marginalize it as a threat to the status quo. If Thomas Edison were developing his electric light bulb today, there would one large gaslight corporation that would buy him out and then proclaim that the idea of electrical lights wasn't practical because it would require that wires be strung everywhere or something. A modern-day computer example would be the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) process that AMD has recently been using to make some of its new processor chips. SOI results in much less power consumption per cycle and offers the potential for a significant cut in worldwide electric power consumption by server farms. Yet, SOI has barely made a dent in the status quo simply because the dominant x86 chipmaker, Intel, has not supported it, and instead focuses all of its energies on driving AMD into bankruptcy.
All the posts here about the deficiencies of the US educational system are just creating a smokescreen around the real problem. By and large, the US public educational system does a pretty good job of providing educational opportunities to bright, motivated kids, regardless of their income or background. The problem is that there is now much less that those bright, hard-working kids can do with their new knowledge than in the past.
I am an undergrad with 3 years in the recently cut (thanks Gov. Scharz...) UC Outreach programs and from my experience, the only differences in our education system and "their" education systems is that 1) We attempt to allow EVERYONE to progress to higher learning and 2) The home culture of education for most families are almost non-existant.
UC Outreach is an umbrella name for the University of California's attempt to level out the education field by sending professionals and undergrads to lesser priveleged schools and pick up the slack of
the green-yet-already-jaded teachers.
Sounds great right? Well, it needs to be noted that we're one the only countries that attempt such programs. Even socialsist France creates a cast-system in its education process. So don't be surprised if their or Japan's top 1% is a couple points smarter than ours.
Second, though funding is a severe problem, the more pertinent problem is that the media tells kids that it's best to attempt to get rich quick while parents a) put more emphasis on chores than homework and b) degrade teachers at home. "Don't listen to them, they don't know what they're talking about."
(About 30% of asian kids graduating from high school are UC eligible. About 1-12% of everyone else is. Why? Because their parents told them that education was the only way to succeed.)
I hear this all the time from the students and that is where the problem lies. If we can actually change the culture of education at home, there's actually be a change. Funding is important, but the change has to be made by the parents.
For years many industries have been moving factories and jobs to other countries, so it's unsurprizing that those countries have increased their technical knowhow.
I think this is more a case of the rest of the world getter smarter rather that americans getting dumber
May the Maths Be with you!
... hmm. Considering Micro$ofts business philosophy and the state of tech markets in general - one might conclude the USA has abandoned technological superiority for a monopoly on tech instead.
Things that make you go hmm?
This is what I think is really needed, example of others and finding out how people should behave. Next time maybe it would have been your turn to stand up for someone else, at least you got example how to do it. Later you would give similar example to someone else. When everyone is sheltered during their childhood there is no examples on how to behave in coming social situations.
Same applies to various other aspects of life, including taking somethings that are not yours to take. If during childhood there was chances of making morally right and wrong decisions that parents reacted upon then everyone would have some example how to behave when something larger was at hand. Can I steal 1 dollar and get away with it? For child that is big deal, and should be taken seriously. If later in life this person faces situation where he could steal a lot more, there should be behavioural pattern to handle that situation already in place. It is hard make morally right decision if there is no previous example or experience.
My friend told me his most memorable story, that he still remembers. There was free magazines at mall and they decided it was really good idea to get 25c for each. So they went around neighborhood door to door selling these magazines. Someone noticed that and called his father, later same day those two boys were walking door to door apologizing and giving those 25c coins back. I think since then he knew something more.
Same applies to work and work ethics, examples must be present. Unfortunately in normal school there is nobody to take example from.
I was USNA class of 94, so yeah I heard all the little catch phrases also. But most people really *did* work hard on academics because GPA is a major influence on your class ranking. Want that last pilot billet? Better start studying.
Also, I was a systems engineering major. I think 80+% of my class fell into type 1 (engineering) majors. So yes there were a few people skating by with political science or English, but that wasn't the majority by a long shot.
And finally, the Naval Academy's graduation rate is a lot higher than most other colleges in the U.S. So while I agree with some of the things you said about lack of American work ethic, I think the Naval Academy is not a particularly good example.
SEAL
she walks, she talks, she's full of chalk. The lacteal fluid from the female of bovine species is highly prolific to the 0th degree (I have no milk at my desk).
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
I have two boys, and while reading a copy of "Raising Cain" I learned something interesting about male developmental psychology: This kind of treatment during adolescence has been solidly linked to serious anger management issues. For my part, it is something that I wrestle with daily. I have constant violent fantasies about the most ridiculous things. 20 years of martial arts has made it very clear to me that I have to deal with these issues before I hurt someone.
After two years of meditating 40 minutes a day I have made some progress, but the return for the effort is miniscule. Fixing your head when you are over 25 is very difficult. So I would encourage anyone who is a young male reading this to deal with the problem now. Martial arts are good, but please find something ASAP. These dickheads are not only making your life miserable now, but they are also screwing with your future emotional health.
A British physicist predicted it, a British-born American inventor and a German physicist each independently confirmed it, a German inventor used it for a collision detection system for ships in 1904, an Italian demonstrated a low-frequency radar system in 1922, an Englishman and a New Zealander used radar to prove the existance of the ionosphere in 1924 and scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. were the first to use radar to detect aircraft in 1930.
Not so cut and dry me thinks.
Also, keep in mind that teachers don't get vacation like most people. They get a couple of personal days, but no where near the two weeks of paid vacation that is common in other fields.
... scientists, techs, engineers, geeks all over need a UNION. You not only could save your jobs and continue to get paid well, if it was an international union think about it, you could CUT THE WORLDS MILITARIES OFF AT THE KNEES AND PREVENT WARS.
And here's something for all the young geeks inside the US now.PAY ATTENTION. YOU, yes YOU, are in imminent peril of being DRAFTED. This is NOT a joke. There are two bills now in the armed services committe for review, chances are they'll sit on it until after the elections, the controlled by the goons mass media is not going to cover it in the "news", then LOOK OUT, they'll pull one of those voice votes with no accountability and pass that thing in the middle of the night like they always do. They are counting on you staying dumbed down and disorganized. And it's ALL young people, male and female, either a forced stint in the mercenary forces or in some aspect of the brownshirt "homeland security". My generation, the boomers, did what we could, millions of us sacraficed a LOT, I mean a LOT, to get it dropped, killed, and we suceeded. I mean, serious widespread street demonstrations and everything else we could think of, which towards the end the returning young nam vets who had just gotten back started joining us by the thousands, because they finally bingoed that they were used, abused, lied to, and had just gotten back from armed conflict, and THE GOONS KNEW THAT. But it took just hundreds of thousands of people willing to go all the way to end it. We got rid of nixon, the draft, slowed down but didn't stop the rise of the military industrial complex shadow government, which is BACK in spades now.
Unfortunately,over the years, greed took over, sad to say a lot of people in my generation sold out, lost their ideals, became addicted to money and power and crass "entertainments". I apologize, I'm one guy, can't do it all.
It's time to do it again you young people,all you nerds and geeks out there, because YOU got the power to make the potential y2k problems look like a mild annoyance, merely by going on strike and not running the nations infrastructure until your demands are met.And not only the real younger people, those past the age of drafting but still young enough to remember and be sympathetic, and there's something in it for you too, called making the nation BETTER.
YOU are really doing the work now, running things, the suits just give you orders and you eat it and eat it and eat it and eat it because you are not organized and they can trample over you, and the goons are just getting started with it again, it's deja vu. WAKE UP.
Create a full bore across the board IT union and you have THE POWER. REFUSE to endorse any candidates from the two major political crime cartels, that's a waste of time and you know it. The suits, fatcats, politicians, CEOs are helpless WITHOUT drone workers-so stop being drones! They need mindless robots to follow their orders, inside and outside of what passes for "government" and in the major industries. You keep getting screwed because of no national organized power structure, and THAT'S IT. They have you faked out that just because you mostly work indoors somehow you don't need a union, when your bosses/politicians got unions up the wazoo, industry groups and lobbyist bribe money by the billions. think about it.
Nothing else is needed except organization, a union to make it stick and to make carved in stone forever laws passed, and the willingness to not sell out. No violence needed, nothing illegal, just a desire and willingness to make it stick, to shut that sucker down unless a few critical things change, and stay changed, for the better.
Sorry, but I'm posting an old blog of mine. The significance of the U.S.'s loss in science leadership is the eventual loss in it's economic leadership:
b er nardmoon_archive.html#107035264302580921
.....
http://www.bernardmoon.blogspot.com/2003_11_30_
Nelson and others within the same camp believe technical advance or growth in technology account for 50%-70%+ of long-term economic growth. Seeing how the U.S. has become the world's foremost economic power, it's difficult to deny some of the truth and theories developed from Nelson and others. Whole new industries were created by developments that sprouted from U.S. R&D labs throughout the 20th century. From Xerox's fabled Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to AT&T's Bell Labs to DARPA, inventions such as laser printing (1971), Ethernet, the graphical user interface, the Internet (1969), and cellular communications (1947) were given birth to in these halls.
One danger that is recently occuring is the decrease in funding for basic research. Basic research allows scientistics to research for the sake of researching. To seek out their curiosities and find the truths of the universe. This is more of a non-linear approach that allows for a wide-range of possibilities, and many inventions that have changed our lives have come from basic research (e.g. x-rays, superconductivity, laser... what would you do without CDs or DVDs?). Over the past decade, corporations under pressure to perform have cut back or closed down their basic research efforts and only focused on applied research that seeks out a specific solution or product that can eventually generate revenue for the company. Even universities have scaled back on their basic research efforts since the licensing of their patents and inventions have become huge sources of funding since the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, and have become more focused on applied research.
Frankly, there's no surprise here. Besides the education problem, it's no secret that the advancancement in US science is due, for a good part, to people coming from abroad. But believe me, this kind of story makes you think twice before you emigrate... Well, at least, I do.
Look, I know this problem first hand too because I was a student in exUSSR and in USA. A lot of it can be solved by making what is studied relevant to real life and relevant to the kid. Because our current educational system does not act as a responce to a natural demand or need, and because it is preemptive, a lot more effort needs to go into establishing that there IS A NEED to do word problems.
Word problems are boring. They suck. Adults would not do word problems, would they? Well, if an adult wanted to learn a foreign language on their own they would do them. But all this is foisted on the kids.
I think the solution is to 1) let learning and playing become the same thing and 2) let the child learn what they want. If they want to learn only Biology, then let them. They will realize soon enough that they also need to learn English and Mathematics and so on. Learning can progress naturally. All school needs to do is to enable it and encourage it and have some faith in the kids.
And finally face the facts: not all kids want to learn. Some just do not want to learn anything. And forcing them to learn just creates negative tension for everyone and accomplshes nothing. Take those kids away from the classroom. Other kids suffer because of a few bad apples who don't really want to learn and screw things for everyone else.
My wife, who is an educator (with 2 Master's degrees), chimes in, "There are 4 problems that keep Science back in schools.
1. There are not enough qualified teachers. Most those good in science and math pursue more lucrative careers.
2. Access the science labs is limited. And labs are what makes science interesting.
3. The science is taught in a way that is too abstract. There is almost no interaction with the larger scientific community. The kids should participate in exchanges with the scientific community. If you study environmental science, why aren't you out there gathering pool water? There is not enough real life hands on application of science.
4. The mind set of teachers and administrators on what can what cannot be learned, what should be encouraged and what should not. For the most part nobody knows how to nurture scientific curiousity if it doesn't fit within their game plan.
For example the child learns about amoebas and says 'Wow, so there are other one celled organisms? Let's go search for some! The teacher says, 'No we study amoebas this week and next week we will study something else.'"
By-the-numbers being no prayer or teaching of creation? Or maybe the kids are already brainwashed and they don't want it undone by those lowly heathens they'd be going to school with.
Uhhh.. seems that only the "scientists"(editors) at Scientific American are upset... what on earth does that have to do with "scientific elite"??
- No-consequence education for various reasons - a student isn't allowed to fail and is always passed through
- No respect for education, intelligence, academic achievement. The highest rewards (social and ecnomic) are for sports and sex-appeal.
- Decreased spending on research by corporations and government, and a repurposing of money towards military applications
- Europe and Asia are coming to parity with the United States.
These all have ruined the ecosystem for science. In this ecosystem some toil on esoteric Math for Math's sake and Science for Science's sake problems. What happens there trickles forward to partical applications.-
The first step are the guys researching pure, abstract science. They might be conducting an experiment bombarding a surface with a certain particle to examine the diffraction caused. In the experiment they notice certain kinds of temperture sensors spike up. These are the guys that figure out that particle causes asymetric molecules to vibrate. The diffraction experiment was a flop, by the way because the nature of the diffraction didn't produce an accurate map of the blah de blah de blah.
-
The next part of the ecosystem are the guys that ask, what does this vibration mean? Can I heat something with these particles. These guys figure out particle X can be used to heat substances containing asymetric molecules like water.
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The next guy comes along and asks if this can be done efficiently? Can I make a gizmo that's small and tolerably efficient? This becomes more of an engineering problem. Some guy at DARPA decides to see if it can be used to knock missles off their trajectory by heating them.
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Then some guy at GE decides that he wants to use the gizmo to make a prototype oven. He's the highest up on the food chain from the science side. The DOD funds related research in weaponizing the particle emitter.
But the biggest hit has been the lack of funding for basic research. Without that first layer - there is nothing at the next layers to build on. Military and industry are in the 3rd and 4th layer. At that point we know there is such a phenomena/effect, but the question is can we make it into an oven or blow up incoming missles with it? This is the by-product of research that most people see. Congress credits military research for "the science" that gave rise to the fancy new oven that cooks a chicken in 30 seconds.We have no real respect for funding, advancing and promoting the layers 1 and 2. Most people don't even understand what happens in those layers. How could we not understand what gravity is at every level? Don't we know what atoms are made of? Didn't Einstein figure all that out? Until we respect, value and understand basic research there will be more interest in congressional hearings on steroid usage in sports and bare bossums on television than hearings on best US super-collider sites.
We have more respect for the management team at GE that decided to go ahead with the oven idea. In fact we have much more respect for the attractive eye-candy spokesmodel that shows off the appliance at some trade show. The fact that the two guys at stage 1 that discovered the phenomena recieved a Nobel prize some six years later doesn't even register.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
But I'm sure every generation for the past 200 years has said that, "Kids today aren't willing to work as hard". It can't have been true every time, or otherwise we would have died out by now. Or perhaps....there's more bullshit and red-tape that needs doing, ie more stuff to do per person, combined with a few people doing practically nothing means higher workloads for the average person?
Now given, my grandpa had to work even harder than both me and my dad put together, but was this always the way? 200 years ago would great-grandpa-bach and his contemporaries have to put in 60+ hour work week just for the minnimum functionality of industrial age society? perhaps. marketing alone makes me think that 200 years ago there was less jobs that needed to be done, and therefor on average, kids could have more stuff just handed to them.
Alternatively, America, alongside with many other a nation, was built on Slavery. Could it be, that it still survives on it? and that without slave condition labour camps to put the hours in so that everyone's kids can get handed silver platters...that things would collapse?(in light of the above, and technology perhaps?)
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
And now they're both signed under Aftermath. Now that's what I call beef.
True story.
You know, lots of people need to be paid more. But the average teacher's salary in 2002 was $44,367. Meanwhile, the median household income in 2002 was $42,409. Further, you have to, as the previous post stated, put this into the context of the number of days per year actually worked. This yields an adjusted salary of about $60,000 (via a back of the envelope calculation).
I'm not saying that this isn't commensurate with their value to society. Money is a horrible indicator for actual value. What I am saying is that based on the job, it's really not horrible money. Read more here.
I was waiting for these shitbats to settle up and come to a conclusion to 'agree to disagree', but no such luck.
I'll toss my 2 cents in on another subject for
The Fanta Menance.
His sig.
--Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Well it's like this Menace.
Let's say a god exists. Somehow. Someway humanity has finally discovered that God/god/gods exist.
If they do exist, based on the majority of myth and religious text. This god probably created the world, the universe, and pretty much has the gist of the afterlife.
Any other trappings of worship aside, it would be pretty damn smart to be appreciative to the being that created the universe so your smarmy ass could exist in this first place! And don't give me any of that existential 'Do I really exist?' bullshit, since you've already implied by your sig that a god would be proved to exist!
Are you also this piss poor and unappreciative of other people that helped create you, like . . your parents?
America is what we make of it.
Pay attention to something that resembles balanced news.
Learn.
Grow.
Vote.
and Work.
"Maybe we should try and just live within our means, even if it does mean not wearing the latest fashions, etc?"
I'm not sure if you really mean that having enough food to eat and a place to stay is some sort of fashion, although I do realize that many, many out there MUST supply the obscene fashion industry, among other things with money(because it is huge and outrageously *everywhere*). But a lot of the people I know who have massive debts, didn't ever make enough to survive on in the first place. (And they are usually the hardest workers, too) I'm lucky to live where cost of living is fairly low, but even then...if you only make 2$/hr...you can't exactly afford 500$/month rent for a small single room apartment easily. Especially if you have children.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I will admit that I did go through the stereotype stuff early in elementary school, but that ended pretty quickly, once I realized the secret. Yeah, I was getting picked on and everything, but I was bringing it on myself. The smart kids don't get picked on in school because they're smart, they get picked on because the vast majority of them are flamming assholes. I basically had to realize that, yes, I was smart, but no one cared and it didn't entitle me to anything. Most of the smart ones the had trouble had enormous egos and thought that everyone should bow down before their massive intellects. Read some of the tales of woe that always appear on Slashdot and pay attention to how there are no "normal" human being, only "nerds" and "idiots".
It also helps not to be a one hit wonder. A lot of these people that preached their own greatness to anyone who would listen were actually doing terribly in a lot of their classes. They might be good at math, but they were flunking English just like the guy that was shoving them into a locker. Now, they'll immediately point out that English is a BS course and that doesn't really count; only math and science really matter. Of course, the guy stomping on the nerd's ribs will point out that math and science are also bullshit and that Gym is the only course that matters. The nerd will then get offended because his personal views aren't taken as gospel and his enormous ego has been wounded.
So, yes, I enjoyed math and science, but I made darn sure I found other things to enjoy, too. I read books (not just scifi, classic literature). I tried to educate myself in the areas that I wasn't good at. More importantly, though, I also took the time to learn a little about the culture around me. I never learned the intricasies of modern fashion or even had much of a working knowledge of popular music, but I did try and watch some network TV (PBS doesn't count; try NBC or ABC). Of course, most nerds would balk and talk about how Television is brain killing tripe. In small doses, though, you can build up an immunity and have the tools you need to communicate with normal people. Yeah, I think the jokes might not be that funny, but if I can get the guy with the baseball bat to stop threatening me and start laughing simply by uttering "Is that your final answer?", I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Better to spend a half hour watching TV than to spend it eating asphalt.
Well, as they say, "all generalizations are wrong."
I never really experienced anything like the stereotypical treatment while I was in school. Some teasing maybe, but then who wasn't teased at some point in their life? And I was (and continue to be) quite geekish myself. However, I'm quite sure my fellow geeks in other areas have been substantially mistreated. Really, it all depends on the makeup of your school district and your own personality. I'm sure we all can think of a few geeks who really bring it upon themselves.
and this makes darpa the only player as far as independent businesses doing science are concerned.
It is a great pity that the NSF is so restricted, it should be changed. I would like to be able to apply for non DoD grants for ReiserFS, and have security not be the only thing I can officially get funded.
Add to that, the hoops you have to jump through to BECOME a teacher in the first place.
I graduated from college with a Bachelor's in Geology and Geophysics. I then went into the USAF and flight school, and eventually became an instructor, teaching people on the ground, in the simulator, and in the air.
After I left the USAF, my old high school contacted me about possibly coming back to teach.
And I was interested.
But the hoops I would have had to jump through, going back to college for 2 years to get "certified", when I already had been certified to teach people to deal with life-and-death-level situations, but it wasn't sufficient credentials to teach in a public school.
It's a pity. The old Earth Science teacher was about to retire, and they had the chance to get a bona-fide geologist into the job. . . but bureau-crap kept it from happening.
And THAT was 15 + years ago. . . it's gotten worse, as I see what the schools have become, from seeing my children in them.
Which is why my wife and I now homeschool: the oldest is coding Python and starting Java to prep her for coding in C, and the youngest taught **HERSELF** HTML, Photoshop, and a bunch of other graphics applications. . . they may lack "socialization" skills, but they code better than I do. . . (ok, I'm a security geek nowadays...)
If that film 10.5 isn't enough to convince you of our lack of scientific knowledge, then I don't know what is!
That's funny, I was under the impression that the US Army Corps of Engineers did most of the work on the Manhattan Project, aided of course by the insight from one Mr Albert Einstein. So no, the Manhattan Project was not 'almost entirely done by Germans'.
Germans invented the RADAR, and then the English improved on that design, so I will give you partial credit on that one simply because I had incorrectly attributed it to the Americans (which was incorrect.)
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
America over has over indulged itself in praising athletic hero's, music and movie stars. As a product of Arizona k-12 education in the 90's, it is safe for me to say that more than enough funding went to the highschool football teams rather than new math and science books. Nothing ever intriguing was taught in the fields of math and science, and all of the hope and weight of success was balanced on the small chance of becoming a select few of American "super-stars".
I love math and science, and through the eyes of a senior CE major public education did nothing to improve my learning potential or popularize the idea of science as an avenue for prosperity or fun.
-----
O_o
He is now our family doctor.
Are the polyp and hernia checks somewhat awkward...or are they a suprisingly good time?
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
"It just wasn't cool to be smart. The smart kids go teased and beat up."
How is this a new phenomena? -m
And how does this change throughout life? It's not as if smart adults are appreciated -- look at our president! Look at our celebrities and cultural heroes too...
One of the reasons our schools are ineffective is this: If we had standards, a lot more kids would flunk out of school, putting more criminals on the street.
How about the idea of having half-grades like in Minnesota. Good students go from Grade 1 to Grade 2, students who struggled too much go from Grade 1 to Grade 1.5. This helps them shore up knowledge while removing stigma, since it is assumed that a large percentage of kids will do this (something like 25%).
Plus bright kids might also find themselves in a half grade (say an outstanding kid could go form Grade 2 to Grade 3.5). Slow kids would do well, as they are reviewing material for the second time.
I remember a scientist telling me about a mouse where, if you tweaked a gene, it would be born without a skeleton, but I guess as long as the other mice celebrated his diversity this was not a bad thing.
The scale used to judge the skill levels of the students was removed because it made the low performing students 'feel bad about themselves', meanwhile more and more of the money that was readied for the schools was diverted for 'administrative purposes' or in other words the people who ran the districts decided that they needed a new mercedes and gave themselves a raise.
Many schools became just ways to get a large number of students attending, and a good average grade on the SAT since those are the ways that the school gets its funding.
I can't tell you the amount of time that my teachers in junior high and high school spent drilling us on the SAT instead of actually teaching us.
A number of factors could help the school system in America.
I was about 12 in '89 when we switched to capitalism. Before that and some years after things were a lot like India (a little less Misha, but definitely Yuri Gagarin and Einstein).
Most things we wanted to do in school were not necesarily science but _useful_ Science was actually the cool stuff.
Now it's different. Things changed while I was in high-school and a lot in college - it's _all_ about money and a good job and nothing about learing for its own sake. The downside is that the shift turned our education system upside-down: I wouldn't count on an university graduate to know how to screw a lightbulb these days. Really.
That doesn't happen in the exclusive or dominantly middle class schools, where the ethos is to prepare everyone for university.
As someone who attended public school in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, I have to disagree. If you weren't into sports or wild parties, you weren't cool. If you weren't friends with the cool kids, you were teased. I was interested in reading books, drawing, and playing with computers. I had friends with the same interests who were also not into sports and drinking, so we were a group of nerds.
Sara Bunting has written a good article on school cliques and teasing that you might want to read.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
"I did my highschool and undergrad in India."
By high school in India all the people that don't want to learn have dropped out. US schools are chock full of people that have no interest in learning and no ability to learn. The "average" student in an Indian english language high school is already the geek elite.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Frankly, I don't think you can argue any ONE thing is responsible.
n is -was-involved. So people have slowly (surprisingly) begun to distrust the scientists (after all what do they do?).
I think it is a combination of factors. The first, I would argue, is the 401K. That may make zero sense to the layman (and to those who have never heard of a pension) but the reality is that we now have people worrying over shit that they have no skills in. That is why pensions were a good thing - the folks that managed them were SUPPOSED to be knowlegable and not thieves. Now everyone is worried about finances.
Another aspect IS the role of the sciences. Or rather the attack on the sciences. When they prove that there is global warming (and yes, it IS proven), hacks in DC (who have zip knowledge) say no-no-no-don't-worry-your-pretty-head. Other hacks say listen-to-the-DC-hacks-and-by-the-way-Clintons-pe
There is also a barrage of hack-crap of "creation science" which has less to do with science than theological argument. As a consequence adults, children, and the public at large get confused as to what science it. Is it opinion? If that is all it is, it can't be that important.
Face it folks, we let this happen. We wanted it to happen (argue what you want, technology don't happen without science). We wanted what we thought was "flexibility". We wanted our kids to be taught in a more God-like school. We wanted to believe our beloved SUV was not killing the planet.
WE are the ones that took the 30 pieces of silver and nailed Science to a piece of wood.
We just didn't notice that those pieces were in fact slugs.
Feloneous
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
I think americans focus on blaming someone else for their (our) problems. It is always someone else's fault. We like to blame a political party, schools, parents, goverment programs, sports, hollywood, or whatever.
No one ever says, "what can I do" or "am I doing my part" or "how can I help fix this". No, blame has to get placed somewhere and we expect someone else to pick up the slack and make the problem go away.
Everyone here can make a big difference just by being a technical role model, changing the TV channel to Discovery/TLC from disney/cartoon programming, helping out at the schools, taking continuing education classes, leaving tech mags around the house.
As a whole, we are good at evangelizing Linux, the same approach needs to be done to science and technology as a whole. It cant be pushy, leading by example is a key part.
Hey, leave comments about my mother out of this!
Our copyright and patent enforcement laws are YEARS ahead of the rest of the world!
Maybe a little OT, but does anyone know what caused the drop in published articles seen in the graph?
I'ld have to agree with you. But don't forget about India. They too will be moving ahead of the U.S. Most of the students in US engineering/science/math graduate programs are foreign born - probably 80%
I went to High School in the seventies, the class valedictorian was by far the most respected student there. He was not in any sports but was the nicest guy in the entire school. He is now our family doctor. Things are different today, it's not that we didn't have some of the same things going on.
I graduated from High School 8 years ago (class of '96). Our class valedictorian was a very respected student, one of the nicest girls I knew in the place. I'm not sure what she's doing today, I didn't keep in touch with most of the people in school and moved across the country 2 years ago. Still, I was always impressed by how hard she worked to maintain her GPA, and that she still had time to work part-time and volunteer in the community.
But today it's just more extreme. People got beat up in school or about something that happened at school that never got settled, not often but it happened. Today people get killed in school,not often but it happens.
When I was in school, people got beat up, generally at the beginning and end of the school year, when it was 100 degrees outside and everyone tended to be a little short on temper. My first year of high school, someone brought a gun to school with the intent of shooting one of the Vice Principles (who was generally hated by many students, not that it justifies anything). Someone saw the gun in his bag and reported it before he did anything.
3 years after I graduated, someone brought a gun to the other high school in the same city, and shot a few students. Within hours people from all over the country were discussing why the school should have metal detectors and security officers and this and that. Anyone that ever attended high school in San Diego County (outside of the city schools) could have told them that metal detectors wouldn't work, because every class room's door opens to the outside (as do the bathrooms, where the shots were fired). Security officers were on campus at every school in the district when I was attending, as well as when the shootings took place (but they increased the numbers almost immediately afterwards). A couple of weeks later someone shot at the administrative building at another school in the same district.
In many ways, students have been treated like prisoners from the time I started attending school. In high school I was required to take 5 courses every semester, regardless of what I needed to graduate, simply because a student has to attend for a certain number of hours to be counted for the cash the state hands out to public schools. Students couldn't leave campus for lunch, and were confined to a particular area of the campus to make sure they could be watched. The zero tolerance policies for violence mean that students looking to commit violence know that there's a good chance that the student they want to attack will not fight back, as both students will be punished if that happens. No lockers were supplied to students because they would be expensive and were found to lead to increased drug use and violence (as students kept drugs and weapons in their lockers). But without lockers, students were often required to leave their posessions in classrooms during assemblies, so that searches could be made of their bags without large protests, often with drug dogs brought in to speed things up. One student's parents sued the school because they had signed a waiver allowing the school to force their daughter to take a drug test; they were under the impression (somehow) that they had to sign and submit the permission slip to prevent the school from performing the drug tests.
There is a big difference. The popular songs talked about alot of things. Sex, drugs, love etc. Now I hear songs that talk about popping a cap in someones ass. Or a dead girl friend in the trunk. Things are different, while alot of themes are similiar, it's just alot more extreme.
Most popular songs are still about sex, drugs, love, etc. The extreme ends, or the things that people get up in arm
-PainKilleR-[CE]
I don't know where you went to school, but I have to call BULLFUCKINGSHIT! Where I went to school, if you were smart, your best bet was to hide it, or to stay as hidden as possible so as to not get harassed. I spent almost all of my lunches at school in the computer lab with other smart friends because it was dangerous to go to the cafeteria (and, no, it wasn't just because of the food).
Add in to this the fact that American institutionalized education today is not designed to educate, but rather to make people conform, and you have a recipe for the decline and fall of an empire.
Nathan's blog
Thank you.
I happen to enjoy my work. I also happen to spend a great deal of time with my family. I ultimately sacrifice things like TV and video games, things that I can surely do without.
I don't get financial compensation immediately, but in the long run I feel it really supports the case of getting larger bonuses and raises.
I also don't work 60 hours a week, every week. It's just every once in a while.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
the more we break it. We keep cutting out arts, music and sports-the very things that foster creative problem solving skills. Every time I hear some idiot politician talking about how we need to concentrate more on the hard sciences and math, I think about a bunch of kids with stifled imaginations. The Japanese built their economy by copying our innovations, their kids couldn't come up with any of their own. Now, we have a bunch of idiots that say the educational system that gave us all of those creative minds didn't work as well as foreign educational systems. Stupid.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Sample (for me):
Do you see where this is going? 2027 would be the first year that having an MS would be worth more than having a BS. That is assuming zero cost of money. If the interest rate on student loans was above 0, then it would take longer. One could make a more complicated model with wild assumptions like pay raises, cost of money, inflation, or that you would even be employed. Any engineer or scientist worth their diploma can do the same math. If you had any intention of teaching in High School, an MS would be required. Teaching at the post secondary level would require at least a PhD. Please note that I will make less money in 2004 than I did in 1985.
The leading cause of children entering engineering is to have a family member or friend who is an engineer. As most engineers, scientists and programmers in the US get thrown out of their profession before they finish paying off their student loans, potential students in that career are strongly discouraged from entering the profession. Young adults aren't stupid, if they see a career is a joke, they won't go near it. Gates can whine all he wants, but kids are staying away from engineering and CS with a passion. They can do the math and see that they will never pay off any student loans incurred. Get rid of all the Benedict Arnold CEOs and it may make a difference in a decade.
There was an effort about 10 years ago by Motorola and other electronics firms to get Universities to change engineering curicula to be a 2 year, job preparatory, degree. They did not want to pay for engineers back then, and they still don't. The "book learning" that students learned was not desirable, they wanted training in the specific CAE/CAD software and methodologies used at the specific employer. The half-life of an engineer's career is under 5 years at this time. It would have been far less under the proposed regime: oh, new version of the software came out, you are all fired. Even the H1B abuses that they do is silly when you consider that the CAD/CAE software that engineers use usally has a $20k-$200k annual license fee. They did not want technicians, they wanted engineers but did not want to pay then, nor now for it.
The USA also has a 200+ history of deprecating education, intelligence, intellectuals and "book learning." Things will never get better in the USA unless there is some new sputnik race, and then the change will only be temporary. We never learn, because learning is not cool.
Some interesting essays on Nerd and Uncoolness are here and here. I wish I had seen those 30 years ago when I was about to become a teen, but I also think that I could not have understood them as a teen. Like a lot of things about growing up, they only made sense long after the fact.
I mean seriously dude...
we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively - bill hicks
Lots of western european countries have laws in place to protect smaller companies, such as retail stores. Try going shopping for a TV on a sunday afternoon in even a city like Zurich. in 2000, it was not really that possible. AFIK it's still the same in Germany.
I'm currently working at a major software company in Germany and I can say that this is still mostly the case. But I'll go one step further and say that this doesn't just apply to TVs. It's embedded in the mentality here and at the international software company I work, most people work 9 to 6, which is considered by most normal people to be really long. This tends to piss me off sometimes (such as when I bust my ass to get a job done, like I'm doing right now -got here at 7:30am and it's currently 8:30pm), but other times I really like being able to leave at 6 and not feel bad about it. Just my two slightly off topic cents.
I don't know if this is off-topic or if someone has mentioned something similar; I doubt anyone will even see this post at this point in the discussion, but I'm going to tell the story, anyway. This story relates one simple thing anybody doing activities with kids can do to encourage at least one kid to appreciate the value of math and science; with enough people doing it, maybe we can stem another article like this 20 years from now. Bear with me, I know how much the story sounds like a geeked-out after school special.
When I was a kid at summer camp they broke us down into teams for a day-long competition. Each event was designed to promote the usual values: faster, bigger, stronger, more aggressive. At the end of the day, our team was tied for first with one other team as we headed into the final event.
All the campers were standing in a grassy area next to the lake, surrounding the lifeguard tower. The guy on the tower asked each team to pick out their smartest member. Obviously, I got picked (mostly, I think, since I was the nerdiest looking ).
We stood in the center of a crowd of two hundred or so sweaty junior-high faces, all intently focused on us. The counselor would read a series of numbers and operations; our job was to follow the series in our heads. After the last number, the first contestant to give the closest answer to the actual value won the competetion.
In dead silence, the counselor started the competition. "30...plus 12...minus 17...times 2...plus 4...etc." It felt like my head would explode, but I followed as best I could, until the counselor said, "Done."
The silence was painful. I waited for a moment, typically unsure of myself, then said (in a meek, supremely wussy voice), "35." The counselor asked if the other contestants had their guesses. After one of the most excruciating 5-second periods of my life, they gave answers that were nowhere near mine (sending me into a panic).
The sadistic counselor waited a bit, then turned to me and said, "I'm sorry, your answer is....ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!"
The crowd went wild; not just my team, everybody. For the next day or two, I was a hero. An absolute fucking hero. Hot chicks congratulated me (they didn't offer to date me, but I took what I could get).
I'd like to say that it steered me into a career as a mathematician, but it didn't. I wish the feat itself had been more impressive (I'm sure most /.ers can solve 4th-order systems in their heads). It wasn't a big deal, but it did give me the idea that math is a beautiful thing in and of itself, and it did something else that was more important.
It showed every kid at that camp that being smart was valuable and that being smart had a place alongside being strong, fast, and aggressive.
Again, I know that's a cheesy little story that doesn't do much but make me look pathetic, but maybe the activity can help someone looking to inspire a kid or two.
The Dalai LLama
...I was cool for an afternoon once, I promise...
My sig could be your sig!
Still, it beats torturing fish or shooting stuff.
My school library was full of books written by Asimov and Clarke, and we grew up aspiring to be pioneers in science and technology.
I thought the US would be like this, but after coming here, its been a disappointment. I'm just very sad, because given your resources and your intelligentsia, you could be so much more.
My only question is, what ever gave you the idea that America (outside the NASA research labs) would be some sort of scientific mecca? It's all over the news these days about all the craziness our administration is doing. Ask any Frenchman what he thinks of American culture. And didn't any of your Indian compatriots call you and tell you what it was really like here?
For some weird reason, immigrants have been coming to this country for over 100 years with some idea that this place was paradise, the streets were paved with gold, etc., just to wake up to bitter reality when they got here. Don't you guys ever watch the news? Or better yet, talk to other people that have already come here? Wake up! This country isn't any better than most out there. If you're looking for a better situation in your life, maybe you should try cleaning up your own backyard instead of abandoning your home and moving someplace else because you've heard some myths about it being wonderful there.
Thus, instead of spending money on basic research, or even any research at all, they spend it on marketing campaigns, creative accounting, and themselves.
They also spend it on teams of Indian engineers because they have completely saturated the local developers with their brilliant planning, but everything that everyone is working on is not what the customer wants. Quick short term fix- outsource.
And I don't think it's public education to blame, nor funding. If you took all the kids that actually wanted or cared to go to my high school, you would have needed about two classrooms. I think parenting is a huge factor here.
It used to be that American companies were focused on producing more and better products. Now, the focus is exclusively on how to crank out more expensive versions of the same crap. Also, the notorious shortsightedness of American companies has only gotten worse since the stock market has been inflated to a ridiculous, unsustainable level.
Case in point: Boeing. The Sonic Cruiser was something new and innovative - and was killed. The 7E7 is a more efficient, more polished version of the same thing they've been building for 20 or so years. After all, R&D costs money and you don't recoup those costs this quarter.
How do school vouchers only aid the rich? Last I checked, they enabled the non-rich to send their kids to something other than a failing public school. If the failing school loses enough students that they lose their funding and have to shut down, good riddance. Kids should not be condemned to failing schools just because some union employees need jobs. I feel really bad for good teachers who are passionate about kids learning. They really have an uphill battle in many aspects, but it simply does not help kids to shuffle them through inadequate schools and then give them a meaningless diploma.
None. Not one
I think you argue against your own point.
The good - if there be good under the terms of "the selfish gene" is diversity as you say.
immoral genes then are genes which reduce diversity.
Say for sake of argumant that we populate the planet by building huge polluting cities and breed in essence a select genome which can tolerate the effects of polution.
We would then eliminate the alternatiivee.
That is the crime in helping people.
When you help one person - you UNHELP another.
I know that is said in provocative langauage - and as a world traveller who has spent time in orphanges in budapest and other parts of hungary - the self righteous among you can park it for a moment.
I'm talking about institutionalized "help". I'm talking transfer of wealth.
Just for example.
in the US we have welfare - that takes money FROM ME and gives it to other people's children. As a result my wife an I decide not to have a second child.
That is a criminal wealth transfer which "helps" one family at the direct expense of another.
AIK
I think it's a good idea to pick out the top 1% and keep them challenged. The world's engineering muscle comes disproportionately from that top 1%. Also, making the top 1% excellent costs far less than making the bottom 50% mediocre. That goes for all dimensions, not just academics.
1972-1985, I remember learning addition up to 3rd grade and multiplication and division up to grade 6. Although I was helping neighbors with multiplication in kindergarten. American History covered the revolution up to about the civil war every year, 1st through 12th grade. Never reached WW1. 8th grade introduced algebra, 9th geometry and chemistry, and gee I had to start learning things!
What would have happened if I'd been challenged all the way along, instead of coasting until 9th grade? My grade school tried, but I was just one of hundreds of students. High school had about a dozen kids at my level, and we had some special classes. College had hundreds, but they were cherrypicking from across the country. I don't see how grade school could have done much better unless they gave me my own tutor, or sent me to a different school.
You seem to fail to see that a lot of our cool gadgets and high technology items have their roots in military research. Radar guns for instance, velcro, etc.
Plus military research has a habit of taking previous ideas and prototypes, and turning them into reliable machinery, like large aircraft, submarines (think exploratory subs), and even cars and trucks.
If you want someone to blame for the loss of scientific dominance, then blame ourselves. We allow government institutions like the patent office to continue stiffling innovation with meaningless patents (like software patents). We allow our representatives to draft and pass crazy laws like the DMCA that prevent reverse engineering so that our aspiring engineers cannot learn from the works of those that preceeded them.
Don't blame the budget, don't blame the government, blame us. We are the ones that allowed it to happen.
One problem with brain drain is we have people being sent by countries like China to earn advanced degrees here in the US. When they go home to China, they're generally not going to come back unless they hide in a cargo container. Technically I guess this isn't so much a drain on our pool of educated residents (or those desirous of residency) as it is a drain on our capacity to educate residents, but the result is the same.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The reason it wasn't a problem before that time was because intelligent women had zero opportunity elsewhere. They could teach, stay home, or get a menial manufacturing job.
I'm not saying the US doesn't have a problem, *BUT* counting the number of published papers is not the best indicator.
I remember scanning countless papers back in college and finding the majority to be lacking in useful information.
My belief is, papers are college student's tickets out of school and their status symbol (e.g., I've published 15 papers...hire me). The worst thing that can happen is that your paper is found to contain errors or is a repeat of another paper. The way to mitigate that risk is to make the papers very hard to understand or apply. Hence, you end up with a lot of impressive-looking but useless papers.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
If you were homeschooled, how can you say that high school doesn't make you sick of learning? I work in a high school where it feels like a battle to get students to "learn".
By-the-numbers being no prayer or teaching of creation?
No. I find it bizarre that you're jumping to that conclusion. By-the-numbers meaning one teacher for 28 students who has to follow a preset list of state-prescribed units with little time for instruction geared toward what individual students are attracted to.
Is then, why in the world CAN THESE PEOPLE NOT DO ALGEBRA and NOT READ? WHY IN THE FUCKING HELL DO MOST SEE SCHOOL AS HOOP TO JUMP THROUGH? If you were in complete control over an insitution where children will spend about 12 years of their life, 40 hours a week, you have an enourmous influence over these people and how they will be shaped. Yet you waste and toil away at ancient techniques of lecture-assign-exam-grade. You can do so much with this system yet you waste it?
The enviroment of school is the main reason why kids don't give a shit most of the time, unless someone else sparked a passion for something that gives them a self-educating drive.
You don't know the half of it. My girlfriend is a music teacher here in Illinois. Here, you have to have four years of teaching in order to get your final teaching cert. This would be all well and good, but they also require a certain level of post-grad training hours. Unfortunately the state has yet to determine what training is necessary for each teaching position in most cases. The cases where they did specify the training requirements, that information wasn't released until only two months remained before the certification deadline.
Teacher's aides are also now required to have at least an associates degree. Not the teachers, the aides! Here we have people who bust their asses to become teachers, jump through hoops, some hoops that aren't even fully constructed, and are having a hell of a time actually remaining teachers. It's as if Illinois is actively attempting to design a system specifically engineered to reject teaching as a valid career. These are the people that genuinely love teaching, but they can't make heads or tails of the constantly changing and increasingly difficult requirements. I can only imagine how many others simply threw up their hands in disgust and looked for teaching opportunities or careers elsewhere.
The sad things is, I doubt Illinois is an exception to the general state of education in the US itself.
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
The last time the US felt it was slipping was during the space race. All of a sudden it became important to have more scientists and engineers, and the schools reacted.
Well, after 20 years of refocusing on socialism, environmentalism and multiculturalism, perhaps this is what the US needs to swing things back. I guess the problem is that the teacher base is now so liberally entrenched with pseudo-science, anti-industry people making $30k a year that even public outcry may not be enough to make a difference to affect the NEA's status-quo.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
Did you ever study folk music?
Did you perhaps learn that lovely song "The Banks of the Ohio"?
Things are now a bit more graphic, though. Probably because of TV. But death and violence have both been among the top three, at least periodically, as far back as we have good records (late middle ages?) OTOH, some places have been grimmer than others, and one can often tell why. Foreign occupation, etc. Why the U.S. has become so grim is less clear. Probably, again, TV is to blame. The "average family" on TV is depicted as living in a way that only the wealthy can afford. So nearly everyone feels poor and downtrodden (by comparison).
Actually, I blame TV for a great host of the ills that are manifest in the modern US. And I blame ClearChannel & assoc., the RIAA, and the MPAA for much of the rest. They shape the cultural milieau...usually in a way that they don't expect, probably, but shape it they do.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Anybody that thinks that American students on the average are a bunch of clueless stupid losers is correct, inasmuch as that has ALWAYS been the case.
Based on a recent news national broadcast, cheating is endemic. Now, we not only have clueless, stupid losers, we have clueless, stupid losers masquerading as something they clearly are not. Problem is, since the diploma is the ticket, how it was acquired isn't a consideration when it comes to filling positions that are well paid and require reasonably intelligent people.
*sound of jaw hitting floor*
Sir, may I take your daughters to the prom? Both of them?
"Diversity is essential to survival"
Indeed and humans are not very genetically diverse.
Almost as bad as cheetahs. Well, maybe not *that* bad.
For all the different races of human, we have little genetic diversity; it might not be enough to save our asses.
Interbreed, damn you! Diversify! Embrace mutation!
Seriously.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
You can't tell me that "good plumbing" has improved our quality of life more than eradicating smallpox or inventing bubble-gum flavored amoxicillin or supplemental oxygen for people with emphysema.
No - I'm quite sure that I can. The benefit of moving good water in and bad water out is the fundamental requirement for dense population - which are the genesis of every other advantage in advanced civilizations. Taming water is the first milestone of progress.
And the point - is thaere is a huge return on taming water - there is much less of a return to society as a result of many of our highest paid professions:
Althlets ? - Plueeeze
Doctors - good - but more limited than we admit.
Lawyers - very low
Actors - also quite low
We have crafted a culture which is making little progress because the highest paid professions are not pulling the culture forward in terms of competing for a globally viable economy.
The standard of living we have attained is the transient effect of world servitude. We are trading in the equity of the honest economic gains of the two-working family in a fair employment industrial growth era ignited and fueled by WWII for a temporary peak in standard of living (expensive foriegn cars and cheap consumer goods).
And i sugegst here the reason is our focus is on four primary groups which cannot help us compete for quality of living in an open trade future.
We should refocus on skills which serve the end of world competition.
This is not to dis doctors lawyer and such, it is to point out that we need to undestand sustainable GNP.
Actually, lots of people don't need to be paid more. The market sets salaries and people get paid for what they produce. However, teachers produce a public good, and are therefore paid by the government, which doesn't need to justify expenses and inflow the same way a company does.
We need GOOD teachers who know their field. Teacher salaries should not be compared to the job market as a whole, they should be compared to the salaries of workers who have a bachelor's degree or better.
When it comes to the welfare of our economy as a whole, teacher's really deserve to make much more than they would in industry. Someone who is great at teaching math or science can help produce hundreds of new workers who are good in that field. The contributions made by these new workers will be much greater than that teacher's contribution would have been if they had gone into industry.
Admittedly, being a great worker and being a great teacher are not mutually inclusive, but a teacher needs to have skills in their field.
As the article cited by the parent points out there are differences in different levels of the education system. I don't mean to offend anyone, but 1st-3rd grade teachers may be getting the salary they deserve at present. At that level, they are basically day care workers whose knowledge doesn't need to go beyond that of a high school graduate. However as you move later in the education process, the teachers need to be more and more knowledgeable to keep up the the material they are teaching.
Don't be bitter. Just realize that in only a few decades your society will be far more wealthy than this one. Get you education, and go home with the prestige that supplies, and get yourself a good job in a country that's on the way up, not on the way down.
The US has always had a tendency to be anti-intellectual. It once didn't matter much, as things were simple enough that most people could understand them and make the correct decision. Now absolutely nobody can, and those who can face this are abused by those who can't. We can't even hope for enclaves that aren't polluted, as the only such groups are 1) those who neither watch TV nor listen to the radios (possibly the newspapers also figure in here, but they are a much weaker influence) and 2) those who are impervious to being influenced, because they already felt that way.
The first group is divided into those who voluntarily isolate themselves from society and those who are coerced into isolation (e.g., children of Memmonites). Neither the first nor the second group make suitable leaders for a civilization. And so we are left with those whose personalities and view of the world are shaped by TV and other popular media. Which, examination quickly reveals, is a very poor model of actual reality.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I got my physics Ph.D. five years ago, and the trends mentioned in the article are both readily apparent and not unexpected.
It's important to understand that the USA has been a relatively minor player in basic science for nearly all of its history. Since World War 2 there has been a temporary reversal of this situation, because:
Because of these factors as well as a relatively liberal immigration policy, good scientists flocked to the USA beginning in the late 1930's. Others have pointed out the critical role these folks played in the early US space program, the Manhattan project, etc. Now, with the rest of the world catching up in living standards and the Cold War ending, the USA is returning to its position as a relatively minor player in basic research.
The root cause of this secondary position is cultural. The USA tends to see everything through a very pragmatic lens, where applications are valued much more than the underlying knowledge. The people who can turn basic research into successful applications are held in highest regard, people like Thomas Edison and Jonas Salk. As a Ph.D. student by far the most common question people would ask is, "But what is your research good for?" -- the implication being that if there isn't another breakthrough product or hot IPO coming out the other end, it's just not valuable.
Europe and Asia, by contrast, have long traditions of valuing scholarship/knowledge for its own sake. The role models are Einstein, Darwin, Maxwell, Confucius -- discoverers rather than inventors. They have a greater cultural willingness to fund basic research, and a more highly-educated general population to understand the results. A large fraction of CEOs in Germany have Ph.D. degrees, more evidence of a greater cultural emphasis on academics and research.
Experimental high energy physics is a good example of the differing cultural attitudes. In the USA, this research was always justified on the basis of military advantage, or at least avoiding military disadvantage. Consequently, the end of the Cold War has meant the end of this research in the USA; in another 3-4 years the USA will be effectively out of the accelerator game, with no next-generation facility to compete with CERN's LHC. If you are an experimental high-energy physicist, better start learning French.
In our country, every kid goes to school and therefore the average of the intelligence is lower than in a country where only smart or rich kids have the opportunities.
This probably is why kids in other countries are more motivated by education because if they drop out they'll be in a sweatshop the rest of their life.
I don't think the issue here is that "america bad, rest of world good."
If you teach someone to do something one way for 17 years, and then say, no, you should also do it this other way for one year, what do you EXPECT the result to be?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I personally think that our comparatively crappy K-12 educational system,...
...an increased dominance of military research over core scientific research plays a big role.
I completely agree with this. People come to university level institutions without the core of knowledge and academic discipline necessary to be excellent.
I don't think so. I don't think military spending holds back scientific research, especially when I consider a bunch of that military spending ends up in the hands of academic researchers.
I think the main issue is getting quality education at the lower levels. I also think that part of the problem is that parents no longer teach their kids to love to learn, or even that education is important. Some parents now expect that someone else is supposed to teach their kids.
Shame! Parenting is essential to a child's education.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
You get stuff women really want: earning potential and stability.
It takes women a long time to wake up to this, however. I've seen and heard of so many women that constantly fall for loser guys who live in their parents' basement it's not even funny. Eventually, these women do wake up and smell the coffee, and start looking for those smart and stable guys they turned their noses up at in their youth, but now it's too late because they've become fat and have two kids, so these guys are no longer interested in them.
Its amazing what sticks with you, isn't it? I think I could probably knock out a chow-call if I had to...
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
If you look at large public schools, graduation rates aren't nearly as high, even over six years compared to five. The US News and World Report College issue shows a wide discrepency between public and private schools. The online version requires a premium description, so I can't provide a link. The fact remains that, to rephrase the post of the grandparent post: "Hell, most public universities overbook themselves at the undergraduate level on the basis that only 65% of students stay past their first year."
I'm sorry, but you are oversimplifying.
Now if you had, instead, said "there is no gene which is both widespread and 'bad'", then I would have agreed with you. But there are genes that will kill the possessor, there are genes which will turn you into an imbicile at the age of 5. There are worse ones. They do exist. Some are so bad, that they always arise as initial mutations, and are never inherited, because their possesors never survive long enough to leave descendants.
You argument is, in direction, correct, but it's so flawed that it demands correction. Diversity doesn't imply all possible choices. Some are so bad that they shouldn't be included. I believe that the gene coding for cytochrome-C has been preserved unchanged, and without any divergent choices, since before prokariots gave rise to eucariots (us, but also slugs and sponges and some algae). Diversity isn't always the right answer.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You don't need to be small and weak. I was one of the stronger kids in school. That meant that in high school I was merely ostracised. But I think that "no girlfriend" is a part of the definition of geek.
It *IS* a cultural thing. Definitely. I don't know that it's only a cultural thing, but it definitely is a cultural thing. And not a healthy one, though it probably used to be (before 1910) a lot less important.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
"Yes working harder gives callouses, but I know more truly happy people that work "low end grunt" jobs then I do the "smarter" professionals."
It is not the job that is smarter, but the person who applies their intelligence towards the task they have chosen to perform. Every job can be better done when smarts are applied.
David Goodstein, Vice Provost of CalTech on the collapse of the PhD pyramid scheme which drives science education in the USA and started to fail in the 1970s and, in his words: http://www.house.gov/science/goodstein_04-01.htm " In the course of a career, a professor in a research university turns out, on the average, about 15 Ph.D.'s. Many of these would like, themselves, to become in turn professors in research universities and turn out 15 more Ph.D.'s. After all, these were the gems that were selected at each stage of the mining and sorting operation. Becoming a professor seems to many of them the natural culmination of their successful educations. That is obviously one of the principal engines of the exponential growth that lasted for a hundred years in America. Those students are bitterly disappointed when they find out the jobs they want aren't there, and their disappointment seeps down through the ranks, turning younger students away from science. ... The problem, to reiterate, is that science education in America is designed to select a small group of elite scientists. An unintended but inevitable side effect is that everyone else is left out. As a consequence of that, 20,000 American high schools lack a single qualified physics teacher, half the math classes in American schools are taught by people who lack the qualifications to teach them, and companies will increasingly find themselves without the technical competence they need at all levels from the shop floor to the executive suite."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
U.S. Scientific Domininace has been outsourced to China/India/Pakistan/Korean Hooker. Please visit http://www.outsourcing.com/ for more details.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Actually, they can't. Fascist liberals took this right (and basic "service" that they owe to their children) away from them.
Uh, state what bill required schools to let kids pass due to "not feeling good about themselves?"
Also, the only way we can fix our school systems, not system, it's a system that's usually controlled at the county level, sometimes higher, sometimes lower. But we need consistent education, strict education and proper education. The only way we can do this is if we make education federally controlled.
I'd like to see the day when a school's funding and quality do not take a hit because it is in a poorer side of town. I lived in a well-off community while I was in middle school and had to go to a school in the ghetto just because that was the closest school to me. But because the school was in the ghetto, the building was dilapidated, the library was woefully understocked and the teachers didn't give a damn.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
After seeing the now infamous images of American military reservists and civilian contractors in the interrogation block of the Abu Ghraib detention facility, I am now seriously thinking about defecting to the West.
I know a thing or two about ground control and telemetry systems. I bet I can design a ground control system for a surveillance drone that would cost well under what the one for the Predator probably costs. All I need is a loan to cover relocation expenses and maybe some language classes. Anybody know if there are openings at Aerospatiale for a slightly-used American?
-
jhw
This system is absolutely ridiculous.
Are you trying to tell me that a smart 10 year old is the same thing as a dumb 13 year old?
~D
FWIW, according to http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20040504-0000002 7-mai-soci
Latest Japan youth poll -
what do you want to become when you grow up?
Boys:
#1 Soccer player
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I don't know what they've been teaching for each of the past 17 years. All I can attest to is what I've been taught for each of the past 2 years.
I'm not trying to disagree with the argument that the prime decision makers are focusing incorrectly on the short-term, I'm just pointing out that each of those individuals took what he/she wanted from their education.
If some arrogant self-centered dick goes to school for a business degree to make a ton of money, they are going to still be an arrogant self-centered dick when making decisions.
Don't blame the schools because a disproportionate number of people who've CHOSEN to go into business are short-sighted dicks.
I wouldn't normally do this, but considering the subject, I will:
It's phenomenon (phenomena is a greek plural)
I live down in Georgia, I moved here from Michigan. GA is the 50th in the country education. And when you visit the schools you can see it. The schools have adapted to just teach the basics, no pushing the kids. Good Lord, that scares me. My old highschool, Mona Shores, of Muskegon, MI, teaches Cisco networking, Novell, etc. Has a Criminal Justice Department, and the school is well funded for arts and sciences. We had the best teams, cept football. Got our @sses kicked every year. Why is most districts now afraid of spending the money on education as it seems. If my taxes go up, to support education, I will accept it. Its unacceptable to have some of the worst education in the nation, and we the US are really going downhill from what we used to be. I have friends my age in Russia, that have 2 masters, think nothing of it. Here people are just getting Bachlors.
SimonTek
As an engineer, I have to disagree with this. If I had kids, I'd want them to be inquisitive and intellectual, but I'd push them to stay the hell out of the engineering profession unless they're planning to start their own company. Having kids go into technical professions is just setting them up for unemployment or wage slavery.
And as for this "how can I help fix this" crap, there's nothing you can do to help. Unless you have a plan for making billions of dollars, then buying enough stock in all the tech companies to have controlling interest, and then firing all the Benedict Arnold CEOs and putting in new management that values keeping good employees around, compensating them well, and not selling out their country, then nothing is going to change.
... in K-12 education it's not cool to be smart ...
;-).
...
To be fair to the school system, we should not that this attitude has little to do with the schools. It pervades American society. There has long been a strong anti-intellectual steak in this society, though the schools try to counter it. But they're fighting a losing battle with the political and commercial system, which mostly prefer a citizenry that knows nothing.
Scientific training has long been a special target of American know-nothings. It's not a recent development. When I was in high school in the 1960's, the biology teachers skipped over the chapter on evolution, and told us clearly that we could read it ourselves, but if they taught anything on that topic, they would probably lose their job. In most of the schools, the only change is that many of the textbooks no longer mention the subject at all. This is because of the power of the religious fundamentalists in American society.
Some years back, Theodosius Dobzhansky made the famous remark that Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Now that the basic biological sciences are starting to make a significant impact on the world, we can expect that America will be left behind, because our schools can't teach the basic concept of the entire subject area. As a result, at the college level we're faced with students who treat biology as a pure memory exercise, since nothing makes any sense to them. The world is just incomprehensible magic, decreed by God.
About the only way it could be worse would be if our engineering schools were forbidden to teach mathematics, and were only permitted to represent numbers with Roman notation. At least the religious folks don't consider Arabic notation a heresy (though there have been those funny incidents in which legislators tried to decree a rational value for pi
It's similar in our favorite topic here. Despite the huge changes that computers and communications have brought to the world, the fact is that most of our schools don't teach these topics at all. Typically "computer literacy" means having watched the teacher use Internet Explorer and Outlook. It's rare for schools to allow anything more than token hands-on computer access, not enough to actually understand anything about the topic. And, of course, the few students to get interested in such topics usually become social outcasts. A kid who becomes knowledgeable in computer communications is invariably labelled a "hacker", and treated as a criminal.
American science and engineering has always strongly depended on immigrants and their children, because those are mostly the people who have a pro-education attitude. We can expect this to continue.
Of course, for us few weirdo nerds and geeks, it has been a pretty good deal. Better than slinging burgers for a living.
But we can expect that, as the rest of the world's education systems continue their improvement, America will probably be left behind. Well, it was fun while it lasted.
OTOH, maybe the rest of the world will commit economic and social suicide, as it did back in the 1940's. Stay tuned
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
From my weblog:
http://www.xminc.com/mt/archives/000085.html
Indias IITs overrated
When people talk about India as a place to invest they invariably mention the IITs; Indian Institutes of Technology. I visted a few of them in 1997 - and the students they graduate are the elite of India. A very bright bunch. No one seems to mention that only 4,000 of them graduate every year. Of that 1,900 are graduate degree holders.
That total is smaller than than one major university in the US such as Cornell despite the fact that there are six of them, for a country of almost 1 Billion. The majority of IIT graduates flee India for the US, Canada, UK and Austrailia. Few return.
Greater China meanwhile is the largest source of US foreign students. China has more that 60,000 graduates from US schools (4000 from top universities - Ivy League etc) per year. In the 1990s more that 40% of US Electrical Engineering Phds went to Taiwan Nationals (a country of only 22 Million). Most return to China or Taiwan.
According to UNESCO only 27 percent of children in India were enrolled in grade one. A lot of work needs to be done for general education. If too many foreign companies start business process outsourcing to India the market for knowledge workers will quickly become bleak.
China and Taiwan have school attendance rates comparable or superior to the US.
Indians have a tendancy migrating to Canada, UK, US or Australia. I think because they feel more at home with the language.
(ps my first post contained a typo WWI -> WWII)
I find it odd how many people from the State's think that they are actually doing any useful work by reading and posting on /. nevermind ass busting levels of work.
Just one person's story, perhaps it is illuminating.
I am an American; I got my PhD from a US computer science department about 8 years ago. For a variety of reasons, I ended up tasking an academic research job in Ireland.
I am generally not very impressed with European science funding models or the university systems. Individual European researchers: really fantastic; but governmental/societal support for science: generally a disaster.
But I will tell you in my particular case, the situation is quite fantastic. Ireland is quite different: the government is spending amount of huge amount of money on basic research; see www.sfi.ie details.
The bottom line is that my research funding possibilities are as food (if not better) than if I were in America. For example, I won a research grant that is [loosely] modelled on the NSF CAREER grant -- except that I got approximately twice as much money per year, for 5 years instead of 3. Furthermore, the money goes much farther: our overhead rate is 30% instead of 50%+ as is common at American universities. (Sorry to get into technical details here but academics reading this will understand the significance.)
For a variety of reasons -- mostly due to family connections etc -- it is likely that some point over the next five years, my family will return to America. Unlike all the stereotypes that you might hear, I can tell you that one of the things I worry about is how much harder I will need to work in America to maintain the same level of researech funding.
A quirk today will be a lifesaver in the future. The gene that we think of as "weak" and "polluting" will be the genes that resist infection or the onset of a new disease in the future.
Exactly:
http://sickle.bwh.harvard.edu/malaria_sickle.ht
Sickle trait provides a survival advantage over people with normal hemoglobin in regions where malaria is endemic. Sickle cell trait provides neither absolute protection nor invulnerability to the disease. Rather, people (and particularly children) infected with P. falciparum are more likely to survive the acute illness if they have sickle cell trait. When these people with sickle cell trait procreate, both the gene for normal hemoglobin and that for sickle hemoglobin are transmitted into the next generation.
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
Living life how you want = freedom = independence = bad for profits.
Submit or be labeled an unrealistic, idealistic, tree-hugging commie pinko hippie.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Actually, Only American TV reports the stuff that tries to scare people. For instance goto Canada, you won't find the news trying to scare the hell out of you. I think, we need a Major uprise, The way this country is going, is not good. We need a revolution. I want to leave, to go somewhere where science is Respected.
SimonTek
As the standard K-12 school system has deteriorated into a simmering bath of babysitters, many parents have taken notice.
I can't speak for other locations, but in California, the home-school and charter-school movement has been mushrooming.
Go to a local karate studio or gymnastics stadium, and you find probably greater than 75% of everybody is involved in some form of alternative educational system.
Parents really do want the best for their children, and a surprising number have decided that the standard school system is just no longer good enough.
In California, there's a very powerful teacher's union which largely has a deadlock on what's done in public schools. This has crushed California's once dominant educational system into something despised by intelligent adults.
And the jail break is on, in full force. I see it every day - my company now works with dozens of charter and alternative education schools to facilitate 100% funding of these alternative programs.
It's exciting, exhilerating, and loads of fun - and every night I sleep with the peaceful satisfaction of knowing that thousands of children across my state have an improved education due, in some small part, to my efforts for the day.
I am terrified of the implications of the declining scientific and educational standards amongst my people, and I'm doing what I can to help.
By supporting organizations such as Julian Charter School, HSC, and of course, my own company, CharterWorks, I'm doing my part to help.
Anybody can post on slashdot, but some people are doing something about it. Are you?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The attitude has fundamentally shifted from developing technology to acquiring technology from others. Expect to see more innovations bought from elsewhere rather than developed here.
It's nigh impossible for the Department of Education to get funding lately, especially here in Massachusetts. Sciences and creative arts especially are being cut left and right, as money is being filtered away to pay for Vietnam II.
After discussing this with a relative who works for the DoE, however, there is one gain to come of this...In a scramble to save money across cash-strapped states, much of New England is beginning to use free software licenses on much of the code they contract for online teacher registration programs, and the idea is spreading to other areas of the department.
You drink too much coffee, I drink too much stout.
They still have credit card debt because they never bothered to do the math.
The vast majority of dual income families have less free income at the end of the month that those same families would have if one of them stayed home.
Child care, added vehicle costs, more days of takeout food for dinner all adds up, quickly. Very few dual income families have the lower of the two incomes actually high enough to come out ahead, completely ignoring the factors around the happiness of their children, their own personal happiness, etc.
Don't discount the teachers of lower grades. The material may not be difficult, but understanding something yourself, and being able to make someone else understand it, are two diffrent things. The younger the kids the harder it is to explain stuff. Not to mention that those teachers are responcible for a good bit of the emotional development of thier kids.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
Washington Post is a conservative paper that tries to be liberal... They are also strongly pro-government (probably because most of their "stories" come from government insiders)...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
I work at a school (IT) and we homeschool our kids and I'm also Bible College graduate and ordained - marry & bury, the whole bit. I don't get how educated people keep banging the same gong, "Sure, homeschooled kids test high and are less likely to fall through the cracks of society - BUT they're not socialized, or they're crazed Christians, or freaks." This is sad coming from geeks who themselves have probably been on the ugly end of teasing from those who think, "Hey, if these guys are smarter than the average 'normal kid' - then we have to bring them down by some other measure." I know some smart homeschooled kids who fit the profile - got the brains but arrogant and not really that great fitting in. But this is an old argument against homeschooling and most modern homeschoolers are hip to the need to get their kids/students out and into the social mix. As far as the Creation thing goes - I think most Christians are now up to speed with a 'Creation Event'. How could they not be with Hawking and others freely using 'God' language?
Ugh. This is some pretty slanted and assuming stuff here.
:)
First off, you're right to a large extent. The US is not a scientific community. You won't earn respect from everyone just by being smart. But this isn't the picture it's painted to be.
US culture emphasizes excelling on all fronts and being an individual, exercising your freedom. This means that you follow your own passions, go where you want to and be good at every facet in your chosen path and in life.
If you're smart, that's a large step to getting there. But you also need passion and individuality. Second, you need life skills. A scientist is a wonderful thing, but a scientist without the ability to effectively communicate with someone not in his field is only good in the lab. You have to have social skills to relate, business skills to sell yourself, mental skills to do a good job and passion to do it well on your own will. Standing on your own feet and presenting a good face on all sides is what we value here. Some do a decent job of faking it -- it sucks, I know some of them. But most off, it's trial by fire. Sink or swim.
Jealousy, envy, rejection of 'being-smart-is-good' mentality? Sure. That's life. Some people are stupid and you'll never get rid of them. Deal with it.
Drug-heads? Boozers? Party animals? Sure. I can't call you wrong here. A lot of our culture emphasizes 'having a good time', 'being a kid', etc. especially during the college years. That said, you can't blame your whole experience on this.
As for your comment about leaders, I believe that it is misplaced. Leaders do a great job at organizing things, but culture is what drives who an American is and what our country values. Leaders do not. If our culture emphasizes 'having a good time', which unfortunately it does in some circles, the leaders can hold all the meetings they want and (in the case of a politician) pass law after law, but it won't do a damn bit of good. The people make a country great, not its leaders.
And in respect to you not growing up here, the opinion of a foreigner is very valuable, as is asking your neighbor or a friend what he thinks of you. But in the end, with all due respect, people who grew up in our education system have more of a right to speak to its merits with a critical eye. You must live the life and be critical to be qualified to give a valuable opinion, but it is not possible to be critical and not live here yet do the same. I think perhaps some Americans would do well to think about who is really qualified to give an opinion on all things American.
For me personally, I've had a number of run-ins with people who hated the smart folks. One year I picked up the nickname 'brain'. I was always the kid walking in just before the bell so I could grab 5 minutes with my science and history teachers to discuss nuclear physics, quantum theory, the Nazi political machine and the like. I am a geek.
When I looked around me, though, nobody seemed to share my passion. Nobody seemed to value doing their best and knowing as much as possible. I felt like the only kid in the school who cared. It was quite disconcerting.
But when it came down to it, my perception was due to my focus on specific interests and my lack of a non-bitter social face. I was hard to approach and deal with -- skills that I spoke of above. My school was not a lab environment, my school was a people environment with folks from all walks of life, not just the upper crust. When I learned to present a more friendly and open social face and attempt to relate to others instead of expect them to join me in my shell, things got better and I saw that people really did care, just not in the way that I did.
I doubt that my post will hold much meaning for you, you appear fairly set in your take on the situation, but perhaps an alternate view from someone in a similar situation might shed some insight on your experience here. Regardless of all, my best of wishes to you, from geek to geek.
Cheers
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
Miserable bunch, the whole lot of 'em.
Funny. I never thought of it in that context either. I guess that has to do with where I live (Northern California). I now see that this is perfectly fitting for somewhere in the bible belt. In our circle of friends, three families home-school their children. One family runs a groceries business, another is a UNIX consultant (has been for 20 years), and the third is a high level employee at Intel. Religion is the last thing in their minds. The reasons they home school is pretty much the same. Public schools are producing homogenized, lowest denominator, can't think different people. As an example, one family (who sends their children to the public school system) has a daughter who ranks 2nd in her class. Each year the school picks the first two kids for a special award. This year, they decided they had to pick a boy and a girl (in order to be "equal"). They dropped her and had to go down to the 8th in the queue (ranking) in order to get the boy. Is this fair? What is this telling the kids?
My daughter, who is in 4th grade, had already read all the books the teacher had asked the class to read this year. She asked if she could read one other book she had being wanting to read. The teacher told her she could not read it because it was "too hard" for the other kids and she would have an unfair advantage. Unfair what? Basically, you are put down if you think different or if you have "an advantage" over the other kids. You are told to be "equal", which invariably means being brought down to the lowest denominator. It's this "feel good" politically correct bullshit we live in.
America has lost respect for its people. People don't respect each other or themselves (how else do you explain an epidemic of obscenely obese people?) Oh! You can't say that. It's politically incorrect. Fuck it. It's a bunch of fat, lazy ass, wanting to feel good, useless pile of crap.
I'm not arguing the wisdom of home schooling, but I certainly see why those who choose to do so, do it.
Essentially kids would rather follow their peers off a cliff then listen to your preaching (no matter how right you are). You can give a child all the "opportunities" in the world and they won't mean shit if their friends tell them its uncool. So it's as easy to "mold" your child as it is to push a wet noodle.
What you can do is make sure your kid is surrounded by "good" kids. If he/she gets caught up in the wrong crowd, change schools or move. If your child is motivated to excel, he will, regardless of crappy teachers, crumbling schools and lack of funding.
In your what?!
You mean your school actually had classes for advanced students? That students operating above their grade level were not harassed by their teacher-coaches?
You went to a very, very good school compared to the average American NEA-infected jockstrap factory!
So of course the students respected achievement: they were taught to. Very few have it that good. The usual in my state is for coaches to double as science teachers, and illiterate union members to teach literature: the teachers themselves cannot operate at the grade level they teach.
I suppose I am jealous (really, ain't no supposin' to it!). If the administration of your school actually rewards rather than denigrates achievement, then you had it EASY.
Its a lot easier to blame it on everyone else then take some responsibility. Thats why you hear so many complaints about being beaten up and harassed.
You're so amazingly spoiled you don't understand how bad some people really do have it. So it's easy to see why you would blame the victims, when the hell they inhabit is not part of your spoiled worldview.
Advanced classes! Realize that most smart American students can only daydream of a school system that rewards intelligence. In most NEA-infected jockstrap factories, the students are taught to harass the smart kids.
[Even with your spoiled background, you were never taught the proper use of apostrophes, nor the difference between "then" and "than." I'm not usually a grammar Nazi, but when the subject is education and the post is dripping with snobbery, I cannot help but point out the irony.]
think that if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't have entered a technical field. Its great money comparitively when you're first starting out, but then it tops out when you're in your 30s. Most people change careers then. Now, in the past generations, the techies had lifelong jobs at IBM and GE. In this generation, we're all getting fucked. Its not surprising that attitudes regarding scientists have gone down.
If this country wants to produce more tech/sci geeks, then it better find a way to reward them better. Otherwise, tech/sci careers become like jury-duty: something that pays poorly, but is "good for the country".
In other low-wage nations sci/tech still pays pretty high. That is why they all bust their butts to go into sci/tech. In the US it pays better to go into managment, where you need shmoozing skills. You don't get those in Calculus class. The kids goofing off by talking in class are probably going to get the better jobs.
The US is becoming a bunch of know-nothing duplicitous marketers because THAT is where the rewards are. Stop blaming the students.
Table-ized A.I.
The typical geek (and i may get flamed for this but oh well) is somewhat scared/timid, and will retreat to that which they know best and get better at it, and shrink from the rest of the world. In order to change the stereo type, we need to fit in and get better at what we're not good at..
CONversely, the typical JOCK is intellectually scared/timid, and tends to shun, and retreat from situations where any mental demands are placed upon them, and on BOTH sides, some who are "Best at their own game" use that superiority as a tool to vie for social dominance. However, the smart geek is not going to be successful at luring a meathead linebacker into an humiliating game of Scrabble. But the meathead linebacker can EASILY force the smart geek into a test of physical prowess, by picking a fight with them. Along with that, goes a social stigma of "brainiacs" - (perfectly personified in a lot of today's conservative radio talk show, the disdain shown for so-called Liberal Elites). The intellectualism is berated, belittled, and scorned. Attempting to use logic or reasoning fails, of course, because while Enlightenment will always win - a complex case can never be defended in a world of sound-bites and short attention spans.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
But then you have to keep their children, whose biological fathers are the high school jocks. You lose.
You remind me of the Indian guy from Van Wilder... ;-)
Are you longing to dine at the American Pink Taco stand? Take it to the car wash?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
But seriously, I think you'll find that everybody in the US is different. It takes time and some trial and error to find where you fit in -- to find true friends and all that. Science is interesting, but science isn't everything (don't get me wrong, I would consider myself a "geek" since I work on computers all day++).
However, our lives are defined in relation to other people. What would life be without those people we care about and respect?
Good luck!
I went to High School in the seventies, the class valedictorian was by far the most respected student there.
Maybe it depends on the particular school. I went to HS in a rural area in the '60s, and it sure wasn't true there. It wasn't that kids got beat up (that was more in Junior High, ~7th grade), but the smart kids weren't particularly respected by the other students. Or most of the teachers, either, unless you sucked up to them. Gawd there were some awful teachers. Of course, maybe the music was to blame, there was Jerry Lee Lewis, and "Louie Louie" and the Beach Boys, and lewd singers who gyrated their hips and all.
We have gone through a long period of very abnormal conditions (devastating world wars, savagely anit-intellectual revolutions, unnecessary deprivation, etc). We are returning to a more natural period when more cultures will not be deprived of the opportunity to contribute to scientific advances. Just because our lives happen to be during this odd period does not mean there was anything normal or sustainable about it. Trying to fix "blame" for a return to something closer to equilibrium is particularly perverse.
Despite the sanctimonious choruses of condemnation about 'kids these days' my own personal observations of children, including my three, do not imply the nostalgia others invoke. It goes back at least to the ancient Greeks that people will always feel they are better than those that follow them. I know I didn't have bilingual education in my public elementary school (French used for essentially all courses), nor had as many (well any) AP courses in high school. I know my school orchestra was not even approximately as good. We didn't have Math Olympiad (which I did coach for eight years and there were some excellent students). I'd have to conclude students are better today than they've ever been in the US and they simply face better competition than before.
The beauty of this nation is that our children are encouraged to make life altering decisions that may affect the rest of their(our)lives. And to question authority. I rather have fewer motivated and productive scientists than a bunch of unhappy citizens. I'll bet a nickel that children in Asia and many other developing nations have very little control when it comes to deciding on their education. Besides, who's to say that a liberal arts major can't discover the next E=MC^2.
I've spent a LOT of time with students at UCLA over the last 10 years and I couldn't agree more. The culture has indeed changed over that decade and I can see the rift between those who believe in working hard for excellence itself and those who are movtivated by the almighty dollar alone.
-- America is becoming a sad culture indeed.
The same two things have been cited as influences on the way high ranked executives get paid.
I can't say for sure, but it is interesting.
You obviously have never been outside the US. I have friends in Poland who work for around 50c per hour, because thats the only work they can get. In America (or most other 1st world countries), you can work hard and get ahead (relatively speaking)
I'm 38 years old. When I went to public high-school the standard academic track required several years of foreign language, math through analytic geometry, history, etc. That was the standard track, there was the proletariate track but nobody from the proletariate is reading this anyway, and then there was the college prep track. That meant a year of high school calculus and several CP classes (you get college credit in hight school). This is just not the expectation in schools that I've been exposed to in the the last few years. We are getting lazy as a society. Most programmers that I meet who are fresh out of college are technicians at best (not academics). As a society we have to stop treating college like trade school, get off our fat bums and actually do some real studying. The people we are competing against are surely studying right now, and they are smart. I predict that most citizens will be driving delivery trucks and handing our cheeseburgers for a living soon. Wait a minute...
>The scientists that developed the LASER, RADAR, Were not American. Get your facts straight before you post.
Ok, maybe I was exaggerating a little. It's obviously a little better than that here. If you're just a blue-collar worker, there's lots of decent-paying jobs in this country (compared to some countries that have high unemployment, no minimum wage, etc.). If you're willing to work, you're not going to starve here. You won't be rich, but you'll survive.
But on the high end, it's not all roses here like some foreigners seem to think it is (until they get here). Getting a great education and a PhD isn't going to automatically get you a great job here; in fact, it may very well make you totally unemployable within that profession.
Yes, you can get ahead to a certain extent in the USA by working hard. But at a certain point, you hit a brick wall; after that, working hard doesn't get you anywhere at all. What's more important is who you know, what connections you have, who you pay off, if you were smart enough to go into the right professions to begin with (law, medicine), etc. Does some of this sound like other countries (the "who you know" part)? It should, because it's exactly my point. While things may be better for the people at the bottom here than in countries with no social programs, worker protections, minimum wage, etc., it's no better for highly educated people than anywhere else (and probably worse in fact).
I agree completely... This is not something that can be fixed with federal mandates or by just throwing money at it. The problem is the huge bureaucracy involved in the school system.
We take the teachers union to seriously. Instead of testing the students to measure results for a school district we should be rating teachers. Afterall by measuring the student we're bringing in thousands of external variables (parents involvement in teaching, students willingness to learn, etc). But the teachers union screams bloody murder anytime it's mentioned we should test/rate them.
We take the Political Correctness to seriously. Women Studies is not a degree, try to work in the field of Women's Studies and that should be obvious. Sure, you may get hired as a teacher, or the government may hire you but there's no place for you in the private sector. I'm picking on one major but there's many of them. Any major that isn't aimed towards a job at the private sector shouldn't be offered as a major in college (minors are fine).
We take sports to seriously. Funding for REAL education should not be diverted to sports, or building sports facilities. In fact all extra-curricular's should not be causing diverting of funds. These funds can be gathered privately or under a seperate budget item. But money budgetted for education should be spent on education.
At the price we pay per student, we could cut it in half per student to send them to private school. Where does all the waste in public school go? Adminstrators and Bureaucracy. The more federalized it gets, the more adminstrators we need.
Finally we're to afraid to deal with the troublemakers. A student shouldn't be allowed to interfere with others learning. If necessary seperate them into two classes, those being babysitted and those being taught. No parent wants to realize their child isn't going to get the best education. But they shouldn't be forced to impose this interference on other's children. Either shape up or ship out.
Oh ya.. teachers unions are evil.
I think you missed my point, your copy-paste-modify rant that you post every time you can work it in to a thread really has nothing to do at all with the story. It's just you standing up on the soap box, and it's getting old...
Oh yeah, I still want my questions answered.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
Not to be contrarian - but to be contrarian, why is it that every time new scores come out America is ALWAYS last? We were behind the Germans, then the Russians, then the Chinese, now Oh LORD, we're falling behind the Indians. Every few years we go through this where everyone suddenly wakes up and realizes the nation is behind....but behind at what? Everytime the rest of the world catches up - we change the focus and turn out all right. Look at recent history - Japan caught up to our traditional manufacturing and BAM - we take the Internet and run - moving to an information based economy. It isn't always pleasant, but it works. That's whats made this nation survive for so long. If anything - the greatest problem is that kids are being pushed so far and so fast - they no loinger have time to play. The best and brightest are scheduled from beginning of the day to the end and have no chance to dream the big thoughts and think how they will leave their mark on the world. I know this won't be popular here - but kids don't need calculus in high school - they need more English and Art. They can learn math when they decide what they want to do...they need english and art to learn how to build, how to change and how to take concepts from their head and make them a reality. They need to unlook their creativity. So I guess that while I think there are problems, I don't see the same problems. We won't lose dominance b/c of poor math skills, but rather from our lack of crativity and lack of desire to reshape the world.
But the question that really interests me is, just what is "basic science"? The author seems to equate it with "useless science"--that is, neat stuff that we can't see a use for. I guess one might feel moved to give money for the discovery of neat useless stuff...as long as the money belongs to someone else. If it's your money, wouldn't you prefer to invest it in endeavors that have some reasonable chance of yielding useful results? I would.
The super-collider (remember the super-collider?) is an excellent case in point. Here you had some guys who wanted the public to invest billions in a huge facility that would provide employment to physicists who would use it to shoot subatomic particles at other subatomic particles at very huge velocities. The problem is that no one could articulate what useful results this endeavor would yield. Indeed, no one managed to articulate any conceivable gain from building this thing, except money in the pockets of physicists who would then write papers that were incomprehensible even to other physicists. I'm not saying there weren't good reasons to build the super-collider, just that if there were such reasons, no one managed to state them clearly. So what did we lose by not building it?
I guess I just don't see why we should subsidize something--especially something hugely expensive--just because some scientists think it's neat. Maybe I'm wrong...but can someone provide examples of massive government funding directed at research that had no practical end, but resulted in a major breakthrough? And tell me please, if a project results in a breakthrough, is it still "basic science"? --Oops, we made a mistake, this thing is useful, let's kill it!
Frankly, I think that this claim that we ought to support useless research is a pretty strange one, and I would like to see some argument for it.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
That my friend is completely and utterly true. Listen up geeks, that is what the ladies really notice. Growing up, I've always known I was a geek. When I entered high school, I was 6'4" and 190lbs, not a small guy but certainly not the most intimidating. I carried into high school the geek tendancies of meekness and introverision that I'm sure many here are all so familiar with. I was quite the geek in junior high, locking myself in my room teaching myself Pascal and assembly on my 286. Junior high was truly cruel, and going to a high school that nobody from my junior high went to allowed me the opportunity to reinvent myself.
I was able to overcome my tendancies and wore a certain air of confidence, balanced with humility. I tried out for and made the swim and basketball teams and before graduation, I was a starting center and captain of the swim team. The best thing I ever did was force myself to put it all out there.
It is truly scary putting it all out on the line, not knowing if you are going to look completely stupid in front of your peers. Even though I still got the occasional crap from folks (it's high school, this happens) for the most part, I received respect from everyone but the complete and utter jerks. Although my size discouraged a lot, a few people picked fights with me in high school. I did not start any, but refused to back down, even if I thought I had an honest chance of getting hurt. I can recall one particular incident where a 300+lb 6"4'+ linebacker was trying to start a fight. When he noticed that I was not going to be intimidated or back down, he let it drop and walked away. Whenever we passed each other afterwards we always had choice words, but he never tried to physically intimidate me again. There was a good chance that he could have completely kicked my ass and I was honestly scared, but did not show it and let my confidence carry me through.
Let me tell you, the ladies also took notice. That is what they responded to folks, confidence. They do not want to date pussies; they want a man who will stand up for what he is, try his best, and never be ashamed or back down. For as much derision as the jocks get on this website, this is one thing they have figured out and there is no reason that geeks can't learn from this. Although I ultimately went the geek route, receiving my EE in semiconductor device physics, I've never forgotten those lessons in self assurance and confidence and have brought them with me to the workforce. I did have certain physical advantages that helped me to excel at those sports, but I assure you that it was almost purely mental. It may seem impossible, but I am absolutely convinced that anyone can do it.
Yes there are bad genes. The ones specifically unable to sustain life.
I would say its a fair argument to argue that children should be allowed to be born with genetic disorders. However if they're (for example) going to need to be hooked up to a dialysis machine twice a day for the rest of their life are these genes worth propogating.
From an inhuman and for the future human race perspective... We should let all genes have a chance, but also let them naturally fail where they happen to do so.
If the demand for private schools, and the funding to go along with that demand, were to increase, wouldn't that make it a lot more financially feasible to operate a private school? And if that were the case, wouldn't more people start schools who would have previously been unable to? What you described could very easily happen in the short term, but long term, I think more churches and other organizations would start new schools. Its difficult, but I know of several churches in my area that have recently opened their own schools. And its not necessarily limited to churches. Private corporations could get into the school business, too. With parents controlling where their kids attend school, anyone running a school would have a strong incentive to make it perform well.
Some HS children DO come out great, while others merely do well. It's not the goal of most homeschool families to turn out a great child, but rather to allow them to follow a path of their choosing. US Public Schools try to cram every kid into the same GD mold. That's the real problem.
Some kids suceed DESPITE the school system.
Peace,
Jim
The USA 'dominates' because they buy in the people and the work. If people get sick of moving projects to the USA then it LOOKS like USA is loosing, but really it's more a case of people doing the work in their own country. For years business has moved low end jobs off-shore, now it has come back to bite them.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Having the chutzpah is not the hard part--the hard part is tempering it with enough self-control such that you don't end up filling up the body bags and going to the big house. Western men are expected to maintain exactly the correct amount of machismo. In a utopian society, machismo would not be necessary. And in a primitive one, it was open ended. Both scenarios are far easier to manage than being a "post-modern man," responsible for his parameterized manliness, IMO.
This kid who was told she couldn't read a book because it was too hard for the other kids... what's stopping her from reading the book anyway? Why does she need the teacher's permission, to what, get extra credit? That's what the teacher didn't want to do. Too lazy to rearrange his gradebook, I surmise.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
WTF? Why would you have to "settle" with the IRS? They can't stop you from just packing up and leaving the country. Coming back, maybe.
Last time I checked, the biggest problem in emigrating to NZ was that they had very strict rules governing who was allowed in, though I think having a job offer with a NZ company was very helpful.
Parents who hate kids who complain about schoolwork.
"This work is too hard! I have to help my son with it and I dont' even understand it. He's a genius that deserves better grades so he can go to college. I'm going to join the PTA and bitch and moan."
Blah blah blah. You know the deal.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The current administation uses wishful thinking and political belief rather than science to make decisions, and misrepresents their own scientific reports, and that is the problem.
Luckily for the world, Germany did the same thing by dismissing the "Jewish Science" of Einstein and others and didn't seriously pursue the atom bomb.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Yes, it does.
He was born in Manhattan.
Get your facts straight, and stop thinking all Americans have last names like "Smith".
The Manhattan Project was staffed by a mix of immigrants and native born Americans. As are most projects in America, a land full of immigrants and descendants of immigrants.
This whole debate is silly.
I'm glad you're here, and I'm sorry you're so disappointed in the U.S. In your spare time, take an American history course and you will be surprised at some things. The U.S. has *always* been full of people that questioned and defied and even rebelled against the elites. It's part of our national character, and for better or worse it means there is a substantial chunk of anti-intellectualism here. Europe, east Asia, and India are places with relatively ancient cultures where learning is cherished and respected. Not so the U.S.
However, what the U.S. really has to offer is openmindedness. You can come here with a wacky idea, and you're guaranteed to find someone who will back your idea. It's what made the economy so successful.
Nice, orderly, disciplined schools are a foreign concept bolted onto the American culture with mixed results. Here in Boston, there used to be outstanding public schools such as Boston Latin, and today the teachers don't even bother to assign homework because the kids simply won't do it. On the other hand, African-Americans and Jews and lots of others were not allowed into certain schools and universities and clubs and parks and jobs, and now they (increasingly) are.
Two world wars brought about a kind of heirarchical discipline in American society that has now broken down; however we do have more freedom, Patriot Act notwithstanding. The U.S. is in a chaotic time in its history but the odds are that it will gather its wits and make a comeback yet again.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Yeah and my code does not have bugs. It just has features users don't understand yet.
I grew up in the Fulda Gap, where did you?
The problem here is that when H-1b/L-1 visas were expanded, there were no protections to prevent those programs from displacing US citizens--and those programs have specifically displaced those with a scientific or technical inclination. What that means is that if you can do other kinds of work, you may have a strong incentive to do so.
I would strongly diagree with this. They shouldn't be considered as 'day-care' workers. The fact that at many times people view them as such in no way helps the U.S. educational system. Children in these grades can learn quite rapidly - with good teachers. That's why those teaching the youngest students need to be bright and creative, and have good training. The parents are at fault for not doing their part in educating young children. Just letting the kids sit in front of the boob-tube when they're not in school is not a way to ensure their success later in life.
I worked for a NSF project. My project was my first job out of college and I knew it would fail. NSF will throw at anything and not require justification. I guess you only need a PhD to get funding.
At 5'8 and 170 I'ld say you were a bit on the chubby side. Most of the young men that I graduated from high school with would have weighed less, myself included.
I saw Robert Winston, best known as the presenter of the BBC series "The Human Body", briefly touch on this issue on some TV talk show. In terms of biology, He felt that scientists in the USA had focussed on the Human Genome project for many years and neglected other areas of biology, such as stem cell research... It is possible that American scientists have excelled in some areas of science due to a National focus while other fields have lost prominence, giving the impression that the USA is falling behind... Perhaps "competition" isn't such a good thing if it means that many scientists are either duplicating each other's work, or not sharing knowledge and breakthroughs freely when their efforts could be more effectivly spread over a range of projects. ANyway, that was his opinion about biology/ medical science in the USA, may not be true for other disciplines such as physics / chemistry etc etc. I can't think of an aspect of chemistry which has received as much press or public attention as the Human Genome project had for biologists.....
Putting syrup in coffee is some form of blasphemy.
In response to this and another reply:
I realized this might be a point of contention and misunderstanding. I don't want to discount the importance of earlier grades, etc. However, the fact is that teachers at all level need teaching skills. These are important skills and also differ among the "grades" in our education system, but beyond those skills, the skills of teachers at lower levels are comparable to those of day-care workers. They need to be able to supervise and provide discipline for young children. They also need to impart knowledge, but this knowledge is at a low enough level that most high school graduates SHOULD be able to handle this. On the other hand as you advance up the ladder you need people who have more knowledge and less skill as disciplinarians.
I don't mean to degrade or demean elementary school teachers. My mother is an elementary school teacher and I know that I could never do her job, but I also know that she would not be a good teacher at the high school level or very marketable to companies not in the education or child care fields.
The US has been a "minor player" in "basic science" for most of its history except for the time after WW II? That's an odd assertion. First of all, a good portion of all the interesting scientific stuff has happened since WW II, so this is sort of like saying "Motor racing was not a popular past-time in the United States, except for the period beginning circa 1900".
Of course, science did not start in 1940. In fact, many of the discoveries that underlie our modern technology were made prior to 1940, notably electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. My point is that US scientists played a relatively minor role in these discoveries; read the history, and you will see names like Maxwell, Faraday, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger. I'm not saying this is good or bad, but just objectively pointing out the USA's minor role in these developments.
I guess I just don't see why we should subsidize something--especially something hugely expensive--just because some scientists think it's neat. Frankly, I think that this claim that we ought to support useless research is a pretty strange one, and I would like to see some argument for it.
If only scientists think a discovery is neat and there's no hope of communicating its importance to the general public, then it does become a problem. As scientists I think we owe it to our funders (the public) to explain what we do and its importance. Sometimes this is relatively easy (the human genome project, the Hubble Space Telescope), sometimes it isn't (particle physics). And American scientists have a particularly difficult time reaching their audience, given the relative lack of science education within the general taxpayer population.
You also seem to be equating "useless" with "no immediate practical payoff". I disagree with this view; I think the day we as a species stop thinking about the Big Impractical Questions (how did we get here?, is there other life in the universe? etc.) is the day we deserve to get snuffed out.
The pay issue is red herring raised by the NEA in order to portray their members as 'oppressed'. (Which is the default position for all unions, which exist to protect their own existence, individual members be dammed.) If the unions really wanted to occupy the moral high ground they claim to, they'd support competency testing.
Point taken. ;-)
I should have said, "the intolerant culture warriors of the right wing". Like most people I have some right wing and some left wing values, which is why I am so appalled by those who would reduce America's major cultural and foreign policy issues down to a set of simplistic interpretations of the Bible, untainted by history, science, or complex economic theory.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
But I'm sure every generation for the past 200 years has said that, "Kids today aren't willing to work as hard". It can't have been true every time, or otherwise we would have died out by now.
Yes. I once saw a translation of an Ægyptian scroll which detailed the declination of their society and the problems of their disrespectful and recalcitrant youth.
Some things never change.
But, then again, where is Ægypt now?
I know that I'm leaving after my school is over. I'm a UNIX admin for an ISP without a highschool degree. There is nowhere to go but "over". Over being the "dark side", or europe.
I just wish I would have remembered my German!
Who do I have to blackmail to get some representation around here!?!?!?!?
My dad told me how in Pittsburgh in the 50s, the high school's chemistry class did real chemistry with real reagents. My high school in FL (half an hour south of Kennedey Space Center) in the late 90s had at least four science labs, but never used them because school couldn't get insurance for accidents. The public schools in Brevard County don't let the students actually use chemicals until community college.
Maybe we should try and just live within our means, even if it does mean not wearing the latest fashions, etc?
Speaking of the latest fashions, why is it that the latest fashion is different from the one of the same season the year before? The fashion industry has done a bang-up job of convincing Americans (especially women, no offense but your fashions tend to change more drastically each year than men's) that we need a new look every year. Of course, to achieve this look we must buy new clothes each season b/c what looked good last season isn't what looks good this season. What a racket...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
"homeschooled children either come out academically great (and/or religiously brainwashed to hell, but i'll say no more about that aspect of it for the moment)"
Don't they have to meet the same standards as other students to get their diploma, though? If so, how are they any more/less brainwashed than others?
"but this is for a simple reason: the process is self-selective. those who are excited and passionate about home schooling do it, and thus no wonder their kids turn out better than average."
So what are you proposing? Forcing all students to do exactly the same thing in exactly the same classes with exactly the same expectations and no room for individual effort or personal accomplishment? Should "those who are excited and passionate about home schooling" be barred from doing it simply because of that?
We should continue mandating 12 years of incarceration with no due process? After all, most schools treat their student bodies as a prison population anyway...
And before anybody accuses me of setting up a straw man, please explain to me how the parent's post isn't against individual choice?
This too, but one can't simply blame "parents". I've seen that happen before, and its not messy - specifically, I've seen teachers convince themselves that not only is nothing bad their fault and that they're responsible for everything good, but that they can't do anything about it. There's a whole lot of factors that contribute - the media, parents, teachers, politicians, other kids...
When it comes down to it, I think one of the problems is that we expect people to be robots, and punish them when they're not. So people think in the short-term, and follow the rules, and try not to stand out.
Er. Seen that before and it is messy. That'll teach me not to preview more closely. ;)
I saw some research into this a while back [like 5-7 years]. It turns out that, for a family, a 2nd income needs to be more than ~35k$ to offset the increased costs of not having a home-maker [in re the United States].
It is important to note that this was not a calculated "equivalent income" when hired out [which would be about twice that value]. This is in terms of the additional costs incurred by not having someone taking care of the house/kids, the higher taxes on both incomes that result, etc. It also did not account for the increased medical and crime problems that also correlate.
Most incomes are less than 25k$, so most dual-income families are probably doing themselves a disservice.
Our family went to single income and we do OK [my wife decided she hated her research job anyway, "Most scientists aren't"]. We gave up the 2nd car [garaged my 60's muscle car], which saves 200$+/month in gas/maintenance/insurance [that's 3.3k$ pre-tax per year]. That, and cancelling niceties like broadband/cable, and we can afford to keep out little house in a God-awful bullet-ridden neighbourhood.
The irony: [and this is germane to many comments, above]. If I we didn't make these financially conservative moves and went towards foreclosure we would have qualified to get one of the newer, larger, and much better assisted-income "Habitat for Humanity" houses one block up the street.
Analysts on the other hand, place a tremendous amount of value on R&D spending. That IS a long term effect.
They definitely don't say its a bad thing. But what I've noticed is that it doesn't tend to get mentioned at all when evaluating a company. There's all sorts of other figures that get tossed around but, somehow, R&D spending just tends to fall by the wayside. And when was the last time a company made a big deal over increasing R&D spending? Not recently, that's for sure, because it rarely happens. They do make a big deal over government R&D grants, but those don't cost THEM anything...
Yes, some companies still do research. Microsoft, IBM, most drug companies... But most of it is, again, short-term-focused. They're working on producing a product that'll sell well in five months' time, not one that'll revolutionize the world in five years.
I come here and notice that being smart or good is being made fun of - this, despite the fact that I'm in one of the US's top engineering schools. The ones with the social life are the ones who show off or the ones who throw ball. Even here, being really smart or nerdy is looked down. People do not respect the need for some of us to be introverted and reclusive, and people are branded as obnoxious or stereotyped as nerds or geeks, most often in a derogatory manner.
I assume you attend a school that is a large university. Since American universities try to be everything to everybody there are diverse groups on campus. The jocks and cool people will take over the social environment because they have been encouraged to do so all their life. It is usually beneficial to attend a small and more focused school that encourages hard work. At my school it is normal to see people working in the CS building on Friday afternoons, Saturdays, and Sundays. At other universities in my state that is not very common.
Well, children do get more intelligent as they age.
I'm assuming he's confusing it with the Washington Times, which is a right-wing paper, but also in which said article does not appear.
Yeah, I agree here. It would only be a waste of money if they were second best. A first-rate army that can kick the ass of anyone else's in the world is worth every penny. Of course barring fraud, weapon systems that don't work, etc.
I think it is very, very important to be able to say (and act upon) "Our military is the best." We are number 1 and there is only 1 country out there that can say that. Being on top is worth a few billion dollars.
Although, our losses in Iraq, I hear, are influenced by the fact that these people have lots and lots of antitank weapons floating around. A good model for the U.S. to follow. I think an RPG in every closet would be good, anywhere.
I did NOT learn everything I need to know in kindergarten.
Just because it may be military spending doesn't mean there is a decline in scientific research. Yes, perhaps specific kinds of scientific research, but how much of what we use now was at one time part of some military research.
Internet, GPS, Satellite, Computers, Commerical Jet Aviation...
We may not see immediate effects of military spending but sooner or later research will trickle into view of the public.
Necessity is the mother of all invention. And the military needs a lot of new technology to fight the war on terror, as well as warfare in general. Lest we go back to carpet bombing, and lined formation advances on opponents 50 yards away.
"Hard work never killed anyone." -- Some Dead Guy
Einstein sent a letter to Roosevelt advising him of the possibility. That sounds a lot like 'insight' to me. And 'marginally correct' data from someone posting with an account is significantly more substantial than the inconsequential rantings of an AC.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
I am a High School Science teacher. I'm certified for Chemistry and Physics and am working on a M.S. in Geosciences. I live and breathe science and science education. The problem is lack of funding for education at ALL levels. I am unable to do many labs not because of insurance, but because I can't afford to buy the reagents in the first place.
Due to budget cuts, I have 36-40 students in a lab classroom designed for 28. I have $200 per year to spend on consumables and to replace broken equipment.
Why do I have overcrowded classrooms and in essence no money?
Society does not want to pay for education. We elect politicians who do not think any further than their next election campaign and what will show results by then. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is a perfect example. The authors think that by testing the students they will improve. BS! Those that improve are just taught how to take the test. Teaching to the test does not improve education, it only affects test scores.
Society needs to realize that to regain our dominance in all areas, not just science, we need to fund our schools. Increased funding will first of all arm our current teachers with the tools they need. It will also in the long run attract better people to teaching.
We need to realize that we will not see a substantive change for at least 5 years, and it may take 10 years to see that it works. This is longer than most politicians are in office.
Now I'll step down from my soapbox.
Amazing. Someone actually discovered that there IS intelligent life outside the USA.
What a complete crock this article was. Do Americans really think that they are the only intelligent people in the world, and that scientific discovery and innovation is their sole preserve? When will you blinkered sheeplike people realise that there is a whole world outside of the borders of the United States, and that there is more happening in that world than simply Iraq, or whatever has the current American interest? You think that having your Congress throw more money at the problem will fix it? Maybe, if you throw it at the right places (public education would be a good start). More importantly though, Americans need to pull their heads out of their Stars and Striped asses, and understand that they are part of a global community, and that others in that community can make just as valid a contribution in areas such as science, or anything else.
Mr., It causes me actual regret to inform you that your plan is bullshit. I know you beleive strongly in it, I know you think it would work. I think you mean well.
But what you have proposed, except for unionizing IT, is not only wrong, but it would not work.
A heavily industrialized society, like ours, is dependent on everyone to do their jobs. A first-world nation, like ours, depends not on some mysterious uber-class of workers, but on all of them. Or more properly, on a supermajority of the set of all workers showing up, on time, every day, to work. The massive strike of an entire profession, ignoring the impossiblity, would not have the desired effect. (eliminating the draft)
America would be severely harmed without IT. It would also be hurt without:
1. Bankers
2. Garbage men
3. Road construction workers
4. Postal workers
5. Agricultural workers
6. Supermarket workers
7. Factory workers
8. CEO's
9. To some degree, everyone.
People have been proposing revolutions and mass upsets like yours at least since Marx. I can think of no case where they acheived what they wanted.
You know, I read "Steal this Book". It really blew me away. Not the groovy little statements ("Stay away from all needle drugs. The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon"). Not the dubious bomb-making recipes. What surprised me was the moral bankruptcy of it.
You see, it blew me away that actually beleived this stuff. The few moral statements were mostly "The establishment like these people, so we hate them. The establishment hates these people, so we like them." The book supported cuba, loved the vietnamese, hated money, (but were not above using small amounts of it), hated "the establishment" but demanded legal rights, and essentially justified any and all actions by simply claiming that "the establishment" had done worse, so it was fine to cheat, vandalize, steal, and even murder.
Now obivously you didn't write that book, but what you advocate seems to stem from and refer to those same ideals from that same time frame.
Your idea that a massive strike and shutdown of the nation's infrastructure could somehow result in massive, unbreakable laws is a seductive fiction. I suggest you read somewhat about the early days of labor unions. (turn of the century)
A strike would work for getting better pay, and conditions. Trying to force the government into doing our bidding by holding a gun to its head will not work.
Incidentally, as voting citizens, we are the government.
I like you union idea. The rest of it is crap.
I did NOT learn everything I need to know in kindergarten.
Don't knock killing ability. The ability to kill quickly and effeciently is what separates Humans from animals.
If I had to tell an Extra-Terrestrial the one thing that humans were best at, I would say "Well, we are fantastically good at killing each other. What did you say you were best at?"
And if it told me anything but that, I would be EXTREMELY suspicious. I mean, this thing crossed interstellar space and it is not the best killer it has ever met? I would find that hard to beleive.
And don't forget: the fact that we have survived this last 50-some years is due to restraint on the part of one or two or three countries.
In addition, I think we would actually have a chance if hostile aliens did come to earth. Humans are the best killers on earth above the level of cockroaches. And on earth, we humans have been locked in a death struggle for dominance with one another for all of our history. And the current winner is: The United States Of America.
The U.S. is on top of the food chain of history, and I am willing to both die, and kill others, to keep it there.
On a tangent, I think this is why humans are so fascinated by sharks. We are the top predator on earth. Sharks are the top in water. We could exterminate them if we wanted, but it engrosses us to see such a finely evolved klling machine, being ourselves the best on earth.
I did NOT learn everything I need to know in kindergarten.
I grew up in India as well and I think this guy is full of shit. Even today hundreds and thousands of Indians cue up at the US embassy for their visas. Indian education is (IMO) backward and outdated and has been like this for years. The only thing he's right about is the respect for acamedics that is peculiar to India. This happens even at a cost to sports and extracurricular activities (which btw isn't a good thing). And as with all things, even this attitude is changing. Nowadays in India, its all about who's in IT and who isnt, who's earning the big-bucks and who isn't.
When you help one person - you UNHELP another.
Ah...? If I help you...I have unhelped someone else. Really. Are you saying that "help" is a zero sum game? You aren't just saying that if one person gets help, one person doesn't (clearly a true statement), you are saying that if one person gets help one person gets anti-help.
Welfare takes money from the government, they have already taken your taxes. If welfare were abolished tomorrow you wouldn't get any more money.
None of your ramblings has anything to do with arguing any kind of point about gene selection and being for or against medical treatment.
I'd say we are quite diversified. Our genome is incredibly complex and chock full of hearty mutation potential. But even if we aren't, all the more reason to not actively try and eliminate "bad" genes.
> What "very large percentage"? For a winner to be counted
/. Still, "large percentage" leaves quite some room for interpretation, and looking just at the Physics laureates of the last ten years, quite a few were born and educated abroad and received the award while at a US institution. You can bet those universities still claim those awards as "theirs". In fact you can find links to the most popular alma maters at http://almaz.com/nobel/alma.html.
> as an American, he has to be a US citizen.
I started digging through www.nobel.se to do some checking, but it's quite a pain to get all the details of place of birth, citizenship, etc, too much in fact for winning an argument on
> The fact is, if anything, Americans are over educated.
Indeed, particularly linguistically. The extent to which you elaborated (i.e. needing a degree for data entry) is quite flimsy and doesn't prove anything. I finished high school in Australia and did the final 2.5 years of my CS degree in the US, and frankly the only math above and beyond what I learned in high school were differential equations and a teensey bit of extra linear algebra. In English I was regressed back to grade 11 level or so, and in the sciences I can't say I learned significantly much beyond high school level in Australia. What does that mean? Mostly that Americans are futzing around in high school doing who knows what, deferring a lot of vital learning till college. Too bad for those who never end up going to college, I guess they can make up the idiot masses. So especially for someone with a "liberal arts" degree, requiring a college degree essentially means requiring the equivalent of a high school degree of many other countries. Your "over education" mileage may vary depending on the frame of reference.
The sad thing is that this is not just an American problem... Whereas America is spending all it's mental and fiscal resources on millitaristic endeavors, The EU is allowing the pay of scientist throughout Europe to be so low, that many cannot survive on an scientist's wage, and these scientists feel oblidged to move to America to find work that actually pays.
I have an acquaintance... a brilliant astronomer, a member of the EOS, and he barely makes enough money to feed himself. Protests throughout Europe over the last few weeks point out the terrible conditions in th EU.
Not surprising, a new outsourcing binge is beginning to happen in the biotect arena as India ramps up to provide cheap talent for biological research. It points to a growing fallacy, that we don't need to be smart or hardworking to succeed. To a growing idea that we can just threaten the world into giving us what we want, by having the biggest bombs and delivery systems.
Our society has always been suspicious of smart people... treated them as social inferiors... however, it's only been a recent phenomenon, that we've abandoned wisdom at a national level. It points to a growing trend in society, romanticizing the moronic, choosing leaders because their "ignorance" makes them feel homey, and "Someone we can identify with.". Whatever became of the idea that one should put their best and brightest in positions of decision making... is the idea of statesmenship passe'? If we cannot maintain an intelligent leadership, then outsourcing science becomes one more area where the ability to make intelligent choices and decisions vanishes from our shores. Human beings are driven by powerful emotions and instincts, it is only through self discipline and profound understanding that we as people ever rise above, blind fear, greed, kneejerk revenge, or pointless self justification. Our future success as a civilization depends on our ability to make critical choices. Einstein said that we will not find solutions to todays problems using the same level of thinking that created them. We must work diligently to create a strong body of educated, free thinking, creative, and courageous intellects if we want to have any hope of achieving a future worth inhabiting. The alternatives are too sad or frightenin to even dwell on. We need to stop romanticizing the "Gumpifaction" of the common man, and we need to aspire (as a society) to something dramatically greater for ourselves and our posterity.
Genda
Australia also suffers from a terrible anti-intellectual culture. Of course, the world's media and artists are mostly anti-intellectual, and cater for the lowest common denominator so it's really no wonder. Our schools and universities are a joke as all the people who were capable of innovative or original thought have upped and left. The rest are just warming chairs, whilst the government of the day makes more funding cut backs.
MTV is a good example of how deplorable criminals and their low brow culture are promoted to children (such as Puff Daddy et al).
Personally, I'm considering moving to a country like Ireland or France, that actively supports scientific and artistic achivements. The bright people here are wasted on these cretins and their knuckle dragging education systems.
When I think of all the things I'm still teaching myself (for example vedic mathematics) that my school and university failed to even know about let alone mention, it's enough to make me weep.
I couldn't agree with you more. I get so tired of people saying that our public schools are in trouble only because of lack of funding. Growing up, my school system did not have tons of money, but it did have teachers who actually knew something and who enforced discipline. This is completely absent in many schools, in which the kids basically run the classroom. Even with this structure, my high school still had problems simply because of the American cultural problems you mention. I went to an engineering school for college where most of the students were not from the U.S. It was refreshing being around people who were simply living their life and trying to do their best in school, not trying to impress people and keep up an image.
Yes, good teachers are very important, and they do require money, but the most important things holding our public education system back is lack of dicipline in schools and our scewed up values which stress superficial things over learning and bettering yourself. Unless this changes, our country will never get back on track.
Also, I hope that India and other Asian countries don't get caught up in the retarded youth rebellion culture that began in the 60s that continues to bring our contry down.
I'm a Latvian going to Reed here on the US West coast, doing physics, and I must say I've never met so many people willing to work so hard before in my life.
The US is a huge country, with an economic middle class that would be considered highly affluent in very many countries of the world, including the one I come from. Despite loans and everything else, it is still much easier for the average American to go to school than it is for people in other countries. As a result, a lot of people go to school in order to have fun and to party, without any real motivation to learn anything. It is not particularly surprising that the majority of students anywhere are not particularly good at studying or science or whatever, but that is only because the majority of people are not _particularly_ good at anything (it's all a distribution curve - and the end of the curve that, say, actually forwards science is very, very far to the right). Elsewhere, the mediocre might get filtered out before college; here it happens later. The end result is similar. The masses do not learn to do genetics or develop new theories of gravity, but ultimately there remain some who do.
It may be true to some extent, however, that studying is less "cool" here in the States than elsewhere. There's good reason for it. Historically, what is "cool" or attractive or whatever has been determined by what indicates you're doing well in life. It was cool and good-looking to be portly once since that indicated a certain level of affluence. Today, that level of affluence is commonplace (though, of course, not ubiquitous) in the US; therefore, chubbiness is no longer the thing (not necessarily so in rural China, though - the Mandarin word "pang" (2nd tone if I remember correctly, though maybe not), fat, still has connotations far more pleasant than those of "fat"). It is the same with education. In a land where you have to work very, very hard for any acceptable standard of living, the smarter you are - the more weapons you have for securing some affluence - the better.
In the US, however, you can work behind a counter in a shop and earn more than, say, a tenured chemistry professor will make in Beijing. Even with higher commodity prices, one can still afford to not work that hard and live "the good life" instead - have fun and play around. Therefore, smarts have lost some of their coolness factor.
It is merely a function of wealth. Progress is driven by need. The more satisfied people feel, the less motivation they have. Here in the US, food and clothing is no longer motivation enough. I am sure the same thing will eventually happen in India.
Does that mark the end of intellectual advancement? Hardly. There's still a lot of us who care for knowledge for knowledge's sake; a lot of us who innovate because to innovate is neat. And there's a lot of us who think that there is more to a good life than eating, drinking, dressing and playing well. Our motivation is now curiosity and a wish to see a brighter future for mankind rather than the need to eat and survive.
It's "crap" because it's never been done in this generation to any great degree. Granted, a very few limited attempts, that's all the past 20 years really, and none of them very successful.
..well... good luck to you. I tend to think that's NOT the case, I'm just not seeing anything real effective yet, heck, you have *lost* basically on just the trivial matter of copying music,so I have no idea what will happen with anything really important.
In past generations it WAS done,massively, that's the difference, I remember it, and it wasn't about MONEY all the time. Remember civil rights? I do, I remember full well when people of color couldn't do this or that, helped out with that, too. They had a "union" of sorts and DID get massive changes, because they organized and did it. They shut things down, boycotted, did whatever it took, and it wasn't just one token day then "oh well, we tried" and go back to work, it was ongoing, intense effort. My point on the draft past, we DID get rid of it, and without all the great communication tools you have now.
A union or organization can "go on strike" for matters beyond just pay/money if they want to, why not? really, why not? Plenty of examples in the past. They COULD do that. Sure, it's wild, I'll agree,it's rad, but it's quite possible, and the time to think about it is NOT *after* the fact of needing to think about it. BEFORE is a much slicker idea, IMO.
Money, job security of note, no offshoring without some sort of replacement jobs, fair trade not free scam trade-all of that, AND also the other is possible. Yes, we need all of everyone to keep it all running,yes, yes, yes, but just THINK what I.T. *really* controls. It is unique beyond any other past profession, if you count all the techs and admins and engineers and scientists and whatnot who make up IT, not just coders.
Or, if you are speaking for (most of) the younger folks who might be facing this,and also facing the prospect of "no jobs" when they enter the workforce because of what is going on now,or watching jobs get less and less valuable to the point that you are worth nothing basically to the uberprofitgoons, are you saying that in your opinion the mass consensus with them is "ho humm, big deal"? If so, then sure, I'm wrong then, totally, go for it alone, go have fun playing mercenary or worker IT drone training your replacement or no job or minimum rage with maximum expenses, or working for the government in homeland insecurity, if that's your gig. Or if you got any sort of plan besides the status quo of "almost nothing" like it is now, I haven't heard it yet.
I don't know anything except what I have seen over the years and how "they" will use you up and spit out the carcass every opportunity they can, so if going it alone by yourself makes more sense, or if only thinking about money makes more sense, that's your right to feel like that and be that way. I do what I can to help folks learn from history, and that's about it. If people today really only care about video games, MP3's, X-treeme sports,movies, whatever, then
It is far more complex than that. High school is the years where hormones are the highest. (Jr High is worse!) Take a bunch of kids who know nothing else, of a diverse background and shove them together. Kids who don't know how to relate to others, and they are learning. A relatively small group, and nobody to relate to (no matter what your interests the kids around you didn't share it). Because if hormones you cared what others thought of you, even when in fact they didn't.
In college we learned it didn't matter, in fact many students would go elsewhere next year so you didn't care what they thought. You also self selected to a group that was more like you. (Suddenly I wasn't the only one who cared about computers!)
Notice the part about others not thinking about you... That defines high school kids have not yet learned they are not the center of the universe, so they care about every imagined slight.
I suspect our high school experiences were very similar despite different countries. The largest influences were beyond our control.
It might be free but it isn't equal. When the employer has more bargining power than the worker or visversa(spel?), then the outcome will never be mutually beneficial. Employers love that fact that there isn't low unemployment, it allows them to exploit workers for more easily.
Remember the article a few months ago about some IT leader bemoaning the fact that IT workers didn't want to accept minimum wage? Obviously not.
You need to re-evaluate what it takes to live. I know single income families who don't make good wages, and they get by just fine. Mom and dad sleep on a "Murphy" bed in the livingroom, so the girls can have a separate bedroom from the boys. They don't have luxury, but they do have everything they need to enjoy life! There are plenty of other cases if you look around, and if you study their situation you will find that while they budget every penny, money isn't the hardest part of their life.
The first women politician in Minnesota grew up in a one room log cabin, about the size of a small bedroom, with 11 other kids. (Its been a few years since I've looked it up so I might not have the details exactly correct, but they are close)
What do you need to live? A couple changes of clothes, some simple food, and a little shelter. You don't need a TV, much less an entertainment system. You don't need a radio. You might argue a car is needed, but even at that you don't need a new one. (keeping a 15 year old reliable is cheaper than buying a 7 year old car!)
I fully understand the want for a few luxuries. Work hard, and you can afford few. Don't pretend you need to keep up with the Jones.
This is why they are suing people for stuff they should be purchasing but decided not to. This is why they want to ban file sharing and P2P. You should only be giving your money to them, not Napster, not Kazaa, not even directly to the artists.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Sure, our genome is full of introns and complexity and has potential for future mutations but there is little diversity within the general human population.
A troupe of chimps may well have more genetic diversity than the entire human race.
We've been through a rather tight genetic bottleneck probably some time in the last 10000 years.
Actually, I've been wondering if the rate of speciation may be dropping as genomes become more resistant to mutation...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Next election start knocking on doors. If you start early you can knock on every door in town and talk to voters. Get some fliers. Show (attend the meetings so you know) how every board member voted. Run yourself if nobody good is running. (But don't put more good people on the ballot than seats, or you divide your vote and let the bad guys in) Get elected, and start changing things.
If you can't do the above, you don't care enough about the issue. (Note that if you don't get elected, or at least come really close, it is a sign that you don't fit into the community and should move someplace where you fit in)
The first group is divided into those who voluntarily isolate themselves from society and those who are coerced into isolation (e.g., children of Memmonites). Neither the first nor the second group make suitable leaders for a civilization.
There are plenty of people who don't base their worldview on TV and radio, and they're not all social outcasts. Two groups immediately come to mind: those who get their news and entertainment from the internet, and those who participate actively in social groups such as bands, hobbyist societies, charities, and so on. A great many people consider TV to be a total waste of time.
Personally I haven't used my TV for anything except rented DVD's and videotapes for about five years now, and I don't feel like I'm missing a thing.
I commend you for presenting a considerably more balanced view. One grows increasingly annoyed at some of the drivel originating from the mouths of Indians today, especially the popular notion among them that they invented computer science, etc., ad nauseum. Furthermore, one tires of always hearing them espouse that utter nonsense that the offshoring of as many American jobs as possible (to India, of course!) is the best thing possible for the American economy. Say, is there any chance of a nuclear war still between Pakistan and India????? And please, no more of that tired race card thing - or perhaps the previous Indian poster should return to the land of his birth and set some women on fire - I hear they enjoy that sort of thing......
I think people are getting way off track here - Japanese have lost their jobs to offshoring to a considerable degree also. The offshoring of jobs - the "lack of opportunity" demonstrates repeatedly that education and hard work not don't necessarily pay - it's becoming a real joke in America. People, whether they be highschool grads or college grads, only make money when they can obtain employment. (Forget about this new age "everyone a free agent" crap.) The only believable indicator of America's economy today is the amount of office furniture being sold - or how many retail outlets selling primarily office furniture have gone out of business (the B.L.S. has no credibility with their "estimates" whatsoever).
I smell a creationist in this blather...
wags
There are many people that come here expecting major life improvement and end up working manual labor jobs. And they become too prideful to tell family back home how it really is. I had a friend who was doing post-doc and needing money also was working at Dairy Queen with me (I was 16-17). He couldn't bare to tell his parents and when his wife and kids moved to the US to be with him, he quit working (about a year working there at nights). Social stature and pride and so many things are involved.
And through it all, for many people, it's still better than what they could have at home...
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
Do you understand the meaning of the term "mutually beneficial"? Both sides of the deal derive some benefit. Is it "equal"? That depends on what you are comparing. But I would argue that all freely entered transactions are "equal" in terms of the perceived value to each side, otherwise the transactors wouldn't carry the deal through. An employer paying less for a worker in an oversupplied profession is no more exploiting the worker than a worker getting paid more in an undersupplied profession (like, for example, IT workers during the dotcom boom) is exploiting the company doing the paying.
The gym is not a place of death. Sports are not a place of death. You go to the gym to be refreshed and get your blood pumping, and after a year, you will also notice that you are way bigger. But that's not important, the 3 times a week work out sessions will make you sharper, raise your metabolism, get you girls, etc. It will also teach you discipline so you actually finish those programming assignments. Where do people get off acting like exercise is only for professional athletes geezus
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Any major that isn't aimed towards a job at the private sector shouldn't be offered as a major in college (minors are fine). And why not? Colleges are for learning. If someone wants to major in women studies or philosophy or anything else, then who are you to say that they shouldn't be able to?
American geeks tend to be smaller and non-violent
This does nothing to defeat the stereotype of America as a very violent brutal place. In my country, being non violent is true of 99% of the people, and nothing you would point out as unusual about any group.
You can compare the national sports. American football vs what the rest of the world calls football. Quite a difference in mentality. And I find it hard to imagine that so many kids who play American football get a solid education and training in beating each other up. That would bever fly where I came from...
Actually, the reason that "its" (possessive) is not apostrophized is that "it" is a pronoun.
Pronouns have different rules than other nouns.
For example, "his" and "her"/"hers" (the possessive forms of "he" and "she") don't have apostrophes, either; nor does "their".
Because of this, the easy way to determine if the word "its" should be apostrophized is to substitute "his" or "her" in the sentence.
If it makes some sense (other than the sex), then don't apostrophize.
If it makes no sense whatsoever, but substituting "it is" does, then "its" should be apostrophized.
The reason that "his" and "her" don't have this problem is that the possessive form is spelled differently from the "is" contraction for "he" and "she" ("he's" vs. "his, "she's" vs. "her" or "hers"), whereas for "its", it's spelled the same, except for the presence or absence of the apostrophe ("its" vs. "it's").
(I have never seen "hi's" or "he'r", but I have occasionally seen "her's", and I once saw "it'self".)
Confusion with "it is" has nothing to do with it.
Otherwise, other nouns wouldn't be apostrophized, either.
For example, in the sentence "John's going to get Bob's car.", "John's" is a contraction for "John is", but "Bob's" is the possessive "belonging to Bob".
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Sometimes, "you and me" is correct.
One way to determine which form is correct is to drop the "you and" part and determine whether "I" or "me" fits better.
For example, "The recession affects you and me more than it does the President."
This may actually sound incorrect (due to "you and I" being drilled into our heads back in Grade/High School), but it is, in fact, correct.
This is also true for "X and/or I/me/myself / he/him/himself / she/her/herself / we/us/ourselves" for any X.
Examples:
"He and I fixed Gina's car, then she drove him and me home."
"George is not as smart as Condaleeza or I."
"Millie and I bought the present for Bill, then Jack and we gave it to his wife and him."
"Send a memo to my boss or me, and she or I will get back to you."
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Eventually, G.B lost much of its empire.
China will probably surpass the United States within 50 years or so.
Eventually, we will lose much of our empire.
(Yes, I know that we don't have an Empire in the traditional, historical sense, but we have one nonetheless.
Our empire is more commercial/economic than militaristic; however, as recent events in Iraq demonstrate, we are not above using military force where our economic interests are threatened.
Once China gains dominance, it will be much more difficult to do this.)
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Agreed.
I'm 17 and have just moved from the UK to New Zealand (and will be returning home, damnit).
Early on (year 7-9) I had some problems; but after that things equalled out and I had no more and no less respect than anyone else.
If a guy asked me about his homework and my reply was a little too technical, I wouldn't get called a nerd or anything like that; I'd just a get a neutral, "Woah, man! I can't handle that sh!t!"
Here in New Zealannd I just can't find ANYONE intelligent, I'm afraid. I know the ICQ guys are from West-Coast South Island, but the education system here just creates mindless drones; I'd put it down to mindless teachers.
Incidentally, all the Austrialians I know are rather clever; and the Europeans I know all work very, very hard; quadrouple this for the Asian exchange students here.
Neils Bohr, Enrico Fermi anyone?
I reserve the right to be wrong.
I can't understand why anyone would do such a thing. Why do people even care who wins some stupid game, the outcome of which affects nothing of importance? How is donating sports equipment helpful to the university? Did you decide on a college based on how well their sports team did?
/. instead!?!?!! :) )
If, by some miracle, or by hard work, I become rich enough to donate money to my alma mater, I'm positive that the money will NOT be used for anything sports-related. I'd rather see a new computer lab or engineering building; hell, new trees planted is better than new freaking helmets.
All sports did for me in college was prevent me from parking close to the library when I needed to study.
While I'm ranting... why do some people, when they find out what college you went to, immediately ask, "Did you catch that game last week?". I'd love to say, "HELL NO, why would I even care???"
Ah, I must be in a bad mood from listening to co-workers talk about sports instead of working. (Don't they know they could be posting on
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
As time approaches infinity, the probability of a cataclysmic event destroying the entire human race at once approaches 1.
Here are the problems with school vouchers where they are used:
1. They do not cover the cost of educating a child. They do not come close to covering tuition at a private school. Therefore, only those who can already afford private school are able to use them. Think of them like tax credits for the wealthy. [Most people will just move to a better district if they can afford it, as I will do this summer.]
2. They do not cover transportation. If you're poor, this is a real dilemma.
3. Schools do not have to accept students who come with a voucher. Better performing schools frequently will not accept a kid who isn't at the top of his/her class if they are worried about standardized test scores being used against them. (As they are in the No Child Left Behind legislation.) This leaves kids the option of schools that are just like theirs, only across town. Most school districts have school-of-choice anyway, which means a kid can go to any school in the district. My building boasts the highest number of 'choice' kids in the district and the longest waiting list (we're at capacity.)
4. Taking money away from a struggling school ensures the school's failure. The school is struggling because they're educating kids who come without having a meal since free lunch yesterday, who haven't seen mom or dad in a few days because their work schedule of 2 minimum-wage jobs gets in the way (read: no supervision, no homework help, no emotional support), who may have abuse situations at home (abuse statistics are tied to SES; that is, the less the income, the more the abuse.) They also need additional funding to cover meals, social workers, conselors, etc. Not to mention the fact that these kids come to school not knowing how to read. In the nice schools, 90% or more of kindergarteners know how to read when they enter school. That lets you (as a teacher) hit the ground running. That frees up so much teaching time that can be used to teach content that the kids in 'failing' schools don't get because they're still learning to read.
My biggest beef with failing schools is this: a school is a reflection of the community in which it is located. If the school is failing, believe me, the community is not the picture of a success story. I have met several university researchers who have had great success with programs in these poor/failing areas that reach out to the parents and teach them how to support their kids' learning at home. In many cases, tutoring was needed to help the parents learn to read, etc. Schools are a socialist construct. They do not work when put into a capitalist matrix. If you do that, you guarantee the failure of kids. And that just isn't acceptable anymore, especially with the lower-skilled jobs going, going, gone! overseas. How can schools help kids be successful in life without home and community support?
I think that instead of giving up on those schools, communities should look into ways of making them better.
When you help me - there is a balance of trade.
When I "helped" orphans in Hungary - the Orphans "Helped" me back. I would go so far as to say it was one of the more enriching experiences of my life. Helping others DIRECTLY is a luxury.
However, governments help noone - they transfer wealth through a blind trust in which the exchange of help for enrichment is reduced to a zero sum game.
When the government helps individuals - they do so by anti-helping the alternative absolutely.
Welfare takes money - but it puts the money into a black hole - welfare receipents will breed to fill the available funds.
Putting money into research, education, even military on the other hand will cause some trickle down - because researchers need starbucks, teachers need houses, and haliburton hires bankrupt dairy farmers to drive trucks.
The real question when the government signs a check is how many times will that check echo within our tax system BEFORE being expatriated to an overpopulated zero GNP domain.
We are losing our economy because we are spending money in a fashion poorly opyimized for maximum GNP.
For example:
medicine - for max GNP we should preserve our education expenses by treating desease - but not by spending three times the education expense on insurance so that we can afford a half million dollars of hospitalisation in the last three months of life.
education: We need to see productivity gains here.
Unions need to join in the fight for global competativeness - teachers unions is a form of welfare. We should pay good teachers more, and lose the unproductive teachers.
welfare - everyone family should be garenteed one job (pay by the piece) and one child in university - if you have more children than you can handle you should agree (not to have more kids) before the government writes a check (after 2 kids)
AIK
... if you start building tanks and ICBMs in every city, switch to Fascism, add more tax collectors and start invading other countries, the science suffers.
There is also an increase in laziness in the US. Kids today don't want to work hard for anything. Just take the easy road. I know because they are my friends. They think I am nuts for reading and working hard at things.
:)
THANK YOU! I'm glad I'm not the only one who's experienced this effect!
I'm in the same situation. All but 2 or 3 of my friends seem to think the world owes them a living.
It most certainly does not.
It truly amazes (and frightens) me how lazy some people at current high school and college age are. I suspect it's due to the last 35 years of the Civil Rights movement's liberals forcing "political correctness," "non-judgmentalism," "feelings over facts," and other such real-world nonsense in public schools. Why do I suspect it? Well, I went to public K-12 school, and even now in a public university I get the same old "diversity! Wow!!" crap I was tired of 10 years ago.
I have nothing against people of other races, religions, etc., but for god's sake, don't try to ram it down my throat because frankly, I don't give a damn. That crap matters not one iota in the dog-eat-dog world of global capitalism.
The "Greatest Generation" has boned America's educational system. That's what happens when you let the hippies take over.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
If you actually read the link in my post you would have seen it's not just the editors of SciAm that are upset. Here: RTFA
Welfare takes money - but it puts the money into a black hole - welfare receipents will breed to fill the available funds.
Putting money into research, education, even military on the other hand will cause some trickle down - because researchers need starbucks, teachers need houses, and haliburton hires bankrupt dairy farmers to drive trucks.
How does the welfare money go into a black hole? That only makes sense if they don't spend it. It's odd that you mention researchers drinking coffee as a benefit, but it's different if someone on welfare does the same thing?
Do you think welfare recipients treat their children as some sort of livestock, having kids just to get more welfare money?
Spending money on foreign countries is much more of a black hole that giving money to our citizens. Unless the foreign countries use that money to buy things from the United States then it isn't returning into the economy. I doubt that many welfare recipients don't spend their money. In fact, seeing as how many on welfare can't afford to keep a large bank account balance, giving money to welfare is practically a direct line for government funds to return to the economy.
What if everyone simply did what they wanted to with their lives instead of what you want them to do? Oh wait they are!
I understand that there are things that are important to all of humanity. What you don't understand is not everyone is or ever wants to be some sort of global saviour. You can save the world or enjoy life for yourself. Most choose the latter. By your reasoning we should all feel a deep and unending guilt if the entire population of Earth isn't working simultaneously to put an end to every form of suffering and injustice.
"The fact that I have to point this out, might be a good indication that you might want to evaluate some things in your life. After all, in the grand scheme of things, sports activities don't mean a dang thing."
There you go again. They don't mean a dang thing to you, but obviously they mean a great deal to others. And its not just sports that matters. Any activity that doesn't involve saving the world must be offensive to you if it detracts us from doing Great Works for Humanity. Ever hear the phrases Holier Than Thou or Self Righteous? They happen to define you to a perfect T.
I don't care that more advances aren't being found at the RATE you would prefer. I think we're doing fine as is. I'm not going to become some mindless Borg automaton for the Human Collective. Why don't you rise to the level of Dictator of Earth and simply force us all to work on ending homelessness and curing cancer and finding a treatment for aging? You could use the justification that you're just doing it for our own good and preventing us from wasting our time on useless but fun activities. After all, YOU do know whats best for everyone don't you?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Do you think welfare recipients treat their children as some sort of livestock, having kids just to get more welfare money?
Not all - but many - Yes - and often for drugs. That is the major reason even the democrats have emplemented "workfare." Entitlements for working age persons is a nightmare.
Give them a job.
Spending money on foreign countries is much more of a black hole than giving money to our citizens. Unless the foreign countries use that money to buy things from the United States then it isn't returning into the economy.
I couldn't agree more - and yet.
We use money given to Egypt to bribe the powerful in egypt (Mushareff) to bribe other people in Egypt not to stir up the people against Israel. The common people see very little of this - as it is probably used to benefit the families of suicide bombers in palastine.
That's a mess. Our foriegn investment strategy has always been short sighted. Instead of giving money to foriegn travellers as micro-emessaries mono e mono we give it to the Saud family which in turn deprives the common people into a state of rebellion.
I doubt that many welfare recipients don't spend their money. In fact, seeing as how many on welfare can't afford to keep a large bank account balance, giving money to welfare is practically a direct line for government funds to return to the economy.
That is the kind of rational which can make a millionaire out of a billionaire.
Welfare is an enducement for the poor to make more children. Children which we can reasonably predict will grow up disadvantaged - require a disporportionate amount of the teachers attention at school - driving up the cost of education for everyone as a percent of GNP which translates to fewer people working to generate real GNP. Which children are disportionately predisposed to being on welfare.
When I was in Hungary - I lived in state - run orphanages, and I would suggest that the children were better cared for, treated more affectionately, and generally healthier than your average welfare child in the United States. They will all very likely become productive members of society - they take care of each other and they are not forced to pattern their lives after the failed model of their parents.
I think it is true that it takes a Village to raise a child, and that as a responsible Village we should intervene in families which fail, rather than proping them up and pretending that what is not working is.
AIK
Well, you have my pitty.
I don't think you've grasped what I'm talking about but I think it's pretty clear we won't see eye to eye. Fair enough.
Perhaps you meant Caltech? CalPoly refers to one of two fine Calif State Universities (Pomona and San Luis Obispo), but are rather different than Caltech, which out-researches universities several times it's size, and administers JPL. Most people who work in science and engineering are aware of the distinction. Many people outside those fields are not aware of the distinction.
The culture has indeed changed over that decade and I can see the rift between those who believe in working hard for excellence itself and those who are movtivated by the almighty dollar alone.
This is probably why most of us that do have a work ethic, and do want to do the best we can, rather then just enough to get by, have been gainfully employed and weren't really effected by the dot com bubble burst.
As someone that reads resumes and interviews people fairly regularly, I can say that nothing turns me off from a promising person more then signs that they jump at any offer for more money. Why would I want to hire someone that doesn't care about the rest of us, and will leave as soon as someone offers a few bucks more... and likely cares about the money far more then the work they're doing?
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
If you don't mind me asking, does your line of work involve improving humanity in any way or are you an armchair/desktop hypocrite like most other holier than thou Slashdot posters?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Now Mr, I agree with you about unions. IT is being mistreated and we should organize. This offshoring stuff, training our own replacements, etc., has got to stop. Unions are the best way of doing this.
Similarily, corporations are the best way that humans have yet invented to do other things. Things like build physical computer products, like manufacturing, like distribution and marketing. Open Source is changing some of this, but for other parts, like manufacturing actual physical goods, a corporation is needed.
Now I don't know what this "it" you are referring to is, and how it can be "about" something, but the one thing I care about, more than anything else, is freedom. However, "The Lord Of The Rings" cost 300 million dollars to make and 10 years of work. Perhaps a massive collaborative process could have created that, but if so, it is a long way away.
I think the hugest problem with the massive social changes attempted in the past was the false understanding of the word "free". In all the literature I have read from that period, I have seen, again and again, confusion and misinterpretation of that one word. I saw talk about "free" food that was shoplifted, I saw talk about "free" peasants who were "freed" by the extreme poverty from the "scourge" of money, I saw talk about "free" speech, about "free" medical care, and endless discourse about how horrible money is.
I think one of the greatest ideas that we thank RMS for is his disambiguation of the word "Free". When he talks about "Free Software", he is talking about having certain legal rights related to the distribution and modification of software. The definition only concerns money where it could be used to limit the freedoms of Free Software.
Frankly, money and freedom are related, though not the way you seem to think. Freedom breeds money. The more freedom, the more money. The less freedom, the less money.
This is why we see starving peasants in north korea and why we see the "poor" in america, who own houses with running water and washing machines and electricity and T.V.s. And they have just as many legal rights as I do.
As for the "trivial" matter of copying music, that is most certainly not resolved.
And as for having a certain "opressed" clsss of people rise up and change society for the better evermore, I am talking about the bolsheviks, who kicked off 70 years of brutal oppression, about the people in mao's long march who ended up worse off than before, and to the intellectuals in the who-knows-how-many french revolutions.
Unions get working conditions and labor laws changed. You guys did NOT get rid of the draft, which is why we have it now.
I did NOT learn everything I need to know in kindergarten.
... reading too much into what I am saying. I am not a communist, and have perhaps a 2% socialist bent, and that is "voluntary" in nature, I tithe, and I use free software and contribute the occasional bug report (don't code so that's it), I copewrate with friends building projects, donate myself to this or that, but not really in favor of mandated wealth redistrivution. I AM in favor of evening the playing field inside a semi regulated capitalist system, and I AM in favor of stripping corporations of legal personhood and putting back named human beings as accountable for their actions..
...wel
Have you ever been in a union? I have, twice, it's not all about money directly, politics is 1/2 the unions interest, and always has been. Just getting a decent workday instead of 12 to 16 hours a day sweatshops was one of the first thing unions did. They lobby and strike over and negotiate for a variety of things not directly related to the digits on their paychecks, although, yes, that is primary with them. Worker safety for instance. Fair trade and not scam "free" trade like we have now would be a good one for any union.. And there's no law saying they can't negotiate or strike over *anything* they think of that's a collective interest of their's. No place anywhere is there any rule or law that mandates what an organization like a union can negotiate for, or strike over if they so choose. Literally, a strike is just not showing up for work, and that's it. Other nations have held entire nation wide strikes, with huge numbers of the citizens involved, not over money usually but some law of the government they have they want to influence. Happens a lot, still happens occassionaly, just more in other nations than in the US, here, we are money lovers to the extreme. I think it's OK to have money, to use money, I use money obviously, worked my whole life since 9 yearsold, etc, but... I'm just not personally a *lover* of money or treat it with a cult like fanatcism, never have my entire life. Ho humm, tangent there...
They could strike over something that their company has no control over, but the government does, that's sort of what I was suggesting. Take the outsourcing issue, any one single company getting that stopped wouldn't be as good as having an national immediate halt to it for a breather, to let the nation come to grips with it and to determine first where the new *real* jobs are coming from before they get shipped overseas. that and perhaps institute quid pro quo tariffs, and also import duties on imported code. They want to treat it like a product, so be it, slap normal tariffs on it, help reduce the bogus "income" taxes. That's another one, we could use such a strike to demand an end to the million law monstrosity IRS and income taxes and go to something different, national sales tax and tariffs, for instance. Who knows, but when you have numbers, will and are in the position to make it stick, you WOULD get some results. That's a dandy issue a nationwide IT union could strike over, and the decent part is, there's no immediate replacement for them,heck, there slap AIN'T replacements for them, can't be done, not quickly anyway, and simply not showing up for work one day would effectively shut down most of the nations business, government, utilities, you name it, because if it was a nationwide union with a significant percentage of IT workers in it,PLUS sympathy strikes from other unions and just joe citizens, that's exactly what would happen, and joe government would have zero choice in the matter. Make it a week, that'll work better. Government still sucks, big corporations throw a fit, too bad, make it two weeks. It's possible. It's doable.
Some stuff would stay up, but so much of it wouldn't or be running at such diminished capacity as to make it almost a moot point, it would be *shut down*.
BUT, IT workers by and large have been *completely* brainwashed over the years that they are "above the blue collar riff raff" and should never "be in a union" because that's for
While I believe it's true that a lack of education in every subject -- math and science, in addition to history, geography, and civics -- is leading to our end of prominence as a great country, I believe that the decline in dominance of the United States in science and technology is due to the attitudes of the scientists themselves, coupled with the attitudes of the public. To digress from the scientific community for a second, first: The government gives grants based on research it deems necessary, from medical research [constantly lobbied for but underfunded nevertheless] to environmental research [funded but only noticed due to convenience]. This inaction is due to (a) the politicians' disinterest and miseducation on important technological and scientific issues, and (b) the people's inability to differentiate science from science fiction. However, I do not believe that the scientific community is doing anything to block the cultivation of this image. Instead, they are drawn [mostly] into the world of the university, where chancellors own patents and publication [novel or not] means money. For every hint at the cause of a major disease in our world, there is another hint at, for example, the nature of 'the Wave' in a Mexican soccer stadium or another contradictory statement on diet and nutrition. Sadly, the media picks up more of the latter statements than the former, and the scientific community does nothing to correct their image. I say to science: Put stricter bounds on what can be published. Differentiate between the useful and the useless. Tell me that biomedical technology is more important than studying some theoretical subatomic particle or a rare butterfly species. I say to scientists: Break free from the construct of the university. Come up with a novel, original idea and take it out into the private sector. Advance your research and our country by marketing your own innovations and funneling the money into research into the practical. In order to turn around American science, we must first turn around America's scientists.
My skillset, I believe, has contributed to society, if only in a minor way. I was one of the primary developers in implementing the Lone Star Card program which provided federal food and cash assistance programs, replacing food stamps. This greatly reduced fraud and increased the quality of living for many people requiring federal assistance. All of which, is really completely beside the point. The whole point, which people seem happy to ignore because they're so selfishly concerned and focused on sports, is that if people put a higher priority on things that mattered (higher education), it improves the chances that someone might be able to contriubte something back to our society or humanity. As such, real gems of potential, in many school systems are getting less than ideal educations at the expense of sports. Accordingly, the potential loss for all of us is greater than should be. All it takes is for us to lose out on one real gem of a person for us all to of lost. And the loss could potentially be big.
The whole point of this thread was not targeted at you or even me. The point is, that there are many very smart kids out there that are getting significantly lessor educations, which in turn, greatly reduces the chances that they'll miss the window of potential for themselves and all of us. A missed potential, in some cases, can be directly associated with lost and/or funneled money into sports activities which is never going to better man kind or society. In other words, in the grand scheme of things, sports are worthless when you consider the games can still be played without all the money being wasted on them. The same is not true about out children's education.
This making sense?
are you an armchair/desktop hypocrite
In ths case, for me to be a hypocrite, I would have to be donating or even encouraging donating, at the expense of education funds, to sports programs. Which, I think means you completely missed the boat. So, even if you completely miss the boat, after this post, I can't be considered a hypocrite.
holier than thou Slashdot posters
I think most people have the right to look down their nose at you after that statement. Simple fact is, it's not unreasonable to want our nation's children to have a good education. The simple fact that you would consider that to be "holier than thou", says a lot about the state of our society. How pethetic is that?
hmmm... I pray for our "scientfic elite" then. Perhaps true scientists do not exist anymore. But as intended, it seems to have taken in the unwashed (that would be you).
"how would u apply your smarts to a job such as I dunno changing brake pads on a car"
Well, there is a right way and a wrong way to change a brake pad. Besides, I'm sure there are safer, more efficient ways of doing it than other ways. It is a skill that must be learned.
You claim to have respect for people, but then claim that they are doing work that requires no skill. Either you really respect people that you think have no skills and intelligence or else you are just playing lip service to them.
Either way, unlike you, I believe that almost all people have skills and intelligence and apply them to their lives. Regardless of whether people like you think that their job is mindless.
I have very little respect for people that waste their God given brains either in blue or white collars jobs and sincerely doubt that anyone that simply does the bidding of others without thought will be truly happy.
The question is can even well fed and cared for slaves be truly happy? And the answer is no.
I think that the anti-intellectualism you speak of came about as an artifact of anti-elitism. This has also given many an excuse to not use their minds as much as they could.
Add to the fact that America has gotten lazy in the last 30-40 years, Americans have a good reason to not make the effort to learn more - they don't want to be like those elite intellectual types.
And lets face it, many of those very intellectual folks can also lack common sense. I wouldn't trade my common sense for a great intellect in quantum physics. I think you need intellect *and* common sense or street smarts to be a well rounded individual.
I'm not saying that scientific knowledge is unimportant at all, but rather that scientific knowledge without a clue of how to use that knowledge to improve society isn't very useful.
The money spent on sports is well spent. The children are thus recieving a well rounded education via their exposure to sports.
As for higher education increasing the chances of people to contribute something worthwhile back to humanity you'll find that is far from the case. Higher education has for a long time now been seen as a way to get a better "job" or "career". Schools entice prospective students with the higher average salaries of college grads vs high school grads. Nowhere in the advertising can you find appeals to advance the state of humanity in the world. Its about getting a better job so you can get a bigger paycheck so you can buy a better house/car/girlfriend....etc.
Ever since the GI Bill this has been the case. The fetishization with accrediting every profession and walk of life and the assumption that all must go to college is the result. Before the GI Bill and the SAT higher ed was considered finishing school for the children of the elite.
Very very rarely is it ever thought of honestly and sincerely as a way for people to better the world. Yes yes some improverished child not being able to go to college sounds sad and weepy enough when you first hear it but when you consider that if enabled to go there's an overwhelmingly good chance they'd end up a rat race money grubbing power broker wannabe like most college grads it ceases to be such a heart breaker.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
You don't consider nobel prize laureates the "scientific elite" and you consider an attack on my personal hygeine acceptable. I like you already.
I sympathize with you and understand your perspective. I server as a Special Operations guy in Nam but was a closet geek. I still love mathematics, Symphony, Opera and Ballet. I like PBS but by and large you can otherwise shoot the TV. I love to read. The majority of folks aren't the brightest bulbs in the package and here in the USA, people have gotten lazy and confused in their values because they have almost everything they need. Of course they want more but mostly want to be cool. My in-laws include two lawyers, two university profs. and a doctor. When together, the dominating conversations are: Basketball, Baseball, "Friends" TV and making more money. In warfare there is a thin red line, in life there is a thin red line in the population that loves what they do and tries to make things better. Sorry for the rant.
You are bitter because you are not worshipped
because you are smart? Hm.
You've twisted his argument into something else. He was talking about attitudes of the people. Literacy is not just being able to read words; it also includes understanding the theme behind them.
I was too young in the 1970s to really participate.
But really, 3/8 inch is guesswork, but 9 mm makes the perfect size bullet for a Glock.
Just remember... this is the same "scientific elite" that told us global warming would melt the polar ice caps by 1995 and that there would be radical changes to our coastline. And yes... these same "elite" said it was a "fact" and said that preventing it was "impossible". Elite? I don't think so. Ignorant, perhaps.
"What I don't get is why non-socialization or bad socialization is considered a valid argument against homeschooling - isn't that the point in the first place? ... Socialization is just a pretty word for indoctrination."
This is completely wrong. Socialization is learning how to interact with other people. Home schooled kids may benefit in many ways (if the parents are good at it), but they really lose out on this front -- in a group school you spend a lot of time with other people, being forced to learn how to get along with them. In home schooling, you spend most of your time at home, with your parents and siblings. Yes, good home schoolers try to spend some time in groups (parks, science museums, etc.) but the occasional group outing is still very limited compared to spending all day with tons of other kids.
"You don't have to be a Christian to see the value in homeschooling."
True, you can be a Christian _or_ a Libertarian!
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Not that it has anything to do with your interesting discussion, but, the Spanish Empire around the 17th century was the _largest_ one the world has ever seen, where the sun never set.
To do list for Windows