Slashdot Mirror
US Adults Score Poorly On Worldwide Test
New submitter Norwell Bob sends this excerpt from an Associated Press report:
"It's long been known that America's school kids haven't measured well compared with international peers. Now, there's a new twist: Adults don't either. In math, reading and problem-solving using technology – all skills considered critical for global competitiveness and economic strength – American adults scored below the international average on a global test, according to results (PDF) released Tuesday."
This is a group of people who collectively voted 90% for Obama or Romney last election.
I was starting to suspect that most people were horribly incapable, but I guess its better elsewhere.
...that the Secretary of Education is furloughed right now, or he'd have some explaining to do!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
But the re-election of BHO pretty clearly underscores any negative remark you want to make about the U.S. electorate.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
People generally forget what they've learned unless they use the knowledge within a few months or so. Americans are work-aholics relatively speaking and thus will bury their head in their here-and-now work such that distant knowledge fades quickly as the immediate situation takes over.
A Just-In-Time education system may be a better approach than trying to hammer in concepts while young hoping they are hammered in deep enough to stay in. That's perhaps not a rational use of time. The 4-year university approach is obsolete, or at least needs big-time augmentation.
Table-ized A.I.
When two distinct races are crossed, it is notorious that the tendency in the offspring to revert to one or both parent forms is strong, and endures for many generations.
The Earl of Powis formerly imported some thoroughly domesticated humped cattle from India, and crossed them with English breeds, which belong to a distinct species; and his agent remarked to me, without any question having been asked, how oddly wild the cross-bred animals were.
These latter facts remind us of the statements, so frequently made by travellers in all parts of the world, on the degraded state and savage disposition of crossed races of man. That many excellent and kind-hearted mulattos have existed no one will dispute; and a more mild and gentle set of men could hardly be found than the inhabitants of the island of Chilce, who consist of Indians commingled with Spaniards in various proportions. On the other hand, many years ago, long before I had thought of the present subject, I was struck with the fact that, in South America, men of complicated descent between Negroes, Indians, and Spaniards, seldom had, whatever the cause might be, a good expression.1 Livingstone,- and a more unimpeachable authority cannot be quoted,- after speaking of a half-caste man on the Zambesi, described by the Portuguese as a rare monster of inhumanity, remarks, "It is unaccountable why half-castes, such as he, are so much more cruel than the Portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the case." An inhabitant remarked to Livingstone, "God made white men, and God made black men, but the Devil made half-castes."2 When two races, both low in the scale, are crossed the progeny seems to be eminently bad. Thus the noble-hearted Humboldt, who felt no prejudice against the inferior races, speaks in strong terms of the bad and savage disposition of Zambos, or half-castes between Indians and Negroes; and this conclusion has been arrived at by various observers.3 From these facts we may perhaps infer that the degraded state of so many half-castes is in part due to reversion to a primitive and savage condition, induced by the act of crossing, even if mainly due to the unfavourable moral conditions under which they are generally reared.
[End Quotation]
American blacks have a good percentage of white blood. That is consistent with Darwin's work above because American blacks are particularly violent and savage and tribal. Anyone that doubts that is welcome to wander the nearest inner-city ghetto but I hope you have life insurance and all your affairs in order before you try it.
Isn't this just one of many signs of the decline of the American Empire? The American oligarchs used to look after their people back in the days when they built their empire but nowadays, the privileged grandchildren of the original oligarchs have forgotten where their wealth and power came from. And so on down the slippery slope...
Most jobs don't involve a lot of math or english these days.
.... Similar to how most companies only need a few elite coders?
More whether or not you can socially function and whether you know the basics of using a computer.
Plumbing, paving roads, being a cashier, managing people, checking meter readings, working an assembly line don't involve much math or English.
Perhaps society only needs a few people per hundred that are great at math? People don't need math skills to drive a semi-truck or make the donuts or take an order or stock a warehouse
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Ha! You mean to tell me that all those kids who 10-20 years ago were getting a shit education grew up to be adults that don't know shit? Say it isn't so! Next thing you'll tell me is that correlation isn't causation and there is some bigger root cause we just haven't figured out yet.
In math, reading and problem-solving using technology [...]
And why would a common man need those skills in modern USA? Cash registers do all the math for a worker; there is nothing to read and no particular reason to bother, with TV in every room; and the only problem that needs to be solved is how to pay all the bills.
Those skills are indeed essential - but only if you are innovating, inventing, doing new stuff. However how many US workers can proudly say that they do such things? The US economy is known to be a "service economy" - and those jobs are static, frozen in time, requiring no R&D.
But if you work for a startup in a significant role, chances are good that you are smart and inventive. You may even read books now and then.
Oh yeah, the Americans*, the same group that scored below average. ;-)
* Yeah, yeah, all you Central Americans, South Americans, Mexicans, Canadians, etc., etc. you know that I mean USAians when using the term "Americans".
Does anyone have histograms of the data? I'd like more than a simple mean. Seeing how its skewed, and how wide the distributions are the size of the tails would be very interesting. Is Japan on top because they have less people doing badly, or some people doing great? Things like that could be answered trivially with a set of histograms.
I'd like to actually take the assessment. However, from the site, it appears that only interested parties, such as governments, need apply..
... the research was flawed and the data either incomplete or the analysis skewed. One study does not measure much of anything except a snapshot of one instance in time on one test. But that's social pseudo-science for you.
It is a test of OECD countries, i.e. the richest 24 countries on the planet.
Oddly enough, success in today's economy (or any other day's for that matter) doesn't depend very strongly on how well you perform on a multiple choice test. The U.S. has been scoring poorly relative to other countries for decades now, and continues to be the world leader in innovation and productivity. It is no coincidence that Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc., etc. are all American companies, or that the Internet was created in America, not to mention the personal computer, integrated circuits and transistors. Or GPS, or air travel, or (going back a bit) the light bulb and audio recording. Most of the things that make the world the way it is today come from America. And yet we keep scoring worse than the Finns on multiple choice international math tests. I don't think I'll lose any sleep over it.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Can someone explain to me how having a shit education system pouring out youngsters that are about as sharp as a bowling ball wouldn't result in said youngsters turning out to be moronic adults?
Most Americans still believe that foreigners perpetrated 9/11, that the 2000 election wasn't rigged before the Supreme Court decided it, and that a lone gunman killed Kennedy. The mindset is basic capitalistic utopian anti-intellectualism. Most everybody wants to get rich QUICK and flash the bling around. (In suburbia the "bling" takes the form of a big SUV and a big house.) Americans obsess over fantasy football and Black Friday and who the latest hot pórn starlet is but they don't realize that a revolution is happening in America -- in which globalist hijackers have taken over the government and plan to fly it into the ground.
Where did they find adults in modern day America? Ooops got to run before someone cuts me off in the line at Walmart....
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Don't assault Neanderthals. Their being "stupid brutes" is a terrible misconception.
(Through the eyes of your average American)
America - Totally Normal, just slightly lacking on education...
Japan - Weird People, Known for Sushi, Nuclear incidents and Cosplay girls
Finland - Freaks, Known for Insane Death Metal Bands and Rally drivers
Canada - Canadians, Known for not being America
Netherlands - Druggies, Known for being full of pot smokers
Australia - Weird People, Known for all being criminals and bush rangers
Sweden - More Weird People, Known for tall blonde women, word's ending in "ooorgan" and "ski", and families who shower together
Norway - Must be Weird, Known for very little... I think it snows there
Flanders-Belgium - Freaks, make chocolate and not get fat
Czech Republic - Fucking Freaks, Known for street porn and getting mugged when travelling
Slovak Republic - Nutters, just look at Slovakia on a map, it's worse than cz..
Korea - Freaks, Known for having a north and south, wait Korea? do they have electricity there yet?
BTW, I am from Australia - clearly, the more crazy and fucked up your nation is, the smarter it's population is.
I'm not signing anything
Personally I think the US government will use this as an excuse to increase the size of government and centralization to manage everything. But ironically, those in the higher ranks of government appear to be the least intelligent ones around as they and they alone are responsible for our enormous debt.
Possible reasons: :-) ) available.
- Dumb kids turn into dumb adults.
- The educational experience is so different between areas of the country that it's possible to be reasonably smart and held back by a crappy school experience.
- Other countries have a much greater emphasis on education than we do. "Tiger parents" are the norm in China/India.
- Too many distrations applies for both children and adults. I'm sure the percentage of people under 35 able to sit and read an entire novel is much lower with Facebook and other time sinks (like Slashdot
- Education still relies on stuffing facts into people's heads. This is actually done in Asian cultures too, but somehow they come out better than we do.
I read a separate article on this earlier in the day, and haven't had a chance to do the follow up reading yet, but one thing I wonder is where they get their test subjects from. DO they just pull some yokel off the unemployment line and say, "Here, take this test." ?
That said, there is a surprising lack of reasoning ability in many adults. Even "IT Professionals" I work with have barely any clue how to methodically troubleshoot systems and figure out what went wrong sometimes.
Here's an immediate way to improve the math, reading, and problem-solving skills of the average adult in America: more H-1B visas!
Me fail English? That's unpossible. - Ralph Wiggum
As expected, the US average is close to the average for the rest of the world. It's because American society has representation from all around the world, unlike Finland or Sweden which have a very narrow spectrum of ethnic histories.
Before you interpret that statement as (perversely) trying to correlate basic aptitude with ancestry... read on...
I wish people would stop evaluating each other as if they were commodities on a 'human stock exchange.' Taking tests should be a guideline for matching people to problems and to jobs, not to quantify their worth. There exists a test for every person out there that that person would excel at and be better off than everybody else. There are people who are conditioned to be deeply analytical, and those who are conditioned to passionately address audiences and captivate them. Just because you are in one group and lack in skills that characterize people in another does not mean you are worth less - as these tests try to portray.
Because America is an amalgam of societies from around the world, we have the benefit of a large and diverse set of these groups - the Nobel-winning physicists, the carefree musicians, the shrewd small business owners, you name it... It is *very* hard to construct a test that an average sample of Americans would ace - because of the certainty of finding people who suck at the test in that sample. But on the flip side - it is also very hard to construct a test that such a sample would faire miserably at - because of the certainty of finding a handful of people who are among the best in the world.
I bet many US adults could tell you a lot about 50 states though instead of 50 countries.
a good supply of media-addled, uncritical, disposable human garbage is also economically beneficial.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Read my lips. There are 30 rounds in this magazine. Problem solved.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The curious thing about this is that the US leads the world in high technology companies in many areas.
Perhaps average adult scores don't matter that much. The distributions might be more important. Perhaps in the US there are enough really smart people to create Unix, C, SQL and many other things.
Also, for the record, I'm a non-American who has lived in the US and Europe. It's fascinating that to an outsider the US doesn't appear to have a surplus of intelligence and yet dominates in IT and many other scientific fields.
Those two groups are almost guaranteed to drag down any American statistic.
If your spending isn't measured as a function of sine, you're doing something wrong.
It's long been known that America's school kids haven't measured well compared with international peers. Now, there's a new twist: Adults don't either.
So it's proven then. Kids WILL eventually grow up to be adults.
Americans have way more than their share of academic achievements, inventions, business creations, and so on.
We would not even be discussing this on slashdot, if it were not for several US inventions.
And what wasn't done by an American, was probably done by some other westerner.
The rest of the world can get all snotty about irrelevant standardized tests, or whatever. But when it comes right down to it, Americans more than hold their own, against any other group.
USA is only about 5% of the world's population. But when it comes to the really big inventions, I don't think the rest of the world even comes close.
The headlines for these tests are always expressed in ordinal instead of cardinal terms. !st, 2nd 3rd, etc., as though it was a horse race. But what do the actual scores mean? The US is 8%, 12% and 6% below Japan in reading, math and problem solving skills. But what do the numbers mean? How do they translate into practical skills. What can a mean Japanese do mathematically that a mean American can't?
I see this as one of the many negative emergent properties of MBA bottom line thinking. You get thinking that thinks that if you keep training an employee in general ways you will end up with your employee leaving and all your training then was to the benefit of another company. Whereas if your employees are under-qualified they will be terrorized into working as hard as they can every day for slave wages.
Another effect of this short term thinking can be seen in most universities. If you invest in a top notch football coach and lavish training and whatnot on the team then you will have near instant wins that you can take to the board of directors. But if you invest in STEM and buy the physics department a pile of cool stuff then maybe, just maybe you will have one of your people win a Nobel prize 30 years from now. Some universities have realized that having really smart students and encouraging them to do cool things can result in near instant wins (Stanford, MIT) but few universities are willing to play the long game (Harvard and Yale seem to be which is funny as they churn out the short term mentality MBAs).
So if you go to a university and want to cure cancer you might have an intellectually interesting time but I am willing to bet that the waterboy for the football team is having more fun. Then on top of that you have the post school job market situation. Again the waterboy will have better job prospects in sales with his BA in sociology than a PhD in Physics ever will. But the MBA or even BA in Business will blow everyone out of the water. Even the PhD who wants the bucks is well advised to jump into something like HFT.
In the past we used terms like rocket scientist and had idols like Einstein and Feynman. But now the best we can do are a few pop culture TV scientists. There is no moon program, there is no nuclear program, there are no blackbird cool skunkworks capturing the public imagination. But there are sports stars, there are hedge-funds, and their are actors and that is about it.
Being a nerd has never been the coolest thing in the world but right now it might be at its lowest ebb.
But back to bashing MBAs. I have been to many companies when I was doing consulting. Fewer and fewer companies are allowing their employees much room for original thought. I have met truck drivers who weren't allowed to change a brake light. I have met IT people who ran a local office yet weren't allowed to deal with the tsunami of malware infecting all the machines because that was not their job. These are systems that were rigidly designed in some central office for maximum "efficiency" that are obviously total BS. You won't get a job in that central office by being an awesome IT person; but if you get an EMBA then you are suddenly VP material.
If you watch the show Undercover Boss the theme is almost always the same. The top boss is surrounded by MBAs who have completely insulated him from the rest of the company. So by going out into the trenches he discovers that the primary effect of the Managerial Accounting that is thrown at him is that the halfwits at the very bottom of the company know that it is being badly run. Yet the reports he gets indicate that things are running at nearly 100% efficiency.
So in this culture of only thinking about next weeks metrics how could someone ever think that embarking on a life long learning endevour would result in progress. Instead a culture of us vs them is created resulting in people reveling in their non-sophistication. If anything self-betterment would be a betrayal of your tribe.
Have gnu, will travel.
I am going to generalize, so please forgive the level of detail I am muting to make my points.
As much as Americans hold school/academic achievement itself in disdain (for what are often good reasons but increasingly have to do with the mindsets of parents and kids as opposed to legitimate problems), I think that pales in comparison to the depth of animus Americans hold towards math. Kids have always hated literature and biology, but the contempt piled upon math in the US extends across generational or class barriers. Those who don't hate math but aren't working with it on a daily basis certainly can't do it. If you don't believe me, compare the effect of quoting Milton against that of making calculus jokes at a party of non-STEM Americans. I don't just mean math at the college level, however: I have regular encounters with people who cannot do arithmetic they ostensibly learned in elementary school. As bad as I feel for them individually, I'm more frightened by the prospect of what they'd do if a massive economic boom in some new domain demanded Americans acquire technical skills. My guess is if that happened tomorrow, most of those jobs would have to be filled by foreigners.
This report--especially where the attainment of adults is concerned--is a good opportunity for the American populace to humble itself, but I count that unlikely to happen; one of the overarching social problems in America seems to be a disproportionate number of people incapable of recognizing the extent to which they contribute to problems that seriously hamper them or their progeny. I can find egotists anywhere in the world, but the American brand of egotism has some exceptional--and, in cases like this, dangerous--traits. For my own part, I don't know what to do about education, but an end to the educational apathy seems like a place to start. Eventually, the centers of power in this country may come to recognize that the American educational problem will eventually destroy their own power, but it would probably be better if the conversation began before that point--it remains to be seen what could be done by then and if the powerful want to produce adept citizens and innovators as opposed to effective workers.
This is not the first time American scored below average. If one go back long enough, those kids that scored low are turning / turned into adults about now. What's worse, America does not seem to be running out of supplies on the dumb front! And with dumb only comes dumber.
Look at all the places that imported / are actively importing the North American life style -- which is roughly all the world -- they are all going the same direction, down. If the score comparison is getting better, it does not mean that American got better, it's simply a reflection of the trend to the bottom. When things go up, "sky is the limit", but when things go down, they hit the floor.
Let's disaggregate the data by US State, so we can find out which of them are dragging us down. Any wagers?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What do you expect would happen when you move to lower STEM wages.
Invisible hand my ass.
Unpossible!
Newsflash!
Larger sample sets trend toward average, smaller ones to extremes. Film at eleven!
Also, breathless headlines are flamebait from many angles! More on this after weather and sports.
I am not a crackpot.
Yeah, we suck, can you give it a rest? Aren't we awesome at burger-eating or something? Throw me a freakin' bone.
This post seems to suggest that American adults are just grown up American kids...
I bring this up because Finland has been mentioned many times over the last few weeks in various regards to education. Some have pointed to it as great with education because of these scores or because the teachers are better or other things along that line. However all the speakers who say this seem to miss an important point that I had seen discussed in a Finnish magazine.
And that is the issue of television and movies in Finland are all subtitled, and never dubbed. It seems minor but it's a huge incentive to learn to read. You can not be illiterate in Finland and watch the popular television programs or movies from America. Even Baywatch is subtitled in Finnish and Swedish. Not only do you have to read you have to read at a reasonable speed to keep up. So as a student if the rest of the children are talking about going to see Iron Man 3 and you can't read very well you now have an reason to work much harder.
What was interesting in the article is that they compared Finland to Germany. Socially the two countries are reasonably similar with roughly similar types of educational systems. However German television and movies are all dubbed, which was pointed out as one possible reason for the large disparity in reading and literacy. From this current report for age 16-65 it shows Finland at number 2, with German below the average and only one step above the United States.
Anyway, I thought it was an interesting idea. At the very least I think all the effort to figure out what they're doing different in schools from our schools won't cover the whole picture. Naturally, good reading skills improve performance in other subjects like mathematics.
From the current report listed I note another interesting pattern on page 63, figure 2.1 which is a list of literacy rates (only highly literate nations, it wasn't a survey of all countries). The literacy rates are 1 to 5. The divide between level 2 and 3 was the center of the chart. For most of the countries, including the US, the percentage at level 3 is roughly the same at 40%, with only a couple countries exceeding that. The percentage of people at level 3 seems roughly the same for most countries listed. The differences seem that the higher countries have more people at the advanced literacy levels and fewer at who are below basic levels. I think Finland and Japan here may do well at low end of the scale because overall they have a relatively smaller number of immigrants and transient workers.
Tax cuts!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Is anyone actually surprised by this?
This is the country we all make fun if for being generally stupid, and now we have confirmation.
There are some adults we could encourage to stay home when the testa are given so our average would improve. I used to work for several.
The demand for a traditional education is HR and some places the people have an traditional education have big skill gaps and or have way to much theory
or hereditary?
Are you a time traveler from before 1990?
The US did great for 200 years, inventing all kinds of things, raising our standard of living by literally 1000%, etc.
Then we traded hard work and dedication for laziness and envy. The majority of our society outright rejects as "old ideas" precisely those things that once made the country great. At the national level, we've gone from taking a few years to put a man on the moon to taking four years to pass an ANNUAL budget through just the senate. We've gone from "defeat the Soviet Union" to "emulate the French"
At the individual level, we used to be the greatest scientists in the world - whether we were born here or immigrated here, the best scientists were Americans. Now, even on a site for nerds most of us can't define the word science.
The American dream was to work hard in school, then work hard at your job so you can buy your own home. America represented economic freedom - you could own your own house and even your own business, beholdenn to no-one. Today half of us dream of punishing "those people" who live that way. We aspire to rent control, dream of moving to the city where big brother will tell us what kind of soda we can have with lunch.
Eager to know how they managed to compare reading skills across vastly different linguistic models.
Here is your cause of income inequality right here:
Indeed, a closer look at the results reveals that more than nine-tenths of the overall variation in literacy skills observed through the survey lies within, rather than between, countries. In fact, in all but one participating country, at least one in ten adults is proficient only at or below Level 1 in literacy or numeracy. In other words, significant numbers of adults do not possess the most basic information-processing skills considered necessary to succeed in today's world.
hire foreigners is about low costs h1b that some cases are locked into low paying long hour jobs.
also foreigners have much lower college costs
On reading, the USA in 16th place average 270 points compared to leader Japan's 296. American/Japanese score = 91%.
On math, the USA placed 21st with 253 to Japan's 288. American/Japanese score = 88%.
On problem solving, the USA placed 17th with 277 compared to Japan's 294. American/Japanese = 94%.
So yeah, Japan's education system works better than ours. What are they getting for it? A public debt problem that's worse than the USA's, per capita income that's a little less than ours but purchasing power significantly worse and almost twice our suicide rate. But hey, they're working, right?
It matters WHAT you learn. Americans learn that they are entitled. Japanese learn to be effective cogs in the corporate machine.
Given that many countries restrict access to education based on student performance on selected tests (while the US does not), these scores aren't exactly a meaningful comparison.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Since in most business, patents, video games, and basically all aspects of life in certain foreign countries cheat and lie and scam, it is possible that a bunch of other countries are all faking their results. In some asian countries test results are held in higher regard than anything else and cheating is rampant. In Turkey it's widely accepted that all small business are trying to rip everyone off whenever possible.
Other countries could be bribing judges or stealing result lists for applicants to study, etc. Before everyone goes off America-hating, maybe they should consider that.
Serfs you, right?
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
to get to our final destination
really 4,000 year old computing and rockets.
I wonder what you would have scored on this test?
And that is the bible. It will tell you everything you ever need to know.
I've met a lot of dumb women who are quite adept at confusing and manipulating smart men.
Of course there are also plenty of dumb men and smart women as well.
Hey guys, a recent report has shown that the increased use of electronics is correlated with a higher electricity bill. Also, extremely loud music is bad for your hearing. Cities are warmer during the day. The moon orbits around the earth.
America represented economic freedom - you could own your own house and even your own business, beholden to no-one. Today half of us dream of punishing "those people" who live that way.
Speaking as a non-american that's not what I as your problem. The people who enjoyed that economic freedom created brilliant innovative companies that then decided that economic freedom did not work so well for their profit margins. Worse they found that it was actually a lot easier to smother new and upcoming competition with either lawyers and court cases or by getting laws changed via lobbying than it was to out compete and innovate new companies.
As a result of that you ended up with a lot of companies who are rich from past glories and now use that to just hold everyone at bay slowing down the pace of progress and innovation to a pace they feel comfortable with. Worse you get some companies - yes banks I'm looking at you - who seem to have completely forgotten their raison d'etre (which was to stabilize and grow the economy by providing valuable financial services) and just go for profit at any cost, no matter how destructive and damaging that is to the economy they are supposed to be serving.
So is it any wonder that people are starting to question whether "those people" should live that way? It's not that people have a problem with successful people making money through clever innovations that benefit society - the problem is that there are lots of people making money for doing nothing useful (or even harmful) to society.
and Koreans is way higher than the employed (page 226). What's going on there?
These are the same people who put a chimp in White House - twice!
They also spend most of their time in front of NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, etc...
What's a globe? What state is it in?
I've seen news stories for (at least) the last 20 years about kids in the US having poor results on international tests. Now you're telling me they've grown up to be adults? Really? And they still have poor results on international tests?
Duh!
Why, yes! I AM new here.
The No Child Left Behind became a No Adult Left Behind. YAPF - Yet another policy failure, since policies don't actually accomplish anything. You need teachers that can teach the old fashioned way to accomplish something.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Belgium is a country, Flanders is a region in that country.
Why this specification ?
They asked about evolution an 'science' instead of asking for Bible quotes.
Everybody on the planet knows the Americans are dumb as a rock because the school system is rigged by the Jesus freaks.
Humans are born with innate curiosity and drive to learn. Stop trying to educate us and enrich us, and instead create an environment where our natural instincts can thrive.
This is a story....Stupid kids become stupid adults?
No the real story is how stupid adults write articles pointing out the stupidity of other adults. No that's not a story either....
Stupid kids become stupid adults who are employed as stupid writers who write about stupid adults that's a story.
Please teach your kids to aspire to be something more than the guy at the McDonald's driver through window. Asking customers if they want french fries with that, is not a job. It's what you do when you have failed to become a useful human being. Teach them enough so they can create an idea that in turn creates a job for themselves. Don't raise your kids to rely upon someone else to give them a job. Fat, stupid and lazy is no way to go through life.
For instance: church attendance, shooting skills, family values, and moral re-armament level.
This would help in two ways: first it stands to reason that this would compensate our average scores (making them rise), and secondly it would give Tea-Party voters a chance to shine.
They're based on things like "facts" and "reality"; and they include "math".
If you tested Americans on properly unskewed and unbiased subjects like the merits of Creation Science, they'd be world champions!
Americans, the rejected scrapings from the abortion (on incest reasons) barrel.
No other people on earth could be worse than that group of ultra-orthodox lunatic deported dickwads who still believe some sky fairy made them 5,000 years ago, and thus they have divine right too rain down robotic bombs on all the brown people.
Pro-tip America.After your fucking NSA (No-Secrets-Allowed) we would prefer you were all wiped out. Dead. Gone.
Leave the world in peace and just go die in a fucking fire.
Sorry for reposting, but I thought this infographic on highest paid public employee per state was interesting (if somewhat ranty and oversimplified).
How is this a twist? First of all, I'm pretty sure this was already common knowledge. I remember reports of tests and studies like this for years. But also, is anyone surprised? If it's already known that schoolchildren perform sub par in tests then obviously once they grow into adults they are going to perform sub par on similar tests. Why would they suddenly have magically learned those missing skills?
This once again confirms what a terrible educational system the US has. I have no personal experience with it, but my brother has, and he tells me that he had three different history classes, but anything resembling actually useful skills was a distant joke...
I'm sorry, this story is about US Adult test scores. Could you take your derailment discussion somewhere else please.
May the Maths Be with you!
This is an excellent reason to homeschool your kids, and encourage homeschoolers in general.
And before anyone complains about how homeschoolers do not teach up to minimum standards: those "minimum standards" have CLEARLY failed America, so let's not.
Because the only reason to do skill based training is to train you in the specific skill you're being trained in.
Whereas education, which isn't supposed to be skill-based training, is trying to teach you how to learn. To begin with you need to know by fiat some things (seriously: will you want kids to discuss how to prove 1+1=2 in kindergarden, and to discuss sentence structure, or do you want to teach them their ABC's and times table?) but if you're being taught some skill specific to a job, and that job isn't guaranteed (remember: businesses used to PAY you for apprenticing, but now you want it to be funded out of the taxpayer pocket???), then your skill is not transferrable.
If you know how to read a book, you can read a book on a skill you do need.
And we still don't know anything!
If they did, however, they could be arrested and even killed.
Meanwhile if you leave your job, you lose your healthcare (since most people who need it have a condition that needs it and if you change, you can be refused that cover that you actually do need because "no pre-existing conditions"), you can't pay bills and lose your house, kids, wife and so on and eventually have to turn to crime and then be arrested (indeed you could be arrested for nonpayment of fines where you were angry and yelled at the cops: you're a criminal BECAUSE YOU'RE POOR in America. If you're rich, you can't be a criminal, everyone knows that).
In theory you aren't a slave.
But in theory the roman galley slaves were free to not work too.
Al Capone had an IQ of 90, and look how far he got!
Get someone else to.
Get a calculator, no need for maths.
Education is wasted on women, they never need it, they'll be bringing up babies. Of course, it's wasted on men too, since their job will never need to know geography.
Problem, though.
If you don't teach Jonnie calculus or Jennie physics, then Jonnie who will go on to enjoy it, take it to university and discover the next big breathrough in quantum computing wil instead be unhappy and serving fries with that. Jenny, instead of finding how to get fusion to work will instead be ground down by bearking five kids whilst Jonnie is serving fries to people who don't use their education from school either.
99.99% of education is wasted on 99.99% of the people.
If you knew ahead of time the 0.01% of education that was needed by that 0.01% of the population to produce wonders, you'd be able to save a hell of a lot of money and time and trouble.
Trouble is, nobody can predict ahead of time who needs to know what, or what use it will be put to.
Since they have been saying American kids don't compete well against others worldwide since I was in high school 20 years ago doesn't it go without saying that adults don't either? The kids of 20 years ago are the adults of today. The university graduate that really committed themselves and excelled are in the minority. College campuses are filled with people that just care about getting it over, not being brilliant.
"It's long been known that America's school kids haven't measured well compared with international peers. Now, there's a new twist [...]
Really? Kids become adults? How can we not expect generations of kids fitting a specific profile not translating to their adult life in some manner.
Because I'm pretty sure you have to memorise something to learn it. Forgetting it, at the very least, is the OPPOSITE of learning.
So I take it that, unlike those "rote automatons" the Japanese, you know why 1+1=2, yes? You know how to derive the conduction band in metallic hydrogen from the Schroedinger equation of QM and know how to extend that to semiconductor use in computers, right? I mean, you haven't just rote learned, yes?
I take it you have tested carbon dating and visited the archeological sites that support the history you were taught rote-like in school, yes? I mean, you wouldn't have just accepted it or ignored it without testing, yes?
I also take it you're 100% against skill-based training in schools since this is merely rote learning on how to use MS Office or whatever, right?
First of all, I am not saying the data is wrong, but it looks in the wrong place. I'll explain. If the AVERAGE American takes a test and does more poorly than the AVERAGE European or the AVERAGE Zimbabwean, that is one thing. However, America is not run by its average people. The average people do the work, sure, but they are directed by the above-average, and I will tell you something about them. These people are the engineers, the scientists, the lawyers, the doctors, etc. While our average people don't stack up to the average people in other countries, our above-average people crush the above average people in pretty much every other place. Our engineers, our scientists, our doctors are light years better than the ones in most other countries. Why do you think so many come from abroad to study in our higher educational institutions? Because the education is GOOD, and among those above-average people in those schools there is an elite crop. It is they who run the country. So these silly comparisons do not bother me. Our average people can be less average than the others, so long as we continue to excel among our elite.
People don't need math skills to drive a semi-truck
I drive 18-wheel trucks, and I use math all the time.
How much fuel do you need? How long will it take to get there? Which route is most cost-effective (tolls, traffic, distance)? What time must you start driving in the morning? How much sleep have you had? There are x pallets of y product on your trailer, how much product? Your truck weighs x empty today and the law in the current state/province/country allows y, how much product can you legally carry? Can you afford to idle your truck tonight? What is the correct toll for your truck? What is the correct tariff for the product? Fuel in USA is USD per gallon; fuel in Canada is CAD per liter; which fuel costs less? Account for petty cash spent. etc. etc. etc.
Americans rag on the metric system, but damn if the math isn't pleasant when the highway speed is 100 km/h and the distance is n-hundred km.
If you look at the distribution of test score amongst high schools in the US, there are schools that perform poorly, and there are schools that perform better than any other schools in the world. What this means is that there is a huge std deviation for scores in the US, which makes using the average(or median) a bit of a statistical fallacy. This test is doing the same. It also doesn't account for the large chunk of Americans who are entirely uneducated because they came from countries with education systems that were supremely lacking or nonexistent. The article mentions that, but doesn't address how the study worked to prove whether that's true or avoid it.
Also, the article says
America's top 10 percent of students can compete globally
But they don't mention how the top 10 percent competes globally. Are the top 10% of Americans just slightly better than average? Are they higher than Japan(#1 in each category)? What's the 'Top %' of Americans that are above average? What's the 'Top %' of Americans to be in the top 10? Top 5?
Obviously the problem this study is how the boundaries are drawn. Scandinavia is relatively small ethnically homogenous countries verses diverse USA. Same with Singapore. If they sampled the north and west of Boston they'd get significantly higher scores. Other places might be Greenwich/Darian/NewCaanan, Orange County (CA), Marin County, or Grosse Point. Sad to say, anywhere highly populated by Caucasians/India/Asians will score highly. Places populated by African Americans will score low.
"Practical electric light" in other words "The one Edison used, 'cos he's 'merkin" Except electric lighting was done elsewhere before then too.
DC power was better but AC took over because it was easier to make huge voltages from AC than DC and transfer that high voltage long distances. AC requiring Maxwell's invention in physics. Phonograph: scot. Movies: scot, airplane: Belgian. All predated USA.
How is that a twist?
The rest of the world is well aware that americans are stupid, pay attention america.
We've been hearing this same song and dance for decades. Isn't it time to realize that test scores aren't the end-all for a robust economy?
Rules to dominate people:
- Keep them ignorant
- Make them work to survive.
- Entertain them during the non-working hours with unnecessary consumption
- Keep their morale high with fake hopes.
Working since 4000 B.C. !
Oh my! You mean all that money we've been spending on schools isn't working? Well, government & politicians will of course thing the answer is we need to spend EVEN MORE MONEY. Politicians, school board & administrations answer is to always spend MORE money. Of course, any SANE person knows the answer isn't money, but WHAT and HOW you are educating them. When parents, and educators let the kids down, what do you expect? Some parents should be more focused with their kids education, but they are "too busy". Educators (paper pushers, not teachers) are more interested in making sure the seats are full just to get the money from the state/feds. When weather is bad, ever notice they don't dismiss class until AFTER 1pm? Because if they cancel earlier, they don't get "their money". You've seen countless comedy man on the street interviews, with kids over 20, and 3/4 of them don't have a clue over the most common things! One bubble head said the Constitution was signed in 1964! What kind of moron from the USA goes through life thinking that? What I would like to see is an INTELLIGENCE TEST requirement before you can vote! Would help get rid of some of the dunderheads in state & federal office that are continually screwing up this once great country!
In numeracy, the US seems to have the widest spread in scores and Japan the narrowest. This suggests that the problem of leaving people behind in math (the Barbie effect) can be addressed substantially here. Move from "math is hard" to "math is expected" and our mean will shift up a lot.
Hardly world wide.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
> and then the rich realized they could redistrict
Gerrymandering was a well known in 1812. That was 200 years ago. The US started going down the hole around 1970. The country flourished when taxes when on success were a LOT lower. Come to think of it, the huge taxes started around 1970, then the country went to shit.
Time was, the best and brightest WANTED to come to America and they did become Americans. US citizenship was a dream of many through the 1980s. Today, those who still come are waving Mexican flags. How often do you hear people dreaming of becoming an American these days?
Academic strength is not what made the US a superpower.
people still use checks these days? I thought the federal government in the United States of America required people to use direct deposit instead of paper checks? i haven't seen a paper check in ages. everyone i know uses debit cards. oh, and we don't have a credit rating either. :p
one thing that surprised me in the article is that "...many people live paycheck-to-paycheck". Really? Save some money in the bank. Cut back on buying expensive items. Cut down usage of water, gas and electricity. Move into the suburbs instead of living downtown. Eat out less often. Take public transportation instead of a gas guzzling sport utility vehicle. Pay credit card bills on time. Saving money is not that hard. Or ask your relatives for financial assistance. not trying to troll, just offering some suggesting.
I take it from the anti-spending tirade that you're among those who think that overly inflated teacher salaries are at the root of the failure of education in the U.S. I thought about becoming a school teacher once. Many people who know me have commented that I would be a very good teacher. But I became an engineer instead. Why do you suppose I decided to withhold my services as a school teacher?
American adults can flip hamburger like no-one else...what else is necessary?
Time was, the best and brightest WANTED to come to America and they did become Americans
That was mostly because the rest of the world was comparatively worse.
There were the old European kings and empires. There was the French Revolution followed by Napoleon. There were the World Wars. There was Communism.
Much like how Obama got the Nobel peace prize just for not being Bush, America was the best place to be and a beacon of hopes and dreams simply by not being pretty much anywhere else at the time.
Hah-haHa
U Dumb People.
Lalalala...
Posting Anon to keep moderation- you DAMN illeetist, 'vory towr, librels!!! ... grumble ... grumble ...
Obviously the decline of the republic is a process over time, not an event on a single day . To get bookends on the time frame, compare Kennedy's speeches to Mondale.
JFK spoke of the promise of America, where a store clerk could, through hard work, become president. Twenty years later, Mondale's speeches have a very different tone, a full of class envy and idea that "the man is keeping you down". So the big change in the US was somewhere between 1960-1980. Monadale tried that in 1984 and lost big , so the majority still rejected it. Obama did it in 2008 and won big, so apparently the trend continued.
Of course I'm speaking of the US. Other countries went through the same thing at other times. Stalin, Potpot, Mao, and Castro all took power based on their own brands of class envy.
My previous subject line mentioned Clinton, but I didn't expand on that in the body. After envy was a big loser for Mondale in 1984, Clinton in 1992 said it was a bad idea. He even pointed that out in his inauguration speech.
So you could say that the envy trend began after the early 60s, was modetately strong in 1980, and had been recognized as error by 1992, but still used for political manipulation in 2008.
Since just the results are a whopping 456 pages, maybe some more competency is needed in interpreting reports for bureaucracies.
The turn of the century was the time of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford - certainly a time when the US was booming.
The top tax rate in 1900 was 0%. In 1913 the top tax rate was 7%.
The roaring twenties were a good time for America, right? Through the 1920s, the top tax rate was reduced to 24%.
During Word War II rates were greatly increased and through the 1970s, taxes were extremely high, as you said.
By 1970, the US economy was screwed and we started seeing headlines about how the US ranked near the bottom in ____, where you could fill in the blank with education or many other things.
1998 rates were cut dramitally, to 28%. The early 1990s boom followed.
I was curious what the questionnaire was like. The OECD site has a sample in case you're curious: http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/Education%20and%20Skills_online%20sample%20items.ppt
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
..The Netherlands is scoring well in this test but overall the level of education in The Netherlands has been dropping dramatically the last 10-20 years.
This is well documented and has been an issue with teachers, employers & policy-makers.
That really should make you worry more about this outcome.
The only people who deny the US is largely populated by complete idiots are the complete idiots living in the US themselves.
It's been said that the average American spends 4 hours a day watching TV. That may have something to do with the low scores.
America used to be a country of independence and innovation.
Now it's mostly sheeple following talking head fear mongers and reality TV.
Baaa baaa baaa.
They wood loose a spelling bea two.. there spelling is two terable to beleve. You should sea the terable spelling by professionals I sea on youtube.. ;-) I think "loose" and "there" are some of the most common examples I see misused, nearly 90% of the time. I think the problem is probably that the teachers are dyslexic uneducated buffoons, which naturally would contaminate any "education" they provide. If the teachers don't have basic math, grammar and spelling skills, then how could one possibly expect their students to have any either?
Sorry, I had to say it.
3th!
Bwahaaaaaa!
-- 29A the number of the Beast
I would argue that the very fact that members of main-stream American religious groups are in effect required to reject solid scientific frameworks like evolution and geology predisposes them to intellectual handicaps. Science is at its heart an intellectual process for finding truth about the physical world. It requires a person to be open to new ideas, and to use logic and reason to reject faulty ideas. By rejecting scientific ideas out of hand, members of these extreme religious groups are developing habits of mind that erode their entire skill set. They develop the habit of mind to blindly accept ideas as given by a trusted religious authority. They develop the habit of mind to view opposing views as evils to be shunned. They develop the habit of mind of assuming a-priori the truth of certain ideas and then defending those ideas in any way possible, including the use of deceptive and faulty reasoning.
I don't think the apparent decline in the reasoning skills of Americans can entirely be blamed on religion. The decline of the fifth estate (the news media) and the rise of vacuous popular culture have likely played a role. I also think that many in our "academic elite" have fallen sway to facile ideologies that ignore the complexities of history and human nature (both on the left AND on the right). I am also not entirely anti-religious. The Jesuits for example display a healthy respect for logic and reason and have a strong intellectual heritage (they educated Rene Descartes, who used the logical habits of mind he gained from his Jesuit education to help start the Enlightenment).
Nonetheless, having conversed and interacted with many evangelical adherents, I am disturbed by their lack of reasoning skills. In a democratic society, having such a large numbers of voters with such low reasoning abilities is likely to be dangerous. The fact that 90 members of Congress are "Tea Party" adherents is strong evidence of this danger.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
The systemic error in diagnosing Lyme disease in the medical industry isn't helping (causes short term memory impairment- MUCH more widespread than previously thought) . Here's the right way to diagnose it: http://funmedwebinars.wistia.com/medias/w3n7cymstt#_media_4694133
2 or 3 generations of school kids do poorly and it's a surprise that adults are now doing poorly. The researchers and reporters that are surprised are the ones to receive a failing grade. Schools used the "feel good about yourself whether you did well or not approach. Colleges have made fortunes teaching and granting useless degrees. Students don't study science because it's too hard, many thousands of kids who were not suited for college were encouraged to go for those useless degrees as they'd never pass science courses which they don't want to take anyway because they are "too hard". Then they are given easy credit with no accountability to run up massive debt earning those useless degrees. Then they think the successful who made a good living owe them part of what they made because they were too lazy to apply themselves through high school. Most students, with the proper approach, ambition and determination can get good grades. However it means they have to apply themselves early in life, because starting to apply yourself when you get in college is way too late. Much, or most of that learning desire comes from the home environment with parents taking time to read to their kids very early. If kids don't have good grades in high school, the odds of even making it in college are very slim. Poor grades in high school? Save your money and get a job instead of running up a big debt for a useless degree. There is no surprise that after 2 or 3 generations of kids doing poor, as adults they still do poorly.
In the USA, (from what I read), the schools are essentially municipality funded, as opposed to state funding. Therefore, the affluent municipalities (the 1% ers) get great schools and infrastructure, whereas the rest get less and less, depending upon resources. If the teacher has no resources, the students suffer.
Then there is University. In the USA, university will, on average, cost up to $100k for the undergraduate degree. This means that bright, intelligent students from poorer background have good education out of reach.
I live in Montreal. I was a single income provider (my wife stayed home, and occasionally had part-time jobs). My three kids completed university, both undergraduate and postgraduate. And without debts. Courses at the time were around $200/semester, plus books and transportation, insurance and pocket money. A September to December Semester set me back about $1500/student, all inclusive. My costs were lower, because the kids lived at home.
McGill University is on a par with Harvard, MIT, HEC (Haut Études commercials), Stanford, and their peers. McGill has always been in the top 5 for medicine, mathematics, and engineering.
HEC (is a university specializing on Economics, Finance, business development and management. It's courses are heavy on business and mathematical analysis. Courses are in both French and English at HEC). HEC have professor swaps with Harvard.
Enough tooting the horn. Pay for as you go is great, you have football, superior premises, good professors, and good tutoring. For science, I presume great labs.
Please note. College is one level of education, University is another. The real education is out in the field, given you graduate from either.
The underlying reason for the US Adults scoring Poorly is not the schooling, it is the unaffordable schooling.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada