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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 The 4-year university approach is obsolete, or at least needs big-time augmentation.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.
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".
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?
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
I'd love to see that too, but people with poor math skills don't understand histograms.
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
Haven't' you taken a statistics class? You present the information in the way that supports your point. You don't give it in additional ways!
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
a good supply of media-addled, uncritical, disposable human garbage is also economically beneficial.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
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.
If your spending isn't measured as a function of sine, you're doing something wrong.
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?
Neanderthals had larger brains than us. Your argument isn't terribly effective.
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.
Read my lips. There are 30 rounds in this magazine. Problem solved.
You must be American, there are 29 rounds in the magazine, 1 in the chamber.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.
This post seems to suggest that American adults are just grown up American kids...
Read my lips. There are 30 rounds in this magazine. Problem solved.
You must be American, there are 29 rounds in the magazine, 1 in the chamber.
The "cocking" sound you heard was thrown in by the Foley guy for effect . . .
I am not a crackpot.
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+
The Neanderthal survived.
Looking at their predicament and environment, I do not think the same could be said for me.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
"There you will see that despite blacks making up 13% of the population in the US, they are [arrested] for a significantly greater proportion
of violent crime."
That's a more accurate statement. Also, what's more likely. people with higher melanin levels are more violent, or laws written
by the majority population are biased against the minority population.
This Sig does not Exist.
I don't know how you do tests in America, but here the idea of most tests is that the majority of the test-takers (even Americans) won't ace it. If everyone aces the test, that means it wasn't planned well enough (as it usually means you gained much less useful data than you could've). Ideally, the test results should fit in a normal curve (that is, very few people score terribly badly, very few incredibly well, relative to their peers).
But yeah, it was quite insensitive of the researchers to publish the results, they should've told everyone that they aced the test and are a genius in everything.
By 'Americans acing the test' I meant the average of the sample being high, relative to the average of the rest of the world. I don't understand why you would see that as implying that every single person gets a high score, but I do see the incentive of misinterpreting statements for cheap laughs.
You are right - ideally (naively) a test's outcome should roughly look like a Gaussian distribution that's not too narrow and not too wide. But that pertains to the design of a single test. I was referring to the universe of tests you could construct to evaluate the varied skills and abilities that people in a society have, with the contention that in the US a majority of them would have the nice bell-shaped gaussian that you talked about, because of the uniform distribution of people's backgrounds across the worldwide range of such backgrounds, and the conditioning and abilities that ensued from those backgrounds. In countries in which people's conditioning falls into a narrower spectrum, the results are likely to be more lopsided - a large subset of sets with very narrow clustering around the mean - and a large subset with very wide distributions.
From the very article you quote, the links between race and crime are the now discredited theories of the late 19th and early 20th century. That minority races are disproportionally represented in nearly every area of your criminal system is likely due to their similar distribution amongst the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum reinforced by racial stereotyping such as you are exhibiting.
That's right, I'm saying that you and the grand parent you are responding to are part of the problem.
It is not that you have a black race (whatever the hell that means) crime problem - you have a crime problem because you have too great a difference between the haves and have-nots, too many have-nots and an uneven distribution of 'race' across that have/have-not divide.
Yes, you could demand that 'they' lift their game and stop reacting to their poverty and discrimination by choosing to be obedient and productive members of the society that has historically exploited them and currently discriminates against them, or we could demand better behaviour of those with the resources.
So, you are correct, there are more 'blacks' arrested, more imprisoned and they are over-represented in other areas of the crime. To an extent, that's because they are black. But that's not racial or genetic. That's social and cultural. Your society and your culture. How about you start holding up your end before you start demanding that 'they' hold up theirs?
what's more likely. people with higher melanin levels are more violent, or laws written by the majority population are biased against the minority population.
Do you really think laws against violent crime are biased against the minority population? Really?
How about an alternate explanation, people growing up in inner city poverty are more violent. Once they break the cultural cycle of violence, we see that skin color doesn't matter. It's culture, not melanin.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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
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
The crime problem exists because people CHOOSE to COMMIT CRIMES.
The fact that you think that everyone has equal access to all choices is an indication of the sort of background you come from. Absent your access to education, raised in a home environment and/or neighbourhood with less opportunities and your choices become much more limited, no matter how you capitalise them.
Your reasoning is nothing more than a lame rationalization
I have echoed the proposals of those far more expert in this matter than either of us, if you can fault their reasoning, please do so. Name calling doesn't further your argument.
an example of your own moral decay
Well, you're either a troll trying to get a rise by insulting me, or I've struck too close to home and have stung you.
could justify violent crime
I didn't attempt to justify it; I was pointing out the flaw in your attempt to explain its origin and further, suggesting that if you want it to change, then demanding that those who are less able be the ones to bear the burden of change is both unlikely to yield results and perpetuates the very discrimination that has resulted in the problem.
A disparity in wealth doesn't cause crime
Actually it does - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality#Crime. Please don't try to weasel out with a pedantic argument over 'cause'. Yes, every person has free will, is captain of their destiny etc., but when talking about culture and society it is useful and meaningful to look at trends and forces at a level other than individual.
it sure as hell does not justify crime
That's your straw man, not mine.
(Posted via free hospital wifi, on my backup, old, iPhone 3GS after said experiment)
Well, I did it. And I have a freshly revised theory: the human race is the most violent one, so far.
Poor white neighborhoods have more violent crime too.
They have higher levels of drug abuse too.
You're simply trying to justify your racism. Unfortunately, the facts you cite don't support your position.
Serfs you, right?
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
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.
NO no.. there are 30 rounds in the magazine AND one in the chamber!
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?
One word: Asians.
Don't know where you got that figure, but I suspect you're smearing Neanderthals.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Beyond culture, it's hope or lack of hope. Wherever the violence is the worst, you will find that poverty or at the least lack of actual opportunity for advancement preceded it.
The lack of hope creates the culture that creates the violence and the lawlessness.
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.
Also, the evolutions of crime rates don't follow the evolutions of the racial proportions of the population. Crime is going up or down, and the percentage of blacks isn't going up or down at the same time or even moving in the same direction most of the time. This further disproves correlation between the two, disproving causation as well.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
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!
"hopelessness hung over the country like a dark cloud, almost palpable."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Beyond culture, it's hope or lack of hope.
So close.
The statistical correlation actually points to poverty as the main cause of crime. Obviously only those crimes that the trolls accuse certain minorities of. Things like serious fraud, war crimes, treason and perjury are not so well correlated to poverty.
Also, what's more likely. people with higher melanin levels are more violent, or laws written
by the majority population are biased against the minority population.
The first statement for sure!
The laws doesn't mention skin color or race, nor any other attribute that be related to that, so if you think people of a certain ethnicity should be allowed to be more violent before they break the law or something similar, you're crazy.
Basically, it might be some kind of bias that makes cops be more vigilant about certain ethnic groups, but the courts should be much more unbiased and they do convict a significantly higher percentage of especially blacks. Sure it could still be bias but given that gang activity tend to involve significantly more blacks directly or indirectly, plus the infatuation the hip-hop culture have with 'gangsta' mentality, I'd say almost all of these convictions are justified.
Now, as to WHY this is so is a completely different matter. As the off-balance is also found in other countries (including African) and among affluent population segments, there seems to be some genetic component to the issue. I have not been able to find any research into the criminal statistics of black children adopted into white families, but if the off-balance exists there as well, all other factors besides genetics can be ruled out.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Sadly, the latter are also not well correlated with prosecution unless carried out against even richer targets.
Orangutans have a larger brain than us, and all they do is spend all day swinging around in trees, eating fresh fruit and having sex while we build cities, invent gods so we can torture ourselves with guilt, and go to war over sticky black goo in the ground.
Hmm...
Actually, it sounds like a bigger brain is better.
Blank until
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.
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.
When you correct for *everything*, blacks do not offend more. What happens is Blacks re-offend more. One supposition is that the system is harder on Blacks (longer terms for the same crimes and such), so they get out more hardened. If the system were not inherently racist, then Blacks would not re-offend more, and the racial divide would disappear. But the whites like being superior, so the system is rigged, in many subtle ways. Then we complain about it.
Learn to love Alaska
The laws doesn't mention skin color or race, nor any other attribute that be related to that, so if you think people of a certain ethnicity should be allowed to be more violent before they break the law or something similar, you're crazy.
But that's how it works. The rich white boy gets caught stealing a candy bar with his friends under peer pressure, and daddy runs in and pleads a "boys will be boys" case, and no charges are pressed. The poor Black kid does the same and the shop owner makes an example from him, prosecuting him for theft for a $2 candy bar.
The US system is racist at heart. But any talk of that is ignored. The whites don't want to hear it, and the Blacks know it won't make any difference.
Learn to love Alaska
From this article:
Orangutans: 275–500 cc (16.8–31 cu in)
Chimpanzees: 275–500 cc (16.8–31 cu in)
Gorillas: 340–752 cc (21–45.9 cu in)
Humans: 1,000–1,900 cc (61–120 cu in)
Neanderthals: 1,200–1,900 cc (73–120 cu in)
I think you're overestimating the orangutan brain size. It gets worse if you try to correct for body size using the encephalization quotient. You then get 7.4-7.8 for humans and 1.8 or so for orangutans.
Feeding trolls may be immoral, but it sure can be fun at times.
c++;
America is just large and young. That's the only difference. You'll find those cross sections in most countries. Stop thinking you're special.
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...
Funny, because White supremacists generally have 2%-4% Neanderthal DNA, vs. 0%-2% for Asians and 0% for Black Africans.
From your post, I'm guessing you reverted to the Neanderthal type.
So if white supremacists have higher levels, what about regular white folk? Also how much of this DNA do black power types have? You specify black africans, what are the levels of black carribeans?
Wanna buy a shirt?
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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!
Well, to be fair, not all "racists" can help being that way. What if every black person you've met in your life has been totally unoriginal, can barely form sentences, smells bad (but often covers it up with lots of cologne), listens to and rarely makes music a not-black-skinned 4-year-old might produce, is highly violent, but more than anything seems to only think about penis to the point of seeming retarded? And what if this is what you saw no matter the black person's upbringing? Wealthy, poor, average... just didn't matter?
I truly do wish black people in real life were more like the way the mainstream media portrayed them. But I've seen too much now, and belief isn't something I can easily control. Wouldn't it be a lie for me to speak about equality when I know, in my heart, everything in my entire life points to something else? Am I supposed to be afraid to tell the truth about my experience because it's not "PC"?
I'm not saying I'm some sort of genius. I don't think my race "superior" or anything grandiose like that, and I don't feel this way about any other skin color or "race". I just don't like black people. It's not a hate thing; I don't want to do anything violent to them. I want them to pursue their dreams as I'd want for anyone else. I just want them to do it way the hell over there.
At least I don't lie about it. Now go ahead and rip me apart. Bring lube.
P.S.: In my experience, most people who call out "racists" have never tried to have a black friend or lived near them. In fact, they don't seem to have any frame of reference at all, yet they speak so very loudly...
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.
For Slashdot, the latter 2 figures are probably most interesting: which countries have more l33t hackers and which have more button-pushers.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I completely disagree that there is a crime problem because of "haves" and "have nots". There is a crime problem because people are choosing to commit crimes. There is a crime problem because in certain cultures, committing crime is cool. There is a crime problem because kids aren't raised with discipline and respect.
Being poor doesn't make you a criminal. Being a dickhead raised by crappy parents and living in a shitty community does.
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
Wow - the irony as you typed that out next to your 'home'/meth lab in your 'whites only' trailer park in eastern Alabama must be smothering...
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Also, the brain size doesn't necessarily account for anything important. I was under the impression that it's the neuronal/synapse density and its interconnection complexity that matters, not the size.
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
So...Black Africans have what % of what DNA? Because your post sounds like bullshit and that lands you in a mental percentile with white supremacists and rhesus monkeys.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
No, there was a recent study that showed that certain human glions could improve rat intelligence: that the glions are even more critical than the number of connections. View it as our synapses being like 14.4k modems, the neurons being like microcontrollers and routers, and the glions being pentium-iv systems. Not that the picture is correct, but just demonstrates the point.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
That's nothing. Cats have basically enslaved vast numbers of humans to be their willing slaves, tending to their every whim and need.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
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.
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.
The most common crimes like vandalism can't be explained at all through greed. Your argument is bad and you should feel bad. You should also stop pretending that the two causes you imagine might motivate you to crime are the only ones that motivate anyone.
Desperation from a drug addiction, for example, is still desperation. Peoples' minds can be messed up without them inherently containing a special flaw that separates them from you.
I'm not a neuroscientist, but I don't think size really has much to do with it. Elephants have the largest brains of all, no? While they're intelligent creatures, they don't compare to humans.
Really, raw intelligence comes from a small portion of the brain, namely the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex, if I recall correctly, and it is this portion of homo sapiens that makes them such an intelligent race (and I think dolphins have one that's even larger). Further, I think more than the raw weight of the brain, it's the number of neurons and more importantly, the quantity of synaptic connections between the neurons which contributes to greater intelligence. While the raw weight of the brain generally correlates with these numbers, and intelligence as a result (which is probably valid for interspecies comparisons, but not intraspecies ones), when you make finer comparisons between intelligence, it actually turns out that having fewer neurons makes you more intelligent because your brain has pruned those neurons which are found not to be performing as much activity, leaving more space/other resources for more productive neurons to grow.
To reiterate, I'm not an expert in this area, but these are my general understandings, any of which may be off.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
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.
We do not cut education. In fact taxes go up and up and up, and more and more money gets poured down the rathole.
The problem isn't the amount of money we spend on education. It is astronomically high. The problem is that we spend more money on administration than we do on teaching. The highest paid people in any school district are the administrators whose only job is to take up space and make sure "the rules" are being followed, and to spend district money on things other than the best teachers money can buy.
Education boards would rather spend $100K/year constantly updating computers that don't need updating, buying technology they don't need, and of course embezzling for personal profit, than spend $100K/year on poaching an experienced engineer from the private sector to teach science and math.
Schools do not want degreed scientists and engineers to teach science and math. They want people with liberal arts degrees in education, sociology, psychology, social work, and other fields, because they are too focused on "school in place of parent" than on learning.
Our education problems are purely architectural and systemic, not financial.
Enslaved human here. Can confirm.
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.
The cynical might think that the offensive and racist AC post above was deliberately made to discredit more rational posts mentioning race and ethnicity as a major factor in comparing US scores to other OECD countries.
The truth is that Americans of _any_ race or ethnicity score well in literacy and numeracy compared to the _same_ group in other countries.
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?
OOOK but who is in charge of the Library then?
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?
Because I'm pretty sure you have to memorise something to learn it.
I'm talking about understanding why it works.
Now, what's with all those pointless questions? Do you really have something against actually comprehending the material you memorize? Do you really believe that I claimed you should never memorize anything? I did no such thing.
So I take it that, unlike those "rote automatons" the Japanese, you know why 1+1=2, yes?
Your questions show that you're attacking a straw man. I believe you should understand why things work when it is possible, so I don't really know what attacking me is going to do. Again, do you have something against decent educations?
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
It does if you want skill based training
Not necessarily. While doing "skill based training," you may come to understand the logic behind what you're doing and become able to apply that knowledge elsewhere. Some people can get quite a lot from more hands-on work.
Whereas education, which isn't supposed to be skill-based training, is trying to teach you how to learn.
Then you're better off learning on your own, because you don't need to waste tremendous amounts of money having someone try to teach that nonsense, which should come naturally.
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
In volume, no. In number of neurons: yes.
See:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons
The number of layers present in the cerebral cortex is also thought to be of importance (possibly coinciding with levels of abstraction)
See:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_cortex#Layered_structure
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocortex
- http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=are-whales-smarter-than-we-are
The point is, we shouldn't be forcing kids to memorize material for the sake of memorizing it, and should instead try to get them to understand why it works. Merely having someone memorize facts practically ensures that it will never become interesting to them, which just means they'll very likely forget it soon after any of these poorly-designed tests, anyway. If you get them to understand why it works and show them how it is useful, they will probably memorize it all on their own even if you don't force them to try to make a specific effort to memorize it.
And, as I said, I don't have anything against memorization (you need to be able to retain information in order to work with anything), we need to focus more on understanding, and too much of what kids are forced to memorize in school is utterly worthless.
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
I believe people often confuse skull size/ratio to brain size/ratio.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Crime is a social problem, not a race problem. It does not matter what race is impoverished and living in ghettos, those people will have a higher crime rate than people with luxuries and wealth.
To show how false you are, look at crime rates for minorities living in suburbs and whites in suburbs. The crime rates will be nearly identical, if not favoring the minorities.
Trading Places (movie) was a moral lesson in addition to being a comedy. There are several variations of the story, each time we have the same result, which is not racist at all. While "stories" are just that, I'm sure if you dig around you can find actual experiments to show the stories match reality.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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.
I agree... whenever people mention the size of the brain being an indicator of intelligence I bring out primordial dwarves who are the smallest dwarves yet the majority go to regular schools and in some cases are on the honor roll. If brain size were truly an indicator, then these people shouldn't be able to function modern society like they do.
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.
I think the orangutan myth comes from people mixing up being bewildered and lazy all the time with wisdom.
That's where Congress comes from too.
I'm not a neuroscientist, but
Read that and decided your post was TL so I DR
Whenever a player quits EVE to go play WoW, the Average IQ of both games increase.
No, that would be the ether fumes
"Damnit Sparky! I'm busy prognosticating the downfall of the White Man, put out that damn cigaret..."
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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.
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)
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.
Violent crime has dropped some 30% over the last 3 or 4 decades even though poverty and the number of poor has risen substantially with rampant unemployment. True unemployment is far greater than the government figures which don't include those who have given up. With 43 million on food stamps which is by far the highest figure ever. Still violent crime is going down. It has risen in a few locations where the police force has been reduced to a number making them ineffective. The same is true for the cost of living which includes neither food nor fuel, the two largest expenditures for a middle class family..
A limit in the number, option, or variety of choices does not negate the fact that it is still an exercise of free will to commit a crime when you know it is illegal. Dunno if you heard but it's not all murder, crack rocks, and hookers in the hood. Until that is the case there will always be daily life choices that don't include breaking the law ;-)
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