Putting for the moment long comments on school systems, triva games, and the benefits (or lack thereof) of art/science/engineering/the classics, why don't we focus on the actual article (gasp!) for a moment.
The ONLY hard fact in this article is "A preliminary study of 150 people aged 20 to 35 has shown that more than one in 10 are suffering from severe problems with their memory."
First note a few things about the above statement. One is that 150 people is not a very large sample of a population, although large enough that we might want to be worried about the 1 in 10 figure. Another is the word preliminary - generally this means that the study is not conclusive. In fact, the article doesn't even mention how the survey was performed. Maybe a big poster was put up "Interested in memory loss??? Call ___" Of course then more people with loss will show up.
Note this is severe memory loss, none of this forgetting how to do math on paper - the case they give us include forgetting where you are going and not being able to remember written words when they are trying to.
Even given the above, the actual research group which did the survey came to no conclusions about technology. The writers of the article clearly listened to doctors saying things like "I THINK technology is to blame." The only evidence that technology might be to blame is that it is the younger generation which is being afflicted.
This is a problem that clearly needs looking into, and many, many more studies before blame can be placed. (How about a study of people who have been using technology just as long as those of us in our 20s who are in their 40s or 50s? Or maybe comparisions of people using technology vs. not using technology). For all we know of those 150 people who are the closest thing to hard evidence we have, only 10 used PDAs or similar devices. Maybe this is a deeper problem than we think. Just don't come to any rash conclusions before we know all the facts.
I agree that history and social sciences help build a common base level of knowledge, but in some of the grades (especially those from 1-8) it *doesn't* help very much.
Most history which I learned in grades 1-8 was very basic, and then when I took the required history courses in high school all I got was more information covered in more depth. Some subjects it is very important to teach in the lower grades before high school (you aren't going to pit a kid into Geometry, Pre-Calc, etc without giving him a lot of math background before-hand, reading is obviously important, etc...) but some of the overlap time would be better spent devoting more weight to learning how to learn and think.
So the question now is whether or not other countries are going to go into space now, or if they will sit and watch China... and will countries such as the US to put more weight into the space program. Personally I think unless China does something that no one has done before, there won't be a great reaction from the other countries in terms of actually launching more things into space than is already planned, since we are long past unmanned flights.
I agree, however it appears (from multiple stories, although I'm still not sure which ones to believe) that Sega is not going to "quit"... I think what we'll probably see is Sega, as mentioned in the speech, attempting to further and further to the side of PC business, and if/when its game consoles begin to phase out they will make the shift then. In terms of business this makes more sense than simply announcing that they are going to stop producing their game consoles.
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The ONLY hard fact in this article is "A preliminary study of 150 people aged 20 to 35 has shown that more than one in 10 are suffering from severe problems with their memory."
First note a few things about the above statement. One is that 150 people is not a very large sample of a population, although large enough that we might want to be worried about the 1 in 10 figure. Another is the word preliminary - generally this means that the study is not conclusive. In fact, the article doesn't even mention how the survey was performed. Maybe a big poster was put up "Interested in memory loss??? Call ___" Of course then more people with loss will show up.
Note this is severe memory loss, none of this forgetting how to do math on paper - the case they give us include forgetting where you are going and not being able to remember written words when they are trying to.
Even given the above, the actual research group which did the survey came to no conclusions about technology. The writers of the article clearly listened to doctors saying things like "I THINK technology is to blame." The only evidence that technology might be to blame is that it is the younger generation which is being afflicted.
This is a problem that clearly needs looking into, and many, many more studies before blame can be placed. (How about a study of people who have been using technology just as long as those of us in our 20s who are in their 40s or 50s? Or maybe comparisions of people using technology vs. not using technology). For all we know of those 150 people who are the closest thing to hard evidence we have, only 10 used PDAs or similar devices. Maybe this is a deeper problem than we think. Just don't come to any rash conclusions before we know all the facts.
Most history which I learned in grades 1-8 was very basic, and then when I took the required history courses in high school all I got was more information covered in more depth. Some subjects it is very important to teach in the lower grades before high school (you aren't going to pit a kid into Geometry, Pre-Calc, etc without giving him a lot of math background before-hand, reading is obviously important, etc...) but some of the overlap time would be better spent devoting more weight to learning how to learn and think.
So the question now is whether or not other countries are going to go into space now, or if they will sit and watch China... and will countries such as the US to put more weight into the space program. Personally I think unless China does something that no one has done before, there won't be a great reaction from the other countries in terms of actually launching more things into space than is already planned, since we are long past unmanned flights.
I agree, however it appears (from multiple stories, although I'm still not sure which ones to believe) that Sega is not going to "quit"... I think what we'll probably see is Sega, as mentioned in the speech, attempting to further and further to the side of PC business, and if/when its game consoles begin to phase out they will make the shift then. In terms of business this makes more sense than simply announcing that they are going to stop producing their game consoles.