I don't see how a bigger screen and better performance suddenly make this oversized phone a professional tool.
I have to say the only thing I was waiting for from this announcement was whether the iPad Pro would have OS X or iOS. As I think Windows RT showed us, the primary difference between a consumer tablet and a productivity device is whether it uses a desktop OS.
Can I run the full versions of Photoshop and XCode on the iPad Pro? Can I use the desktop verson of Microsoft Office on the iPad Pro? How easy is it to dock the iPad Pro to my Thunderbolt screen to have multiple monitor support? These are the important questions to answer. Everyone knew Apple could create a device that looks like the Surface Pro, we just needed to know if it could be a true laptop replacement in quasi-tablet form.
I'm sure it will still sell like hotcakes though, since iOS still has a much better app ecosystem than Windows RT did. And if the Apple watch can sell, anything Apple creates (for a while at least) will sell.
Comparing money spent on college education is far more complicated since the US government generally does not pay for college. To compare money spent on college with other OECD nations, you would have to include all government and private spending on college. From a total investment standpoint, the government paying for college is no different than private citizens paying for it; the only difference is whether the payments are direct (loans/savings) or indirect (taxes).
Here we are talking about temporary foreign replacement workers, and you slip 1st and 2nd generation immigrants in, hoping no one would notice. Wrapping it with '40% of Fortune 500' was a nice touch, I'll give you that.
But I noticed. They fall for that bait and switch on the CNN and Fox forums. One should know better around here.
I have yet to meet an H1B worker who wasn't trying to get citizenship. My sample size is only about a dozen, but I have never seen these H1B immigrants who plan on coming here to work for a couple years and then leaving. This does happen quite often, but only because of how hard it is for them to get green cards.
I put myself through school 3 times, worked full time at night in a factory to do so. My family is one of the wealthiest in my very poor town, which isn't saying much. I put up with 3 hours or more of commuting a day and work nearly 24 hours a day some days. You really think that I've made poor decisions?
I have too little information to know if you have made poor decisions, but based on what you wrote I assume you have. I have no idea what putting yourself through school three times means. Does that mean a Bachelor's, PhD, and MBA/JD? Or does it mean three useless degrees, or perhaps even two failed attempts at a degree? Its too little information to go on.
Working full time while getting a degree is also suspect. That takes a great work ethic, but even being in that position means you probably made bad choices. I had to finish my degree while working full time, but it is because I made horrible decisions as a 20 year old.
You also seem to believe working hard is the same as being productive. This is a big problem for a lot of the middle class in this country. Most people working 70 hours per week are making poor choices, especially if its not for a company they have significant equity stake in. Work smarter, not harder.
The US worker cannot compete, because the playing field isn't level.
Considering STEM jobs are paid well above average for careers that require a college education, I would say US workers are competing quite well. I made almost countless mistakes in my 20's, and still have little problem making six figures in the Midwest suburbs in my 30's. I have worked with plenty of H1Bs; some horrible and some great. The horrible ones are no threat to my livelihood and the great ones only make me better when we're working together.
You are understand the false idea that H1-bs are above average.
I found them to be no better than anyone else and many of them got through school by cheating.
Considering they are more likely to get a degree, start a business, and have high achieving children, I would say they are above average. Maybe not even above average compared to college educated natives, but that isn't the correct measuring stick. Even if we were only increasing the number of poorly educated college graduates, that would still rise the average education level of our country.
Oh yes, it is so un-American to accept the world's tired, poor, huddled masses.
I don't see that quote anywhere in the Constitution. Or are you talking about the poem that wasn't added to the Statue of Liberty until 1903?
I don't see where I said it was in the Constitution. And that poem was a reflection of a mentality our country had before it was written; Emma Lazarus did not initiate some new immigrant movement in the US.
The US is a huge country and probably contains the same number of potential STEM workers that we're "taking" from the rest of the world.
The US has about 5% of the world's population. It is laughable to think we have the same number of potential STEM workers as the rest of the world, especially given that our primary schools rate so poorly compared to other nations.
It just so happens that we don't really want to invest in Americans.
The US spends more per student than any other developed country in the world. (source). Private school tuition does not affect these averages much, so even our public schools are better funded than the rest of the world. We absolutely do invest in Americans, but with only 5% of the population and 22% of the world's GDP, it is impossible to keep up our current advantage without continuing the brain drain we have been doing since the world wars.
I do agree we need massive changes to our school system, but there is even more resistance from the educational industry than there is against immigration.
Collectively, immigrants -both legal and illegal- send tens of billions of dollars back to their respective countries every year, removing that currency from US markets. How again is that a "good deal" for the US economy?
Because while they may send $120 billion in remittance per year, they make trillions of dollars working in our economy. They go to US restaurants, US supermarkets, buy US real estate, and start US companies. 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by 1st or 2nd generation immigrants, so I'm fine with them sending a fraction of 1% of our GNP overseas each year.
Anyone who has ever worked with Indian grad students knows that we are not getting anything worthwhile by letting them in.
While this is a horribly racist comment, it also illustrates another misconception about what it takes to attract the world's best and brightest. Just like it is impossible to hire only the best employees when you are hiring thousands of employees per year, it is impossible to only attract the best and brightest when you want to attract a million immigrants per year. The goal is not to ensure they are all superstars, the goal is to ensure the average immigrant is of higher quality than the average native born citizen.
Regardless of your xenophobic opinions, I would be surprised if you think those Indian grad students are less intelligent than the average American. They may not all become rock star STEM workers, but they will still improve the overall quality of our workforce. This is especially true once you factor in their children, since the children of legal immigrants perform far better than native students.
No he isn't "spot on". No one wants to train new employees. It costs money to hire and retrain. Companies want to keep you at the cheapest amount possible. No one is going to hire anyone who jumps around every year.
So don't be one of the employees who has to be trained.
I have taken failing projects away from company lifers within a couple months at new companies on multiple occasions. While I will be more productive after a year or two than I am on the first day, my varied work experience makes me more valuable on day 20 than most employees with 10 years of company specific experience. I just keep 1 to 2 company lifers close so I can ask for advice so the company gets the best of both worlds. The coworkers I choose to work close with are usually the ones who want to improve themselves and are eager to be part of projects that are improving their internal IT processes, so everyone benefits. Everyone but the lifers who resist change that is.
I do have to agree that changing jobs every year is a bit much, unless you are a contractor. Three years per company is very reasonable though.
Keep moving, or you will get fired? Who is going to hire someone who keeps switching jobs constantly?
While switching jobs every year will be a red flag (unless you were a consultant), switching jobs every three years or so will not be a red flag for any employer worth working for. As long as these are not consistently lateral moves, it shows the candidate is managing his career well and will probably bring more varied skills than someone who stayed at one employer for 10 years.
When I am asked where I see myself in 5 years during interviews, I am always open that I will either have moved to a more senior role at this company or have solved their immediate needs and moved on. For every potential employer that I still wanted to work for after the interview, that answer has never stopped me from getting a competitive offer.
Using the word Career instead of Job is more important than ever, IMHO. In past decades career development was simply finding a good company and moving up the ranks. Having a career was basically just the same as having a job. In today's economy, managing your career is much more difficult. But because it is more difficult, it is far more rewarding for those who do it well (and more hazardous for those who do it poorly).
Move up, move down, move laterally; it doesn't matter. Just keep moving
This is very good advice for most people. The more you move, the more varied experiences you will have. It is far better to have 10 years of actual experience than 1 year of experience repeated 10 times. There will be rare times when you will be promoted within a company (my first move to Senior Developer along with a 30% raise was a promotion), but "promotions" will be far more rapid when switching companies.
And the most important benefit of moving between jobs is gaining more varied experiences. You see more people doing things right, and more people doing things wrong. If you ask the right questions during interviews, you can ensure you will be part of more interesting projects, instead of being put on some sun-setting maintenance project.
Once you gain enough experience, you get the job security back since you are so much more valuable than the workers who stayed at a company for 20 years.
Oh yes, it is so un-American to accept the world's tired, poor, huddled masses. It is so un-American to take advantage of the world's brain drain by taking above average workers from foreign countries. [/sarcasm]
What does appear to be un-American is an understanding of history or the critical thinking skills necessary to realize how good of a deal this is for the US economy. So many of the world's college educated workers want to leave their home economy and improve ours instead.
The post is obviously asking for bargain tablets to purchase, so they aren't too interested in top of the line specs. The iPad Air 1 is $100 less than the Air 2, and you can get more than a 16 GB hard drive for just $50 as opposed to $100 for the Air 2 (although the Air 2 goes to 64 GB instead of 32 GB).
I'm not saying the Air 1 is necessarily the way to go, but based on the information from the post I see no reason to recommend the Air 2 instead.
I was going to respond with advice to wait for the new announcements from Apple and Microsoft, but when the post mentioned the price range I realized these announcements will be irrelevant. Since they are asking about $200-$400 tablets, the title should have been "Best Bargain Tablet in 2015" to reduce confusion.
When you buy hardware, expect it to be out of date within a few months.
While I somewhat agree with you, I agree with the OP that sometimes waiting is the right move. If you are in the market for a Surface Pro or iPad right now, it is prudent to wait for information about the soon to be released iPad Pro and Surface Pro 4. And in the case of an iPad we may even learn about new products other than the iPad Pro next week.
I also disagree that hardware is expected to be out of date within a few months. This is usually only the case if you don't research upcoming products. If you bought the iPhone 6 or the Samsung Note 4 / Galaxy S5 the month they came out, you had a phone which is the top of the line for about a full year. It is fairly easy to ensure new hardware is top of the line for a year, not a few months.
And if you aren't buying top of the line products, your hardware is out of date the moment you buy it so you shouldn't care what comes out in a few months.
"Only $6000" Maybe this is because I'm not an Apple/Google/Intel employee, but if I got $6k handed to me, I'd be psyched.
You need to take stock of your life if $6k is considered a financial windfall. This is basically a single paycheck to many of the professionals being affected by these illegal practices. They have likely missed out on tens of thousands of dollars in wages and are being given a big F-U by the government as well as the companies that conspired against them.
how many Billions these corps have saved, reinvested, and reaped as untold wealth, while only having their feet held to the fire for about 100m each in this case. They are sure to invent some fascinating practices to hold wages down further in the coming years.
This is all there is to learn from this case; that the government willfully endorses this type of behavior. They hand out some minuscule fines every once in a while to placate citizens who cannot comprehend math, but ultimately let companies blatantly conspire to reduce wages.
This settlement is less than a tenth of the dollar amount necessary to actually punish these companies more than they benefited. And if you are a regular who doesn't punish someone more than they benefited, you are explicitly endorsing their behavior.
but if you don't have enough people, it isn't logical that you let people just not work.
Considering the fact that overworked people are less effective than those with a better work/life balance, it is very logical to still encourage vacation time when your staff is busy. Sure there are some rare times when a very important release keeps people working 60 hour weeks for a month or two, but if the company constantly thinks it is always in crunch time their workers will suffer. And that will impact the company just as it impacts the employees.
There are plenty of very successful people who fool themselves into thinking their 80 hour work weeks are more productive than a 50 hour one, but no research backs this up. It is just one example of why you can't assume every opinion of a successful person is golden. Long work hours are a symptom of bad project management, nothing more.
There are lots of people who claim that the current education methods are 'archaic' and 'old fashioned' but I never heard any one of them claim why that is so.
That is surprising since claims regarding the failings of our schools are so prevalent in media and society as a whole. Our students hardly even compete with other developed countries on almost any metric anyone has thought up yet. Special needs children rarely get enough resources, and gifted children rarely have an educational experience that rises to their level. Your average adult can barely calculate tip, or locate foreign countries on a map. The symptoms of the problem are seemingly infinite.
I would agree that no one can accurately claim exactly what is causing these symptoms. If that was so we could fix it tomorrow. We are in a stage where we need to continue trying new things. We actually are doing a decent job of finding new techniques that work. Foreign countries like Finland that turned around their school systems in the past few decades found most of their inspiration from innovative programs in the US. But they had enough centralized control and motivation to try new things on a large scale. Skepticism and resistance from the US education industry are what is holding us back (IMHO), not those actually trying to fix these problems.
And by "us", you mean "really quite rich people". Don't imagine the proletariat will be able to afford many "extra neurons".
Yeah, I can't think of any examples of technologies that were once only affordable by rich people, but are not ubiquitous. Its not like everyone owns a car, computer, mobile phone, dishwasher, microwave, refrigerator, or any other number of items originally affordable by only the rich...
Well since we already have an educational model that works (or at least used to) to some degree and we are looking at ways to improve it the medical equivalent would be having a condition which medical science can already manage to a varying degree of success and then replacing that with a new treatment
I would equate changing our school systems with replacing the use of leeches to treat medical conditions. You know, a method used for a very long time that we now realize is very archaic. It just seems the educational industry is about 100 years behind the medical industry in finding ways of improving on methods used near the beginning of the industrial revolution.
If these results are as common as you state, do you have sources to back them up? And I don't mean a source complaining about a few instances; it would need to be something similar to a survey paper looking at a large representative sample size of approaches. Considering the amount of funding the unions would provide to someone trying to prove that, if there is such evidence it should be very easy to find.
And I do mean evidence against innovative techniques coming from private industry. Abominations like the NCLB act are appalling and anyone would have no problem finding a dozen studies pointing out its many flaws.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see how a bigger screen and better performance suddenly make this oversized phone a professional tool.
I have to say the only thing I was waiting for from this announcement was whether the iPad Pro would have OS X or iOS. As I think Windows RT showed us, the primary difference between a consumer tablet and a productivity device is whether it uses a desktop OS.
Can I run the full versions of Photoshop and XCode on the iPad Pro? Can I use the desktop verson of Microsoft Office on the iPad Pro? How easy is it to dock the iPad Pro to my Thunderbolt screen to have multiple monitor support? These are the important questions to answer. Everyone knew Apple could create a device that looks like the Surface Pro, we just needed to know if it could be a true laptop replacement in quasi-tablet form.
I'm sure it will still sell like hotcakes though, since iOS still has a much better app ecosystem than Windows RT did. And if the Apple watch can sell, anything Apple creates (for a while at least) will sell.
Comparing money spent on college education is far more complicated since the US government generally does not pay for college. To compare money spent on college with other OECD nations, you would have to include all government and private spending on college. From a total investment standpoint, the government paying for college is no different than private citizens paying for it; the only difference is whether the payments are direct (loans/savings) or indirect (taxes).
Slick.
Here we are talking about temporary foreign replacement workers, and you slip 1st and 2nd generation immigrants in, hoping no one would notice. Wrapping it with '40% of Fortune 500' was a nice touch, I'll give you that.
But I noticed. They fall for that bait and switch on the CNN and Fox forums. One should know better around here.
I have yet to meet an H1B worker who wasn't trying to get citizenship. My sample size is only about a dozen, but I have never seen these H1B immigrants who plan on coming here to work for a couple years and then leaving. This does happen quite often, but only because of how hard it is for them to get green cards.
I put myself through school 3 times, worked full time at night in a factory to do so. My family is one of the wealthiest in my very poor town, which isn't saying much. I put up with 3 hours or more of commuting a day and work nearly 24 hours a day some days. You really think that I've made poor decisions?
I have too little information to know if you have made poor decisions, but based on what you wrote I assume you have. I have no idea what putting yourself through school three times means. Does that mean a Bachelor's, PhD, and MBA/JD? Or does it mean three useless degrees, or perhaps even two failed attempts at a degree? Its too little information to go on.
Working full time while getting a degree is also suspect. That takes a great work ethic, but even being in that position means you probably made bad choices. I had to finish my degree while working full time, but it is because I made horrible decisions as a 20 year old.
You also seem to believe working hard is the same as being productive. This is a big problem for a lot of the middle class in this country. Most people working 70 hours per week are making poor choices, especially if its not for a company they have significant equity stake in. Work smarter, not harder.
The US worker cannot compete, because the playing field isn't level.
Considering STEM jobs are paid well above average for careers that require a college education, I would say US workers are competing quite well. I made almost countless mistakes in my 20's, and still have little problem making six figures in the Midwest suburbs in my 30's. I have worked with plenty of H1Bs; some horrible and some great. The horrible ones are no threat to my livelihood and the great ones only make me better when we're working together.
You are understand the false idea that H1-bs are above average.
I found them to be no better than anyone else and many of them got through school by cheating.
Considering they are more likely to get a degree, start a business, and have high achieving children, I would say they are above average. Maybe not even above average compared to college educated natives, but that isn't the correct measuring stick. Even if we were only increasing the number of poorly educated college graduates, that would still rise the average education level of our country.
Oh yes, it is so un-American to accept the world's tired, poor, huddled masses.
I don't see that quote anywhere in the Constitution. Or are you talking about the poem that wasn't added to the Statue of Liberty until 1903?
I don't see where I said it was in the Constitution. And that poem was a reflection of a mentality our country had before it was written; Emma Lazarus did not initiate some new immigrant movement in the US.
The US is a huge country and probably contains the same number of potential STEM workers that we're "taking" from the rest of the world.
The US has about 5% of the world's population. It is laughable to think we have the same number of potential STEM workers as the rest of the world, especially given that our primary schools rate so poorly compared to other nations.
It just so happens that we don't really want to invest in Americans.
The US spends more per student than any other developed country in the world. (source). Private school tuition does not affect these averages much, so even our public schools are better funded than the rest of the world. We absolutely do invest in Americans, but with only 5% of the population and 22% of the world's GDP, it is impossible to keep up our current advantage without continuing the brain drain we have been doing since the world wars.
I do agree we need massive changes to our school system, but there is even more resistance from the educational industry than there is against immigration.
Wow, calling out someone for some severely racist comments is considered Flamebait around here? I didn't think Slashdot had gotten that bad.
Collectively, immigrants -both legal and illegal- send tens of billions of dollars back to their respective countries every year, removing that currency from US markets. How again is that a "good deal" for the US economy?
Because while they may send $120 billion in remittance per year, they make trillions of dollars working in our economy. They go to US restaurants, US supermarkets, buy US real estate, and start US companies. 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by 1st or 2nd generation immigrants, so I'm fine with them sending a fraction of 1% of our GNP overseas each year.
Anyone who has ever worked with Indian grad students knows that we are not getting anything worthwhile by letting them in.
While this is a horribly racist comment, it also illustrates another misconception about what it takes to attract the world's best and brightest. Just like it is impossible to hire only the best employees when you are hiring thousands of employees per year, it is impossible to only attract the best and brightest when you want to attract a million immigrants per year. The goal is not to ensure they are all superstars, the goal is to ensure the average immigrant is of higher quality than the average native born citizen.
Regardless of your xenophobic opinions, I would be surprised if you think those Indian grad students are less intelligent than the average American. They may not all become rock star STEM workers, but they will still improve the overall quality of our workforce. This is especially true once you factor in their children, since the children of legal immigrants perform far better than native students.
No he isn't "spot on". No one wants to train new employees. It costs money to hire and retrain. Companies want to keep you at the cheapest amount possible. No one is going to hire anyone who jumps around every year.
So don't be one of the employees who has to be trained.
I have taken failing projects away from company lifers within a couple months at new companies on multiple occasions. While I will be more productive after a year or two than I am on the first day, my varied work experience makes me more valuable on day 20 than most employees with 10 years of company specific experience. I just keep 1 to 2 company lifers close so I can ask for advice so the company gets the best of both worlds. The coworkers I choose to work close with are usually the ones who want to improve themselves and are eager to be part of projects that are improving their internal IT processes, so everyone benefits. Everyone but the lifers who resist change that is.
I do have to agree that changing jobs every year is a bit much, unless you are a contractor. Three years per company is very reasonable though.
Keep moving, or you will get fired? Who is going to hire someone who keeps switching jobs constantly?
While switching jobs every year will be a red flag (unless you were a consultant), switching jobs every three years or so will not be a red flag for any employer worth working for. As long as these are not consistently lateral moves, it shows the candidate is managing his career well and will probably bring more varied skills than someone who stayed at one employer for 10 years.
When I am asked where I see myself in 5 years during interviews, I am always open that I will either have moved to a more senior role at this company or have solved their immediate needs and moved on. For every potential employer that I still wanted to work for after the interview, that answer has never stopped me from getting a competitive offer.
Career Is But A Quait Concept Now
Using the word Career instead of Job is more important than ever, IMHO. In past decades career development was simply finding a good company and moving up the ranks. Having a career was basically just the same as having a job. In today's economy, managing your career is much more difficult. But because it is more difficult, it is far more rewarding for those who do it well (and more hazardous for those who do it poorly).
Move up, move down, move laterally; it doesn't matter. Just keep moving
This is very good advice for most people. The more you move, the more varied experiences you will have. It is far better to have 10 years of actual experience than 1 year of experience repeated 10 times. There will be rare times when you will be promoted within a company (my first move to Senior Developer along with a 30% raise was a promotion), but "promotions" will be far more rapid when switching companies.
And the most important benefit of moving between jobs is gaining more varied experiences. You see more people doing things right, and more people doing things wrong. If you ask the right questions during interviews, you can ensure you will be part of more interesting projects, instead of being put on some sun-setting maintenance project.
Once you gain enough experience, you get the job security back since you are so much more valuable than the workers who stayed at a company for 20 years.
Oh yes, it is so un-American to accept the world's tired, poor, huddled masses. It is so un-American to take advantage of the world's brain drain by taking above average workers from foreign countries. [/sarcasm]
What does appear to be un-American is an understanding of history or the critical thinking skills necessary to realize how good of a deal this is for the US economy. So many of the world's college educated workers want to leave their home economy and improve ours instead.
The Air1 is old tech and new iPads and a new iOS are going to be announced in a few days. Recommending the Air1 is just plain wrong.
All $200-$400 tablets are old tech.
The post is obviously asking for bargain tablets to purchase, so they aren't too interested in top of the line specs. The iPad Air 1 is $100 less than the Air 2, and you can get more than a 16 GB hard drive for just $50 as opposed to $100 for the Air 2 (although the Air 2 goes to 64 GB instead of 32 GB).
I'm not saying the Air 1 is necessarily the way to go, but based on the information from the post I see no reason to recommend the Air 2 instead.
I was going to respond with advice to wait for the new announcements from Apple and Microsoft, but when the post mentioned the price range I realized these announcements will be irrelevant. Since they are asking about $200-$400 tablets, the title should have been "Best Bargain Tablet in 2015" to reduce confusion.
When you buy hardware, expect it to be out of date within a few months.
While I somewhat agree with you, I agree with the OP that sometimes waiting is the right move. If you are in the market for a Surface Pro or iPad right now, it is prudent to wait for information about the soon to be released iPad Pro and Surface Pro 4. And in the case of an iPad we may even learn about new products other than the iPad Pro next week.
I also disagree that hardware is expected to be out of date within a few months. This is usually only the case if you don't research upcoming products. If you bought the iPhone 6 or the Samsung Note 4 / Galaxy S5 the month they came out, you had a phone which is the top of the line for about a full year. It is fairly easy to ensure new hardware is top of the line for a year, not a few months.
And if you aren't buying top of the line products, your hardware is out of date the moment you buy it so you shouldn't care what comes out in a few months.
"Only $6000"
Maybe this is because I'm not an Apple/Google/Intel employee, but if I got $6k handed to me, I'd be psyched.
You need to take stock of your life if $6k is considered a financial windfall. This is basically a single paycheck to many of the professionals being affected by these illegal practices. They have likely missed out on tens of thousands of dollars in wages and are being given a big F-U by the government as well as the companies that conspired against them.
how many Billions these corps have saved, reinvested, and reaped as untold wealth, while only having their feet held to the fire for about 100m each in this case. They are sure to invent some fascinating practices to hold wages down further in the coming years.
This is all there is to learn from this case; that the government willfully endorses this type of behavior. They hand out some minuscule fines every once in a while to placate citizens who cannot comprehend math, but ultimately let companies blatantly conspire to reduce wages.
This settlement is less than a tenth of the dollar amount necessary to actually punish these companies more than they benefited. And if you are a regular who doesn't punish someone more than they benefited, you are explicitly endorsing their behavior.
but if you don't have enough people, it isn't logical that you let people just not work.
Considering the fact that overworked people are less effective than those with a better work/life balance, it is very logical to still encourage vacation time when your staff is busy. Sure there are some rare times when a very important release keeps people working 60 hour weeks for a month or two, but if the company constantly thinks it is always in crunch time their workers will suffer. And that will impact the company just as it impacts the employees.
There are plenty of very successful people who fool themselves into thinking their 80 hour work weeks are more productive than a 50 hour one, but no research backs this up. It is just one example of why you can't assume every opinion of a successful person is golden. Long work hours are a symptom of bad project management, nothing more.
There are lots of people who claim that the current education methods are 'archaic' and 'old fashioned' but I never heard any one of them claim why that is so.
That is surprising since claims regarding the failings of our schools are so prevalent in media and society as a whole. Our students hardly even compete with other developed countries on almost any metric anyone has thought up yet. Special needs children rarely get enough resources, and gifted children rarely have an educational experience that rises to their level. Your average adult can barely calculate tip, or locate foreign countries on a map. The symptoms of the problem are seemingly infinite.
I would agree that no one can accurately claim exactly what is causing these symptoms. If that was so we could fix it tomorrow. We are in a stage where we need to continue trying new things. We actually are doing a decent job of finding new techniques that work. Foreign countries like Finland that turned around their school systems in the past few decades found most of their inspiration from innovative programs in the US. But they had enough centralized control and motivation to try new things on a large scale. Skepticism and resistance from the US education industry are what is holding us back (IMHO), not those actually trying to fix these problems.
And by "us", you mean "really quite rich people". Don't imagine the proletariat will be able to afford many "extra neurons".
Yeah, I can't think of any examples of technologies that were once only affordable by rich people, but are not ubiquitous. Its not like everyone owns a car, computer, mobile phone, dishwasher, microwave, refrigerator, or any other number of items originally affordable by only the rich ...
Well since we already have an educational model that works (or at least used to) to some degree and we are looking at ways to improve it the medical equivalent would be having a condition which medical science can already manage to a varying degree of success and then replacing that with a new treatment
I would equate changing our school systems with replacing the use of leeches to treat medical conditions. You know, a method used for a very long time that we now realize is very archaic. It just seems the educational industry is about 100 years behind the medical industry in finding ways of improving on methods used near the beginning of the industrial revolution.
If these results are as common as you state, do you have sources to back them up? And I don't mean a source complaining about a few instances; it would need to be something similar to a survey paper looking at a large representative sample size of approaches. Considering the amount of funding the unions would provide to someone trying to prove that, if there is such evidence it should be very easy to find.
And I do mean evidence against innovative techniques coming from private industry. Abominations like the NCLB act are appalling and anyone would have no problem finding a dozen studies pointing out its many flaws.