Post: #1

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/jo...m=facebook

Much in line with Roosh's reflections on America's decline. Food for debate.

Quote:At this stage, we don’t really need more evidence that there is a problem. We need a concerted national effort to address it.

Post: #2

I believe this is a study of how the average people in each of those countries match up. It would be interesting to see how the top people in the United States compare to the top people of those other countries in each and every category.

Post: #3

i didn't realise how smart the finnish were until i saw this graph.

Post: #4

Quote:Is it surprising that, in comparing a country set up to allow intelligent people to become brilliant against countries that are set up to raise average welfare, the more collective cultures have higher averages? If we wanted to raise the average, there are very concrete steps that we could take (see: Finland), but our country is driven and funded by the inventiveness and brilliance of the top end of the distribution...so I would be wary of changes that threaten this special niche. The more countries that seek the average, the more lucrative it is for a country to differentiate by cultivating the top. I don't know which is better, but you can't change the educational system without having a major impact on the economic and social system.

I found this comment very interesting. We really do live in a winner-take-all nation and I wonder if this also takes root in our education system. I have been on the top end of the distribution my whole life, been coddled through gifted, honors, AP classes, etc., graduated in the top percentile of my class with minimal effort and great contempt for being forced to "learn" a bunch of nonsense I had little interest in, but I can't say my the system really did me any wrong. They gave me my As and sent me on my way and I maintained my intellectual curiosity outside the classroom, like many of us who came upon this community.

With that said, I was almost immediately separated from the mass of the student body upon entering public school, so I didn't get a lot of firsthand experience with them and their education. However, from what little I did see, it was pretty terrible...

My experience in Europe showed me a whole new world: better lifestyle for everyone and a semblance of satisfactory baseline standards for general education. And as a broad generalization, they seemed to value intellectual pursuits more than us.

Post: #5

Shitty graphs, shitty article, and a magazine that becomes shittier every day. I remember when the New Yorker was interesting.

I love how the preceding article is called "Why Obamacare Will Work (On It's Own Terms)" and the following article "Playing The Obamacare Blame Game." Just a bunch of SWPL's who are obsessed with making the status quo work. These guys are cocksuckers.

As for the article, the charts mean nothing because America has a huge population of minorities that are part of the underclass. If you just took the college educated population of the USA, I'm sure we'd top the charts.

Second, the article assumes the countries who are chart toppers do not face any serious problems of their own. What sort of nonsensical unspoken assumption is that? Look at the second graph; Japan tops the charts in literacy and yet that country is going extinct. Who cares about speaking Japanese anyways? Why don't we brag about which countries know the most Latin while we are at it.

A country's decline or incline has very little to do with literacy, numeracy, or "problem-solving," it has everything to do with it's cultural fabric; the willingness of it's countrymen to stick together and support one another, it's ability to crush its competitors (America is still #1), and the quality of the government guiding these factors. When measured in these terms, America is going downhill fast, but that makes a lot more sense than the regular SWPL preaching about "education," which is just university dogma.

Post: #6

This is all due to demographics. There are a lot more hispanics now and they do poorly in school. Silly to blame the schools for this issue.

The US does have plenty of smart innovative people.

Post: #7

As far as I know, America never excelled in education rankings. A few countries have always been at the top. It's always in the middle or lower-high strata. We put more emphasis on sports than actually learning.

The correlation is simple, countries with good social programs do well while those with Mad Max-esque economics (USA and Poland).....you can see the results.

Post: #8

Charts like this play into liberal notions of closing the achievement gap. If only we can close the achievement gap, we can be better than those other countries, therefore the achievement gap is a real problem. It's all circular reasoning.

Post: #9

(10-24-2013 05:36 PM)sfer Wrote:  This is all due to demographics. There are a lot more hispanics now and they do poorly in school. Silly to blame the schools for this issue.

The US does have plenty of smart innovative people.

Compare Cuban Americans' school performance with that of White Americans. Many, many Hispanics do well in school.

Post: #10

(10-24-2013 04:41 PM)Samseau Wrote:  As for the article, the charts mean nothing because America has a huge population of minorities that are part of the underclass. If you just took the college educated population of the USA, I'm sure we'd top the charts.

I do think there is something to what Samseau is saying. They are comparing the USA which has a large minority population(black and Latino) and comparing them to largely homogenous countries in Europe and East Asia. Since there's large disparities in performance between white Americans and blacks and Latinos, you are going to see an average that looks lower for the U.S.

So if you don't break this down ethnically, the results don't say much. White Americans if separated out are probably on par with their European counterparts. Obviously Latinos in America do better than Latinos in Latin America and blacks in America do better than blacks in Africa, but you have to consider the gap in education attainment between the groups and the implications that has on the nationwide average.

America's economy doesn't function equally for everyone and prosperity comes rather selectively. Even if the country is sliding downhill on average, it will always be good for certain types of people when you have a two-tier economy. Think Brazil if you want to see where we're headed.

Post: #11

This makes about as much sense as saying there is a famine going on because American children are getting shorter... When in reality it's because the proportion of the shorter races of Asians and Latinos is increasing.

Post: #12

Because further increasing the over-oversight drone factory called public education is the answer to ALL of America's problems.

Post: #13

(10-24-2013 05:56 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(10-24-2013 04:41 PM)Samseau Wrote:  As for the article, the charts mean nothing because America has a huge population of minorities that are part of the underclass. If you just took the college educated population of the USA, I'm sure we'd top the charts.

I do think there is something to what Samseau is saying. They are comparing the USA which has a large minority population(black and Latino) and comparing them to largely homogenous countries in Europe and East Asia. Since there's large disparities in performance between white Americans and blacks and Latinos, you are going to see an average that looks lower for the U.S.

So if you don't break this down ethnically, the results don't say much. White Americans if separated out are probably on par with their European counterparts. Obviously Latinos in America do better than Latinos in Latin America and blacks in America do better than blacks in Africa, but you have to consider the gap in education attainment between the groups and the implications that has on the nationwide average.

America's economy doesn't function equally for everyone and prosperity comes rather selectively. Even if the country is sliding downhill on average, it will always be good for certain types of people when you have a two-tier economy. Think Brazil if you want to see where we're headed.

For me, this isn't even a racial issue. It's a class issue. Notice, I said, "college educated." So college educated blacks and latinos could be included in this polling and America would still be comparable to the homogeneous European countries.

Likewise, if you took whites who never finished college, then you'd probably get dismal results on all of these questions.

Also, I'm not saying college is the answer to the world's problems. However, a college grad should be able to dominate the types of questions the New Yorker was polling for.

Post: #14

It is very interesting that "American decline" is the one idea that the left and the right have no problem agreeing about, even though they see this "decline" happening for seemingly different and indeed contradictory reasons.

It is the one idea from which there is no dissent.

Very interesting.

Post: #15

My response is the same as when something similar was posted on Marginal Revolution:

Quote:This canard again? ...once you account for ancestry, the “gap” largely goes away.

American-International test score gap is the new “70 cents on the dollar.”

Post: #16

(10-24-2013 04:41 PM)Samseau Wrote:  Shitty graphs, shitty article, and a magazine that becomes shittier every day. I remember when the New Yorker was interesting.

maybe the grapohs are crap, but the O.E.C.D. has a pretty strong record when it comes to stats. I have a hard time though to believe Americans are not problemsolving-minded, I believe quite the opposite is true when it gets to getting problems solved.