Investing in children so they can attain a natural interest in learning, as well as about a thousand other important skills that will help them become productive critically thinking members of society. How can you think it's wrong? How can you expect parents to teach children things they never learnt? If you could impose a slightly higher tax on the wealthy and completely revamp your public education system. Why not? America has a bad rep for neglecting it's education system. What are your arguments for doing this? 0.o
I don't object to education at all. What I object to is people using the university system as a way to delay adulthood for 4 years while learning virtually nothing of value. That's what i see in most colleges. Frat parties draw crowds, not study sessions. The popular majors are stuff that would be better learned by OTJ training. (Protip: in order to be a good manager, you should learn by managing people, not reading books about theories about managing people) If our people studied like Asians, college would be great, but we party like hedonistic Romans at an orgy and rack up obscene debts.
I'll second a lot of what septimine said. In this country you have the freedom to rack up six figures of debt getting your degree in something like 17th century French liturature and have gained no useful skills to speak of. When it comes to primary education. Well, how to put this. Alright, I remember reading an interview of some people who had fleed from North Korea. It was a shocking experience for them, and arriving in the bright neon lights of tech happy South Korea was like someone in the 1950s travelling into the future. South Korea has enough refugees they've set up special schools just to get them up to speed so they can function in society and pick up some much needed general education. The thing is that the North Koreans spent just as much time in school as everybody else. As the person being interviewed put it, "all we learned in school was that North Korea was the greatest country in the world and our leader was the greatest leader in the world". It's that sort of education that people object to and call wasteful in public schools. And sadly those are increasingly getting full of it.
I enjoyed the parties, weed, sex, and social environment. I got a degree in History and now utilize the skill from that degree (persuasive writing = marketing) in a full time job. I got a great education along the lines of the atmosphere you describe. I wouldn't change it other way. It was a great time. The most important aspect was my social and maturity development. Do give our higher education some credit, for its benefits are significant for the individual. I just wish I could have the women now I did back in college... Sheesh, what a ladies man I was! Ever slept with a woman from Venezuela? I recommend it. And if we studied like Asians... We'd be more like Asian... I don't think that's what ANYONE wants in their lives.
And how could investing in solar energy possibly be considered wrong? Think Solyndra. And how could investing in poor people possibly be considered wrong? Consider Detroit. And how could investing in criminals possibly be considered wrong? And how could investing.... Wait, perhaps the problem is that liberals don't have a clue about what investing means. It does not mean simply spending more money with no controls and no accountability which is what you are asking for. Golly, if we just raised taxes and spent more money on education with no controls and no accountability all would be wonderful. Liberal insanity on parade. Why is it the more we spend the worse it gets? Consider...unions. Do I want my investment spent on teachers who don't actually teach but do union organizing? Not really. Do I want my investment spent on teachers sitting in the rubber room playing cards because the union prevents them from being fired? Not really. Do I want my investment spend on luxurious parties and conventions? No, I don't. And do I want absolutely no accountability for the results of my investment? Hell, no. Public schools and education are not connected.
i do respect the higher ed thing, and it does sound like you did fine, however going $100,000 in debt to bed Venezuelans -- seriously, dude, hookers, hire hookers. It's cheaper. As for the Asians -- they're technologically about 15 years ahead of us in Korea and Japan. They've done stuff we only dream of -- including having robots as personal butlers (still somewhat experimental, but that stuff is not on the table here). They have jobs, we don't. the average Japanese 7th grader can read English -- most of us even post college cannot read Japanese. Our kids smoke weed and "occupy" whatever business they feel owes them. Their kids study their butts off and get a job working for good companies. I hope my kid studies like an Asian, because frankly that's what this generation needs to do if they want to be employed at a job that pays enough to live on. Sure, they don't drink, drug and party like Americans, but then again, there is no "occupy Tokyo" because most Japanese are "occupied" with a job.
Are you really not aware that children are BORN with that? How do we know that what children learn from schoolteachers doesn't stupefy rather than edify? We don't need a tax increase to accomplish that, we need a voucher system.
We're already paying more and getting less out of education that any other nation. The problem isn't going to be solved by putting more money in, it's going to be solved by demanding more results out.
We just don't have quite the robot fetish over here that they do. But I think some of our military robotics exceed their butlers. And it is a very nice advantage Americans have that we don't have to learn a second language, everybody else learns English. However we are squandering things to a degree, and we may well be surpassed if current trends continue. Though as I'll discuss below, it's a bit more complicated than that. It's a bit more complicated than that. After seeing charts like that I started looking into the high schools around my state, their tests scores for stuff like what the chart covers are recorded. What I found out was what I really already knew but didn't think about. A big difference in the US vs other countries is the wild variablity in our schools due to location, local cultures, and the method of allocating funds based on local property taxes. The result is that we have incredible schools that are heavily funded and packed full of overschedules and overpressured kids. They are awash with money. The teachers are paid much more and the kids are going to robotics competitions and stuff. Then you get the "typical" schools a lot of us are used to, which still do quite well at least in my state for those numbers. But at the tail end, dragging everything down, are the poorer neighborhood schools. Which are probably doing worse than freaking Mogadishu. I'm not sure what to think about all that. When it comes to comparative advantage our sheer size means we probably still have more excellent students than those other countries. However I fear this will cause an inceasing wage gap between those at the different ends of the educational spectrum. Still though, lots of kids in the middle range public schools could apply themselves more.
Easy question. Education is free, and learning comes from experience and guidance. Paying money for a screwed up bunch of UAS public education is a huge mistake and a huge waste of time. In the USA K-12 is just a huge baby sitting envoronment for lazy educators who make massive amounts of money doing basicly nothing for a lot of money. Volunteers can do the same with the same outcomes for free. But you must understand, the USA public education system is a monopoly and industry of making money. Billions and trillions are spent each year just to keep adults employed. If it were not for the USA public education system these lazy complacent educators would not be able to compete for real work in the real world. Hence, it keeps them out of the judical system and social welfare system. You can amount the USA public education system and it's unions and associations as a huge tax burden and a subculture of welfare recipients.
There's some truth to that. Sadly too, since educators used to be the best and brightest of us, well respected and well rewarded they helped produce a nation of leaders and innovators. Something happened though. We turned an education from something to be worked for and sought after to a right everyone now takes for granted and few value. As recognition and reward dropped, the best and brightest left to become lawyers and doctors. We massively recruited folks with lesser skills and ... well here we are. And now we're repeating the process with health care.
True. IMO, over the past 30 years USA education had been declining. But it was th 1990s that brought in a mass of bad educators and loss what was left of the good educators. During the 1990s and the Clinton administraton State gubments were making a lot of money as well as most of the USA, and with the mandate to spen, States built more schools, and hired more teachers they expanded the public education system to huge proportions. As a result, what was left of the good educators, they did not like the competition and influx of the poor educators. As a result, they too left. At this time the corporate world and investment world was taking all the brain power because they too needed man/woman power to expand. After all, growth of a corporation is key for profit. As to the medical industry, this era was the birth of big paharma, private medical insurance, and the masses of medical technology. So in regards to your statement of medical industry, this also relates to the failure of USA education system. Now I'm in no way a history fanatic because I can't stand History. During the 2000s, the States could not afford to pay off the Public education unions and associations and their demands to keep the massive public education school system running. So they started borrowing money in huge masses via municiple bonds. These states take in from private investors at high interest rates money to pay off the public education systems of every state, other than Montana and Dakota. California, Florida, and a host of others are in hundreds of billions debt. that is their dirty secret that the media propaaganda does not want you to know about. Soon as more cities and states go bankrupt, the investor will be the one screwed. Today, we see the results of this mess the USA public schools have created for the security of the USA. Huge debt, massive infrastructure to maintain. Huge payroll to meed, and massive amounts of retirement benifits to pay off the ones who left public education. What is more troubleing in there is no way to fix it. NONE. with the unions and associations for educators in power over the taxpayers and politicians/lawmakers, this problem will only get worst. The problem of public education in the USA is the down fall of the USA. We are only seeing the middle of this crisis. I give it about 4 to 8 years till the USA will no longer be able to sustain public schools. that is when states like CA and FL go bankrupt. They can only hide their debt for so long.
