I have been thinking about this for a while...

[Skipjack]

There was someone else recently who talked like you... WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Who was it... I can't put my finger on it... OH! It was Al Gore!

So you are going through the steps.

First step:
Denial, a miracle will happen and everything will be good. Check

Second step:
Hatred. Lets ridicule the facts and the messenger. I am sure you can show me a bit of anger too, right?

[Diogenes]

If you are right Diogenes, then why is China about to surpass the rest of the world right now (not yet there, but ahead of your country and mine)?


China has embraced capitalism. They have always had a population that wanted better lives for themselves. It is only recently that they have acquired an opportunity to achieve that, and only because the iron fist of communism has relaxed enough for naturally occurring capitalism to flourish.

They were poor who want to be rich. We are rich who do not remember how we got rich.

Also, education in Russia is better than in some parts of Europe and the US right now.
The "socialist" France and Sitzerland are among the leading nations in Europe in regards to math and science education quality. How do you explain that?

What's to explain? Math and Science are products of society, not society itself. They're populations are declining. Soon their highly educated populations will be replaced by people with little education and then we shall see who the smart ones are.

Heck even Austria is better than the US (and we have definitely seen better times here too).
Besides, I think that this circle is complete bull. History does NOT repeat itself, it never, in no way, has.

Egyption Empire. Gone.
Persian Empire: Gone.
Greek Empire: Gone.
Roman Empire: Gone.
Turkish Empire: Gone.
Napoleonic Empire: Gone.
Chinese Empire: Gone.
Hapsburg Empire: Gone.
British Empire: Gone.


How do people go from being top dog to being nothing?

[Diogenes]

Where I live, at least a third of the population is from China, wife included, daughter half included. What matters is motivation, and culture. China has come through a rough last century, and education is seen as the way out of poverty.
In the west over the last century, we haven't seen the same level of poverty as China, plus we live in a culture that values sports and instant gratification over academics. We need to fall a very long way before we get the same level of motivation.

We do NOW. It wasn't always that way.

[Diogenes]

A uniform, dumbed-down population is easier to simulate and control.

I agree with hat. This makes it even more remarkable that education in the dictatoric China is better than in the democratic US.

The people there are struggling to make their lives better. The people here are already so fat and happy that they just don't care. When they become scared and hungry, they too will work hard to educate themselves for a better life.

In Austria and Germany, I think education quality has degraded mostly due to the many immigrants that do not speak German, even in the second generation. This holds back other kids that want to learn, because it slows down the teaching progress. The child of a friend of mine from Vienna was the only german speaking child in its class (primary school).
I would not put my child into a school like that, would rather homeschool it. Situation in Germany is no better, probably even worse than here.
Of course there are more reasons to the degration of education here. One is that our socialists insist on the idiotic notion that "everyone is the same". So they dont distinguish between intelligent kids and kids that... need more help. In order to make sure that everyone "is the same" they have to make the smart ones dumber (as they cant make the "slow" ones, smarter).
So yeah, education here is going to hell too, but the US beats even us, which is remarkable.
Either way, the west has fallen behind and with the education of the next generation lacking like that, it will only get worse.

I think the people whom you complain about are educated enough to realize they can get a free ride off the backs of the Germans for awhile. The stupid ones are the ones giving out the free ride.

[Diogenes]

Well an understanding of math is the basis for any technical and scientific education. US students (and many European students as well) suck at math, according to this study.
Also, read the part about patents filed and technical papers being published.

The founders lived some 250 years ago and were children of their time. What they had to say was important and valid back then, but some things have changed. It would be stupid to insist on a worldview that has long been overtaken by reality . Yes, there are things that are important in education, but math is the basis for any science. I am sure that even they understood that.

You let me know when human nature changes. When that time comes, THEN you will have a point.

Yeah, math and science are good at building stuff, but not so much for getting people to form a society. The society which built the math and science you so much admire was Judeo\Christian society. It is no accident that Science didn't progress far under the Chinese, The Egyptians, the Greeks or the Romans.

Check out this website. http://www.bede.org.uk/sciencehistory.htm

[Diogenes]

It is hillarious how people are trying to rationalize the facts in front of them, so that the situation looks better (in their eyes) than it actually is.
IMHO it is worse than it looks.
But yeah, keep drinking the cool aid, the aliens will come and save you all!
Everything will be fine. No need to get on your feet and fight for the future of your people. Some miracle will happen and the US (and Europe) will magically reappear on top again.

I tell my children we are going to have a "Zombie Apocalypse."

The idiot socialistic democrats are going to collapse the U.S. economy (and possibly the world's) and thereby threaten the lives of everyone. By bringing commerce to a standstill, it will create panic and riots followed by famine and totalitarian control. Eventually it will be every man for himself.

The masses will come streaming out of the cities looking for food and any other asset, and they will be sick, weak and starving. ( a good approximation of zombie behavior) They will steal anything they can, they will use whatever violence they can, and they will be ruthless. So too must be those who would defend their families and farmland.

The SANE states of America (Like Texas) will organize to repel marauders and start the process of rebuilding.

Hopefully that scenario stays an unpleasant fantasy. Until the signs abate, I am treating it as though it is plausible.

[ladajo]

Saw Max speak on this, but missed a chance for a discussion with him due to a schedule conflict. Interesting stuff from the Son of Mel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_war_z

[Skipjack]

Egyption Empire. Gone.
Persian Empire: Gone.
Greek Empire: Gone.
Roman Empire: Gone.
Turkish Empire: Gone.
Napoleonic Empire: Gone.
Chinese Empire: Gone.
Hapsburg Empire: Gone.
British Empire: Gone.

So these empires have all collapsed. Where is the circle here?
Oh and the Habsburger were very catholic!

[Diogenes]

Egyption Empire. Gone.
Persian Empire: Gone.
Greek Empire: Gone.
Roman Empire: Gone.
Turkish Empire: Gone.
Napoleonic Empire: Gone.
Chinese Empire: Gone.
Hapsburg Empire: Gone.
British Empire: Gone.

So these empires have all collapsed. Where is the circle here?
Oh and the Habsburger were very catholic!

They rose, they fell. While not a sine wave, it was cyclic. Did these societies not go (or are going) through something like this?

[Diogenes]

Saw Max speak on this, but missed a chance for a discussion with him due to a schedule conflict. Interesting stuff from the Son of Mel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_war_z

I wasn't familiar with this, but the notion does resonate. I often wonder if people think that their neighbors may someday become "zombies" and have to be killed. Very worrisome.

[mdeminico]

It is hillarious how people are trying to rationalize the facts in front of them, so that the situation looks better (in their eyes) than it actually is.
IMHO it is worse than it looks.
But yeah, keep drinking the cool aid, the aliens will come and save you all!
Everything will be fine. No need to get on your feet and fight for the future of your people. Some miracle will happen and the US (and Europe) will magically reappear on top again.

I tell my children we are going to have a "Zombie Apocalypse."

The idiot socialistic democrats are going to collapse the U.S. economy (and possibly the world's) and thereby threaten the lives of everyone. By bringing commerce to a standstill, it will create panic and riots followed by famine and totalitarian control. Eventually it will be every man for himself.

The masses will come streaming out of the cities looking for food and any other asset, and they will be sick, weak and starving. ( a good approximation of zombie behavior) They will steal anything they can, they will use whatever violence they can, and they will be ruthless. So too must be those who would defend their families and farmland.

The SANE states of America (Like Texas) will organize to repel marauders and start the process of rebuilding.

Hopefully that scenario stays an unpleasant fantasy. Until the signs abate, I am treating it as though it is plausible.

Sounds about like it could happen, hopefully doesn't though.

It all starts with the idea that people (liberals/socialists) have. The idea that they have a RIGHT to someone else's money. The idea that government has somehow been given some magical power that it can STEAL someone else's money and do what it wishes with it.

Think about it, why can one person steal another person's money? That's all government is, a group of people...

Can you go around your neighborhood and tell your neighbors "Give me 5% of your income or I'll take your house"? That's what government does. Nobody else does that. Well, no, correction, someone else does that, it's called the MAFIA.

Yeah, in other words, government is criminals when it does anything besides provide things that EVERYONE needs (like national defense, administration of justice, and a very few other things).

When government comes to steal your money for , the effect is the same as a criminal, but nobody thinks of government as criminals.

[MSimon]

OK. Look at the Japanese. The WW2 generation worked like dogs. Their children - not so much. The same will happen to the Chinese.

Education: the education of the bottom 90% matters hardly at all as long as they don't cause much trouble.

It is the top 10% that matter and the US is doing reasonably well there. I have 4 children and they all got good educations. Comparable to what I got in the 50s and 60s except they actually covered more ground than I did in school (I was mostly in AP courses - the same as my kids). Things I was doing in 9th grade they were doing in the 7th or 8th. Irony of ironies though is that I flunked English in High School. And now I write full time for a fairly popular blog. Heh.

The upshot: very few trends dealing with humans can be extrapolated indefinitely.

BTW the "kids today" line has been a constant in human nature. It goes back at least 2,000 years.

And of course we have the Internet - the greatest teaching/learning tool so far invented. It will eventually make schools more or less irrelevant.

Have we hit a rough patch - sure. But the correctives have appeared. The Tea Parties for politics and the Internet for education.

That is what I like so much about America. We don't wait for our betters to fix things. We rise up and fix them ourselves.

[happyjack27]

Have we hit a rough patch - sure. But the correctives have appeared. The Tea Parties for politics and the Internet for education.

That is what I like so much about America. We don't wait for our betters to fix things. We rise up and fix them ourselves.

on the contrary, i would take those alternative routes as excellent examples of how badly out of shape and in need of fixing the conventional instruments are. e.g. when a child skips school to go to the library, you can read as a sign of the child's autodidacticism, or that the school is utterly failing to provide for his educational needs. in truth, it is both. but you can't simply expect children to teach themselves everything they need to know, so the former is moot.

[Skipjack]

Msimon, I really hope that you are right. Personally I think that it is just denial though.

[KitemanSA]

Interesting article in American Scientist (?) recently.
BLUF: Americans get most of their STEM education from non-school related activities (libraries, S&T museums, nat-history museums) also TV, & web. Such facilities are significantly more available in the US than the rest of the world.