We're the dumbest nation in the world . . .

Check this out: http://news.yahoo.com/asian-nations-dominate-international-test-100159386.html

In an international test for reading, math and science, the "greatest country in the world" has teen agers who rank 24th in these key subjects.

China was number one. In reading: US 498 China 570
In math: US 481 China 613 Science: US 497 China 580.

One therefore can safely conclude that we will or have ceased to be the "greatest country in the world," within a decade or less.

Unfortunately parents of teenagers weren't tested. If they had been, it's unlikely the Americans would have done any better.

What else would you expect from a society in which at least 30% still believe the earth is less than 7,000 years old, woman was created from a man's rib, global warming is a hoax, and that homosexuality is a product of the devil.

What else could you expect from a country where the government is owned by the military industrial complex, and sports contestants -- not writers, teachers, researchers or inventors -- are our national heroes?

Yessirreesir, unfettered capitalism and prayers in schools is all that we need.

Screw Amerika Inc.!!

Americans have been hearing for years that their kids are lagging behind the rest of the developed world in skills. Now it's the adults' turn for a reality check.

A first-ever international comparison of the labor force in 23 industrialized nations shows that Americans ages 16 to 65 fall below international averages in basic problem-solving, reading and math skills, with gaps between the more- and less-educated in the USA larger than those of many other countries.

The findings, out Tuesday from the U.S. Department of Education, could add new urgency to U.S. schools' efforts to help students compete globally.

The new test was given to about 5,000 Americans between August 2011 and April 2012. The results show that the typical American's literacy score falls below the international average, with adults in 12 countries scoring higher and only five (Poland, Ireland, France, Spain and Italy) scoring lower. In math, 18 countries scored higher, with only two (Italy and Spain) scoring lower. In both cases, several countries' scores were statistically even with the USA.

The oldest Americans in the sample turned in a higher-than-average performance in reading, with 9% of test-takers between 55 and 65 years old scoring at the top proficiency level, compared to just 5% worldwide. In math, however, they were even with the 7% international average.

The problem, the new findings suggest, is with younger U.S. workers, who lag in nearly every category.

The results are "quite distressing," says Harvard University's Paul Peterson, co-author of Endangering Prosperity, a recent book on education and international competitiveness. "Other countries have been catching up for some time," he says. "At one time, we had a really significant lead, but those people are disappearing from the workforce."

"Adults who have trouble reading, doing math, solving problems and using technology will find the doors of the 21st century workforce closed to them," Education Secretary Arne Duncan says. "We need to find ways to challenge and reach more adults to upgrade their skills."

Other findings:

• Average literacy scores ranged from 250 in Italy to 296 in Japan. The U.S. average: 270.

• Average math scores ranged from 246 in Spain to 288 in Japan. The U.S. average: 253.

• Only 9% of U.S. adults performed at the highest proficiency level on math. Just three countries — South Korea, Italy and Spain — had a lower average.

• Overall, about one in eight Americans turned in a top performance in reading — seven countries had a higher percentage of top performers. In math, 15 countries had more top performers.

What brought the U.S. average down was a larger-than-average gap in skills between groups, such as those with or without a college degree, and between workers whose jobs do or don't require advanced math and reading skills.

While those gaps may not show up immediately in productivity totals, Peterson says, in time they'll have an effect. "There's a 20-year delay between the quality of the educational system and its impact," he says. "It's sort of like watching a car crash in slow motion."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/08/literacy-international-workers-education-math-americans/2935909/

"In math, 18 countries scored higher, with only two (Italy and Spain) scoring lower."

Hmmm. Lessee now. Spain and Italy are bankrupt because those countries have been living beyond their means. The "experts" relied on for economic policy in those countries obviously didn't comprehend basic math.
Must just be a coincidence.

We continue to have the best and brightest from around the world lining up to migrate to the United States. I have had recent conversations with the President of the Board of Education of a community which are bringing Japanese manufacturing plants to America, and are teaching Japanese in High School and have created a regional vocational school with the local Junior College which has state of the art welding equipment as they manufacture rail cars. The Students by the time they are 20 have unique and very marketable skills running CNC, presses, lathes and other program driven equipment.

My problem with the United States is our failure to change curriculum to meet job demands. We have close to five million jobs where applicants lack the necessary skills. My wife found her school getting the top math and reading scores in the state. Fifth in the state among elementary schools which included exclusive private schools. Doctors, lawyers, and engineers were her graduates......and then from above we began hiring quarter of a million dollar superintendants who began dictating curriculum tied to book companies. The main stay curriculum was changed every three years, and the classroom teacher's discretion and skills diminished in her thirty plus year career.

We need to get education back to the local board level. We need less state and Federal Government interference and more business and private sector coalitions which focus on vocational training. You can see the success and failure of our educational system right on this forum. When my wife had to deal with inclusion of kids who were emotionally disruptive in the classroom, she saw a general decline in her school's objective and standardized test scores. I however take another view. We are improving every day as a nation, and it will take our business people to demand curriculum which trains our citizens to be productive. It will take small constructive steps at the local level across this nation to continue to make things better.

The pattern has been and continues to be the exact opposite of that.

"The problem, the new findings suggest, is with younger U.S. workers, who lag in nearly every category."

So much for seaoat's theory that once the baby boomers are gone, the younger generations will make the country great again. lol

So much for seaoat's theory that once the baby boomers are gone, the younger generations will make the country great again. lol


Robert.....Robert.....Robert......and exactly who do you think has been teaching our children for the last 30 years.......damn babyboomers.

This is more likely what those younger generations of Americans are facing, seaoat...

https://www.google.com/search?q=america+moving+toward+3rd+world+status&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

2seaoat wrote:

Robert.....Robert.....Robert......and exactly who do you think has been teaching our children for the last 30 years.......damn babyboomers.

Most of today's schoolteachers are 20 somethings and 30 somethings, seaoat. And their students are dumbed down too.

I'm not the one making the generation argument, seaoat. You are.
The country is in utter decline in just about every way. The whole country and the whole populace. It's not because baby boomers are better than other generations or other generations are better than baby boomers.

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/08/02/poll-record-number-21-million-young-adults-living-with-parents/

Hardly.  I have over the years participated in mentor programs with local school districts.  For a number of years I had the privilege of working with Math and science students who simply blew me away.  The top students remain remarkable.   However, I would be blowing smoke if I also did not recognize that the lowest tier students pull the averages down as we do not live in a monolithic culture where equality of opportunity has and continues to be one of our strengths.    Schools are mostly funded by property tax money in our nation.  As those with means and wealth always do, they move to where our children will have the best opportunities.  The funding of schools in this nation remains uneven and unfair.

However, I am amazed at how educated my children are and how prepared they were with their skill sets garnered from mostly public schools.   With wealth and abundance comes complacency, and that my friend has changed.   America is getting hungry again, and our economic domination of the world post World War ii is evolving to a competitive model which I believe will be second to none.  I remember in graduate school discussing what I believe now was the Blount thesis.....I do not know if I am spelling it correctly which in the early 70s postulated that out of every 1000 there is genius, and that in time India and China would dominate the world in innovation and that the critical step in the same was to develop an educational system which would produce the technicians and skill sets which would nurture that genius.   I think over the next 100 years this thesis will be tested and will be found to have much truth, but with the advent of the internet, genius has no nationality or artificial nation state boundary.

You're using anecdotal data,  seaoat.  People do that all the time to support pre-conceived notions.

Just another sign of the decline.

Wordslinger wrote:Check this out:  http://news.yahoo.com/asian-nations-dominate-international-test-100159386.html

In an international test for reading, math and science, the "greatest country in the world" has teen agers who rank 24th in these key subjects.

China was number one.  In reading:  US 498  China 570  
In math:  US 481  China 613  Science: US 497 China 580.

One therefore can safely conclude that we will or have ceased to be the "greatest country in the world," within a decade or less.  

Unfortunately parents of teenagers weren't tested.  If they had been, it's unlikely the Americans would have done any better.  

What else would you expect from a society in which at least 30% still believe the earth is less than 7,000 years old, woman was created from a man's rib, global warming is a hoax, and that homosexuality is a product of the devil.

What else could you expect from a country where the government is owned by the military industrial complex, and sports contestants -- not writers, teachers, researchers or inventors -- are our national heroes?

Yessirreesir, unfettered capitalism and prayers in schools is all that we need.

Screw Amerika Inc.!!

Must be difficult for my far left Socialist good friend Wordslinger to accept that his beloved, benevolent Union Bosses are the direct cause of our failing schools. 

National Education Association General Counsel Bob Chanin stated in July 2009. 

Chanin: "It is not because we care about children. And it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues...."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwxiRXqH_hQ&NR=1


Says it all, does it not?

Here's the thing that worries me most about the future of our country.

Overall,  my parents's generation amassed a fairly good amount of wealth.

My generation not as much but some.  

It wasn't because my parents' generation was smarter or better.  Or that my generation is smarter and better than those which have followed.  
It was because their generation and my generation lived during the peak years of American economic prosperity.  
BEFORE America had to get in competition with the emerging regions of the world.  
Following that, our country found itself competing with literally billions of others in those emerging nations.  And as a result of that,  our slice of the pie has over time gotten smaller and smaller.

The wealth of those earlier generations is significant because it continues to prop up what's left of our economy.  It supplements the dwindling incomes of the present.  But for how long?

Once that wealth is depleted,  our country will then totally rely on those lesser incomes for it's survival.  

Where are the revenues then going to come from.  For education.  For health care.  For defense.  For retirement.  For capital investment and economic development which is the only thing that actually could create future jobs.  For infrastructure.  For leisure.  For anything and for everything.

I'm afraid the answer is continual decline.  It's goddamn depressing to face this reality.  But putting on rose colored glasses just makes that dismal future rose colored.  It doesn't change a thing.

http://www.msnbc.com/martin-bashir/nearly-6-mil-young-people-not-school-work

PkrBum wrote:http://www.msnbc.com/martin-bashir/nearly-6-mil-young-people-not-school-work

Wow.  After reading that, there are only two words required to describe the future of our country.

It's fucked.

Now is the time to go back and revisit teo's thread.  The "black friday" thread.

The one which asked the question: "if that's how they're behaving when the shelves are full,  how in god's name are they going to be behaving when the shelves are empty?"

The answer to that question is too depressing to even think about.

You optimists should read Cormac McCarthy's "The Road".

It's right up y'all's alleys.

lol

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/12/thomas-sowell/does-the-welfare-state-lower-iqs/

“Life at the Bottom” by British physician Theodore Dalrymple. He said that, among the patients he treated in a hospital near a low-income housing project, he could not recall any white 16-year-old who could multiply nine by seven. Some could not even do three times seven.

What jolts us is not only that this phenomenon is so different from what we are used to seeing in the United States, but also that it fits neither the genetic nor the environmental explanation of black-white educational differences here.

These white students in England come from the same race that produced Shakespeare and the great scientist Sir Isaac Newton, among other world class intellects over the centuries. But today many young whites in England are barely literate, and have trouble with simple arithmetic. Nor are these white students the victims of racial discrimination, much less the descendants of slaves.

With the two main explanations for low performances on school tests obviously not applicable in England, there must be some other explanation.

And once there is some other explanation in this case, we have to wonder if that other explanation — whatever it is — might also apply in the United States, to one degree or another.

In other words, maybe our own explanations need reexamination.

What do low-income whites in England and ghetto blacks in the United States have in common? It cannot be simply low incomes, because children from other groups in the same low-income brackets outperform whites in England and outperform blacks in America.

What low-income whites in England and ghetto blacks in the United States have in common is a generations-long indoctrination in victimhood. The political left in both countries has, for more than half a century, maintained a steady and loud drumbeat of claims that the deck is stacked against those at the bottom.

The American left uses race and the British left uses class, but the British left has been at it longer. In both countries, immigrants who have not been in the country as long have not been so distracted by such ideology into a blind resentment and lashing out at other people.

This is also about more than just the public debt piled on this bunch... the brightest among them hold large personal debt when they arrive in the economy. So it's not just the the idle that aren't gaining experience and skills... there will be a diminished standard of living overall. The amount of stuff on the shelves might be a better measurement of systemic results as this plays out... govt driven demand is a vicious cycle.

Sal wrote:You optimists should read Cormac McCarthy's "The Road".

It's right up y'all's alleys.

lol

McCarthy is brilliant writer,  considered by some (I'm one) to currently be America's best novelist,  and The Road is an amazing story.
But a "post-apocalypse" story really has no relevance to the discussion in this thread.  
What our country is experiencing is not an apocalypse.  It's a gradual decline which takes a totally different form.  

Your post is nothing more than an attempt to obfuscate from the point of this thread.  Why I have no idea.

Bob wrote:

Sal wrote:You optimists should read Cormac McCarthy's "The Road".

It's right up y'all's alleys.

lol

McCarthy is brilliant writer,  considered by some (I'm one) to currently be America's best novelist,  and The Road is an amazing story.
But a "post-apocalypse" story really has no relevance to the discussion in this thread.  
What our country is experiencing is not an apocalypse.  It's a gradual decline which takes a totally different form.  

Your post is nothing more than an attempt to obfuscate from the point of this thread.  Why I have no idea.

"if that's how they're behaving when the shelves are full, how in god's name are they going to be behaving when the shelves are empty?"

If this is where you think we're heading, things can accelerate downhill rather quickly.

lol

You and markel are so much alike, sal. With merkel the answer to everything is the republicans and with you it's the democrats.

markel believes if we can just get ted cruz and rush limbaugh into office our problems will be solved. With you it's obama.

All I say to both of you is: grow up.