Buying video games, tax views

[Dylan]

Essentially you're saying that a doctor who has a life-saving cure for a patient shouldn't use that cure if other doctors want the patient to die (remember this phony crisis?).

"Life saving cure" is subjective in this case. Most importantly, compromise is a huge reality in the democratic system and should absolutely be accounted for.

[Menegrothx]

Admittedly as far as education is concerned, we do spend more than most other countries without getting the same results.

That is incorrect. If you check US Pisa results by ethnicity you can see that white American students perform better than most Europeans do.

Math results:
Shanghai-China 600
Singapore 562
Hong Kong 555
S. Korea 546
Taipei-China 543
Finland 541
Liechtenstein 536
Switzerland 534
Japan 529
Canada 527
Netherlands 526
Macao-China 525
USA (Asian) 524
New Zealand 519
USA (White) 515
Belgium 515
Australia 514
Germany 513
Estonia 512
Iceland 507
Denmark 503
Slovenia 501
Norway 498
Slovakia 497
France 497
Austria 496
Poland 495
Sweden 494
United Kingdom 492
Hungary 490
Luxembourg 489
Ireland 487
Portugal 487
USA (Average) 487
Italy 483
Spain 483
Latvia 482
Lithuania 477
Russia 468
Greece 466
Croatia 460
USA (Hispanic) 453
Dubai 453
Turkey 445
Israel 447
Serbia 442
Azerbaijan 431
Bulgaria 428
Romania 427
Uruguay 427
USA (Black) 423
Chile 421
Mexico 419
Thailand 419
Trinidad and Tobago 414
Kazakhstan 405
Montenegro 403
Argentina 388
Jordan 387
Brazil 386
Colombia 381
Albania 377
Indonesia 371
Tunisia 371
Qatar 368
Peru 365
Panama 360
Kyrgyz Republic 331

The same thing also applies for the reading scores

Judging by the 2009 reading and math scores, it seems like majority of white American students outperform the students of the countries where their ancestors came from. The same thing applies for hispanic American students (better than Mexico and latin American countries) and I assume that if African nations competed in PISA, African Americans would outperform those nations. I'm not sure about Asian Americans though. Australia, New Zealand and Canada (countries where most of the population is made up of European immigrants) also seem to outperform most of Europe. Naturally it's easier to compare USA to European and Northeast Asian countries because they are all first world countries, while many Latin American and African nations are still developing/third world countries so it's not reasonable to compare Hispanic American student performance to Mexican student performance when there's such a wide income gap between the two nations.

Yes I've heard that. Any idea why that is? I mean your universities are some of the best in the world, but honestly your schools fail miserably.... when I lived there (specially in Alabama, not so much in Missouri) I was much better than the entire class at math and stuff (obviously not in English, though at least I know the difference between your and you're ).

No offence but you seem like a left leaning type of guy... what made you decide to move to Alabama?

[ZeroAX]

Yes I've heard that. Any idea why that is? I mean your universities are some of the best in the world, but honestly your schools fail miserably.... when I lived there (specially in Alabama, not so much in Missouri) I was much better than the entire class at math and stuff (obviously not in English, though at least I know the difference between your and you're ).

No offence but you seem like a left leaning type of guy... what made you decide to move to Alabama?

Actually I am a centrist (balance is perfection, compromise is key, and as my ancient ancestors said, παν μέτρον άριστον (google it)), but of course by American standards that makes me a radical leftist or something.

I moved there because of my father's job. And I'm sorry but when people didn't know where Greece is (it's not like it might have ever been important right?) or they think we still believe in the Dodecatheon (I wish, that religion is awesome), I had major reasons to doubt your educational system.

And as I said I outperformed the class at math and science stuff, and I've seen stuff you guys do in (the first year of) college we do in high school.


But that doesn't affect the middle/higher class much, cause your universities are among some of the best in the world (while ours suck, so that extra knowledge we get in high school compared to you goes to waste).


I think that is probably a very important reason for rising inequality in the US. You Universities are so good (not all of them of course, but many of them), that the people who get a higher education are among the best in the world and so can obtain a much higher standard of living.

On the other hand your schools seem to be so bad that the working class (people without higher education most of the time) ends up less educated than it should be (according to your economic strength, biggest economy in the world and all).

I honestly don't know what is so wrong. Our schools are also very bad, so of course I am not saying to try and get tips from us. But perhaps you should look into countries with higher quality high school graduates and try to copy them.



But.......I don't know, I mean there is also an American stereotype that keeps springing to my mind, but I can't talk about it. When I lived there I was in elementary school, so I don't know how true it rings, but I've spoken with a couple Americans as an adult and they all told me the same thing: "Smart kids get bullied, and all the education money goes into school sports". I don't want to consider that part of the problem when I haven't seen if it's true myself, but specially about the first part, if it's true, it baffles me because here it's the opposite. Stupid kids get bullied (not physically, but dumb is a word they hear very often), and smart kids are like school gods, nobody really touches them.

So IF that thing is true (which please correct me if those Americans were overstating how true it is), it might have something to do with your youngs' lack of ambition in school?

[Erik_Twice]

If the US average is near Spain, you must be really, really fucked up.

[ZeroAX]

If the US average is near Spain, you must be really, really fucked up.

Yeah, you guys can't even do a proper riot. Learn from Athens or London ffs.

[Ack]

Interesting. I've never seen that data broken down by ethnicity before, Menegrothx.

[Gunstar Green]

But.......I don't know, I mean there is also an American stereotype that keeps springing to my mind, but I can't talk about it. When I lived there I was in elementary school, so I don't know how true it rings, but I've spoken with a couple Americans as an adult and they all told me the same thing: "Smart kids get bullied, and all the education money goes into school sports".

It's not even a stereotype it's kind of an endemic problem in our schools. It's especially true in more rural schools and our inner-city schools are a complete mess.

[ZeroAX]

It's not even a stereotype it's kind of an endemic problem in our schools. It's especially true in more rural schools and our inner-city schools are a complete mess.

Well if it's true, I don't think there's a lot to debate about. You can throw all the money at it, all the best academics at it, but at the end of it if you can't change the way the students themselves think about education, you won't get a lot done.

[Menegrothx]

And as I said I outperformed the class at math and science stuff, and I've seen stuff you guys do in (the first year of) college we do in high school.

But that doesn't affect the middle/higher class much, cause your universities are among some of the best in the world (while ours suck, so that extra knowledge we get in high school compared to you goes to waste).

I'm still not American

I honestly don't know what is so wrong. Our schools are also very bad, so of course I am not saying to try and get tips from us. But perhaps you should look into countries with higher quality high school graduates and try to copy them.

Being from one of the top performer countries myself, I've got to say that there's nothing special in the system. School was very laid back and easymode compared to Japan/South Korea/China. I personally was always one of the best students in my class (best in many subjects) through classes 1-9 and I hardly put any effort into studying at all. I spent the last two years of high school playing World of Warcraft at home, only attending school to do my exams and I did well.
Many good students, myself included, learned many things at home by browsing the internet, watching documentaries, playing video games and so on and never really had to put that much effort into actual studying. There were no "advanced" classes so when you're young (7-12) and learn things faster than other kids in the class, there's nothing you can do but wait for them to catch up. That poses a problem, because the kids who have never learned to study properly will have a hard time adapting to university where you actually have to put time and effort into your studies if you want to learn anything, atleast if it's "hard sciences" (math, physics, computer science etc) that we're talking about.
The problem of youth unemployment and alienation is on the rise (and a serious threat to economic growth in the future) because many smart kids who did well in school are just plain unintrested in getting an education or a job. Why spend your precious free time working when you can live on welfare and spend your days watching anime and playing MMORPGs? Bigger house, better car and material wealth in general doesn't really motivate the "internet generation", quite many people value free time, not having to deal with stress and people over social status and wealth. That's a major problem of the welfare state.

I also don't think that the super effective school system of Northeast Asian countries would work in the West because the culture is so different here. Those high performers (South Korea, China, Japan) aren't really multicultural (except Singapore) or individualistic the same way many Western countries are. We don't have the same kind of collectivistic mindset/culture as they have.

I dont know what the average person in Japan or China thinks about the school system, but I do know one South Korean immigrant who says that he absolutely hated school as a kid. He says he enjoyed doing military service more than school. Very strict teachers and discipline (and high expectations from parents&society), he felt miserable in school.
I don't know if hikikomoris exist in China and South Korea, but the hikikomori phenomenon shows that Japan has same kind of problem with young people being unintrested in getting a job/education as we do despite the fact that they have a lot more strict and efficient school system.

I've spoken with a couple Americans as an adult and they all told me the same thing: "Smart kids get bullied, and all the education money goes into school sports". I don't want to consider that part of the problem when I haven't seen if it's true myself, but specially about the first part, if it's true, it baffles me because here it's the opposite. Stupid kids get bullied (not physically, but dumb is a word they hear very often), and smart kids are like school gods, nobody really touches them.

Here it wasn't really about intellect per se, it was whether you were "physically awkward" or not. You were likely to get bullied if you looked weird, acted weird, were clumsy at sports, obese etc. The cool kids were tall and either athlethic (=played ice hockey/soccer) or fit (=in good physical condition but didn't care about sports). As long as you behaved cool/"mature" and you were strong and tall, you could dress a little funny or dye your hair, not care about sports and do well in school and no one would bully you. Of course "nerdy"/smart kids have a tendency to be unintrested in sports and physical activities, so they were a lot more likely to get bullied, but it wasn't because they were smart or good at math.

[ZeroAX]

So where are you from?

EDIT

Though from that WoW reference I am going to hazard a guess and say, Sweden?