Nature vs. nurture? It's a cop-out. Most parents do what they can with what they have. It's the demographic of where I am, but I don't know any degens with kids. Maybe they're drunk every night but they're high-functioning if so. I have a kid with a 200IQ who's ADHD. He can do linear equations out to the margins at 10yo but refuses to do any homework. He should be in HS if not for the lack of EQ. Nearly perfect eidetic memory. I have another child who's 120-130 tested and is the most diligent student you can imagine. Sits at the dining room table each night banging out the homework and extra credit. Will never grade the grades of his younger brother.
The education here sucks because teachers are forced to teach interest-based theories and they leave very little room for intellectual analysis. Almost all economics course in the U.S. used text books by Paul Krugman. The curriculum is dictated from the top-down and free-thought as well as free-speech are highly frowned upon. If I had to pinpoint it to one thing, it would have to be political correctness. It's spreading very quickly and in many ways it handicaps educators. We don't have educators running our education system, we have Educrats looking after special-interests. The common core is a perfect example. Nobody really benefits except the few corporations who received these huge contracts to distribute their material to every class room in America. If you think our education isn't up to par, you are mistaken. Our students are just as bright as any other country. The one difference is that our system is bought and paid for by corporate interests more than any other country.
And the populations of those homogenous socialist societies? Less than 2% of the global population. It's moot.
They had courses on linear alg/topology in my HS. Did you take anything past Calc? Don't tell me you did. The point is that the system is fine for those that can excel (will). There has to be a population in the bottom deciles. It's why "Rank and Yank" is so prevalent in the Ivy League. How do you differentiate when you give everyone an A for showing up? Why do so many Euro and Asian elites come to the US for undergrad?
Most don't do it solely for education. In the case of chinese, many want to try and escape their homelands for a more free country. For another, they are easier to get into than the elite schools in China. They have 3x the population we do. There are a lot of factors involved. Heck, one dude in my english class back in the day just wanted to get away from his parents because he feared the life they had prepared for him.
Not going to debate you on most things, its not worth it. I encourage you to do a little more research on your sky high tax brackets. I think our Tax brackets are sky high for top earners, unless you are a futures trader which gets a nice break. Even then, most countries in western europe have less capital gains tax then we are subjected to. I will let you research that. While you are at it, check the prices of university and health care in those countries. I'm not trying to be confrontational here, even though it does sound so....some facts are not correct, and western european countries are always categorized into high tax states that leave no room for opportunity. Where in fact a lot of times its less tax, and might be more beneficial for profitable traders and families if our tax scheme were more like theirs. As far as girls being more educated then boys, I don't find that weird. In my experience girls do work harder on studying then boys do. But many times they lack competitiveness or the willingness to screw someone over, boys don't care in the least. In 2008 that willingness to screw investors over by selling fraudulent mortgage backed securities came back to screw us over, and dug us a hole that we may very well not get out of in the long term without things getting much worse.
Agreed. Hate to sound like a total partisan because the Republicans aren't a lot better, but the Dems have done their best to destroy the traditional family. Additionally for many of the family units that are traditional, both parents are forced to work because of lower real wages. This causes parenting to suffer. It's outsourced to the school systems, which we all know is not up to the task.
+10 Scataphagos is a to-the-bone racist who'll look for any excuse to blame "minorities.". The fact is that White American kids aren't doing so great compared to Whites in other countries. Here's the bottom line: In France, for example, the Ministry of Education actually runs the school system. There is uniformity nationwide. Here in the good ol' USA, we've made the assbackwards decision to let states and local governments run the school systems. The best the Department of Education can do is to try provide some incentives via funding here and there but it's really the locals who call the shots. This is why the idiocy of creationism can dominate public school biology classes in Texas but not in New York. No real national educational standards here. Nothing to do with socialism, just dumbfuck Americans being dumbfuck Americans.
Right, they want to see the Grand Canyon. C'mon, you're entirely talking out of your ass. We have the greatest % of foreign students of any country.