The united states of America, what a joke. We have almost no focus on advancement of our culture. We focus on sensitivity to the point of insanity. Our schools are inept. There seems to be no standard in the schooling system. When young I attended several different schools in many locations. They all had different paces and standards. Some places would be studying subject A in 10th grade where others would have covered it in 6th grade, and so on with many more inconsistencies. At one point I was stuck in a high school for a semester that was covering things I learned by 4th grade. I see a problem with this, a big problem. Did this classes ever catch up to my pace? No one of the few American standards is to slow the class so the stupid don't feel stupid. This is not right. Yes you could say that if the student is so smart they should put them in an advanced class or that if there so dumb they do to learning disabled classes. Well it doesn't always works that way. Even when it does, it doesn't. I attended many honors classes, advanced classes, advance pace classes, honors advance classes, and no end to the titles, but in all of them there where people who didn't belong. People who get into the classes for some reason but can't keep up to the pace. So I would be in a "advanced" class and it would be slowed to a crawl because someone doesn't understand.
Schools shouldn't work like this. We are sacrificing intelligence to give a few a little comfort. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the actual intelligence of the person either, just the learning pace. In all the different schooling environments I have experienced I have noted that the ratios are the same. You have the same balance of learning paces so you always have dumb and smart kids. But if you move at a faster pace, as some do, you have a overall higher level of intelligence. It has been proven that the human brain learns more easily as a child. So if we started increasing the pace of classes to match the average or advanced student, and we started teaching subjects younger we would have an altogether more intelligent nation.
Another thing we must stop doing is lieing to the students, we explain something one way just to make the class simpler when in fact they learn later that it is inaccurate. Example: you learn in elementary school that the atom is the smallest unit of matter. I pointed out that it wasn't, that there where protons, nuetrons, and electrons. It was stated that I was wrong and to leave it alone. Then later in elementary school I was told I was right about protons and such, but that we where told otherwise to help explain it to us. But then later we learn of quirks, gluons, and other quantum particles. Now it would be much better if we didn't lie to explain a point.
Even when we seem to advance we hold ourselves back, if it's not profitable. Several inventions have not been produced based on the fact that it would hinder profits. And the scientists who made them often can do nothing since they usually must work for corporations that hold the patent on the devices they create. Things such as many of the energy saving light bulbs we have seen recently where developed many years ago, in that case they where invented in the 60's. In the late 90's a new storage media was developed that was similar to cd's but held something like 45GB of data and credit cards devices that could be written to easily that held 10GB. No company wants to sell this media cause it wouldn't make enough profit. We design technology to never implement it.
We have structured our society on title and not abilities. In the businesses world one the highest matters are what degrees you have behind you and what contacts you have. Often getting these degrees does not mean they have adequate knowledge to perform the job. As well just because they know someone does not mean they can do the job, but yet these people flourish. I have seen many who have no clue what they are doing. I have seen many who's income reaches 6 digits and yet the only reason they produce anything of value is because there assistants doing work for them, there secretaries fix there reports, then there printer repairs them into a proper presentation. So often the real work force in America , the intelligence and organization are the laborers. Now how is this an incentive to progress?
Now this is just the present. The past problems of the country I will not even get into, because history is written by the victor. Then it is distributed by the current party in power. So to argue all the problems of the past would be a impossible to do decisively. We have many different accounts of events and everyone has knowledge of different ones based on who taught them.
So why are we supposedly better then the rest of the world? what cause we can consume more per person then any other country? Because we have a lot of land? Because we have big guns? Why are we better. What makes us always right? Why can't we admit we are wrong when we are? Why can we insult other countries in our media? Why can't other countries insult us?
Any questions?
Schools shouldn't work like this. We are sacrificing intelligence to give a few a little comfort. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the actual intelligence of the person either, just the learning pace. In all the different schooling environments I have experienced I have noted that the ratios are the same. You have the same balance of learning paces so you always have dumb and smart kids. But if you move at a faster pace, as some do, you have a overall higher level of intelligence. It has been proven that the human brain learns more easily as a child. So if we started increasing the pace of classes to match the average or advanced student, and we started teaching subjects younger we would have an altogether more intelligent nation.
Another thing we must stop doing is lieing to the students, we explain something one way just to make the class simpler when in fact they learn later that it is inaccurate. Example: you learn in elementary school that the atom is the smallest unit of matter. I pointed out that it wasn't, that there where protons, nuetrons, and electrons. It was stated that I was wrong and to leave it alone. Then later in elementary school I was told I was right about protons and such, but that we where told otherwise to help explain it to us. But then later we learn of quirks, gluons, and other quantum particles. Now it would be much better if we didn't lie to explain a point.
Even when we seem to advance we hold ourselves back, if it's not profitable. Several inventions have not been produced based on the fact that it would hinder profits. And the scientists who made them often can do nothing since they usually must work for corporations that hold the patent on the devices they create. Things such as many of the energy saving light bulbs we have seen recently where developed many years ago, in that case they where invented in the 60's. In the late 90's a new storage media was developed that was similar to cd's but held something like 45GB of data and credit cards devices that could be written to easily that held 10GB. No company wants to sell this media cause it wouldn't make enough profit. We design technology to never implement it.
We have structured our society on title and not abilities. In the businesses world one the highest matters are what degrees you have behind you and what contacts you have. Often getting these degrees does not mean they have adequate knowledge to perform the job. As well just because they know someone does not mean they can do the job, but yet these people flourish. I have seen many who have no clue what they are doing. I have seen many who's income reaches 6 digits and yet the only reason they produce anything of value is because there assistants doing work for them, there secretaries fix there reports, then there printer repairs them into a proper presentation. So often the real work force in America , the intelligence and organization are the laborers. Now how is this an incentive to progress?
Now this is just the present. The past problems of the country I will not even get into, because history is written by the victor. Then it is distributed by the current party in power. So to argue all the problems of the past would be a impossible to do decisively. We have many different accounts of events and everyone has knowledge of different ones based on who taught them.
So why are we supposedly better then the rest of the world? what cause we can consume more per person then any other country? Because we have a lot of land? Because we have big guns? Why are we better. What makes us always right? Why can't we admit we are wrong when we are? Why can we insult other countries in our media? Why can't other countries insult us?
Any questions?