Is America An Essentially "Uneducated" Country?

[Unbeliever]

There is sometimes just a time to say "Good On Ya".  Srsly, good work.

My schooling was very much atypical: I went to a different school every single year, because we moved around so much, for whatever reason (I still don't know the reason). So I was always the new kid on the block. I completely skipped the 5th grade, because my adopted parents got divorced when I was 10 y.o. and neither wanted me, so they put me in a boys' camp for a year and a half. That was pretty cool, though - no school, and we got to take canoe trips to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login and a 600 mile canoe trip down the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login. After that they let me go on to the 6th grade, somewhere, I don't really recall where.

Every year the stuff they'd teach at whatever school I was at would be the same stuff I'd been taught the previous year at whatever other school I'd been at. So it was very boring, though my grades were pretty good. During the 10th grade I was at Skyline high in Dallas, living at Buckner's Orphan's Home. I started the 11th grade, but I got in trouble with the law, as I mentioned, and went "on the lam" until caught. They were going to give me 10 years probation, but since I was (just barely) old enough to join the service, they let me join the Navy. This was in 1973, and that was the last of any schooling for me - except for the school of hard knocks.

[Baruch]

Read the TV guide.

What do you think?

The Know Nothings ... were Trump came from ...

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[Draconic Aiur]

Oh America is very educated. It's just our government and our economy want dumb people more. Thy also want you to work years on a shitty wage and shitty job because they "lack" the infrastructure to make jobs that require your college degree. They also "lack" the commitment when thy want you to go to said college and earn a degree only to spend your life in a garbage can while everyone who isn't discriminated against has the "American Dream".

Then when bringing up solutions libertarians and republicans (also known as fucking retards) bitch and moan about communism and socialism saying its the worst thing while Big companies hide in plain site (with a political smile) and with stupid small business owners parading their incompetence at running a business. Our government reeks of corruption and our people are educated but brainwashed to follow these corrupted fucks.

Red scare tactics is a bitch to defeat.

[Baruch]

Oh America is very educated. It's just our government and our economy want dumb people more. Thy also want you to work years on a shitty wage and shitty job because they "lack" the infrastructure to make jobs that require your college degree. They also "lack" the commitment when thy want you to go to said college and earn a degree only to spend your life in a garbage can while everyone who isn't discriminated against has the "American Dream".

Then when bringing up solutions libertarians and republicans (also known as fucking retards) bitch and moan about communism and socialism saying its the worst thing while Big companies hide in plain site (with a political smile) and with stupid small business owners parading their incompetence at running a business. Our government reeks of corruption and our people are educated but brainwashed to follow these corrupted fucks.

Red scare tactics is a bitch to defeat.

Sorry, French Revolution didn't save France, and won't save you either.  But I understand the frustration.  There is no salvation.  Because "it is what it is".

[trdsf]

Oh, it's much worse than being an uneducated country.

We're a country that doesn't value education in the first place.  Just look at the solution most often offered to "improve" schools: vouchers and charter schools.  No, don't fund public schools fully and properly, let's take away from their already inadequate budgets and privatize education so someone can make a profit off of it because profits fix everything.  Oh, and rather than teaching critical thinking skills, let's just cram data so children can pass a test rather than actually use their knowledge.  Mustn't forget that step.

You may sense a certain bitterness here.  I genuinely feel like I'm watching my country blow its own brains out one generation at a time.  This is not just a "kids these days" thing.  Even back when I was in grade school, my parents would go to PTA meetings and no one wanted to hear about what the bright kids were doing, they wanted to know what the athletic kids were doing.  My own parents were told point blank that "nobody cares" what their smart kid was up to.  The boy that looked like a good prospect for the junior high football team?  That was meaningful to them.

And this was during the Space Race, when science and engineering were presented more positively than any other era I can think of.

America isn't an uneducated country, it's a don't-even-want-to-be-educated country.

[Unbeliever]

Not only do we not have an informed electorate, we have a mis-informed electorate. "Alternative facts" will be the death of this country.

[SoldierofFortune]

It'S crucial what we understand from the phrase: To be educated.

If you assess well the world outside you, we name you educated well; on whatever subject of course: Basics of natural world, some math, history, geography, geometry, philosophy, and morale values...

Levels vary of course but to make yourself direct to spesyphic branch determines what you will be, your professional fate was seen a littly bit.
Besides, and to stasfy our intellectual life we can do hobbies activities. These hobby area is our chose. But we can'T learn everything. we have to be limited. Limits vary from person to person.

[Baruch]

Not only do we not have an informed electorate, we have a mis-informed electorate. "Alternative facts" will be the death of this country.

Good riddance.  Back to Papal infallibility and the rich living in castles ;-)

[GrinningYMIR]

Sports and entertainment will take precedence in most Americans minds, if their kid is the star athlete that can do a lot more in their minds Han great grades, at least that’s how they think

[Unbeliever]

Maybe people really believe their kid will become a multi-millionaire in a pro-sports league, but I think most kids don't meet that expectation.

[Cavebear]

Read the TV guide.

What do you think?

TV Guide still exists?  I haven't seen it even in the grocery store checkout aisle for a decade.

[Baruch]

TV Guide still exists?  I haven't seen it even in the grocery store checkout aisle for a decade.

The Deep State uses Facebook now, to bamboozle the public.

[SGOS]

TV Guide still exists?  I haven't seen it even in the grocery store checkout aisle for a decade.

Recently, I saw an internet ad for TV Guide.  I then thought with 500 channels, it must be the size of an encyclopedia.  Then I realized it wasn't a subscription.  It was an ad for old TV Guides being sold as memorabilia. 

[Cavebear]

Recently, I saw an internet ad for TV Guide.  I then thought with 500 channels, it must be the size of an encyclopedia.  Then I realized it wasn't a subscription.  It was an ad for old TV Guides being sold as memorabilia.

Actually, now that I think about it, the channel descriptions on my HD internet say "TV Guide".  Change and prosper, I guess.

[GSOgymrat]

Leaving the country to escape student loan debt seems pretty extreme. The rising student loan debt is worrisome.

These Americans fled the country to escape their giant student debt

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Chad Haag considered living in a cave to escape his student debt. He had a friend doing it. But after some plotting, he settled on what he considered a less risky plan. This year, he relocated to a jungle in India. "I've put America behind me," Haag, 29, said.

He now lives in a concrete house in the village of Uchakkada for $50 a month. His backyard is filled with coconut trees and chickens. "I saw four elephants just yesterday," he said, adding that he hopes to never set foot in a Walmart again.

His debt is currently on its way to default. But more than 9,000 miles away from Colorado, Haag said, his student loans don't feel real anymore.

"It's kind of like, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it really exist?" he said.

The philosophy major concedes that his student loan balance of around $20,000 isn't as large as the burden shouldered by many other borrowers, but he said his difficulty finding a college-level job in the U.S. has made that debt oppressive nonetheless. "If you're not making a living wage," Haag said, "$20,000 in debt is devastating."

He struggled to come up with the $300 a month he owed. The first work he found after he graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in 2011 — when the recession's effects were still palpable — was on-again, off-again hours at a factory, unloading trucks and constructing toy rockets on an assembly line. He then went back to school to pursue a master's degree in comparative literature at the University of Colorado Boulder. After that, he tried to make it as an adjunct professor, but still he could barely scrape a living together with the one class a semester he was assigned.

Haag had some hope restored when he landed full-time work as a medical courier in Denver, delivering urine and blood samples to hospitals. However, he was disappointed to find that he brought home just $1,700 a month. He had little money left over after he paid his student loan bill. He couldn't afford an apartment in the city, where rents have been rising sharply. He lived with his mother and rarely went out with friends.

"I couldn't make the math work in America," Haag said.

Milestones that seemed like pipe dreams back home, like starting a family, and owning a house, are now on his horizon. This year he married an Indian citizen, a professor at a local college. He now has a five-year spousal visa, and plans to renew it when the time comes.
Adjusting to a new country, he admitted, has not been entirely easy.

"Some toilets here are holes in the ground you squat over," Haag said. Recently, he ate spoiled goat meat at a local restaurant and landed in the emergency room.

Still, he said, "I have a higher standard of living in a Third World country than I would in America, because of my student loans."...