As someone who dearly hates math and science and has no idea how society thinks it's anything useful and is going to end up really poor but use an average of 14 eight syllable words per sentence, I'm glad the USA has gotten over the dumbass idea that we're the best in everything. Good to see there's still sensibility about ;)

I don't hate science--I love it.

I just am not skilled/never took anywhere near enough classes in it to get a job...mostly because I loved English/Poly Sci so much and because I figured eventually I'd run up against my already-admittedly-poor math skills...

I passed Algebra II and Geometry, so I'm not very good at it, but at least I can do the basics...and after all, I'm not saying everyone has to be good at everything, or even that the US has to be good at everything academically.

It'd just be nice if we kept a lead in something.

Not in science...
Not in math...
Clearly not in business anymore...
Not in writing skills...

I fear this nation will become a melting pot of incompetence by the time I have to take charge fully in it.

*Sigh*

In fifth grade, people considered me a mathematician, and by people, I mean teachers and parents, not kids. By eighth grade, I was sick of math. By tenth grade, I failed my precalc final. Taking an AP and then getting the hell out of math.

I misspoke I guess because I love science and I wish I were that type of person because it makes money and you can be happy in the field too. There's a lot of positives out of science and that community has made huge strides lately.

In terms of America as a whole, I'll use an awesome youtube video. Don't have the link but someone can help me out. The three things America leads the world in:

• Childhood obesity
• Adults who believe in angels
• Imprisoned persons per capita

Doesn't make us sound like much fun, does it?

@bo_sox, how can you hate math and science? Pretty much everything you do wouldn't be possible without the mathematical and scientific advances of the past 3000 years.

@obi, maybe I'm missing something, but scaling something to an average and then finding the percentage of people above a certain scaled score seems rather meaningless. 27% would be about what one would expect on any data analyzed as such. That's not to say, of course, that our education system is fine. I just think it's interesting that they didn't do a more meaningful calculation.

I've seen it too. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16K6m3Ua2nw

Great scene--but then, you'd expect that from the creator of "The West Wing."

Yeah, you would. Ghug, read both my posts. I know you posted before seeing my second. Little clarification.

And by the way, for someone that aspires to live a lifestyle of writing and never talking to anyone again in a cabin in the woods of the southwestern Yukon Territory, no, math and science don't have a ton to do with my life.

@ghug:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/14/writing-proficiency-naep_n_1884541.html

The way this article puts it, it's that only roughly a quarter of kids reached "proficient."

There's a difference between "proficient" and "excellent," I think, or at least an implied distinction.

After all, you can be proficient in French without being the next Jean-Paul Sartre...the next Sartre would be "excellent," having a grasp of most of the language and words to a pretty good and workable degree would be "proficient," and then "basic"--what it says 54% or so of students tested into--would seem to be analogous to having a high school French I understanding of the language--

Namely, sure, you might know a few scattered sayings, and the structure, but try to communicate in any meaningful or (more importantly) business-savvy way with it, and you'll run into problems, as to succeed in business linguistically, undeniably, one must be proficient AT LEAST--

You can't very well just have a very, very basic understanding of the language of business and expect to pull of complex trade negotiations, after all.

A lucky few MAY squeak by, but not the majority.

I don't think standardized scores say shit about someone. I'm a terrible test taker and I'm not that great with grades because my study habits aren't great (hence why I'm a terrible test taker) yet the guy next to me could probably be the valedictorian yet doesn't understand half of what I say. In terms of a college, I wish they'd hire more people so they could actually know their applicants rather than the piece of paper that is supposed to represent their applicants. Same goes for jobs. Stop focusing on the resume, start focusing on whether my personality is right for what you're looking for. I don't think we'd have such issues with unemployment if people wouldn't judge based on written credentials and instead just who they are.

Obi- Just an FYI, if you want to go anywhere in political science past undergrad level, it all turns into math.

@obi, I get that, my problem is the way they're scoring the thing. A scaled test with the average in the middle means that they're fitting the scores to a normal curve and the fact that they're setting a level of "proficiency" along that curve means that they had already decided what percentage of the population they wanted to be proficient. The term "proficient" is entirely meaningless here unless they define it in some way, and the article seems to be saying that they haven't.

bo_sox - resumes are excellent because they show what kind of person you are. Attitude and personality don't mean shit compared to the ability to get your job done efficiently and....i don't know, the fact that you can hold a job for more than a year.

I don't know. I'm the guy who always did excellent on tests, loved AP Calc, was salutatorian of my class, and plan on living in a big city with my career depending upon my ability to use technology. I'm pretty much the anti-you, bo_sox, so I doubt that we'll ever agree on educational standards

"What happened to us, USA?"

Federal involvement in education, teachers' unions, apathetic parents, school district bureaucracy, and Hollywood have turned our education system into a Level Five clusterfuck.

Also @ghug, couldn't they have transformed the data to reach that result? Its a stretch, but could have taken the initial results, put them on a new scale, and set the average to 150 on the new scale. It doesn't quite make sense though.

Or, it is possible that the test was designed so that scoring a 173 would be the mark of "proficient" and 150 would be the mark of "average." Its not completely clear that they used a normal distribution either. Without seeing the study methodology, its hard to say.

My educational standards are that the educators should focus on the student rather than the scores. Say what you will to sympathize with the student but you're basically telling me that you disagree with that. I can't believe that of all things right now education is first on the list of budget cuts around the country. We need better teachers, not cheaper ones. If we don't have that, the next generation of budget management will be just as bad as this one, and by the way, this one has caused us a massive recession and instead of fixing it is fighting as to who should be blamed. At least the Great Depression got fixed because they worked to fix it.

@Nietzshe:

Wow, what an honor it is to talk to you, one of my great idols...well, besides all your political ramblings and before the syphilis got you, anyway! :)

But Poly Sci is my "minor" (technically not even that, I don't register a minor until after his semester if I choose to) so English is really the driving degree I guess I'm going for, for better or worse...and then either a Masters/PhD or else Law school...if I can afford either without selling my hands off to pay for it. :/

And, upon seeing Gun's post, I will expand on apathetic parents in one word:

Babysitting.

Teachers aren't babysitters. That sixteen your old girl that your husband probably wants to stalk on Facebook is a babysitter. Not the teachers.

@gunfighter - I agree with you on all accounts, except maybe Hollywood. But the largest part imo is that parents are simply either not around for their kids or don't give a shit. There are more instances of both parents holding jobs now than ever before, meaning nobody is home for the kids, or if they are home they're dead tired and frustrated. Teachers can only do so much for the kids. Just as in college most real education occurs outside the classroom, in primary and secondary school most of the learning comes at home

I agree with you though, bo_sox, that education should not be cut, though for different reasons. An uneducated consumer was the cause of this recession, coupled with greed by real estate brokers, housing lenders, wall street, and ratings institutions. But the base of it was the stupidity of the average American in buying something that they could not afford. They really should make a personal finance course mandatory for high school...

@Gunfighter:

Agree with the last two, disagree with the previous two (they can be a pain in the ass, but I'm still pro-union, and teachers deserve their due...in fact, they deserve a far greater due than they're given right now...and I'd like to see, as is almost always the case with me, more federal and less state/district ruling for the big four--English, history, math, and science--of K-12. There can be regional variants, but ANY school teaching Intelligent Design is none to intelligent and not doing their students any good whatsoever by doing so..there need to be federal standards on that sort of thing. You're bound to disagree, and I'll readily concede the fed has botched educational reform before a la No Child Left Behind...still, I trust federal standards agreed upon and held to the standards and values of all 50 states over state governments falling into old routines and not as accountable nationally--but then, that's just the difference between a Federal vs. State kind of guy, I suppose.)

@no

I have some advice for you: grow up.

Yeah, tests and resumes suck but that's how the world works. You aren't going to change it by making yourself a reclusive martyr. And, while I agree that too much emphasis is placed on standardized tests, resumes are actually very useful. They show you know how to present yourself and give a summary of your skills and personality. You say writing isn't important, but a vast majority of most jobs is, in fact writing.

Abge, that kind of thing is exactly why I'm a little pissed at the generation before me. They think they made my life easy by inventing the internet, but only if I can afford it. Which I can't.

I'm not sure how that relates to what I said at all...

It doesn't. I'm just saying I've heard it before and I am not about to start listening. My minimum wage teachers never taught me how to do that.

"in fact, they deserve a far greater due than they're given right now..."

Nope. Disagree and will always disagree Obi. Teachers Unions have ruined the educational system by virtually guaranteeing that a teacher cannot, under almost any circumstances, be fired. I much prefer private schools where teachers have a bit more at stake. Case in point. in my district, high school teachers earn up to $100,000 a year, sometimes more, by the time they are in their 50s. Once they reach 55, they can retire, collecting 70% pay and health benefits (for them and their spouse) FOR LIFE.

My school district is on probation for poor academic performance. The average salary of people living in the district is something like $42,000 a year (far below the national average) and the poverty rate is near 20%. It is a grossly wrong compensation system.

Oh, did I mention the 4% a year for 5 years salary increase they just got?

I'm pretty sure your teachers were all paid pretty well.

Someone once told me some very valuable advice: you can win or make a point, not both. You can live in a cabin and die a beggar if you want. Or, you can suck it up, play by the rules, and actually try to change something. The choice is yours, but don't blame others for what you decide.

And I'm forgetting ages right now, but isn't bo_sox like 17? If so, he'll grow out of this phase.

@abge - he probably just read "Into the Wild"

^^based on his fuck-you-world and im-gonna-live-in-the-middle-of-nowhere attitude

@OP

This isn't surprising to me at all. In my 6 years at university, I only met a handful of people who's writing wasn't atrocious.