Starving the Future

There are attributes of American society that enable the country to excel, and which have nothing to do with quality of public education. First, parents in general are less active in managing their kids' time than other countries. Kids have more leeway to determine what they do with their time. Many do slack off, or get into trouble, and sometimes it is serious. But many others find out what really interests them. They are not told they have to prepare to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer. They are more likely to be able to try everything and see where their mind returns to over and over. No cookie cutters or escalators.

Second, we have a different view of failure than many other nations. The relatively low social and legal consequence of failure allows Americans to stand back up, shake off the failure and try again. Think about how many restaurants there are and the number that will fail within a year or two. It is millions of failures annually. In Germany, for example, if a business does not notify its creditors 30 days before running out of cash, the president can go to prison. In the US, a business has no requirement to ever notify their creditors at all. We seem to see failure as a consequence of taking a risk, not as a scarlet letter. To never fail, is to never try.

If you combine the two, we have a society where people not only have a better opportunity to discover their passions, they feel much less encumbered by the prospect of failure than in other countries. Passion drives innovation, creativity, persistence and the competitive spirit. Can you imagine Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, Amazon, MacDonald's or any other 'huge success' without a passionate, risk-taking founder? Even Subway has such a story.

The product of our education system may not do as well on tests as their peers from other countries, but when they get into college and choose a major, they are more likely to be passionate and self-motivated and excel in their chosen curriculum.

Our educational system needs help, there is no doubt. Since my grade school days, funding for the arts has completely disappeared. Schools are run down to the point of being shameful. But the key ingredients that produce greatness are still there.

Wow, this is a pretty depressing response from the ycombinator crowd.

I wonder what you guys think about this?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=N...

This is such an astonishingly bad article that I really don't even know where to start.

I saw this exact same type of drivel with the Japanese in the 80s and the Asian "Tigers" in the 90s. "Oh no! The Asians are growing at 10% a year - we're screwed!". Give me a break - it's like comparing a toddler to an adult - "Oh no! Little Timmy is growing at 10% per year - all of us fully grown adults don't stand a chance in hell against that kind of growth!"

> “between 2000 and 2008, China graduated 1.14 million people in the STEM, or Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, subjects; the United States graduated 496,000.”

> “by 2017, India will graduate 20 million people from high school — or five times as many as in the United States.”

Firstly - absolute numbers are pointless since both India and China are 3-4 times larger than America (~300 million to ~1+ billion each). Tell me per capita rates - then we're talking.

> We’re cutting back, while our children’s future competitors are plowing ahead.

What does that even mean?

India/China are third world nations - of course they are plowing ahead - they haven't even began to produce IP on the world stage yet. You're not comparing growth rates in ratio - you can't say a toddler is growing insanely fast - and then state that he is going to become a giant and "destroy us all".

> Enroll 40 million children in preschool, a 50 percent increase from today.

> More than double enrollment in higher education.

If I'm missing a leg - and I get a prosthetic - I do grow my ability to walk by 100% (as in I double it). But that doesn't mean anything - since everyone else already has two damn legs! My growth was just getting back to normal. China/India are like amputees who are slowly acquiring prosthetics. They are starting from an unfortunately low baseline and growing towards normal - they will not overtake us.

This is alarmist drivel written by the "won't you think about the children" crowd coupled with poor reasoning, improper understanding of the uncertainty present in future projections - 2030 for heaven's sake! - and a thorough misunderstanding of what growth really implies.

This faulty reasoning is also applied to "wunderkids", best exemplified by Peter Thiel's 20 under 20, and startup growth numbers: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104407

I will never understand why this guy has a column.

While

> many of our children are literally too hungry to learn

here http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html we learn that

> Approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2—19 years are obese.

So SNAP in its current incarnation is not as clear-cut of a panacea as Charles M Blow suggests. Even USDA happily reports http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/retailers/eligible.htm that

> Soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream are food items and are therefore eligible items

> Energy drinks that have a nutrition facts label are eligible foods

Most of this article seems to be directed at some proposal of Paul Ryan's that supposedly reduces food stamp funding by 17% over 10 years, and a weak attempt to link that to education with sketchy anecdotal evidence.

Lame class warfare article. The left is full of whining idiots like this.

Higher preschool enrollment will not help. Fewer split homes and dual-income families with kids is the only way to ensure kids get the nurturing they deserve.