There’s Poverty, and then there’s POVERTY
Mrs. Thinker and I enjoy sitting on the porch and watching the birds eat off the feeders in the front yard. We’re starting to see the quail and pheasant chicks, and the yellow-headed blackbirds have been legion this year.
A couple of weeks ago we were reading an article in Education Week about the flattening world, the next generation of engineers is going to be 100% Indian and Chinese, we’re falling behind—all the usual.
The question out there is why. The schools could do a better job, certainly. With our population and our resources there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have an excellent pipeline of future brainiacs to help us keep our enviable place in the world pantheon.
I think the motivational aspect gets overlooked, though. I haven’t fully fleshed this idea out, so please tell me what you think:
In India the consequence for not getting a good education is severe and immediate. Failure means you live and die in a slum, you may well be hungry, and your quality of life will be among the lowest in the world.
In the United States the consequence for not getting a good education is…..what? You won’t have a comfortable life, but you’re still likely to have food, clothing, and shelter. Working a minimum wage job will still get you $5.00 an hour.
Who’s penalized more for failure?
Who has a better incentive to get an education?
Is this at all a factor, or just a useless social observation?
A couple of weeks ago we were reading an article in Education Week about the flattening world, the next generation of engineers is going to be 100% Indian and Chinese, we’re falling behind—all the usual.
The question out there is why. The schools could do a better job, certainly. With our population and our resources there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have an excellent pipeline of future brainiacs to help us keep our enviable place in the world pantheon.
I think the motivational aspect gets overlooked, though. I haven’t fully fleshed this idea out, so please tell me what you think:
In India the consequence for not getting a good education is severe and immediate. Failure means you live and die in a slum, you may well be hungry, and your quality of life will be among the lowest in the world.
In the United States the consequence for not getting a good education is…..what? You won’t have a comfortable life, but you’re still likely to have food, clothing, and shelter. Working a minimum wage job will still get you $5.00 an hour.
Who’s penalized more for failure?
Who has a better incentive to get an education?
Is this at all a factor, or just a useless social observation?
posted by Ryan at 3:54 PM
1 Comments:
Interesting...
And what's better, here you can claim to have had NO CHANCE at an education-- conveniently omitting your part in the story....
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