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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: haqihana who wrote (8798)	5/22/2006 6:39:43 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 71588

re: currencies/economies The point was, that if other major countries return to gold, silver, or even gems, as their financial base, we are screwed. Could you expand on the point. I can see how if other countries currency becomes relatively harder that our currency would undergo a relative devaluation, and that this devaluation might have negative consequences. But I'm not sure I go from there to "we're screwed", let alone "bankruptcy". Also I think its very unlikely that Japan, or China, or India, or the Euro zone will go to a gold or silver standard or something similar. re: education 30 years ago, every high school graduate knew who the President was, when the Civil War began, etc. ad infinitum, but the graduates of today don't know squat about much of anything. High school graduates are checkers at burger joints, and many of the department stores, and they can't even count money. Just as a test, I will give them an amount of money that requires that they add, and/or subtract, and they look at as if I asked them to explain the atom bomb. I'm not sure the difference between now and 30 years ago is as great as you think. Also today the majority of people with average or higher intelligence and drive at least take some college courses, if you look at someone who's educational level is "HS Grad" rather than "Some college" today you are sorting out most people with drive and intelligence. More generally the average person today reaches a higher level of formal education that the average person of 30 or more years ago. If you compare people at the same level of educational achievement today (Some HS, HS Grad, Some College, College Grad etc.) you aren't comparing the same percentage of people from each period. There is also the fact that people today may know a different set of facts than people 30 years ago. I remember seeing a test that is supposed to be from the 1800 for elementary school students that a lot of modern educated people might have difficulty with. The display of the test was meant to show how people in the 1800s where supposedly so much better educated than people today. But many of the questions involved measurements or terms that are less common today. Getting to your two specific examples I think that just about every high school graduate today would know who the President is. (They might not know if full name or much about him but they could at least say its Bush). I also think you would get a majority that would say when the Civil War began and a strong majority that would have it at least approximately correct. I do think that 30 years ago the graduates would have better knowledge of geography. That is because our educational system puts less effort in to teaching geography than it used to. That might be a bad thing but part of the reason for it is because we put more effort in to other things today. For example the average HS grad is much more computer literate than a typical HS grad 30 years ago. Also for whatever reason the average IQ score has been going up. Apparently we are learning more of the types of information and reasoning that goes in to producing good IQ scores. wired.com Then there is also the factor I mentioned before. If its worse than 30 years ago, it doesn't necessarily follow that things are getting worse now. The decline could have happened from 30 to 20 years ago, 20 to 10, 10 to 5, etc. None of which necessarily means that our educational system is not getting worse. It certainly doesn't mean that it is really solid and not something that we have to worry about. I am not asserting either idea. I do think our education system has problems. I do think in some ways it is worse than it used to be. I just think the question - "Is it getting worse now", is not a simple one, nor one that I can see any solid answer to.