American workers not "best in the world." In fact, we're actually kind of bad.

I've made no secret of the fact that there was a time in my life when I was a blue-collar tradesman. I worked with (and later employed) many, many graduates of my home area's vocational schools/technical colleges. These guys had better math skills than my typical MBA student has today. They could use a trig table to find/answer all sorts of questions of immediate practical import (e.g., I need to locate/drill seven holes evenly into a circle that has a diameter of 200 mm. What X-Y coordinates, in inches, should I use for each hole?).

 

What's your evidence for this?

Folks with rare and/or exceptional skills are in demand, and can set their own price. Silicon Valley companies are tripping overthemsleves as they attempt to throw money at the best engineers and programmers.

It's not that hard. If you want to make money, be really good at something that people value.

If you only want to be average, fine. Just don't expect to make a lot of money.

Why are we so afraid of saying that? We refuse to tell that to kids, who are then surprised to learn it as adults, when it's "too late" to "retrain" them.

Why not train them the right way the first time around, when they're school children? And, why not tell them then that they need to be good at something, and not average?

 

Are you really of the belief that at the heart of this problem is teachers telling their students they just have to be average, because, you know, unions?

 

I think it's still true of many tradesman. I'm on job sites all the time, with various tradesmen. And, while it might be faint praise, they're nearly all smarter than I am.

They know how to do things, how to problem solve, how to adjust, and modify things as the situation warrants.

 

it's partly that, but more because of a mindset. We're uncomfortable telling people hard truths. We don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. So, everyone gets a trophy, and no one is told they need to excel if they want to be successful.

And, interestingly enough, it is just the opposite in sports (and chess, and the like). Parents constantly tell little Timmy that he needs to work harder, practice more, and be the best if he want to earn that college scholarship, or play pro ball.

We don't tell kids the same thing in regards to math, science, etc.

And, as you said, they just expect to land a good paying job. Why do they expect this? Because no one told them otherwise.

 

Which probably points up another fault with the educational system and probably society in general.

Basically, I've never fixed anything in my life. Never took a shop class, never got under a car hood, because I was on a different track at school. So anything fix-it or handy is not a job prospect to me. I'd assume this is the case for most kids who are on the "college track."

In addition to limiting my job prospects, this has cost me thousands upon thousands of dollars as I have to call a repairman for just about everything.

But there is quite a bit there about what dq was saying about people putting together the entire picture. Even when I was studying math in high school, I was not grasping the science portion of the "science and math" grouping.

 

I think the biggest part is that teachers don't want to put up with parents' bullshit. So everyone gets an "A." Which, of course, devalues an "A."

I don't know how many of you have ever been graded on a strict curve among a group of smart people, but it's quite an experience, quite a shock to the system.

 

YF, your solution to this problem is for everyone to be extraordinary. That might work in Lake Wobegon, but it doesn't work in the real world.

Accepting the premise that yes, it's good to be exceptional, what do you do with the 80% of people who aren't? Are they all meant to work for $8.50 an hour while rending their garments at their own inability to be exceptional?

I have surprisingly few qualms about treating different students differently -- and the refusal to do this is a HUGE problem in the British education system, from my limited, albeit soon-to-increase, knowledge of it. I do have qualms about just sloughing off the ones who aren't at the top of the class.

And yes, the idea that everyone should go to college is a part of that problem. If everyone has a college degree ... then a college degree ceases to be a qualification.

 

We wouldn't slough them off. They'd be qualified to do jobs more suited for the modern world, and our economy and standard of living would grow as a result, with unskilled jobs being performed by robots or Bangladeshis, as they should be.

 

So, we're in broad agreement.

The thing is, Americans need to be exceptional vis–à–vis other nations, and we're not.

And, the less me demand exceptionalism, the less exceptional people we will have.

And, the more we coddle the 80% with feel good trophies, then we'll get more people accepting mediocrity.

So, yeah, I think there should be rewards for being exceptional. Should the rest make $8.50 an hour for the rest of their life? I don't know, but maybe if they take one $8.50 an hour job, they'll learn additional skills that will make them more valuable.

There's a price for every skill. Espresso repair pays ok. It's not at the top of the scale either though. But, everyone needs some kind of skill.

If you don't have any marketable skill, then you really should not expect a middle class life style. It's unsupportable.

 

Forgive me for this brief threadjack ... I get so frickin' tired of the "everyone gets a trophy" bit. When is the expiration date on that cliche? (And YF, you're not remotely the only one I've heard using it; you're just the one who used it the day I happened to be near a soapbox.)

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming ...

 

I'm not surprised that people would debate how to address our knowledge/skills gap with other nations.

I am a bit surprised that some people don't seem to think it's a problem or, in the alternative, not an indictment of our educational system.