Re: [Mac] geography
Mac,
While I do agree with you that America's educational system is going in the toilet, or water closet if that term is more fitting for an international discussion, you need to understand political statistical analysis a littlle better before posting what the media reports.
If I take a poll of literacy statistics in the United States and 35% of those that are polled are from the inner cities where our educational system and literacy rates can be classified as attrocious at best, then automatically, the statistical results are already significantly skewed.
Now, conversely, if you polled those that come from the regional school systems that I come from, we would completely blow the analysys out of the water and make it look as if Americans were the smartest beings on the planet.
For one of my degrees, I actually had to be able to prove improbabilities as truths by skewing stastical pollings. It is actually quite easy to do, and our politicians and lobbyists do it all of the time to suit their agendas.
Sweden's educational system is somewhat of an anomaly where families of lesser education are on par with families of higher education in the primary schooling years, thus eliminating the segregation of students and equaling the playing field so to speak. This system would never fly in the United States. My parents only gave me the best education in the best schools. Unfortunately for those families in the US not as finacially fortunate as my family, our educational system is in most cases, a function of socio-economic factors. My parents are highly educated and well off, therefore, that was instilled in me at an early age, thus elevating the level of educational attainment in my school systems that exceeded where others in other school systems were able to be, which, is being passed on to my son.
Sweden also has several huge advantages that allows it to consistently place among the top in the world:
1) It's population has only increased by one million people since 1969 where as countires like the US have increased over one hundred million in the same time frame with persons from all different nationalities, socio-economic classifications, and educational attainment.
2) Sweden has an ideology of collectivism (for the better good) versus the "me above all else" American ideology, which increasingly separates the economic classifications every year-somewhat of a survival of the wealthiest philosophy.
3) University studies are subsidized by taxes in Sweden. I think I will move to Sweden with the rising costs and diminishing quality of US educational institutions.
At this rate, it will cost me $100,000 per year to send my son to a private university.
My point here is that in these statistical analyses, there is more to it than just the black and white seven sentence blurb you found on the internet to support your "Typical American" argument.
Don't be so quick to lump all Americans together.
I may be crucified by the skydiving community for saying this, but I really don't give a fuck...I would not exactly calssify the majority of skydivers as a basis in which to argue that "Typical American" misnomer. After 10 years, I have a very few friends in skydiving because after five minutes of conversation, I cannot handle talking about another jump, another skydive, another canopy, etc., etc. The few that I do have, we never talk about skydiving or BASE Jumping unless we are planning a jump. Our conversations tend to lean towards business, politics, finance, and travel.
Point in case...That chick who thought there was an ocean between the US and Canada is as poor example to utilize as the quoted statisctical report you posted for arguments sake.
Best Regards,
The Atypical American
