Asia gain prominence in sci-tech as US loses ground, Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news3376.html

http://www.physorg.com/news3376.html

Should we applaud Bush"s administration?

Not to say that bush is without sin, you really can't pin this all on him. it's been a long time coming.

the problem is the same as any other. the American Public education system.

America used to be the land of Free thinkers but in the effort to improve education and make things equal for all, we've been turned into a nation of test takers.

kids are no longer encouraged to Excel, in fact many schools now discourage it because it makes the dumb kids feel bad.

we need to bring competition back to the schools and back to america. though it's probably to late. I'm thinking east asia is the next super power.

But europe survived the transistion well enough. I supose we could do the same, so long as China doesn't decide try to take over the world.

I don't want to get into a political flamewar here, but it's not like this just suddenly happened within the last few years. This has been a long time in coming. Decades, I'd say.

While Bush may not exactly be bolstering the US economy, we can't just assign blame to one man. The potential of a nation is also the combined result of the efforts of its populace. Personally, I think we're just getting lazy and complacent. We're not the hegemony we were after WW2 anymore. Countries that we helped up out of the dust have been gaining on us ever since. They learned the lessons we taught them, and then turned around and built on that, rather than following suit and resting on their laurels. They've shown that our own accomplishments in the past 200 years, while respectable, are no longer very unique or impressive.

At any rate, we have the ability to address this, if we so desire. If we can recognize that our era of "entitlement" is over, and we once again need to work hard for prominence and superiority of economy, technology, and information. It's competition, people. It's what capitalism is all about. Step up to the plate or warm the bench, it's up to all of us.

Don't you hate it when you carefully write up a thoughtful post, and when it's perfect and complete you submit it, only to find out that someone else already made your main points while you were tweaking your wording?

All I can say is this:

if it matters, I think you said it better.

I'd just like to add that the article that dirak linked to is much more entertaining if you skip the intro paragraph and pretend that "Hicks" refers not to a researcher, but to a group of people.

Back on the serious side...

This is disturbingly accurate. I have a few close friends who are pursuing degrees in education right now, and the stories they tell are really frightening. The amount of coddling that is encouraged (or demanded in some cases) makes the teaching process completely ineffectual for anyone but the most self-driven child. There is little to no encouragement to correct oneself, because the concept of "right" and "wrong" answers is gradually vanishing from schools.

The fact is that people grow and mature by overcoming adversity. A challenging educational environment is a necessity if we expect our youth to equal and eventually surpass our own achievements. How can we expect our youth to expand upon the horizons we've explored if we lead them all the way on training wheels and padded sidewalks? They need to be taught to stand on their own, and this cannot be done with words alone. They need to be taught that barriers are not indestructible, and this cannot be done unless they run into some on their own. The desire to overcome is driven by dissatisfaction with the status quo. But with all the coddling and psychological protectionism that goes on in schools today, we are training them all the way to be satisfied with what they are given.

The world is a harsh and competetive place, and our youths are shaping up to be little, gooey furballs of emotion and foundationless self-esteem. I just saw the new computer-animated movie "Robots" (which by the way is very funny and clever). It features a little encouraging slogan: "You can shine no matter what you're made of." It's a nice little thing that we should be teaching our kids: Everyone has an ability; find yours and make the most of it. But instead what are we teaching them? That there's no need for self-improvement, and everything is going to be okay, so don't worry about it.

We've taken away the encouragement to "shine", and all we're left with is the "no matter what you're made of" part. Which allows our youth to remain a bunch of dull, uninspired, mentally and psychologically flabby pseudo-adults. We should instead be encouraging them to shine themselves up and contribute, expand, and improve the world.

Granted, not all schools or school systems have fallen victim to this philosophy. There are places yet where teachers have faith in the strength of their students' minds and egos, and are willing to drive them to improvement. Anyone care to take a guess where? I'll give you a hint: they'll be hard to find in places like LA, New York, Chicago, or Milwaukee. I'm not taking political sides here. I've got equal ire for all Republicrats, because there are big problems on both sides of "the aisle". I judge by issues, not platforms, and so usually find myself undecided. But if we were to set this issue to stand alone, one side loses big in my opinion.

Just watched the movie Napoleon Dynamite last night. While it is funny enough, it is pretty scary given the article for this post. We've been on a long slide the last few decades, but I'm worried we are accelerating. (Someone older tell me if my fears are well placed.)

Japan? Germany?

seriously though, if you find out where let me know. it's not the rich suburb just north of Indianapolis as near as I can tell.

so long as you come to school and pass your ISTEPs, you can flunk every class in 8th grade and still move on to highschool.

hell you can even bring a pocket knife to school, take it out in the middle of the gym, Hand it off to a friend when you see kids running to theteacher, lie to the teacher and the principle, even after they recover the knife, get arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and expeled for a year, and still get into highschool. (true story BTW, I'm thinking if selling my nephew to gypsies over it)

I'm not at all concerned about the Asians being more studious in their education. I've worked with many Asians in the engineering fields and they always seem to have taken their education much more seriously then most Occidentals. This is not to condemn our education system here in the West, I have worked with some brilliant engineers and scientists that received their education here. However, as in all instances I prefer quality and not quantity. It's one thing to have an excellent education, it's another to actually do something with it. Although a good number of our well educated engineers and scientists do wind up working for companies that design military and space hardware can any nation even come close to our expertise? We have robots wandering around on Mars. We have satellites orbiting other planets. We have satellites in orbit that can 'see' X-ray and Gamma ray radiation from events that happened over 12 billion years ago. We have drone aircraft that can stay aloft for days without being detected. Our latest fighters and bombers look like a sparrow to any type of radar. The VHS was originally developed by an American.
One needs to remember that the Asians have always been very well educated people, it's their governments that hold back any original thought processes.

Nope, it's in the low-to-mid-middle-class areas outside the sprawl of bigger towns and cities. It's not universally true, but there it's easier to find teachers who teach for value, rather than just to make a living. (They tend to be "Red" areas. They may not have the higher-education stuff down, but at least they lay their foundations right.) The rich suburbs, on the other hand, are usually even worse than the urban areas I mentioned.

And every now and then you'll stumble upon a truly great and dedicated teacher in the bigger public school systems. But usually they are older, on their way out after a career of good work, toiling in obscurity.

Great, but who invented CD, and DVD, and HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray? These things that are replacing VHS and cassette.

The point of the article is not that suddenly the US is not making any more progress. The point is that new innovation is happening less often in the US. The progress is slowing, and becoming less significant.

Great, we're in space. Wonderful. Let me know when I can arrange a Martian vacation through Expedia or Travelocity, and then we can pat ourselves on the back. In the meantime, Japanese technology is in the hands of the vast majority of Americans. How much technology does Japan import from the US, I wonder? (Besides maybe the X-Box, in very limited numbers, and which now has to be marketed to Japan by a Japanese native.)

Innovation is what this is about. We're not mediocre, as a nation, yet. But we're making great headway on getting there. Complacency will only speed the process.

We have become lazy and we glorify wealth to much which translates into a society no longer fixated on self-improvement (not the bank account kind) or working for a greater good (not the tree hugging kind) but just on what gets them the most money and phD degrees generally do not fill that desire.

As a senior in high school I can honestly say everyone is correct their is no competion in the most of high school. Only the top one percent in my school actually care and strive to do good and worry about their grades and not where the next party is going to be at.

it's not japanese technology that we're importing though. it's just japanese products.

what powers the Playstation? AMD, INtel, IBM, ATI, NVIdia. (ok, ATI looks to be canadian) but again all japan does is take our technology and sell it back to us.

James Russell in 1965, first mass produced by phillips in 1980.

of course all of this is just a fancier cd but....