The latter generation of people becoming more stupid?

[Kilmer02]

I'd like to give this topic a whirl. Some credentials' date=' I have a BA in physics and am studying computational Geodynamics in graduate school. My BA came from a small liberal arts school, where I VOLUNTARILY took classes out side my major: English(3 upper division classes), Philosophy(2 upper division classes), History, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Chemistry. In fact, the only courses I didn't take were Earth Science which is what I now study. This is common for students of the liberal arts, but not so common for most collegiate institutions. The general distate for understanding, in all fields, is apparent in the tedium of students. I also teach introductory Earth Science classes at my grad school, and have been always more or less let down my the majority of my students. Most of them are Education Majors, taking geology or oceanography as a requirement showing little to no enthusiasm for the subject. Are they stupid ? Perhaps, but they will never work hard enough for me to find out. Laziness and stupidity are far from different, and this laziness is a societal thing. For example, during one of my labs a student asked me "what answer will give me most credit". Most students think like that, I can't blame them as they are evaluated by grades, but I would never ask a question like that. That question is lazy, for obvious reason. Most of the time grades don't measure how well you can process information but how well you can regurgitate it. Thats a problem, but the deeper problem is that students don't take ownership of their education. They take classes because they are required to, not because they want to. I have never taken a class I did not originally want to take. Sure there are classes I didn't like, but I wanted to take that class. I thought it would be interesting before I took it. People are in school because they believe it will give them a higher income and not happiness. While there are exceptions, happy people are generally smart people and we have a society of severe unhappiness. Perhaps education should focus on learning ways to be happy instead of ways to score high on standardized tests. Either way, I'll continue to be happy no matter what. [/quote']

You sir, have hit the nail on the head with this. I have the same exact views on standardized testing. I am taking french and I am terrible at it, and the same goes for math. But when I tell the teachers and students who are getting A's in those classes that I have built my own computer, they are like OMG that must be so hard...

The problem is, all this information is just thrown at you and jammed down your throat, and its done without any consideration of its usefulness in the future. I will not need french at all in my life, but in order to get into college nowadays you need to have language credits... I just find the education system in america messed up.

[NeoZeon]

I'd like to give this topic a whirl. Some credentials' date=' I have a BA in physics and am studying computational Geodynamics in graduate school. My BA came from a small liberal arts school, where I VOLUNTARILY took classes out side my major: English(3 upper division classes), Philosophy(2 upper division classes), History, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Chemistry. In fact, the only courses I didn't take were Earth Science which is what I now study. This is common for students of the liberal arts, but not so common for most collegiate institutions. The general distate for understanding, in all fields, is apparent in the tedium of students. I also teach introductory Earth Science classes at my grad school, and have been always more or less let down my the majority of my students. Most of them are Education Majors, taking geology or oceanography as a requirement showing little to no enthusiasm for the subject. Are they stupid ? Perhaps, but they will never work hard enough for me to find out. Laziness and stupidity are far from different, and this laziness is a societal thing. For example, during one of my labs a student asked me "what answer will give me most credit". Most students think like that, I can't blame them as they are evaluated by grades, but I would never ask a question like that. That question is lazy, for obvious reason. Most of the time grades don't measure how well you can process information but how well you can regurgitate it. Thats a problem, but the deeper problem is that students don't take ownership of their education. They take classes because they are required to, not because they want to. I have never taken a class I did not originally want to take. Sure there are classes I didn't like, but I wanted to take that class. I thought it would be interesting before I took it. People are in school because they believe it will give them a higher income and not happiness. While there are exceptions, happy people are generally smart people and we have a society of severe unhappiness. Perhaps education should focus on learning ways to be happy instead of ways to score high on standardized tests. Either way, I'll continue to be happy no matter what. [/quote'] You sir, have hit the nail on the head with this. I have the same exact views on standardized testing. I am taking french and I am terrible at it, and the same goes for math. But when I tell the teachers and students who are getting A's in those classes that I have built my own computer, they are like OMG that must be so hard... The problem is, all this information is just thrown at you and jammed down your throat, and its done without any consideration of its usefulness in the future. I will not need french at all in my life, but in order to get into college nowadays you need to have language credits... I just find the education system in america messed up.

I took latin, will never use it again, and loved that I took latin even if I got a C+ in the class. You missed the point.Its a happiness thing, not a knowledge thing. Does taking french make you unhappy? You learn more than just french in french class.

[chingyg]

I'd like to give this topic a whirl.

Some credentials, I have a BA in physics and am studying computational Geodynamics in graduate school. My BA came from a small liberal arts school, where I VOLUNTARILY took classes out side my major: English(3 upper division classes), Philosophy(2 upper division classes), History, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Chemistry. In fact, the only courses I didn't take were Earth Science which is what I now study. This is common for students of the liberal arts, but not so common for most collegiate institutions. The general distate for understanding, in all fields, is apparent in the tedium of students.

I also teach introductory Earth Science classes at my grad school, and have been always more or less let down my the majority of my students. Most of them are Education Majors, taking geology or oceanography as a requirement showing little to no enthusiasm for the subject. Are they stupid ? Perhaps, but they will never work hard enough for me to find out. Laziness and stupidity are far from different, and this laziness is a societal thing. For example, during one of my labs a student asked me "what answer will give me most credit". Most students think like that, I can't blame them as they are evaluated by grades, but I would never ask a question like that. That question is lazy, for obvious reason.

Most of the time grades don't measure how well you can process information but how well you can regurgitate it. Thats a problem, but the deeper problem is that students don't take ownership of their education. They take classes because they are required to, not because they want to. I have never taken a class I did not originally want to take. Sure there are classes I didn't like, but I wanted to take that class. I thought it would be interesting before I took it. People are in school because they believe it will give them a higher income and not happiness. While there are exceptions, happy people are generally smart people and we have a society of severe unhappiness.

Perhaps education should focus on learning ways to be happy instead of ways to score high on standardized tests. Either way, I'll continue to be happy no matter what.

A very interesting point you bring up. I see a lot unexcited students especially in elective courses which they are force to take and their levels of understanding the subject is limited not by their intelligence , but by their lack of interest.

[chingyg]

Hi Brian. I'm going to give you my take on this as well. This is a very interesting topic!

Parents

This heavily ties with how your parents were raised, the environment they grew up with, and the morals they were taught. Maybe you perceived all parents as lazy and uncaring based on your own experiences with them. You may or may not know, that is certainly not the case with all parents. Take my parents for example. They are both immigrants who came to the United States seeking a better future. My dad worked 12 hour shifts at various restaurants so we had very little interaction. My mom worked overtime as much as she could so the only person who was able to teach me the way of life was my older sister. Both parents wanted my future to be great and successful. The problem was, they did not know how. So they kept telling me to get all A's and B's on my report card because in doing so, I would have a better chance of being successful. Doing hw was always a challenge. They were not able to understand or help me and on top of that, they weren't very supportive. Well I got decent marks on my report card, graduating from my high school with 3.8 with AP courses, and with 4 years in drumline. If you were to judge me based solely off the reflection of my academic marks, how well would I stand? If I were to tell you my SAT score is 1100, would that change your answer? Because the fact that my parents have little to no education background, they don't know how to raise me to me successful other than telling me to get good grades. They didn't tell me how important SATs were or how important it is to apply for early admission for colleges or how much money/time you save by taking and passing AP exams. Do I blame them? No, not at all. They raised me as best they could with their knowledge and I acknowledge that.

Child

Brian you are 15 years old. You're going to witness a lot of people in and out of your circle of friends change. When I was 15, I considered myself one of the more intelligent one out of my group. It's not the same as academic intelligence.... more like the ability to see things from other perspectives, or outer awareness. I had friends who would copy hw from me, friends who lack interest in school, and friends who wanted to hangout all the time. At the time, I was not too happy with them, but did I think the current and later generations were becoming less intelligence? No. I can't based my judgement on such a small sample of the population. My sister told me a very important quote and I still think it holds some truth to this day. "You are who your friends are." I eventually stopped talking with those friends of mine and I have no regrets. Later on I found out those same friends began stealing, drinking, and smoking.

In case anyone was wondering, I'm 20 and I'm currently majoring in computer science.

[Brainiac777]

I judge a person by their knowledge of the school subjects' date=' which I think is relevant. You guys probably judge people by their ability to help society.[/quote']

Then in your eyes, everyone who fails at an education is a failure. I personally know - and I mean face to face - dozens of highly successful people who dropped out of secondary education or didn't pursue tertiary education, most of whom are millionaires. Then you have examples such as Steve Jobs - say what you want about Apple and their products but at the end of the day - it's an incredibly successful company. Walt Disney(Disney), Bill Gates(Microsoft), Sir Richard Branson (Virgin), Colonel Sanders (KFC) - these are just 4 people who all dropped out of school and became highly successful.

As Einstein said: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid"

You may have forgotten that knowledge is power and things you don't know, Steven jobs has no knowledge on computers, he is a good motivator and pusher. Many of these people were lucky. So if I dropped out of high school now, I will become highly successful? Or work in a McDonald for the rest of my life? You have to look at reality, when you apply for a job, do they care more for your education or your abilities?

[Brainiac777]

I judge a person by their knowledge of the school subjects, which I think is relevant. You guys probably judge people by their ability to help society.

Why would you do that though? There's so much more to a person than just raw knowledge that the school sees as ''important''. Like windspeed said, there are enough persons that didn't excel in their education but still became very rich. And money isn't everything. There's still something called emotional quotient and there's a lot of people that are extremely bright and open minded emotionally and have a very wide understanding of things, all of which doesn't require education. To judge someone on their knowledge of trivial school knowledge is not fair.

I understand that you consider yourself as intelligent and quite possibly enlightened, but there's still much, much more to a person than raw school knowledge, ie there are a lot of things you don't learn in school.

This is my first impressions on people of judging by education, yeah I have to grow more socially, I just don't like to make more friends because the they just leech off your knowledge and use you, and many friends like to base off your physical looks and I ain't a good looking guy. Money is just a medium to gain you that happiness. My school knowledge thing is just something to relate to I guess because I see most of these badasses at school.

[Guest]

I judge a person by their knowledge of the school subjects' date=' which I think is relevant. You guys probably judge people by their ability to help society.[/quote']

Then in your eyes, everyone who fails at an education is a failure. I personally know - and I mean face to face - dozens of highly successful people who dropped out of secondary education or didn't pursue tertiary education, most of whom are millionaires. Then you have examples such as Steve Jobs - say what you want about Apple and their products but at the end of the day - it's an incredibly successful company. Walt Disney(Disney), Bill Gates(Microsoft), Sir Richard Branson (Virgin), Colonel Sanders (KFC) - these are just 4 people who all dropped out of school and became highly successful.

As Einstein said: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid"

Abilities. Other than accounting and medical, I don't know an employer who basses acceptance on education. And for accounting - it's beyond tertiary that they do.

[Salmiakbal]

I'd like to give this topic a whirl.

Some credentials, I have a BA in physics and am studying computational Geodynamics in graduate school. My BA came from a small liberal arts school, where I VOLUNTARILY took classes out side my major: English(3 upper division classes), Philosophy(2 upper division classes), History, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Chemistry. In fact, the only courses I didn't take were Earth Science which is what I now study. This is common for students of the liberal arts, but not so common for most collegiate institutions. The general distate for understanding, in all fields, is apparent in the tedium of students.

I also teach introductory Earth Science classes at my grad school, and have been always more or less let down my the majority of my students. Most of them are Education Majors, taking geology or oceanography as a requirement showing little to no enthusiasm for the subject. Are they stupid ? Perhaps, but they will never work hard enough for me to find out. Laziness and stupidity are far from different, and this laziness is a societal thing. For example, during one of my labs a student asked me "what answer will give me most credit". Most students think like that, I can't blame them as they are evaluated by grades, but I would never ask a question like that. That question is lazy, for obvious reason.

Most of the time grades don't measure how well you can process information but how well you can regurgitate it. Thats a problem, but the deeper problem is that students don't take ownership of their education. They take classes because they are required to, not because they want to. I have never taken a class I did not originally want to take. Sure there are classes I didn't like, but I wanted to take that class. I thought it would be interesting before I took it. People are in school because they believe it will give them a higher income and not happiness. While there are exceptions, happy people are generally smart people and we have a society of severe unhappiness.

Perhaps education should focus on learning ways to be happy instead of ways to score high on standardized tests. Either way, I'll continue to be happy no matter what.

You are completely right. This modern educational system is based solely on getting good marks, whether they be important or not. As a result people are forced to do things they may not like, which is fundamentally wrong. You live in order to be happy, right?

[Brainiac777]

I'd like to give this topic a whirl.

Some credentials, I have a BA in physics and am studying computational Geodynamics in graduate school. My BA came from a small liberal arts school, where I VOLUNTARILY took classes out side my major: English(3 upper division classes), Philosophy(2 upper division classes), History, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Chemistry. In fact, the only courses I didn't take were Earth Science which is what I now study. This is common for students of the liberal arts, but not so common for most collegiate institutions. The general distate for understanding, in all fields, is apparent in the tedium of students.

I also teach introductory Earth Science classes at my grad school, and have been always more or less let down my the majority of my students. Most of them are Education Majors, taking geology or oceanography as a requirement showing little to no enthusiasm for the subject. Are they stupid ? Perhaps, but they will never work hard enough for me to find out. Laziness and stupidity are far from different, and this laziness is a societal thing. For example, during one of my labs a student asked me "what answer will give me most credit". Most students think like that, I can't blame them as they are evaluated by grades, but I would never ask a question like that. That question is lazy, for obvious reason.

Most of the time grades don't measure how well you can process information but how well you can regurgitate it. Thats a problem, but the deeper problem is that students don't take ownership of their education. They take classes because they are required to, not because they want to. I have never taken a class I did not originally want to take. Sure there are classes I didn't like, but I wanted to take that class. I thought it would be interesting before I took it. People are in school because they believe it will give them a higher income and not happiness. While there are exceptions, happy people are generally smart people and we have a society of severe unhappiness.

Perhaps education should focus on learning ways to be happy instead of ways to score high on standardized tests. Either way, I'll continue to be happy no matter what.

This is my situation right now. In IB, you are forced to take French to the 30 levels aka grade 12. I find this unexciting because French is all about memorizing the exceptions and vocab. I find this EXTREMELY boring as I could be taking a better course such as Biology or an option, but you have to remember that you signed up for this and knowledge is power, having more knowledge is EXTREMELY helpful in life, such as in my case, applying for a job with "fluent in French" on my résumé is very helpful. Another thing to note, having knowledge on hand can get you things you might have never wanted. An example of this is when you go to university, and you want to become and engineer, but you change your mind at grade 12 to become a doctor, you don't have that biology you need, which would have took two months of summer school to do. Having everything is better than having something. Having something is better than having nothing.

[Brainiac777]

I judge a person by their knowledge of the school subjects' date=' which I think is relevant. You guys probably judge people by their ability to help society.[/quote']

Then in your eyes, everyone who fails at an education is a failure. I personally know - and I mean face to face - dozens of highly successful people who dropped out of secondary education or didn't pursue tertiary education, most of whom are millionaires. Then you have examples such as Steve Jobs - say what you want about Apple and their products but at the end of the day - it's an incredibly successful company. Walt Disney(Disney), Bill Gates(Microsoft), Sir Richard Branson (Virgin), Colonel Sanders (KFC) - these are just 4 people who all dropped out of school and became highly successful.

As Einstein said: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid"

The answer was both, engineering requires an amazing amount of math and science with creativity and imagination. If you want an lawyer to build a bridge, go ahead and do so. So why do job employees look at the academics before your abilities? Because someone smart will benefit the company more than someone who can do multiple things. If I went to apply for a job as a doctor and said, "I can build computers, I know how to program" do you think they will care?

[Guest]

I judge a person by their knowledge of the school subjects' date=' which I think is relevant. You guys probably judge people by their ability to help society.[/quote']

Then in your eyes, everyone who fails at an education is a failure. I personally know - and I mean face to face - dozens of highly successful people who dropped out of secondary education or didn't pursue tertiary education, most of whom are millionaires. Then you have examples such as Steve Jobs - say what you want about Apple and their products but at the end of the day - it's an incredibly successful company. Walt Disney(Disney), Bill Gates(Microsoft), Sir Richard Branson (Virgin), Colonel Sanders (KFC) - these are just 4 people who all dropped out of school and became highly successful.

As Einstein said: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid"

You look at audio - you will get further in the industry based on your attitude and work ethics than any degree can give you. The tertiary courses for this field of work teach you so little that you can learn more in a 2 day load in that you will in a term or even semester of uni. If you look at employment slightly later in life, you will notice that employers pretty much don't give a damn about your education and more care about your attitude and previous employment.

And anyway, your comment on Steve and not knowing about computers - that is shooting yourself in the foot. He didn't go to uni or something, he went out and employed people to do that for him to make himself successful. He took the attitude of I don't want to be the one working for someone, I want them to work for me.

[Brainiac777]

I judge a person by their knowledge of the school subjects' date=' which I think is relevant. You guys probably judge people by their ability to help society.[/quote']

Then in your eyes, everyone who fails at an education is a failure. I personally know - and I mean face to face - dozens of highly successful people who dropped out of secondary education or didn't pursue tertiary education, most of whom are millionaires. Then you have examples such as Steve Jobs - say what you want about Apple and their products but at the end of the day - it's an incredibly successful company. Walt Disney(Disney), Bill Gates(Microsoft), Sir Richard Branson (Virgin), Colonel Sanders (KFC) - these are just 4 people who all dropped out of school and became highly successful.

As Einstein said: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid"

Attitude and work ethics are not abilities. They are personalities. Job employeers also look at that, but that is not what I asked. Please go read the Steve job biography because you clearly don't know that Steve jobs has NO KNOWLEDGE ON COMPUTERS, he even states it himself. Wozniak was the brains. You don't even explain how Steve didn't know anything. You go on of how he hires other people to do the job for him. You are contracticting yourself. If he knew about computers, why did he hire other people then? He can be his own boss.

[Guest]

I judge a person by their knowledge of the school subjects' date=' which I think is relevant. You guys probably judge people by their ability to help society.[/quote']

Then in your eyes, everyone who fails at an education is a failure. I personally know - and I mean face to face - dozens of highly successful people who dropped out of secondary education or didn't pursue tertiary education, most of whom are millionaires. Then you have examples such as Steve Jobs - say what you want about Apple and their products but at the end of the day - it's an incredibly successful company. Walt Disney(Disney), Bill Gates(Microsoft), Sir Richard Branson (Virgin), Colonel Sanders (KFC) - these are just 4 people who all dropped out of school and became highly successful.

As Einstein said: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid"

If he knew about computers, why did he hire other people then?

Why do people have chauffeurs and personal chefs if they can cook and drive themselves? You look at any successful business person - do they do the work? Or do they have someone else do the work for them so they have time to do what they want?

[Brainiac777]

I judge a person by their knowledge of the school subjects' date=' which I think is relevant. You guys probably judge people by their ability to help society.[/quote']

Then in your eyes, everyone who fails at an education is a failure. I personally know - and I mean face to face - dozens of highly successful people who dropped out of secondary education or didn't pursue tertiary education, most of whom are millionaires. Then you have examples such as Steve Jobs - say what you want about Apple and their products but at the end of the day - it's an incredibly successful company. Walt Disney(Disney), Bill Gates(Microsoft), Sir Richard Branson (Virgin), Colonel Sanders (KFC) - these are just 4 people who all dropped out of school and became highly successful.

As Einstein said: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid"

You really need to go read that book. People hire other people because they are lazy or they can't do it themselves. It's the truth. Steve Jobs only hired the other people because he couldn't do it himself. You should know Steve Jobs wasnt lazy. As I said before, Wozniak was the brains of the company, Steve could only give design input, he has no knowledge on hardware himself. Go look at the differences between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, Gates actually has knowledge on programming, Jobs doesn't. Go read the book before you reply to me because this is starting to get annonying.

[Brainiac777]

I judge a person by their knowledge of the school subjects' date=' which I think is relevant. You guys probably judge people by their ability to help society.[/quote']

Then in your eyes, everyone who fails at an education is a failure. I personally know - and I mean face to face - dozens of highly successful people who dropped out of secondary education or didn't pursue tertiary education, most of whom are millionaires. Then you have examples such as Steve Jobs - say what you want about Apple and their products but at the end of the day - it's an incredibly successful company. Walt Disney(Disney), Bill Gates(Microsoft), Sir Richard Branson (Virgin), Colonel Sanders (KFC) - these are just 4 people who all dropped out of school and became highly successful.

As Einstein said: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid"

http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/19686/how-technical-is-steve-jobs

[Guest]

You really need to go read that book. People hire other people because they are lazy or they can't do it themselves. It's the truth. Steve Jobs only hired the other people because he couldn't do it himself. You should know Steve Jobs wasnt lazy. As I said before, Wozniak was the brains of the company, Steve could only give design input, he has no knowledge on hardware himself. Go look at the differences between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, Gates actually has knowledge on programming, Jobs doesn't. Go read the book before you reply to me because this is starting to get annonying.

You're missing the point completely - it doesn't matter if it is Steve Jobs, Richard Branson or the CEO behind your local supermarket chain - a successful businessman will not work in his business but rather on it. If he can employ someone else to do the job for him while still making money which gives him the freedom to go and do whatever he wants, why the hell is he going to sit at a desk 9-5 each day and do the work himself?

Do you not understand business management?

[Art Vandelay]

If the IB programme has taught me anything, it's that a lot of what you do in highschool is completely pointless and will never be used again in your life. IB French is pretty much a game for marks, when it comes to exams, rather than your ability to speak french.

I had parents that never forced me to study anything, but I am driven to try to actually do well in highschool, unlike many of the people I know who have parents that pushed them hard to do well. I try to do well in highschool because I enjoy most of the things I am doing and am willing to suffer through the pointless garbage to do more of the stuff that I like doing in university. If you push someone to do well in a field that they hate, they are not going to do well in it regardless.

(Being totally racist here) As weird as it may seem, anybody that is a decent Asian view Americans in a very bad light [YES, THIS IS TRUE]. The majority of Americans in our eyes are stupid, fat and lack moral values, due to lack of social enforcement, and has since become the norm. (Which is really funny because Americans think that all Asians have -.- eyes :P)

Calling ethnocentricity racism while you are calling people stupid...

People actually are that extreme in their views of the US? This should be an interesting discussion topic at my next witch burning.

"if no one pushed you up to your feet, their is no motivation to do that job"

You really must not enjoy what you do at all.

"then why not let you parent guide you because they can pinpoint your mistakes"

I'm not arguing against that, I'm arguing that forcing people to study and work does not help at all.

Also popular music is getting worse. Listen to the motto by Drake; it just makes me feel sad.

In the 90s and late 80s we had Nirvana, the Pixies, Smashing Pumpkins, etc. Now we have people like Lil' Wayne, Beiber , Bruno Mars (look up The Lazy Song if you want to feel sad, as well), and Katy Perry at the top of the charts. In the 90s, we had songs with massive amounts of effort by talented artists were put in, now we have songs about some rich idiot sitting on his couch masturbating (The Lazy Song).

[NeoZeon]

A clear theme in this thread is that people are often mistaking themselves as smarter than their neighbor, when in fact, there is good reason that they have neighbors to begin with. Just because you understand what "tech" is doesn't not make you smart. The majority of people here understand how tech is supposed to be used, but have no idea what makes the tech actually work. Why doesn't my cellphone interfere with the guy making a call on his cell phone right next to me? What is interference anyway? How can light hold information, ie fiber optics. And in my mind, not caring about these things, is a form of laziness, but we all have things we neglect. People just happen to neglect the things that are important to you, which by definition you put higher value than other skills. This is a form of tolerance/ intolerance and it might be important to be aware of.

Its important to take a holistic view, in anything you do. There is a speech, by David Foster Wallace that you should all listen to. He gave it to Kenyon College's commencement in 2007, and then turned into a book called "This is Water". It runs 20-30 minutes on youtube, or is a quick read online. It tackles education with much caution.

[Brainiac777]

You really need to go read that book. People hire other people because they are lazy or they can't do it themselves. It's the truth. Steve Jobs only hired the other people because he couldn't do it himself. You should know Steve Jobs wasnt lazy. As I said before, Wozniak was the brains of the company, Steve could only give design input, he has no knowledge on hardware himself. Go look at the differences between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, Gates actually has knowledge on programming, Jobs doesn't. Go read the book before you reply to me because this is starting to get annonying.

You're missing the point completely - it doesn't matter if it is Steve Jobs, Richard Branson or the CEO behind your local supermarket chain - a successful businessman will not work in his business but rather on it. If he can employ someone else to do the job for him while still making money which gives him the freedom to go and do whatever he wants, why the hell is he going to sit at a desk 9-5 each day and do the work himself?

Do you not understand business management?

I though this was about Steve jobs for the most part. Yes are are right, capitalist are lazy and they need someone else to do it. I mean, you don't want direct control over your company, that's fine. Just don't blame it on someone if you company starts to suck.

[Guest]

You really need to go read that book. People hire other people because they are lazy or they can't do it themselves. It's the truth. Steve Jobs only hired the other people because he couldn't do it himself. You should know Steve Jobs wasnt lazy. As I said before, Wozniak was the brains of the company, Steve could only give design input, he has no knowledge on hardware himself. Go look at the differences between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, Gates actually has knowledge on programming, Jobs doesn't. Go read the book before you reply to me because this is starting to get annonying.

You're missing the point completely - it doesn't matter if it is Steve Jobs, Richard Branson or the CEO behind your local supermarket chain - a successful businessman will not work in his business but rather on it. If he can employ someone else to do the job for him while still making money which gives him the freedom to go and do whatever he wants, why the hell is he going to sit at a desk 9-5 each day and do the work himself?

Do you not understand business management?

It's not a 'western thing' It's a standard rule of management: if you can get someone or something else to do the job for you without negative consequence, then why do it yourself?

[Brainiac777]

Hi Brian. I'm going to give you my take on this as well. This is a very interesting topic!

Parents

This heavily ties with how your parents were raised, the environment they grew up with, and the morals they were taught. Maybe you perceived all parents as lazy and uncaring based on your own experiences with them. You may or may not know, that is certainly not the case with all parents. Take my parents for example. They are both immigrants who came to the United States seeking a better future. My dad worked 12 hour shifts at various restaurants so we had very little interaction. My mom worked overtime as much as she could so the only person who was able to teach me the way of life was my older sister. Both parents wanted my future to be great and successful. The problem was, they did not know how. So they kept telling me to get all A's and B's on my report card because in doing so, I would have a better chance of being successful. Doing hw was always a challenge. They were not able to understand or help me and on top of that, they weren't very supportive. Well I got decent marks on my report card, graduating from my high school with 3.8 with AP courses, and with 4 years in drumline. If you were to judge me based solely off the reflection of my academic marks, how well would I stand? If I were to tell you my SAT score is 1100, would that change your answer? Because the fact that my parents have little to no education background, they don't know how to raise me to me successful other than telling me to get good grades. They didn't tell me how important SATs were or how important it is to apply for early admission for colleges or how much money/time you save by taking and passing AP exams. Do I blame them? No, not at all. They raised me as best they could with their knowledge and I acknowledge that.

Child

Brian you are 15 years old. You're going to witness a lot of people in and out of your circle of friends change. When I was 15, I considered myself one of the more intelligent one out of my group. It's not the same as academic intelligence.... more like the ability to see things from other perspectives, or outer awareness. I had friends who would copy hw from me, friends who lack interest in school, and friends who wanted to hangout all the time. At the time, I was not too happy with them, but did I think the current and later generations were becoming less intelligence? No. I can't based my judgement on such a small sample of the population. My sister told me a very important quote and I still think it holds some truth to this day. "You are who your friends are." I eventually stopped talking with those friends of mine and I have no regrets. Later on I found out those same friends began stealing, drinking, and smoking.

In case anyone was wondering, I'm 20 and I'm currently majoring in computer science.

I am not familiar with the AP marks nor the SAT marks so I don't understand that part. I agree I am looking at a sample population, but the area I live in represents my opinion. Globalization has made it so we can get different opinions and I think this just makes us more interconnected. I will say the minority of adults are corrupt, the ones in political power, own transnationals, and the ones that allow their child to become a badass. I don't really understand your opinion on the parents section. It is positive or negative?

[Brainiac777]

A clear theme in this thread is that people are often mistaking themselves as smarter than their neighbor, when in fact, there is good reason that they have neighbors to begin with. Just because you understand what "tech" is doesn't not make you smart. The majority of people here understand how tech is supposed to be used, but have no idea what makes the tech actually work. Why doesn't my cellphone interfere with the guy making a call on his cell phone right next to me? What is interference anyway? How can light hold information, ie fiber optics. And in my mind, not caring about these things, is a form of laziness, but we all have things we neglect. People just happen to neglect the things that are important to you, which by definition you put higher value than other skills. This is a form of tolerance/ intolerance and it might be important to be aware of.

Its important to take a holistic view, in anything you do. There is a speech, by David Foster Wallace that you should all listen to. He gave it to Kenyon College's commencement in 2007, and then turned into a book called "This is Water". It runs 20-30 minutes on youtube, or is a quick read online. It tackles education with much caution.

Ummm, well, I don't really understand what are are trying to get at here. Do you mean to question everything in existence? That sir is curiosity. So you call everyone that can't question the world lazy? If you had the time to do that, I pretty sure we would all be smarter. So to not be lazy, you have to analyze this world to a crazy extent in your terms. Why would I care if gorilla pound his chest? Beats me, my life is not dedicated to studying things I don't care about.

[Brainiac777]

~The true POV from an Asian perspective~

I'm 16 and Asian. And i do understand your point of view, i shall elaborate on the "Asians' increasing bad-assery' trend.

As technology is becoming more and more accesible/advanced (Globalisation), like you said, Asian kids are increasingly 'white-washed'. Being flooded with cultures of different trends and values, mostly of the West (America and Europe comes to mind). Being an Asian myself, i can safely say that we were brought up in a very conservative and competitive society.

(Being totally racist here) As weird as it may seem, anybody that is a decent Asian view Americans in a very bad light [YES, THIS IS TRUE]. The majority of Americans in our eyes are stupid, fat and lack moral values, due to lack of social enforcement, and has since become the norm. (Which is really funny because Americans think that all Asians have -.- eyes :P) What is acceptable in their society may not be in ours, but due to the increasing effects of Globalization and exposure to western cultures, some Asian kids who were not-as-well brought up by their parents will naturally believe that being 'bad-ass' is the norm of the society.(I would pin it as moral degradation) Hence the increasing trend of such cases.

Likewise, with the vast amount of information freely accessible on the internet, younger people nowadays in essence, have lost their thirst to experiment or learn new things by heart as everything(Almost) can be solved with a simple search on Google. Simply put, the majority people of our age and younger have lost the belief in putting in the best effort you can for everything. As far as i am concerned, for all we know, they may consider themselves the social norm already, ​while we, the more intellectually sharp, are being perceived as geeks/nerds simply because we want, and are using our brains :)

Thus, the increasingly little time Parents are spending on children, the ever-changing society and influx of foreign cultures are all to blame for the increasingly worrying trend. But truth be said, we can't do much, except educate our children well in the future.

Small Print: Totally putting the blame on Americans here :P, sorry if this comes off as too offensive, but facts are facts XD

Gotta hand it to you, your a pretty funny guy.

[Brainiac777]

If the IB programme has taught me anything, it's that a lot of what you do in highschool is completely pointless and will never be used again in your life. IB French is pretty much a game for marks, when it comes to exams, rather than your ability to speak french.

I had parents that never forced me to study anything, but I am driven to try to actually do well in highschool, unlike many of the people I know who have parents that pushed them hard to do well. I try to do well in highschool because I enjoy most of the things I am doing and am willing to suffer through the pointless garbage to do more of the stuff that I like doing in university. If you push someone to do well in a field that they hate, they are not going to do well in it regardless.

(Being totally racist here) As weird as it may seem, anybody that is a decent Asian view Americans in a very bad light [YES, THIS IS TRUE]. The majority of Americans in our eyes are stupid, fat and lack moral values, due to lack of social enforcement, and has since become the norm. (Which is really funny because Americans think that all Asians have -.- eyes :P)

Calling ethnocentricity racism while you are calling people stupid...

People actually are that extreme in their views of the US? This should be an interesting discussion topic at my next witch burning.

I enjoy what I do, you gotta hate some things in live to have fun. Oh, I agree that forcing you to do homework is a problem, heard this story that somewhere in Asia, China or Korea, the parents forced the child to do work 24/7, they suicided in the end. Funny music remarks.

[NeoZeon]

A clear theme in this thread is that people are often mistaking themselves as smarter than their neighbor, when in fact, there is good reason that they have neighbors to begin with. Just because you understand what "tech" is doesn't not make you smart. The majority of people here understand how tech is supposed to be used, but have no idea what makes the tech actually work. Why doesn't my cellphone interfere with the guy making a call on his cell phone right next to me? What is interference anyway? How can light hold information, ie fiber optics. And in my mind, not caring about these things, is a form of laziness, but we all have things we neglect. People just happen to neglect the things that are important to you, which by definition you put higher value than other skills. This is a form of tolerance/ intolerance and it might be important to be aware of.

Its important to take a holistic view, in anything you do. There is a speech, by David Foster Wallace that you should all listen to. He gave it to Kenyon College's commencement in 2007, and then turned into a book called "This is Water". It runs 20-30 minutes on youtube, or is a quick read online. It tackles education with much caution.

That is not what I am saying at all. I am saying that because people are lazy in the values you hold "important" they seem dumb. Yet, you and I are lazy in the same fashion, just in other areas, and could be deemed dumb by some other's metric. That is the holistic view of the question presented. It's not bad parenting, nor is it people being dumb, genetically. It's a value based thing. And Since our generation is the most diverse and populated of any generation, it would make sense that there are many different polarities of we feel is important.