| By "educated, intelligent" I just meant people who've finished school and can hold a coherent conversation.
Oh, OK. Since high school education is pretty much a given for most folks at this point, I usually take "educated" to mean someone who's finished at least 2 years of some kind of college. "Intelligent" is pretty subjective, but most folks can hold a coherent conversation on some subject or another; I figure they should have some critical thinking skills too, or the ability to figure things out for themselves.
| Surely the only difference with 60 years ago is that back then you'd have met with a much narrower range of opinions?
That's pretty close to what I was getting at, yeah. Not so much that you'd meet with a narrower range of opinions, but just that it was harder to hear from, say, a hundred average people from around the country (or the world) all at once. Nowadays, you can do that just by visiting Slashdot, Reddit, or Digg, or the like, and usually the experience isn't that inspiring.
| ...but lots of people seem to share your opinion.
Funny thing about that. This conversation prompted me to flip through one of my favorite Really Big Books last night, "Chronicle of the 20th Century". It's an indexed compilation of news articles from 1900 to 1995, ordered chronologically. It's somewhat Amero-centric of course, but it's still a really interesting kind of history book: in a sense, you get to read about history, as told by the people that were actually living it.
Anyway, there's an article in it that goes like this:
"Little dignity and low pay have resulted in too few and poorly trained teachers, falling below the standards of every other civilized country, claimed Joseph H. Defrees, President of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, in a speech to the National Educational Association today. Some 450,000 children have no or, at best, over-crowded classrooms. And of the 600,000 teachers in the country, 100,000 are under 21 years of age, 30,000 have no education beyond eighth grade and 150,000 lack education beyond the third year of high school. This situation must change, Defrees said."
That's dated Jan 16th, 1921.
| By "brain grinders" do you mean just teaching kids to pass exams, rather than to think? Cos that seems to be a problem everywhere.
Yeah. I try not to assume that's a problem everywhere, since I don't know as much about the way everybody else does things. :-)
I think I'm soapboxing a bit here, but the state of education is something that I get excited about pretty easily. I think that I can tie nearly all of the social problems that the U.S. has -- and probably any other country -- to the quality of education provided from kindergarten all the way through college or university.
If people really wanted to improve their society in a lasting way, they'd want to start with the educational system. Unfortunately, 80 years after the Scopes trial, people are still arguing over the teaching of evolution versus creationism. So, I don't think the system can be improved enough from within; I think I'd like to see a whole new, radically different system built from scratch, and offered to anyone who wanted it.
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timeasmymeasure
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Oh, OK. Since high school education is pretty much a given for most folks at this point, I usually take "educated" to mean someone who's finished at least 2 years of some kind of college. "Intelligent" is pretty subjective, but most folks can hold a coherent conversation on some subject or another; I figure they should have some critical thinking skills too, or the ability to figure things out for themselves.
| Surely the only difference with 60 years ago is that back then you'd have met with a much narrower range of opinions?
That's pretty close to what I was getting at, yeah. Not so much that you'd meet with a narrower range of opinions, but just that it was harder to hear from, say, a hundred average people from around the country (or the world) all at once. Nowadays, you can do that just by visiting Slashdot, Reddit, or Digg, or the like, and usually the experience isn't that inspiring.
| ...but lots of people seem to share your opinion.
Funny thing about that. This conversation prompted me to flip through one of my favorite Really Big Books last night, "Chronicle of the 20th Century". It's an indexed compilation of news articles from 1900 to 1995, ordered chronologically. It's somewhat Amero-centric of course, but it's still a really interesting kind of history book: in a sense, you get to read about history, as told by the people that were actually living it.
Anyway, there's an article in it that goes like this:
"Little dignity and low pay have resulted in too few and poorly trained teachers, falling below the standards of every other civilized country, claimed Joseph H. Defrees, President of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, in a speech to the National Educational Association today. Some 450,000 children have no or, at best, over-crowded classrooms. And of the 600,000 teachers in the country, 100,000 are under 21 years of age, 30,000 have no education beyond eighth grade and 150,000 lack education beyond the third year of high school. This situation must change, Defrees said."
That's dated Jan 16th, 1921.
| By "brain grinders" do you mean just teaching kids to pass exams, rather than to think? Cos that seems to be a problem everywhere.
Yeah. I try not to assume that's a problem everywhere, since I don't know as much about the way everybody else does things. :-)
I think I'm soapboxing a bit here, but the state of education is something that I get excited about pretty easily. I think that I can tie nearly all of the social problems that the U.S. has -- and probably any other country -- to the quality of education provided from kindergarten all the way through college or university.
If people really wanted to improve their society in a lasting way, they'd want to start with the educational system. Unfortunately, 80 years after the Scopes trial, people are still arguing over the teaching of evolution versus creationism. So, I don't think the system can be improved enough from within; I think I'd like to see a whole new, radically different system built from scratch, and offered to anyone who wanted it.
...Oops, there I go again. :-)