NY Tmes Op-Ed Columnist: How We Are Ruining America

Parent Cafe
141

One of the reasons why Imperial Japan was eventually defeated was precisely because their economic capacity was a tiny fraction of the US’ even before the US economy ramped itself into production.

And while Japan was far more developed and technologically advanced vis a vis its neighbors, a lot of that came from exploiting resources from their colonies and an economic system which prioritized the aristocracy/wealthy and especially military elite over everyone else. It’s a reason why even in the 1930’s, the militarist government had no issues imposing a budget which heavily prioritized military spending above all else*.

  • The buildup of the IJN fleet alone took up ~32% of Japan's entire GDP in this period.

Both Koreas were exceedingly poor due to 40+ years of Japanese colonialism, racially based oppression, maximal exploitation of its resources, and massive war related damage by the time WWII ended.

The only reason why North Korea inflicted massive casualties was that it was amply supplied with military aid by the Soviet Union and later on, both the Soviet Union and Mainland China contributed resources and personnel to help North Korea.

In contrast, South Korea got diddly from the US/Allies until after the invasion from NK commenced in 1950.

One other thing many…especially Americans forget is that up until the early '60s, North Korea had a much stronger economy and was wealthier than South Korea because it had the benefit of taking over an area which was much more developed industrially and had the lion’s share of wealth/natural resources whereas South Korea was effectively an economic backwater with most of its economy centered on agriculture and a lack of natural resources.

This aspect if understood only highlights how much more impressive South Korea’s economic rise to the point of not only overtaking its Northern counterpart despite its great initial advantages, but also becoming economic peers of current advanced industrialized nations in only a few decades. It also underscores how badly NK’s Kim dynasty squandered North Korea’s economic/resource advantages it had over South Korea so that it fell behind starting in the mid-60’s onward.

142

Your points are accurate but the discussion has moved into the weeds. The people of the major Asian countries have been literate and using engineering for well over two thousand years and that was my point. This discussion is about the influence of genes on the issues brought up by Brooks in his column. The bottom line is that groups of people whose ancestors were advanced and literate for thousands of years are in the first world today regardless of race or ethnicity while groups of people recently emerged from the Stone Age do not fare as well. The twin studies clearly show there is a genetic component to intelligence and behavior. But I leave any further interpretation to others because it quickly becomes an uncomfortable discussion.

143

@SAY You can’t use “first world”, an outdated term that is very limited in scope (industrialized capitalist countries of western Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand), to mean something it doesn’t mean.

Even the leader of China confirmed that definition.

http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/ziliao_665539/3602_665543/3604_665547/t18008.shtml

144

And even Mao is a bit off if one goes by the original definition of First, Second, and Third world:

First World: US and other advanced developed industrialized countries with capitalist/quasi-capitalist economics.

Second World: Soviet Union and fellow Combloc states.

Third World: Everyone else…especially the poor underdeveloped nations of the period.

145

Well he was wrong about Japan but right about China in 1974. Have you been to China in the past few years? The major cities are now first world and Hong Kong has been there for a long long time. I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m using the term first world as short hand for people that do well in the modern competitive world that Brooks was talking about. I chose that term to avoid a description that might sound offensive. If you have a better term I’m open to giving it a try.

146

We know what works to change cultures, but it has to be done from the inside. The Harlem Children’s Zone has been a phenomenal success. It started with teaching parents to just talk more to their babies. http://hcz.org/our-programs/the-baby-college/

I don’t believe that everyone should go to college, but the real problem is that so many poor kids are entering school already years behind their UMC schoolmates.

And @zoosermom thanks so much for your work as an LLL leader. Unfortunately some UMC whites that were part of our LLL council was dominated by UMC homeschoolers. My LLL leader though was great. We had women in our group who were breastfeeding despite serious opposition from everyone in their family and she was really great about being supportive of whatever they could manage in the face of such negativity.

147

Mathmom I do a agree with you. The problem with Brooks column is that these problems have no realistic solutions because much of it is based on genetics. This makes the entire issue quite unpleasant but it makes even less sense to pretend that the differences are based on an unfair society and that some government program can reverse thousand of years of genetic selection.

148

Look, I’m an uneducated republican and even I can see what’s wrong with your argument. Or at least one thing.

The alternatives aren’t “give up” or “create a government program.” There is a whole lot in between there. Starting with our own selves. For example, up thread, there was discussion of receptionists and file clerks not breastfeeding in what I perceived to be an unkind way. In many professional firms here in New York, those positions are filled by women of color. If a person is aware that the women with whom they cross paths aren’t taking beneficial steps, then maybe offer some proactive support? Such as asking a woman getting ready to go on maternity leave if she has the support available to pump at work. Suggest lunch and learns where all women are welcome with guest speakers on important topics. Many women who have already made it are utterly shocked to find out that others down the ladder don’t have the same perks/opportunities/support that they do. Ask. If you’re an executive/partner/up-and-coming woman, why not inquire about whether benefits available to you are available to all women in your company/firm? And if not, are you ok with it?

I volunteer as literacy volunteer. My kids are now college educated (!) and so I can support the families I work with in making sure that their kids are on track to meet high school graduation requirements, know how to file a FAFSA, know how and when to take the SAT.

Point being: government bureaucracies that coerce others’ money isn’t the only or the best way to get things done. Each of us has a choice and if a particular issue matters to us, then we need to do something about it. Over the years, I’ve tutored more than 1,000 people and that has made a difference. Time, effort, role-modeling all matter a lot.

And here in the US, I don’t think genetics matters nearly as much as you do, since so many people are so mixed race it would be impossible to sort things out. I will agree that culture plays a role to a large extent. As I’ve stated before and been criticized, some immigrants coming here from indigenous cultures have no history of literacy in any language and don’t speak English or Spanish, so they will have a harder time. In their own languages, I think they could be very successful. For most, the ability is there.

149

Colleges too, even the elite ones, can discount ‘accomplishments’ that can only be achieved by the affluent. Things like study abroad, mission trips volunteering in some country that costs thousands in airfare to reach, or unpaid internships.

Colleges need to weigh more heavily things like an after-school or summer job (especially by those in lower SE circumstances).

Public school needs to be treated the same as private school, recognizing that private schools have many college counselors while many public schools have one for hundreds of students. Some schools have many more AP classes than others.

And legacy admissions need to go.

150

I agree with both of the above posts but it won’t have any significant impact. The colleges are doing a pretty good job with an almost impossible task and the truth is that some issues just don’t have easy/good answers. Most of these social problems are virtually unsolvable like poverty/drug addiction/ homelessness in a free and open society. The main point of the Bell Curve was not about racial differences in IQ but rather the changes in modern behavior that has created this new “modern cognitive elite”. Everywhere you look today you find endless married couples who both attended elite or at least very good colleges. The lower classes on the other hand consist mostly of couples or single parents without college degrees. Today the doctors tend to marry not nurses but other doctors. This type of very selective coupling is vastly more powerful in shaping society than any puny government program. It really is a voluntary form of intellectual non-racial selective breeding that is resulting in a massive cognitive inequality. This new social behavior has been the focus of Charles Murray’s career.

151

How about “countries that do well in the modern competitive world”?

152

Legacies make educated and capable students and good future doctors, lawyers, etc.

After 18 years of lousy education, it is too late for a 4 year college to turn hidden potential into a top future professional.

Personally, I want my liver transplant surgeon to have had all the best educational advantages from birth (or before).

153

Intelligence isn’t static nor is it destiny.

Or else we wouldn’t have the plethora of accounts of intellectually dim offspring of aristocrats/royalty and the upper classes doing their utmost to restrict access to educational opportunities in order to protect their own progeny from competition from their intellectually superior and harder working counterparts from the “lower orders” ranging from attempts by wealthy Ivy/peer private elite alums attempting to stop the move towards a more academically meritocratic admissions process in the early '60s to wealthy rural Prussian/German aristocratic families successfully doing their utmost to maintain admission process to the military academy system which favored the aristocracy and blocked reforms which would undermine them(i.e. Instituting the attaining of the Abitur as the minimal educational requirement for aspiring German commissioned officers)*.

  • In some ways, the Prussian aristocratic junker elite...especially the rural ones are analogous to our modern-day developmental legacies given substantial admission discounts mainly because of their family's high SES status/fame/connections.

What you’re thinking of are average-excellent legacies who get little, if any meaningful boost from the fact their parents/grandparents attended because they didn’t donate large sums to the alma mater or didn’t have the level of achievements, fame, or connections.

The legacies who do get a boost are the ones who donate large sums and have high levels of achievements, fame, and/or connections…and can and do get admitted with mediocre for that given school’s stats.

Most of the HS classmates admitted to Princeton in my graduating class were from this group and the older college classmate who was admitted to an Ivy as a legacy was also a legacy of this type due to his grandparent’s high-level of achievements and substantial donations(think millions to the Ivy alma mater).

The former…likely the vast majority of legacies on this board and in general aren’t the same and do not get the same boost/degree of influence as those from the latter group.

154

I don’t think being a legacy should get an admission to someone who otherwise would be only an average candidate. I feel the same way about admitting the children of the well-connected, children of politicians, celebrity children. Colleges say they are for social justice and equality but some of their admission practices put the lie to thst. My own Alma mater was caught admitting the children of pols to the law school who had much lower grades than average. But daddy was in the legislature.

155

Having edited several posts, I wish to review the rules:

Statements that are OK to make:
• I disagree…
• I have a different interpretation
Statements that are not OK to make:
• You just really have no idea what you’re talking about.
• I’m coming to the conclusion you never were on the college debating team.

Having said that, let’s move on from defining terms, genetics, IQ, and other topics that have nothing to do with the original post

156

I have always believed that “holistic admission” is used to facilitate the transmission of privilege from one generation to another. This recent study only helps to strengthen my position more:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10769041/The-US-is-an-oligarchy-study-concludes.html

For me, a simple work-around is to focus on the major and not the institution. Both Euan Blair and Lee Hsuen Loong are sons of Prime Ministers. Blair has a masters degree from Yale while Lee was a senior wrangler at Cambridge. That is all I need to know who has it and who doesn’t, relatively speaking of course.

Your comment about First World, Second World, and Third World are exactly as I remember. They used to call the Third World “underdeveloped nations”, but was later changed to “developing nations”. Political correctness goes back a long way…l.

157

re: investing in children. “But weren’t these behavior codes once fairly common across the whole American SES spectrum?”

No. Not now. Not then.

My father was raised on a farm on an Native American allotment (see the Dawes Act for historical information.) He was involved in 4-H, which was and is funded by the feds. He said one of the reasons 4-H existed was simply to teach rural kids how to bathe and use soap and water. He grew up without electricity, central plumbing, hot water.

He ran around rural Oklahoma by himself, no supervision. His father, as a child, used to run away from home (abusive stepfather) and camp out in the Cookson Hills with the outlaws in Indian Territory.

I don’t know what my grandfather thought was “abuse” bad enough to make him leave home and sleep under the stars. I know he belted his own kids. Everybody did. My grandmother had the children cut switches from the peach tree orchard and then she beat them on the bare legs with them. Children were paddled at school, church, and by the neighbors. Yes, you could beat your neighbors’ kids, and were expected too.

My dad used a belt on his own children (yep, including me.) So did everyone I knew. (And no, I am not advocating corporal punishment. I lived in Texas, where the public schools can physically hit your children EVEN IF you as a parent do not wish them to do so. I just want people on CC to recognize that it is a thing.)

In contrast, my mother grew up on the East Coast. Gangs of kids roamed the city streets playing stickball. They used to dam up the Lackawanna River to form a lake. The police came along with explosives to blow up the dam. Great fun.

Oh, by the way? None of the kids could swim.

I had a free range childhood myself in suburbia. You didn’t wear shoes in the summer, you always went barefoot. It was baby boom times, so lots of construction. We used to play on construction sites as kids. Barefoot. Even kid I knew stepped on construction nails. My twin sister got a fishhook embedded in her foot. My grandfather got out his wirecutters and calmly clipped it out. We kids used to open up Black Cat firecrackers and pour out the gunpowder. We used cigarettes as punks to light the gunpowder (we were in third grade and stole them from our parents.) I had gunpowder residue on my hand which caught on fire. I had second and third degree burns. Did I tell my mother, a nurse? Hell no. I didn’t want to get in trouble.

We would routinely climb and fall out of trees We would climb chain link fencing and barbed wire and get ripped up. You just didn’t bother your parents with this kind of stuff. It was part of being a kid.

My sister and brother and I played Frisbee in the backyard. We were using a piece of tin. My sister sailed it at my brother but she had bad aim. She sliced his leg out. My mom and dad sewed it back up. My dad grew up on a farm and so used to sew up the injured animals, plus he was a Naval officer in WW2 and sewed at sea.

My sister and I used to play in storm sewers and explore the tunnels. No supervision whatsoever.

One day, school was cancelled due to a freak snowstorm. We siblings had a snowball fight. I got hit in the head which caused massive bleeding. My mom drove me to the hospital to get it stitched up, while my dad freaked and beat my brother with a belt for causing it (it wasn’t intentional.)

Remember watching “Mad Men” where the ten-year olds knew how to take drink orders and mix a scotch on the rocks or a Tom Collins, Bloody Mary or Whiskey Sour? That’s not fiction.

Yeah, but that’s all in the past, you say?

OK. How about this?

My children have always attended Title 1 schools where the majority of children were on Federal Free Lunch. That included a selective charter school that was a public Montessori and fine arts magnet, an International Baccaleaurate school, and a selective Early College High School. At the latter, you apply and get in in eighth grade, start taking college classes in ninth grade. In twelve grade, you graduate with an associate’s degree two weeks before you graduate from high school.

Many of the children at the Early College High School were from an upper-income master planned community. They wanted their children at University of Texas or Texas A&M. They weren’t going to qualify for the 10% rule or for financial aid, so early college high schools were a workaround. Your child gets an associates and guaranteed transfers in to the state flagships without a problem. The state has paid for two years of your children’s college education: tuition, fees, books, everything. No dorm fees because they are living at home.

Upper income families were pushing their kids into this program in preference to AP or IB. Thank you, State of Texas, for paying for my upper income child’s education.

Here’s the story of two freshman girls at that school who were best friends. My daughter came home from school one day and opened the apartment door. Flames shot out. The place was totalled and her cat died. For the next eight weeks, we slept on the floor because we did not have beds. My daughter had the clothes on her back. Neighbors brought her clothes. They didn’t even speak English.

She didn’t share her troubles with her teachers or her best friend. The teachers were clueless, because they are college-educated and live in master-planned community.

She felt the best friend had worse troubles than she did. Her bestie was cutting since she worried her mother would be deported. Her parents never, never, showed up at school. The mother couldn’t leave the house (sin papeles) and her dad worked nights. I think domestic abuse was involved, too.

I’m sorry, you guys living in an effing bubble.

158

“I’m sorry, you guys living in an effing bubble”

One person’s bubble is another person’s reality.

159

Not sure where the author is living but I work long hours, have to run home and pick up kids who have been waiting after practice for me, fix food as quick as possible because they are all starving…My kids attend public schools and they do their homework on their own when they get home. They have lockers and smelly socks and messy rooms and there are clothes in the dryer that have not been folded but at least those do not smell (most of the time). Our lives are not perfect and my kids are not Einsteins or college athletes. This article is rather elitist and definitely insulting. There are good and bad parents in every tax bracket. I do think it helps when you have the means to get tutors if needed or prep tests before the ACT or SAT. But I think this guy needs to get out in middle America and see real people. Oh, I forgot, he probably detests “fly-over states” and would not be caught dead at a diner that serves fried catfish. :slight_smile: Does he have kids? Has he ever lived anywhere but NYC? Where did he go to school? does he have any friends? lol

160

Brooks is a moron. Colleges are ruining America by breeding intolerant leftists who seek to stifle the speech of anyone to the right of Marx. Evrything is a social injustice these days; it’s either racist, sexist, homophobic, transphoblic, islamophobic blah blah blah