Comment Re:Different usage? (Score 2) 108
If you tell me that you "can set a bowl of water on fire with a lighter"... I won't believe it until I can get a bowl of water from my sink and just light it on fire.
So... you've lived in your apartment for ten years, and you're telling me that fist-sized hole has always been in that wall... if I just believe what you tell me, then I should just hand you a wad of cash for your security deposit... if I use a thing called critical thinking, that would tell me you passed inspection for 9 years, then there was a hole in that wall... because ghosts and bugs don't punch holes in walls, that means you did it, and you security deposit will be used to pay for it.
No, I think he's pointing out that it's a big ask. Especially in a democracy that has been voting against tax increases for education and instead been following the low expectations and regressive education mandated by the Texas Book Repository since the days ol' Lee Harvey Oswald graced their notorious base of power for that American jihad that by dint of being the largest single buyer of textbooks enabled them to bully publishers in dragging standards down to their level; metaphorically doing to America's children's brains what Oswald did to Kennedy's.
Just look at this century: despite America's intense focus on STEM, math scores are testing at a very retro 1970's level and the ignored subjects critical to democracy: civics and literacy... horrid. America is a nation of uncritical anti-intellectual biases who did their own 'research' and firmly believe that NASA astronauts did not really land on the Moon, the Earth is not billions of years old, and is, in fact, flat, not round. Think about it, most Americans have no idea what the capital of Canada or Australia is, or for that matter, differentiate between Australia and Austria.
America's happy as a little lamb that their current minister of Education has no experience in the field! What a boon! The nation literally has a career carnie from the WWE in charge of shaping our children's future by putting a bottle of 'A-1' in every classroom! And it's nothing new. Despite 20-30 year focus on STEM, the nation's math scores are worse than before Reagan and students are burdened with greater and greater debt.
The only upside I can see, with decades of grade inflation since I matriculated, my GPA is nearing triple digits. But it doesn't really compensate for living in a nation that chased the top AI minds along with countless other critical academics out of the country for being either foreigners or Americans who can read and knew it was time to go. The signs have been clear for a long time. Your kid's teachers and maybe even your favorite prof from uni are either living in their car or one emergency from homelessness. We literally treat our educators like garbage. With GIGO is our plan for development, what could go wrong?
For comparison, think of the country of Luxembourg, a nation most Americans couldn't find on the map. In my memory (going back to he 70's), the nation's most valued job has been kindergarten teachers. Could you imagine if that were the case in America and the job of teaching and caring for small children had been valued in America that long? We wouldn't be having this conversation.