Where do you get this information? Do you have any facts to support your assertion? For the past 10 years, I've been working internationally, for non-American concerns, working and living in foreign countries, including four years in Europe. My co-workers are from around the world, including from the United States. As well, I have met countless Americans working for non-American employers around the world. There is no evidence from my experience that people educated in American schools are considered inferior in any way to those educated in Europe. My personal experience in working closely with Europeans (not only in Europe but in other countries as well) is that their education is, essentially, no different than my own and that Americans succeed as well at all levels in my field as do Europeans. I have not worked for an American owned concern for 10 years.
I agree that a lot of posters on this message board exhibit poor thinking skills, poor use of language, an inadequate grasp of history, and a limited knowledge base. However, they do not represent American college and university graduates in general. I've been on other forums whose members, primarily American, do not exhibit, on average, that level of ignorance and weak development of the mind. You should go on a British based forum sometime and see how well educated the average Brit appears to be. Oh, and btw, I have a liberal arts degree: I have not found it to be useless, quite the contrary.
Of course not.
You are working with those who have excelled.
Not a cross section at all.Bottom line.. Out public education system is not about learning. It is about indoctrination.
Students are not taught to think critically. The mode is memorization and regurgitation to prepare for standardized testing. Independent thought, non-conformity and debate are not permitted.
Basic skills such as language usage, sentence construction, creative writing, basic math skills, US history, geography and civics are no longer taught to the degree to that of when I went to school in the 60's and 70's.
It is of note that "Independent thought, non-conformity and debate are" rarely permitted in Asian education. "The mode is memorization and regurgitation."
I think most of the people I encounter represent middle to higher, yes. If they didn't, they probably would not have the initiative to seek overseas employment.
Standardized testing is certainly, imo, a plague on American education; however, it is limited to elementary and secondary education and has no connection to college and university programs. There are good universities in the US, mediocre ones and poor ones. It is a fact that students from all over the world aspire to study in American universities, a fact which somehow belies the premise that they are not on a par with the rest of the world.
BTW, Saigon, how many people are knocking themselves out to get into Finnish universities? Besides Finns? ; )
