Questions: -Does USA have an image problem? Specifically, why does the USA marginalize intellectuals? Is it because of materialism? The media? From elementary school to adult life, the best and brightest are disregarded except by academia and tech companies. In elementary school, they are teased as braniacs and nerds, which have bad connotations. In junior high to high school they are often on the receiving end of a fist. Maybe that's an exaggeration (albeit barely), but it is seen that the ones looked up to in school are the jocks, cheerleaders, and athletes. In college, again, it's the athletes who shine. Then once you start working, who do people want to emulate? The rich. Professors and teachers pull in 5 digits after years of schooling while athletes and entertainers pull in 7 digits. Society and the media holds up the rich and the beautiful as the people to aspire to. Who wants to make $60,000 as a Ph.d when you can make $200,000 as a stockbroker? The effects of greed and materialism is seen as more and more people head into fields that make the most money. Science and Math, the parents of innovation are cast aside for the feel of cold hard cash. Perhaps the most evident effect of anti-intellectualism is seen in colleges, particularly the engineering and science departments. A quick look around the engineering and science departments of the best colleges in the USA shows a huge number of Asian immigrants. Where have the Americans gone? Unfortunately, Americans don't see the huge problem the void of intellects have produced. America is living on borrowed time as the best and brightest immigrants come to the US. However, soon countries like China and India will establish their own world class universities equal to the United States. By then, the immigrants won't come over anymore...which leads to a lot less engineers and scientists. A lot of Americans feel that it is the patriotic nature of the US or maybe the soldiers that have made America great. I hate to break their bubble, but the true greatness of America came from technology and innovation. Without technology and innovation, we are no better than Canada (no offense). Technology and innovation spurs economic growth and creates jobs and spurs more technology and furthers more growth. Alas, that time where the US is the epicenter of all things great is coming to an end... Here's an article: LINK USA to Pass Science Crown to China Contributed by editorone Tuesday, 26 July 2005 According to a working paper of the National Bureau of Economic Research, rapid development of a science and technology base by populous Asian countries soon may threaten the economic position of the United States. Not only is the U.S. losing ground in high technology exports, but its very capacity to develop new technologies is declining rapidly with respect to the rest of the world. According to Richard Freeman, the paper's author, the sheer population of Asian countries may allow them to train more scientists and engineers than the U.S. while devoting a smaller share of their economy to science and technology. Over a decade ago, Japan exceeded the United States in technology-based competitiveness. Since then, the two nations have run neck and neck while China surged upward. From 1993 to 2003, China more than doubled its competitiveness by measures of Georgia Tech’s Technology Policy and Assessment Center. Since 1999, China has particularly excelled in two input indicators to the measure - its production of scientists and engineers and its capacity to manufacture technology-based products. The phenomenal growth of China's industrial base has been widely publicized, but Freeman focuses on what is perhaps the more important long-term indicator of a nation's prosperity - its re-investment in science and technology education. In 1970, when over half of the world's science and engineering doctorates were minted in the U.S., China granted virtually none. The U.S. dominated both the high technology and general world economy in the following decades, but the two country's investments in their technological infrastructure took divergent courses. By 2000, only 17% of bachelor's degrees granted in the United States were in natural sciences and engineering versus the worldwide average of 27%. China was already issuing 52% percent of its bachelor's degrees in science and engineering. Today Asia grants more science and engineering doctorates than the United States. By 2010, Freeman estimates that China alone will grant more than the U.S. These changes translate directly into an impact on the economy since technology products represent a larger share of our exports than imports. They also drive a feedback loop as more U.S. technology jobs are outsourced to Asian countries, discouraging U.S. students from pursuing science and engineering. Freeman concludes that research and techological activity and production are moving to China because China is graduating huge numbers of scientists and engineers.
There are two distinct themes in your post that you may not want to mix together. First, the huge income disparities between the intellectuals (scientists, engineers, university professors, etc) and the entertainers (celebrities, atheltes in popular sports, etc) exist in both USA and China. I would say this is universally true in almost all countries. It was not that long ago highly educated Chinese made no more than average citizens. The Chinese intellectuals were certainly well respected but their incomes didn't reflect the education they received. This was largely because in those years the China's market economy was not yet in full gear, and then there was (and still is, not only in China, but in USA and other countries as well) this "over-educated but under-skilled" thing. Even nowadays educated and skilled Chinese are fanancially much better than general populace only if they are working in the right fields. The law of supply and demand still rules. Second, the fact that China is producing more and more scientists and engineers ought not to surprise anybody. Figuratively and relatively, the USA is reaching a "saturation point" while China is still filling pretty much an empty tank. Moreover, China has five times the size of population of USA, so it is only inevitable that one day in the not-so-distant future China will have more scientists and engineers than USA will have. Nothing you can do to stop it. On the other hand, because of their populations, countries like China and India will not be able to catch USA in any foreseeable future when you factor per capita measurement. While striving to keep our competitiveness, we need put these in perspective. More and more people in this country have now realized our aura of invincibility may eventually be a thing of past. America is still the best in the world and everybody else learns from us. Openess and humility, however, can never be liabilities and a sign of weakness.
intellectuals are treated with much respects in China. Majority of the parents in China would push their kids to succeed academically. Kids in schools want to compete for the honor of the best student grade wise instead of who is the biggest jock in the school. That is probably due to thousands of years of confucious teaching.
I just wanted to point out that professors in certain departments at elite universities can -- and commonly do -- command 7 figure salaries. They are very low 7 figure salaries, but a million is a million. The average salaries in most science/engineering/economics departments for tenured professors at elite schools are around 175-200K, which exceeds average MLB salaries (and can't be too far off average NFL salaries, although I don't know). Throw in potential money for consulting and being on "the board" of some corporations, and you can do pretty damn well. If you're going to compare elite athletes, you have to compare them to elite academics. That said, don't go into this profession for money! In relation to the point you were making, none of this matters because the people making real money are the ones with their own business, and while management is a very difficult job and requires a lot of skills (I don't want to denigrate it by any means), it isn't fundamentally academic. Microsoft engineers are more the intellectual than Bill Gates, and he knows it.
Good point overall. Just one thing though, you are not calling players in MLB and NFL earning 175-200K elites, are you?
This is a good point of view, but I believe that this goes on everywhere, much more so abroad...There has always been a division between the have's and have not's...Specifically in the Asian region and in Mexico, South America & Europe...There is the classic socioeconomic lines between classes that harbor this view and unless your an athlete to get out of the slums, your stuck like Chuck... From an intellectual standpoint, your absolutely right that it is frowned up from a social perspective in America, which is wrong, but the way it is...
Don't forget us poor saps with education in art, philosophy etc. People are discouraged to actually learn about these subjects because it doesn't amount to a new shiny home, etc., and you are ridiculed if you want to actually learn for the sake of learning. Education now is nothing more than business training. That is what the emphasis of materialism does, it destroys actual enlightenment.
Well, the US imports most of its scientists from abroad now anyways, that's the only way America can keep pace with the Chinese, Indians, and other countries in Europe. We are importing a large chunck of our brilliant minds.
The traders at my firm are mostly top-25 school, high gpa, intellectuals. I dont see a backlash here.
Also consider that our current president has won two elections by being played up as a dumb guy. I know specifics abot his life through family connections and I know he is a bit of a bubba, "good old boy" but the stupid act is also fully controlled. A little sad that strategists (Rove) figured out that dumb was a winner. Meowgi, The humanities are under serious attack in academia. Unlike science, business, engineering, etc. the results are not really tangible so it is getting harder and harder to justify the "value" of the humanities to the powers that be and the vultures are circling.
Relative to this topic, and for once I agree with Friedman... http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/27/o... and Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Columnists/Thomas L Friedman Learning From Lance By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: July 27, 2005 There is no doubt that Lance Armstrong's seventh straight victory in the Tour de France, which has prompted sportswriters to rename the whole race the Tour de Lance, makes him one of the greatest U.S. athletes of all time. What I find most impressive about Armstrong, besides his sheer willpower to triumph over cancer, is the strategic focus he brings to his work, from his prerace training regimen to the meticulous way he and his cycling team plot out every leg of the race. It is a sight to behold. I have been thinking about them lately because their abilities to meld strength and strategy - to thoughtfully plan ahead and to sacrifice today for a big gain tomorrow - seem to be such fading virtues in American life. Sadly, those are the virtues we now associate with China, Chinese athletes and Chinese leaders. Talk to U.S. business executives and they'll often comment on how many of China's leaders are engineers, people who can talk to you about numbers, long-term problem-solving and the national interest - not a bunch of lawyers looking for a sound bite to get through the evening news. America's most serious deficit today is a deficit of such leaders in politics and business. John Mack, the new C.E.O. at Morgan Stanley, initially demanded in the contract he signed June 30 that his total pay for the next two years would be no less than the average pay package received by the C.E.O.'s at Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. If that average turned out to be more than $25 million, Mr. Mack was to be paid at least that much. He eventually backed off that demand after a howl of protest, but it struck me as the epitome of what is wrong in America today. We are now playing defense. A top C.E.O. wants to be paid not based on his performance, but based on the average of his four main rivals! That is like Lance Armstrong's saying he will race only if he is guaranteed to come in first or second, no matter what his cycling times are on each leg. I recently spent time in Ireland, which has quietly become the second-richest country in the E.U., first by going through some severe belt-tightening in which everyone had to sacrifice, then by following that with a plan to upgrade the education of its entire work force, and a strategy to recruit and induce as many global high-tech companies and researchers as possible to locate in Ireland. The Irish have a plan. They are focused. They have mobilized business, labor and government around a common agenda. They are playing offense. Wouldn't you think that if you were president, after you had read the umpteenth story about premier U.S. companies, such as Intel and Apple, building their newest factories, and even research facilities, in China, India or Ireland, that you would summon the country's top business leaders to Washington ask them just one question: "What do we have to do so you will keep your best jobs here? Make me a list and I will not rest until I get it enacted." And if you were president, and you had just seen more suicide bombs in London, wouldn't you say to your aides: "We have got to reduce our dependence on Middle East oil. We have to do it for our national security. We have to do it because only if we bring down the price of crude will these countries be forced to reform. And we should want to do it because it is clear that green energy solutions are the wave of the future, and the more quickly we impose a stringent green agenda on ourselves, the more our companies will lead innovation in these technologies." Instead, we are about to pass an energy bill that, while it does contain some good provisions, will make no real dent in our gasoline consumption, largely because no one wants to demand that Detroit build cars that get much better mileage. We are just feeding Detroit the rope to hang itself. It's assisted suicide. I thought people went to jail for that? And if you were president, would you really say to the nation, in the face of the chaos in Iraq, "If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them," but they have not asked. It is not what the generals are asking you, Mr. President - it is what you are asking them, namely: "What do you need to win?" Because it is clear we are not winning, and we are not winning because we have never made Iraq a secure place where normal politics could emerge. Oh, well, maybe we have the leaders we deserve. Maybe we just want to admire Lance Armstrong, but not be Lance Armstrong. Too much work. Maybe that's the wristband we should be wearing: Live wrong. Party on. Pay later.
The US provide a system where a politican that will act this way will never be elected in the first place. This is sad but true. The comment about Chinese leaders is interesting. While the system in China could lead to very bad leaders like Mao, it also could generate much better than average leaders. Deng and most of the people in charge appointed by him have been for the most part very competent leaders that have lead China on a path of economic revolution. As an old Chinese saying goes, if you have a great priminster, the country cann't go badly.
That's what I was thinking when I saw Martian's post. When I think of intellectuals, I'm thinking of people engaged in the liberal arts, not engineers and scientists. I'd say engineers and scientists are about as much a sellout as athletes and businessmen. Maybe, intellectual isn't quite the right word to use. I understand what MM is getting at in America's disdain for intelligence, but I think it is a thing again from intellectualism.
I know, because the 'average Joe' can't relate to engineers and scientists; they prefer a character. So much for the idea of democracy, eh? I am reminded of what Winston Churchill once said: "The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter". Sad, but true.
It's because our public school system is horrific, first of all. It is truly sad that our high school graduates rank 30th or something in the world overall. That is pathetic. Secondly, other countries' unviersities are catching up to ours, and some of our best foreign students are going back home instead of staying here. Third, our culture doesn't value engineering and science as much as China and India. Students are choosing "sexier" majors.
It's not about being dumb, it's about being clear, honest, and straightforward. For example, Clinton had clear messages, while Kerry added nuance to even the simplest discussions. Clinton was far more effective without being dumb.
I wouldn't call it disdain, afterall, those "intelligent" nerdy ones are the reason America is what it is; they are the only edge we have, not our "democracy" or "liberty" or anything else. It's our scientific edge over the rest of the world. I am thinking that most Americans envy intelligent people, but not disdain them. Anyways, I do agree that such hard sciences as engineering are not intellectual, that would be reserved for the liberal sciences.
Would certain intellect's denouncement of materialism account for the anti-intellectualism? Or would people rather just buy stuff than learn stuff? Heck, we don't even want spiritual leaders that denouce materialism. It's not hard to understand why Lakewood and it's "prosperity gospel" is #1 in America. Personally, I think materialism and greed is the most prevalent problem in our society and yet it is what we are trained to desire. It is what our culture is based on. We condemn materialism when it is sex and drugs, but not much more.
