Damn right they are highly motivated. If your choice is between shoveling pig $#!t in Urumchi for $100 a year, and working in an air conditioned factory in Shenzhen for 27 cents an hour, it's no wonder they work like demons.
The same thing is happening at the high end of the labor market. The average computer science or engineering major in an Indian college is much smarter and harder working than his American counterpart, because the competition to get in to college is so much more fierce over there. You have to be in the top 5% intellectually to even have a prayer of being admitted to a university in India.
American workers have a self-image that is in some ways similar to the undeserved "self-esteem" being ladled out in American schools nowadays. Ask anybody who drove an American car made in the 70's or 80's. As a kid, I remember being stranded on the side of the road so frequently in our Detroit lemons that I have not bought an American car in my entire adult life.
Yes, we are the most productive in the world, but in large part that is because we are able to use advanced technology provided by our "exploitative" capitalist employers. In terms of native intelligence as well as work ethic, we lag behind much of the Third World (though not generally the developed world; they are even worse.) If they steal our technology and ignore our patents, they will overtake us.
-ccm
Closed minded. And not very patriotic either.
Aren't those capitalist employers great?! They made all this technology with their own hands and were so generous to hand it to the lazy American workers.
Right. We American's are lazy and inept at everything we do. Why, it's a damn wonder any of us even has a job. We certainly don't deserve one.
In terms of native intelligence as well as work ethic, we lag behind much of the Third World
Since IQ is measured across ALL people, the "average" of 100 applies to ALL people, as does the rest of the IQ bell curve.
Ambition, energy, and drive correspond to the IQ distribution.
OTOH, I suppose that you could claim that China's inventions of gunpowder and fireworks demonstrate more intellectual capacity than, say, that displayed by the quite American George Westinghouse, or Sam Colt.
Do you have a computer science or engineering degree? I'd be interested in knowing if you have any experience in actually earning an engineering degree over here.
If they have fewer colleges and can therefore take only the top few percent, then their average will be higher, but that doesn't make their best better than our best. Are you trying to claim that their best are better than our best? If not, why would their smaller numbers of engineers and computer scientists make things better over there? If we have more people entering those fields, then our students have more competition. Over there, a student who beats 95% of the other students to gain entry to college doesn't have to worry about them again. Over here, that student still has to compete with many of those other students for the rest of his career.
This is not to diminish the very real threat...but they are clearly not 10 feet tall. I.e., these are not 1.3 billion MIT or CalTech graduates.
What we are are seeing is the long term effects of 'student deferments' to the draft during the Vietnam era. That's when everyone that could possibly afford to send their kids to college began doing so to avoid the war Politicians then realized that they could get plenty of votes by various grants, loans, other programs that allowed those kids of the working class, the ones whose parents couldn't cough up the bucks for college, to attend anyway. Lowering of standards (to get all this money) by the educational institutions followed. Civil rights played a part as well, with the quota's and such, but not the largest part.
The result of all of this was large numbers of kids going to college that should have become factory workers, mechanics, tradesmen, skilled technicians, getting degrees and seking white collar employment instead. Those who shoud have made their living by actually making things of use became college trained instead of work trained. Basket weaving type of degrees proliferated, teachers were turned out who had no relistic view of the purpose of the educational process (having missed out on it themselves) and degraded the standards of the public schools system.
Industry responded by creating positions for them; positions which were not really needed and which were supported by a diminishing number of productive workers. Prodution workers of any kind, people who made genuinely usefull things from the natural resources of the earth, became desparaged and looked down on, further discouraging anyone from seeking other than a College degreed white collar job as a carreer. Today, those who have remained in productive work, the ones that make our country and it's goods, are considered little more than beasts of burden by the educated 'elite' (many of whom are FReepers, BTW), and there is little respect or incentive left for them. We have a complete shift ocurring in America from a society of productivity and self sufficiency to one of wanton consumption based on dependance on other productive societies. Some people think this is good, some do not. .
IMO and FWIW.
If they are that advanced why do so many need to cheat?
www.aher.org/soaf_quick.php
has links to articles describing widespread cheating in Asian countries. To wit, here's a letter from ETS explaining why the computer science GRE had to be canceled.
http://www.gre.org/csletter.html
"Computer Science Letter to Department Chairs
"September 2002
"Dear Computer Science Department Chair:
"Over the last several months, ETS has determined that there have been significant security breaches of the GRE Computer Science Test. The two locations that have presented the most jeopardy to test security are India and China, including Hong Kong. In order to protect the viability of the Computer Science Test, the GRE Board and ETS have made the following decisions: . . ." [end excerpt]
The IHT article referenced in my post above contains addional information.
As a youth I remember pre-PC news items about rioting in universities in India because they were not allowed to cheat on finals.
I did... Still do ('74 Dodge). I'll pass dozens of '70s-early '80s cars & trucks during my daily commute and it's amazing that almost every one of those older vehicles is American.
Statistics don't lie & statistically, after 10 years, the percentage of American-built cars still driving starts walking away from those superior foreign makes.
Japs & Euros averaged 25%+ of US auto/truck market from '75-'90 - very few are still around... where'd all those old foreign cars go? Junkyard perhaps?
OK. Ask me.
I drove a 1984 Thunderbird for 250,000 miles and then the odometer broke. I might be still driving it except for a lady who turned around to scold her kids and rear-ended/totaled me.
Exaggerators like you chafe me just a little.