Posted on 04/06/2004 12:49:21 PM PDT by doug9732
Says who? Where do you think the vast majority of students at US engineering schools come from? That's right, public schools, where the program they take to get into engineering school is rigorous and essentially begins in junior high school.
Students going to engineering school in my district usually begin taking either algebra or geometry (a few!) in eighth grade. Then in high school their program is as follows. They don't have to take both chemistry and phyiscs but many take both:
Freshman year:
Either honors geometry or honors Algebra 2 / Trigonometry
Honors Biology(which is equivalent to the college course which I taught labs for)
Sophomore year:
Honors Algebra 2 / Trig or Honors Precalculus
Honors Chemistry
Honors Physics
Junior year:
Honors precalculus or Calculus I (college credit)
Advanced Physics (college credit)
Advanced Chemistry (either can also be taken senior year)
Senior year:
Calculus 1 (college credit) or Calculus 2/Differential equations (college credit)
Another St. Louis district is offering Calculus 3 / Differential Equations 2 to its high school seniors.
Don't tell me how bad public schools are when it comes to providing the advanced classes needed to get into engineering schools. Better suburban districts *are* providing this preparation. Most students in any given district are not *intellectually capable* of pursuing this type of course of study.
What should concern us more is that students who *are* capable aren't doing it (EE and CS enrollment is down a third this year already) because *why work so hard* if you can't get a job easily, or if you do, your job is outsourced?
And Free Traders, apparently, are not.
Why should the "CEO-wannabes" (love that phrase) care? After all, if borders don't matter, why not just clamber to the top of the heap of the One World Government?
Outsourcing manufacturing was bad - we have no domestic US men's shirt makers, for instance, and I really wonder if we do have the ability to make the materiel we would need for a long-drawn out war. But our really critical lack is going to be technically-trained people. Keeping engineering jobs in the US isn't just a protectionist issue - it's a serious national security issue.
Good question. I've been reading dozens of these articles/threads over the past few months, and *no one* has a cogent answer. Except for a few brief references to "biotechnology" and "new technologies" (unspecified), NO ONE interviewed from this administration has given any decent answer.
The "biotechnology" thing is especially lame. Most of the head work requires a PhD in biochemistry, genetics, etc. and the lab grunt work is done by people with 1-2 years at community college.
The basic message to 40-50 year old engineers - in fact, the whole technically-trained middle class - is f--- off. Too bad most of those being flipped off were George Bush's base in 2000.
I personally do not count anything that has happened since then as an end of that peace - never were major great powers in direct shooting (vaporizing?) conflict over extended periods.
I attribute the length of the period to a number of things. Firstly, from the moment we nuked Japan, we feared great war so strongly, that we exhibited many behaviors that were not, from a historical perspective, at all normal. Appeasement, truce calling, detente, ongoing negotiations with no conclusive end point, etc. I issue no value judgement regarding those behaviors, I only am bringing them to light.
Secondly, we took the UN much more seriously than the League of Nations or any other earlier international body. In many if not most cases, much of our support of and engagement with the UN has been overtly antithetical to our true national interest; we have, in essence, taken the anti Clausewitzian approach. This is, in a way, another manifestation of the first item - our now near primal fear of great war (even, I might add, to the point of refusal to consider it in cases where, from a perspective of the long term survival of Western Civilization, it would have been the correct, ableit exceedingly painful, decision).
Thirdly, the advanced state of decay of the age old aristocratic structures, and, innate Judeo Christian Western institutions, fomented by the increasing influence of anti traditional intellectuals brought on by inexpensive media means, the bourgeiosification of higher education and the previously mentioned efforts to discredit Von Clausewitz' theses, resulted in a potent Leftist polity throughout the West with its own ill effects.
And finally, the change in monetary policy from one of relatively fixed (or at best, slowly changing and metal backed) money supply to one of elasticity and bourgeiosified debt incursion, gave rise to the historically unprecedented and unproven hyper commercial orientation of Western modernism. This last item clearly drives the mentality of the so called "free traders." Certainly it comes as no surprise that when that mentality is juxtaposed upon the first three factors, the current state of affairs is a predictable outcome.
Given that none of these four factors have a deep foundation and are certainly not part of the thousand plus year old underpinnings of the core of Western Civilization, any claim as to their stability and staying power must be suspect.
If Bush loses this election (which is looking more and more likely as those approval numbers drop), a big reason will be what you say. This is impacting primarily a conservative Republican demographic. Bush and the GOP are committing mindless political suicide on this jobs/offshoring issue. If they think the well-heeled corporate fat cats are going to save them with their big bucks they'd better think again, because there are very few of them and a whole lot of the middle class who have been screwed by offshoring.
You can say that again. They're about as substantial as a house of cards built on shifting sands. It won't take much to bring it down. Something like, say, China deciding to re-assert it's perceived historical right of hegemony over the Pacific Rim. They might not try it anytime soon, but in something like, maybe 20 or 30 years, when this country is only a shadow of its former military and industrial self, and has largely reverted to an agricultural base or, as the one Japanese business executive called it, an "entertainment nation", they can move on the vision. The Chinese are nothing if not patient. They'd rather see us destroy ourselves than take on a shooting war, but if it comes to that, they won't do it until they're sure they'll win. That may not be all that far off, given the trends.
While there are fine public schools out there (usually in affluent districts) your average public school s-cks in terms of preparation for the sciences (to say nothing about the other subjects).
Thanks Mark. Your experiences with Globalism gives your response added validity. While I haven't become an all-out isolationist, my experience has made me a much stronger protectionist.
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