How much of Japan's population syndrome is directly assignable to Japan's unique policies, versus the nature of first world countries in general?
Japan's population has been essentially flat for the last 6 years: 127,773,000 in 2005, 127,817,000 in 2011. It is headed south as long as the birth rate remains so low. So no question that the rest of the world needs to understand the effects of negative population growth. A decreasing population will test many economic policies that relied on monotonically increasing population to be effective. I doubt we can predict all of the policies that will break.
That's pretty disingenuous. 23 million Americans have used drugs/alcohol to the point of needing treatment: http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/08/study-22-million-am...
That's 7% of the population, including children under 12. Take the pre-peer-pressure group out and it starts to look more like Russian Roulette. I'd hardly call that a risk worth taking.
From your link, that was the number that the study authors estimated needed treatment. However only about 11% actually got treatment, and the #1 cause of not getting treatment is that they did not think they needed it.
There undoubtably was a lot of denial involved. But without knowing more about the biases of the authors, there is a real possibility that they are being overly quick to assume that people need treatment when someone else may conclude that they do not.
I keep imagining the technology used with recreational vehicles. Spend a day as a tourist in Chicago. Hop in the RV and go to sleep. Wake up in Memphis. Visit Elvis, enjoy waffles & fried chicken, then hit the hay and wake up the next day in Orlando. No down time.
Not sure about the logic of this: "They will live in a world where China and India will have 50 percent of the world GDP. They will live in a world where, if they cannot function successfully in the Asian culture, they will pay a heavy price."
Today, the US + EU have about 50% of the world's GDP. Do Chinese kids pay a 'heavy price' because they cannot function successfully in the Western culture? It seems more like the heavy price is paid due to lack of economic integrity and opportunity in China. The importance is in getting a solid education. There will be plenty of work to do here in the US and in China.
"Related topic: The Hong Kong Chinese don't want their kids to learn about about China"
That's a very wrong interpretation of the current events in HK. The parents and students are opposed to the National Education plan because it inaccurately presents recent mainland Chinese history and Chinese cultural values, is an attempt at brain washing (or 'wash brain' in local English) and is being used as a way of monitoring the political reliability of students & their teachers. This last point is a particular concern, as its an extension of the surveillance network & could be used to hinder job promotion and educational advancement.
Yes. What the hk'ers are against is the "patriotic" education where the kids learn about Mao and how great the CCP (Chinese communist party) is. And I think they have a good point.
For what it's worth, English is a mandatory subject for students in China. It's hard to predict what the political and economic climate will be like a few decades from now, but I'm pretty sure the number of Mandarin speakers will increase and Asia will still be a major influence on global economics.
I'm not sure if I agree with this decision given the circumstances of this particular school district, but I won't be surprised if we start to see other schools strongly encouraging Mandarin studies.
Let's not jump too quickly to politics. Mandarin is a language, and will be spoken by the Chinese regardless of politics. It is also spoken in many places outside of mainland China.
> English is a mandatory subject for students in China
Few of them learn it well enough using their rote methods to be of much use though. It's good to learn english as it is currently the lingua franca of the world. In europe German teens talk to their Swedish friends in English, just as Italians talk to the Croatians in English. It's used universally for communication.
I wonder though - are all English classes in China taught by american government representatives whose salaries are paid for by the United States? Do they also introduce American values as part of the classes?
I noticed the article said the classes, throughout the future, will be free to the schools because the Chinese Government (which is as we know run by the Communist Party) is paying for them and the teachers are being sent from mainland China.
Nothing seems odd about that to you?
I know, I know. I must be some "conspiracy nut" just to be asking whether the Chinese Communist Party completely financing and sending trained and educated Chinese Communist Party members to the US to teach poor american children to speak Chinese and understand modern Chinese perspectives defined by their government in order to "prepare for 2050" is a strange thing. It's safe to disregard these "crackpot ideas", right? Or is it.
No. Many governments have or have had programs to spread understanding of their language, including paying for teachers at times, as well as paying for radio stations, TV channels, web sites.
Some of these are or have been blocked by various countries at various times because they didn't like the political views espoused, sure, so it's not like one should assume that there are never political motives (and that goes for all "sides" - the US has done this as much as everyone else).
But it is also important for commerce, diplomacy etc. to ensure a good supply of people with an understanding of language, and "seeding" interest for later language studies by introducing it earlier is a good solution.
> I know, I know. I must be some "conspiracy nut" just to be asking whether the Chinese Communist Party completely financing and sending trained and educated Chinese Communist Party members to the US to teach poor american children to speak Chinese and understand modern Chinese perspectives defined by their government in order to "prepare for 2050" is a strange thing. It's safe to disregard these "crackpot ideas", right? Or is it.
Do you for a second believe that the curriculum won't be read by someone in these schools prior to use? Someone who is pretty much guaranteed to hold viewpoints sufficiently far from any devout supporter of the Chinese regime to react quickly to blatant misrepresentations?
It's not like these teachers will be let free on a class with no follow up. I very much doubt the Chinese regime is interested in risking their promotion of Chinese language and culture by adding controversial political content. Not least because ideology has long been a secondary priority for the Chinese leadership after economic growth.
What do they care if American school children agree with their policies? What they do care about is that American school children grow up to be useful when Chinese companies want to do business with American companies and need people who understand both languages and cultures.
Chinese language teachers in china aren't very political (actually most Chinese are not very political), I suspect the Confucius institute teachers are rather typically similar. American English teachers (not paid for by the USA government,as or more numerous) are much more politic in contrast, trust me, we are indoctrinating more then they are. Disclaimer: not all English teachers here in china are American.
>It is also spoken in many places outside of mainland China.
Mandarin will definitely be a widely spoken language. But having studied some Mandarin in college, an average American doesn't have enough opportunities to interact with Mandarin speakers to make it a useful day to day skill.
And it's much harder to learn (for a native English speaker) than Spanish (or French or German). Given equivalent instruction the average student learning Spanish will be significantly further along.
Do you think that they (Chinese) don't have similar barrier when learning English?
Do I have enough opportunities to interact with Japanese?
No. But I'm still learning it.
"Not enough opportunities to interact with [language]" is poor's man excuse to not learn it at all.
A word of advice. Stop and think about your tone before you write.
To answer your post:
This has nothing to do with excuses or perceived difficulty. It has everything to do with cost benefit analysis. When forcing a group of students to learn a language, usefulness vs difficulty is a valid concern.
The State Department estimates that it takes only around 600 hours of classroom instruction to learn Spanish, but 2200 hours for Mandarin (for a native English speaker). They also recommend that half of the hours learning Mandarin occur in country.
30 minutes a day for 13 years of school won't provide enough instruction for these kids to become proficient, but it could provide enough to become proficient in 2 category 1 languages.
I did stop and thought about the tone. There were more comments (quite) similar to yours, so it was more at random that reply was to your comment.
Usefulness? Ability to communicate with more than 1.7 * 10^9 people is not enough for you? Also once you know Mandarin learning Japanese is much simpler.
...
for simplicity I will assume 364 days/year
0.5 * 364 * 13 = 182 * 13 = 2356, which is more than those 2200.
It is generally advised to learn language in place where it is being used on day to day basis, no matter what language you are using.
>... for simplicity I will assume 364 days/year 0.5 * 364 * 13 = 182 * 13 = 2356, which is more than those 2200
In Most of places in the United States kids only go to school for 180 days per year.
>Usefulness? Ability to communicate with more than 1.7 * 10^9 people is not enough for you?
Where did you get 1.7 billion from, that's way too high.
Usefulness is relative. If I can communicate with a billion people on the other side of the world, is that more useful than being able to communicate with a few hundred million people whom I'm much more likely to contact?
>It is generally advised to learn language in place where it is being used on day to day basis, no matter what language you are using.
Yes, it makes it easier for all languages. But for category III languages, it is nearly impossible to become proficient without spending time in country.
>Also once you know Mandarin learning Japanese is much simpler.
Apart from a bit of the writing system, Chinese and Japanese are not similar. They are from 2 completely different language families. They are more distantly related than English and Russian.
The average student in the World encounters far more written English than average American student of any other language (in written form). And people outside of countries with English used on day to day basis don't encounter enough English to properly use it in spoken form.
I'm not too busy just learning Japanese (as a matter of fact I'm also learning German and Russian and I still have some free time).
If you have a passion to learn a language, lack of opportunity is just an excuse. If you're choosing a policy for forcing kids to learn a language against their will, lack of opportunity is a significant factor that should be considered. English is compulsory in Japan too, which makes the average Japanese citizen the best example of compulsion without opportunity equating to a lot of wasted effort for very little return.
English is pretty much compulsory in entire world. And the same can be said in Poland - almost everyone learns English in school (often for 9 years) and only 30-50% of those people can use it in its written form (and situation is far worse when it comes to spoken form).
While I agree that their logic may be a bit suspect, your counterexample is also false.
Chinese kids who do not command at least passable English are barred from the best (or even slightly above-average) schools and jobs. So yes, they do pay a heavy price.
Macon is a town with a large blue-collar population that lost most of the major industries in the last 15 years. This is part of a multi-pronged approach to get Foreign-owned companies to locate low-skill jobs in the city.
Since 1970, global population increased by 91%
Since 1970, global aggregate GDP increased by 540% (in constant $)
I think that means that 540/1.91 = ~2.8x increase in per-person productivity on a global basis over the last 40 years. I would contend that capitalism drives productivity increases to a greater degree than communism or socialism, simply based on the fact that 8 of the top 10 economies in the world are arguably capitalist. (counting France as socialist and China as something else, not sure what at this point).
A better statistician than I can weigh in with wealth distribution, and I am betting that the average world citizen is better off today than 40 years ago, primarily due to capitalism.
Big box stores killed the mom & pops.
Online retailers killed the big box stores: Circuit City, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Blockbuster, Tower Records.
WalMart is right to be concerned.
Consumers benefit from online shopping:
- Skip the ride to the store and back
- Seemingly limitless selection in a few searches
- Confidence in pricing by comparing
Brick & mortars need to do their homework and understand the psychology of shopping in an Internet world.
There will always be those who:
- Want it right now
- Enjoy the social interaction of shopping with friends
- Want to talk to someone who knows what they are talking about
- Want to be 'seen'
They need to wind down and market to that segment of the population. That is where they are headed anyway.
I think the internet will kill big box stores and bring back mom & pops. There's no point in going to Best Buy/Walmart/etc. to buy something I can get on Amazon for a fraction of the price, but I will browse local stores for unique and interesting goods that are harder to find online if you're not looking for them.
It will bring back browsing as a legitimate activity, something which big box stores completely killed imo.
Physical stores may be able to offer expertise as well as seeing and trying out things in person. I imagine they might not even stock multiple copies of a single product to save space, and you just order the product to be delivered.
Facebook will apply the data from each account to the Turing Test. Start with a database of 67.5 years of e-mail, tweets, photos, voice mail, video mail, geo-location, blogs, purchase history, social networks, all from one person. Then add AI and a remote presence device, and we can all live on.
