Cultural models

There was this posting on X that revealed "only 31 percent of American 8th graders are proficient in reading... 30 percent are below basic readers or functionally illiterate. And only 27 percent of 8th graders are proficient in math. Hiring American workers is more difficult because our education system is failing."

- BOO CHANCO

For the Americans as it is for us, correcting this problem will take a few generations. In the meantime, the current generations have been condemned to live a life that's less satisfying economically and the political system will be plagued by unwise choices. The educated and the barely educated suffer the consequences.

Vivek Ramaswamy, who was chosen by Trump together with Elon Musk to organize a Department of Government Efficiency, recently posted on X that "top tech companies often hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers over 'native' Americans... comes down to the c-word: culture... American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long. That doesn't start in college, it starts young.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers...

(Fact: I know 'multiple' sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch some TV shows precisely because these shows promoted mediocrity... and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates)...

"Most normal American parents look skeptically at 'those kinds of parents.' More normal American kids view such 'those kinds of kids' with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve...

"Normalcy' doesn't cut it in a hypercompetitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we'll have our asses handed to us by China.

"This can be our Sputnik moment. We've awakened from slumber before and we can do it again... A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness."