I nearly failed out of high school and college because I spent my time on things I found more interesting that classes - computers and journalism for the most part. The skills I learned outside of my studies have been more useful by far than anything I learned in a classroom. I feel like we've pushed people away from the kinds of self directed learning that really stick with a student towards the easily quantifiable "no student left behind" style of learning.

I very clearly see this with 2 nephews of mine, both 14. One is in a highly competitive school district in the bay area, the other in a relaxed Texan school. One has no free time and is pushed into this or that class or activity all the time. The other has quite a bit of free time. The second nephew is very creative, street smart and communicative. He also managed to teach himself how to program and make games. The first nephew simply lacks that creativity.

I experienced this in my Bot Scout troop of all places - people, kids especially, need room to fail. Having a structured environment, having every day planned out with something new and enriching is great and all - but it doesn't give you room to stretch your own brain. You're stuck following someone else's plan. One could argue this is a major failing of our education system.

(Apologies for the late response)

I did the same, and have nothing to show for it. I wonder if there's some personality trait, some sprt of drive that helps people succeed in any environment?

> I recently found a copy of my 12th grade public school math textbook. More than half of the problems are proofs. Today there are no proofs.

This was a big issue for me when I entered college. We did proofs freshman year of high school as part of geometry, but they were so simplistic that I didn't know how to write a good, real proof. Then, when I got to college math, I struggled for a long while figuring out what I needed to do to properly prove something rigorously.

I hope the proofs made math more fun for you, not less. The similarity between proofs and programs was something that attracted my interest in both.

They definitely did, in conjunction with me better understanding what I was using this math for (my freshman and sophomore engineering courses were too handwavey. The somewhat informal way we were doing things actually hurt my understanding).

After the initial frustration with learning how to write a proper proof, everything got better.

It seems like there's an assumption in your post and in your fears: unhappiness comes from poverty and a lack of high-demand skills. I think that's a common narrative in America, and I certainly have it somewhat ingrained.

I recently moved to Southeast Asia from America. There's a stark contrast between the two places in terms of economic development and quality of goods. People here aren't any less happy. If anything, they feel happier in the poorer or lower tech places I visit.

I feel like my American education and citizenship grant me so many opportunities compared to most that I meet here. Still, I don't believe we differ in the maximum happiness that we can experience.

This isn't to say wealth and education are unnecessary or bad. I'm just adding my observations to challenge the assumptions that more wealth or education will lead to more happiness, justifying "short" term sacrifices in happiness for a few years.

I certainly fear poverty. No question there. That fear could be exacerbated by the erosion of the safety net in the US, and by economic segregation. Poor people experience worse health, higher violence, more intrusive police presence, less social stability.

I don't know what it would be like to move my family to Southeast Asia. How do they treat women? I suspect that it varies from country to country. Are their education systems better? I've heard that Korea is everything bad that we've been talking about in this thread, and a friend of mine from Singapore said: "I prefer the American schools. There are fewer beatings."

My problem is that I actually like education as an end unto itself. That's my culture. I just don't want it to kill people, or burn them out.

If my last post came across as a suggestion to move your family here, that was not my intention. I mentioned it to contrast happiness against economic success. In American media, the two are so frequently treated as the same, and from what I see here, they're quite different.

It seems like some societies are willing to teach people to be unhappy to achieve economic success. Singapore and South Korea are good examples of this. I question in which direction America is headed.

Could you briefly go into why you moved to SE asia from america?

Sure. I quit my job in June and a friend invited me to visit. I checked out some local communities corresponding to my interests in America: tech, startups and dancing. The communities were lively, yet different enough that they caught my interest.

I enjoyed your rant. I think that some of it resonates with what Chomsky has written about the "disciplinarian culture".

I think every parent has same concern - middle class is vanishing, normal degree will not be enough, etc.. I have read in one of the book "65 percent of children entering grade school this year will end up working in careers that haven't even been invented yet" (I know data science is consider new field, it is just derivation of CS).

At the same time, if we feel our kids are smarter they should be able to figure out their way out if they have good basic skills ( leadership, teamwork, co-ordination, communication, passion etc).. So we as society should focus on such skills and not expect every kid to make multi billion company out of college room..

But 72 percent of statistics are made up on the spot.

> Because I can see that my class -- the middle class -- is vanishing, so the expectations of my generation are no longer valid. Get an OK degree in something worthwhile and work hard. Gone. I literally followed exactly the same education and career path as my father. That's gone.

This attitude (which I hear all the time, not just from you) reminds me of what's been going on in East Asia for decades now: the ultra pressure cooker life-defining once-a-year college entrance exam system and the accompanying high pressure studying environment preceding it (and much like in SV, students do kill themselves from stress). Students in these countries (Japan, Korea, and Taiwan in particular from what I can tell -- not so sure about China) are pushed so hard because frankly it is correct that the college you go to largely defines your QoL for the rest of your life (more so if you are in the humanities vs engineering).

You often work at a corporation for life, and they take the vast majority of employees as new grads. The best corporations often have cutoffs based on the school you attend. Online registration sites for recruiting info sessions will show up as full if you say you attend a mediocre college, but will show up as having seats open if you say you attend the University of Tokyo.

Whether this perception of what I call the "scarcity of success" for students is real or not in the States, I frankly do not know. But I like to say that perception is the reality by which you live. If this is the perception that parents have, then their behavior in response to this perception is logical. They behave this way because they truly want the best for their children (Tiger mom behavior and Asian immigrant parents driving their children towards stable high paying professions like medicine is a direct result of their own struggles as immigrants and lack of clarity into their future financial stability).

Also,

From article: "Many college students struggle with critical thinking, a fact that hasn’t escaped their professors"

From parent: "Another thing I've noticed is that the school curriculum is more intensive and consuming, but not necessarily more advanced.

I used to be quite creative in elementary school. Loved to draw, tinker with electronics, make stuff, etc. But then I "woke up" in middle school and for the first time in my life learned to study, extremely hard. I went to a private school in Silicon Valley that (according to a recent thread in my alma mater's mailing list) was described by one parent as "[being] somewhat notorious for pushing the kids too hard." I had 6 hours of homework every day (100% of it was rote drills as parent says), after 2-3 hours of sports and extra curriculars, every day. I did this for 6 years, 7th through 12th grade. I graduated near the top of my class and was accepted into one of the best colleges in the country. I largely continued this behavior in college.

At one moment of clarity in my mid 20's, I realized that I had lost the creativity that I once possessed. I excel at figuring out how to optimize and perform in a defined system. I am now quite terrible at thinking outside of predefined problems. Looking back now, I realize that I would have made quite a good banker or management consultant (which is where most of my peers ended up after college).

I think this is related to the article saying:

Many college students struggle with critical thinking, a fact that hasn’t escaped their professors

The new "The Little Prince" movie is about this. Great film