8 ms·

The US is a strange place. On one hand, teachers do not treat academic performance as prominently as those in hyper competitive countries, say, China. Classes i

The US is a strange place. On one hand, teachers do not treat academic performance as prominently as those in hyper competitive countries, say, China. Classes in high school are easy. Exams are generally easy. Teachers normally do not spend lots of time coming up with enlightening or challenging problem sets. SAT and ACT are embarrassingly not challenging or differentiating. They have only multiple choices, for fuck's sake -- the simplest form in an exam in other countries! The message from the US education system appears to be that it's okay if you don't want to excel in school but we will give you lots of resources if you're an elite student. On the other hand, the competition is not going away. It just gets hidden or gets distributed to families. So, kids take 10+ AP courses, if not 15+ as in many of Bay Area schools. Kids participated in hyper competitive ECs to show that they are made to change the world to appease the admission officers. In the meantime, they still need to maintain high, if not perfect, GPAs. As a result, they sacrifice their sleep and therefore their health. It's as if there are two worlds in the US. When I read the novel Folding Beijing, I felt that I was reading about the US's education system, which is sad.

PragmaticPulp 3y ago
> It's as if there are two worlds in the US. The US is very far from a monoculture. Culture and personal values vary greatly from one family to the next, even within the same region. I worked for a company with a lot of non-US offices with a lot of younger people who always had a lot of questions about US culture. I think they got tired of me explaining that the US is extremely diverse when it comes to culture and values. They always wanted one, singular answer about how people in the US do things in their personal and family lives. When describing their own countries, they’d confidently say “Here, we all do it this way” as if their entire country followed a singular culture. It was interesting to see how this sense of monoculture (however unrealistic) varied from country to country, but rarely applied to discussions about the US. Of course, internet commenters love to generalize about US people, generally in a negative light. Even US citizens love to criticize the US. However, one of the things I love most about living here is the wide array of values and cultures and the freedom to do your own thing
- EscapeFromNY 3y ago
  I like to tell people that a US state is the size of a European country, and USA the country is as large as Europe the continent. "Oh, you're from Europe? What language do they speak in Europe?"
  - jhonof 3y ago
    State to state the US is significantly more similar culturally than Europe is. The distance from my home town to the University I went to is equivalent to London to Jerusalem basically, but the differences between my hometown and the place I went to university are not very significant when compared to the differences between London and Jerusalem.
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      Yeah, I did not find moving from Massachusetts to California involved a radical reimagining of my behavior, the way I spoke, or in many cases even the places I shopped. The people here are all familiar with the same cultural touchstones, more or less. Distinctive regional accents are harder and harder to hear. US culture might have been more notably diverse in the pre-War period but now basically you're, to put it in vulgar terms, "cosmopolitan" or "hick" and that's about all the differentiation that matters.
      - quesera 3y ago
        FWIW, (Eastern) Massachusetts and (South-Central, Coastal) California are not very different. San Francisco and Boston share a special affinity. Many of the places in between are more varied.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        They’re not but that’s kind of my point. It’s not really that varied, you can go “red” or “blue” and those alternate a lot as you travel around, but the idea of a patchwork of many little very distinctive cultures is on life support.
jimbob45 3y ago
They have only multiple choices, for fuck's sake -- the simplest form in an exam in other countries! I’ve found multiple-choice to be as hard as any other format when “none of the above” and “all of the above” are added to every single question.
- 3836293648 3y ago
  Multiple choice with none of the above compared to every question is a minor essay? Yeah no

PragmaticPulp 3y ago

> It's as if there are two worlds in the US. The US is very far from a monoculture. Culture and personal values vary greatly from one family to the next, even within the same region. I worked for a company with a lot of non-US offices with a lot of younger people who always had a lot of questions about US culture. I think they got tired of me explaining that the US is extremely diverse when it comes to culture and values. They always wanted one, singular answer about how people in the US do things in their personal and family lives. When describing their own countries, they’d confidently say “Here, we all do it this way” as if their entire country followed a singular culture. It was interesting to see how this sense of monoculture (however unrealistic) varied from country to country, but rarely applied to discussions about the US. Of course, internet commenters love to generalize about US people, generally in a negative light. Even US citizens love to criticize the US. However, one of the things I love most about living here is the wide array of values and cultures and the freedom to do your own thing

EscapeFromNY 3y ago
I like to tell people that a US state is the size of a European country, and USA the country is as large as Europe the continent. "Oh, you're from Europe? What language do they speak in Europe?"
- jhonof 3y ago
  State to state the US is significantly more similar culturally than Europe is. The distance from my home town to the University I went to is equivalent to London to Jerusalem basically, but the differences between my hometown and the place I went to university are not very significant when compared to the differences between London and Jerusalem.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Yeah, I did not find moving from Massachusetts to California involved a radical reimagining of my behavior, the way I spoke, or in many cases even the places I shopped. The people here are all familiar with the same cultural touchstones, more or less. Distinctive regional accents are harder and harder to hear. US culture might have been more notably diverse in the pre-War period but now basically you're, to put it in vulgar terms, "cosmopolitan" or "hick" and that's about all the differentiation that matters.
    - quesera 3y ago
      FWIW, (Eastern) Massachusetts and (South-Central, Coastal) California are not very different. San Francisco and Boston share a special affinity. Many of the places in between are more varied.
      - emodendroket 3y ago
        They’re not but that’s kind of my point. It’s not really that varied, you can go “red” or “blue” and those alternate a lot as you travel around, but the idea of a patchwork of many little very distinctive cultures is on life support.

jimbob45 3y ago

They have only multiple choices, for fuck's sake -- the simplest form in an exam in other countries! I’ve found multiple-choice to be as hard as any other format when “none of the above” and “all of the above” are added to every single question.

3836293648 3y ago
Multiple choice with none of the above compared to every question is a minor essay? Yeah no