Quote Originally Posted by carlmaloschneider View Post

Some people who can't perform some skills can still be very functional in their particular world.

Geography is a great subject, yet for day to day existence it hardly matters if you know where Norway is, esp if you live in Central Africa, for instance. I guess that's rather an extreme example, I would have thought an American could have named Afghanistan, as it IS important to know just where (and why) you're shipping your children off to die.

But I think it IS important remembering that not all skills that I for instance see as useful will be useful to another.
I respectfully disagree.

Geography might not play a vital role in most people's day to day lives, but math sure does, and not being able to do simple math or estimations quickly can end up costing you a lot.

What's a better deal, getting 2 pounds of meat for $5.50 or three pounds for $8.00....there are many companies out there that know most consumers are unable to do that math and end up paying more.

You're thinking of redoing your kitchen floors. How do you calculate how many tiles to buy and the total cost of the job if the only price you have is per square foot of tile, or even the cost of a single tile that's a certain size? Do you want to end up with part of your floor left untiled or a bunch of leftover tiles you paid for go to waste?

Simple math.

"their particular world", whatever it is, still means eating and buying stuff.

Geography plays a more important role in understanding the world around us and why things like shipping costs affect the final price of products. If you don't know where Sweden is how can you evaluate the shipping costs of a Volvo car? How many people know that there are quite a few parts of the USA (excluding Alaska) that are actually NORTH of Canada? Don't you think its important to know where your biggest trading partner is?

Education, in all subjects, creates wealth, reduces crime, improves social skills and makes defending against bad guys easier. Rather then letting those who, for any reason, do not have the skills we are talking about live in their particular world, lets bring them into ours. We will pay less, they will make more money, the government will collect more taxes to better our infrastructure and that will cause us to pay less, help them make more money....you get the idea

I understand that there will always be a certain percentage (there's that math thing again) of the population that will not get there, but we have to minimize it if we're to have any chance of keeping our freedoms and democracy. Its a fact that oppressive regimes succeed in places where there are a lot of uneducated people.

Maybe if we put it in terms of losing your freedoms and rights, people will take this more seriously.

Darn it all, I said the rant was over...I guess I still have to vent.