Which Yardsticks

I was listening to a radio programme the other day in which a man was reading the book "A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari ....

 

A Brief History of Humankind

 

..... and something the reader said made me think.

 

The Marked Decline Of The West

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) are a way of comparing like with like across international educational systems. Sadly their biggest attainment has been to expose the West's decline into mediocrity ......  and the rise of Asia.

In the West generally and the UK in particular we have constantly chosen the lowest common denominator as our bench marks for educational standards, and boy is it now showing on our streets. Of course one measure of this is our relative economic performance, and all this is reflected now in the international educational performance leagues. Our last leader in any of the key fields was plucky Finland.

In the triennial Pisa tests, those taken by 15-year-olds are in reading, maths and science. The previous leaders in these subjects are:

• 2000: Finland, Japan, South Korea.
• 2003: Finland, Hong Kong, Finland.
• 2006: South Korea, Taipei, Finland.
• 2009: Shanghai, Shanghai, Shanghai.

The Leaders Of Tomorrow (or is that Today?)

This years results are expected to reinforce the dominance of China, with more evidence that all over that nation the educational system is producing the scientists and engineers of the coming century. All this in the space of little more than twenty five years.

So what are we doing about it? Nothing, which is why the UK will disappear as a nation of any worth inside the next twenty five years. When my generation, which was educated in a different more rigorous system, is gone, or senile, the lights may well be turned off in the West.

China's Economy

With all the talk of the Euro powers (Germany and France), asking for the Chinese to bail out the Euro, we need to look more closely at the Chinese economy and to put things in perspective.
 

Super Economy or Trade Dependent?

 
For all China's dramatic economic rise, its economy still accounts for less than 10% of global GDP at present, while the developed nations of Europe and America make up nearly 50%.