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...and I bet he doesn't spend his lunch hour boozing it up at the bar down the street.
As for "letting kids be kids", operating a front-end loader would have been the highlight of my childhood.
Danged right! You would have had to drag me, kicking and screaming, out of that thing.
As a former elem. teacher ....Kids excel at breaking stuff. They can be trained to do tasks but leaving them alone for 10 minutes around anything complicated is asking for it to be broken/dropped/ripped apart.
$100 says in 4 months that tractor is stripped for parts after a "mysterious" breakdown" *
*broke by kids...add "set on fire" if we include teenagers...I swear...kids could break a safe if left alone long enough.
Danged right! You would have had to drag me, kicking and screaming, out of that thing.
Indeed - I was excited enough as a kid to get a pneumatic Lego digger.
Of course, this video doesn't show much - one kid in China has some skills. Plenty more are no doubt just as idle as kids often are many other places.
One thing this thread shows is that you only have to mention China round here and people start rattling off sixteen to the dozen reasons why that country will soon fail, demographic crises, China only makes cheap crap to sell in Walmart, Chinese kids don't get to be kids, yada yada yada. People need to try to develop a more balanced, and less emotional view of these things...
As a former elem. teacher ....Kids excel at breaking stuff. They can be trained to do tasks but leaving them alone for 10 minutes around anything complicated is asking for it to be broken/dropped/ripped apart.
$100 says in 4 months that tractor is stripped for parts after a "mysterious" breakdown" *
*broke by kids...add "set on fire" if we include teenagers...I swear...kids could break a safe if left alone long enough.
Don't agree with you. As a kid I learned to work with home electrical wiring, and electricity. Got shocked a few times, but learned a lot. Also, my father used to give me all kinds of things to take apart and put back together. Today I can repair or tune home boilers, know plumbing, carpentry, enough about mechanics to repair my own vehicles, reload my ammo, hunt, fish, proficient with taping, painting, and home remodeling...
China is a large country, with farmers, workers, doctors, engineers, capitalists, officials... Some are very handy, others are very good at math etc.
That particular kid does NOT represent China, although Americans tend to think Chinese are all the same.
I lived in China too and I could not even ride a bicycle till 12 year old or so.
I know one man (an ex-spouse and current friend of mine), who invents machines using parts he finds in the junkyard or on old machines, or just bits of metal, combined with some metal-shaping tools he inherited from his father, who was an artisan and inventor. He is teaching his son (my son) how to invent what he needs. He is showing him how to innovate rather than go to the nearest auto-parts store and buy some Chinese-made hunk of crap that is probably toxic to your skin the second you handle it anyway. He has also taught that son how to drive a tractor
You realize, of course, that China is facing a demographic crisis that -- unless they start shooting citizens upon reaching age 70 -- is going to cripple that country in the coming years. The crisis is real and looming fast, which explains a great deal of their breakneck economic growth. The Chinese, you see, are racing against time.
Right now, at this very moment, the Chinese have the largest working age population that they ever will. Around 2014, the number of working age Chinese will begin to decrease, according to the United Nations. And the decrease will not be gradual. It will be a plunge. Imagine the biggest, scariest roller coaster. Imagine the slow climb to the top, followed by the gut-wrenching drop. That's what things are going to be like in the coming years for China.
What's more, manufacturing jobs are beginning to leave China right now, chiefly because labor costs have increased at roughly 20% a year for the past several years. Had you attended a furniture trade show last year, you would have seen a lot of product made in China and shipped over in containers. Had you attended one in the past few months, you would have seen that a lot of that manufacturing migrated rather quickly to places such as Vietnam and Indonesia.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bettafish
China is a large country, with farmers, workers, doctors, engineers, capitalists, officials... Some are very handy, others are very good at math etc.
That particular kid does NOT represent China, although Americans tend to think Chinese are all the same.
I lived in China too and I could not even ride a bicycle till 12 year old or so.
As said above China is a large country with people of all different professions but due to the one child policy the future population will not be balanced as there will many more old people than young and also a shortage young women (as the Chinese have preferred to have a male child for cultural reasons over a female one). So right now China is on the wave of empowerment, but it is not clear how they will deal with this coming upcoming population imbalance crisis.
That is kinda cool to see a kid in a piece of machinery like that. But kids in MURICA have better education and usually go to college. The standards are wayy too different to compare.
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