What do you want to be when you grow up? USA vs UK vs China
Ecco the dolphin - 1mon
18+52+37+47+56=210 for China. Each child could pick up to 3 answers. The average number of jobs the Chinese children picked was 2.
For USA/UK the average was about 1. Very few children selected more than one answer.
That's weird. What a weird poll. Were there only 5 possible choices? I would have told you I wanted to be a veterinarian at that age, if I answered at all. (I did not become a vet, I became a failure lmao)
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JoeBigelow @lemmy.ca - 1mon
I wanted to be an electrical engineer, then I saw all the math and settled for electrician, then I saw all the math and settled for Janitor
33
idiomaddict @lemmy.world - 1mon
I wanted to be a naval pilot engineer at four. I’m colorblind, terrified of heights, not fond of authority, sloppy, and scatterbrained as hell. It’s quite possibly the worst possible job for me. To be fair, part of the reason was that I hated the word “bellybutton” and thought anyone who said ”navel” instead had the right idea, so it’s not like I really understood that part of it.
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untorquer @lemmy.world - 1mon
Unfortunate, i know lots of engineers who never learned math.
5
clif - 1mon
Not an engineer but I took calculus 1, 2, 3, discrete math, linear algebra, statics, dynamics, and probably others I'm forgetting.
Since school, I needed one trig function for calculating distance between lat/long coordinates that I looked up on Wikipedia and plugged in to a program.
... Statics was fucking cool though.
3
untorquer @lemmy.world - 1mon
Statics is good fun. That was one of those courses i spent 40-50hrs a week on.
That knowledge is great for other applications too. For example, it helps with visualizing of how tension laid in fallen trees on saw crews for trail maintenance.
I still use statics at work but i could in theory get by with just basic FEA guess and check.
2
SapphironZA @sh.itjust.works - 1mon
How are Electricians needing to do so much math? Its basic calculator and lookup table stuff? I mean a janitor does more complication calculations when they dilute cleaning products and estimate how much they will need for a given room.
2
Gonzako @lemmy.world - 1mon
Man, I really can't get why ppl hate math.
2
Knoxvomica @lemmy.ca - 1mon
If it doesn't make sense, it sucks
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SapphironZA @sh.itjust.works - 1mon
Math is mostly taught as theory. It should be taught in practice.
Teaching people how to calculate an inventory, or taxes in a spreadsheet, is much more useful than teaching them differentials and number theory.
Its like teaching people carpentry but never having them make anything with it. You just quiz them on which tool and material they need to use.
1
Prime @lemmy.sdf.org - 1mon
I get where you're coming from but i have to disagree. What your describing is not math but econ, a different subject. Math is about how to calculate stuff with least effort.
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SapphironZA @sh.itjust.works - 1mon
I agree with you, its no longer math at thst point, but the application in the service of other fields.
What I am advocating for is that math at most of secondary school level should be taught on the practical basis. Math theory should be treated as a field of specialization. Much like how language is taught after people get over the basic literacy portion.
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Prime @lemmy.sdf.org - 1mon
That's reasonable, but some theory is also good to know. In language class we discuss not just the content of an article but also how it is written. Language itself is a tool here, similar to math.
Another important aspect of school is to ensure that everyone is exposed to many topics. That's why we have art classes even though most people don't become artists. It let's everyone know that this topic exists and what it is about.
The practical implementation of teaching math is bad though, as you said. Sometimes it is just rote memorization, which is the complete opposite of what it should be. I hate that.
1
Redex - 1mon
It's also possible that these aren't all of the available answers and they only selected the ones they thought are interesting.
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ThirdConsul - 1mon
It says all the children were given an option to pick up to 3 answers. Given the small sample size, it's likely there were questioned by the same person and that person didn't convey that to children properly.
Or they are all very focused on only 1 path.
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Ecco the dolphin - 1mon
It says all the children were given an option to pick up to 3 answers.
Mmhmm, I also noticed that, which is why it's the second sentence in my post.
Given the small sample size
It's a survey of 3,000? It's still possible that only one person was giving the survey to the Chinese students.
But yeah, it does look like the Chinese students got different instructions or had them explained differently or something. Just a strange poll.
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Brickhead92 @lemmy.world - 1mon
You need to give yourself more credit. You didn't become a failure, it was within you the whole time; you were always a failure...
That concludes my Pep Talk®
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dogdeanafternoon @lemmy.ca - 1mon
I think it’s pretty obvious this is a subset of the answers.
So it seems like, given 3 picks, only 1% of kids are choosing YouTuber as an option. That doesn’t really seem ridiculous.
Edit: it’s 3000 kids total, not per country. So I guess 3% if these are the only 3 countries included.
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Ecco the dolphin - 1mon
This poll annoyed me so much I googled it. It's just a really shitty poll. There is no reason to believe the 5 listed jobs is a subset of the answers. This is an infographic summarizing a single question from a survey that seems to be commissioned by LEGO.
I couldn't find like, an academic paper describing the poll. There's no methodology for it I can find. It's just some corporate fluff piece, frankly.
So I guess 3% if these are the only 3 countries included
Yep, only 3 countries. This is just a trash poll.
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dogdeanafternoon @lemmy.ca - 1mon
I just figured if 3000 people responded, they should have 9000 picks. Since we only see a few hundred it seemed like it’s a very small subset of the total answers.
Very shitty poll indeed.
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Ecco the dolphin - 1mon
Friend, the totals are percentages, not absolute counts
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dogdeanafternoon @lemmy.ca - 1mon
HOLY SHIT. Please no one pay attention to me
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Four_mile_circus - 1mon
Born too late to explore the oceans.
Born too early to explore the stars.
Born just in time to remind you to hit that like button, share with your friends, and subscribe so you don't miss a thing.
The West is lost.
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Carl - 1mon
We know more about our solar system than our oceans. We might have mapped a bit of the floor, but we don't know what is between the surface and the ocean floor.
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UltraGiGaGigantic - 1mon
We should send our billionaires down there... for research purposes of course.
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Dialectical Idealist - 1mon
Why don't scientists just point a telescope at the ocean: are they stupid?
3
Caveman - 1mon
We are both actively exploring the stars and the ocean. There's still a lot we don't know and there's still plenty of species being discovered in rainforest all the time.
Bacterias and viruses are also something that you can never finish exploring and there are for sure weird creatures like tardigrades that are still undiscovered.
You're just in time to discover genetics, epigenetics, biomechanics of nutrition, chemistry, biochemistry, how to make custom creatures from DNA building blocks, protein folding applications, mysteries of how the brain works and even math as mature as it is also has tons of undiscovered parts.
Sure you might be too late and to early for a couple of specific things but science discovery is absolutely exploding and random average Joe types are discovering things all the time. I think on the contrary now is one of the most likely things where you can just flat out discover something about the world that nobody has discovered before.
2
𝔄 𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔢𝔫𝔱 𝔭𝔦𝔢𝔠𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔠𝔥𝔢𝔢𝔰𝔢 - 1mon
"The West"
Sibling what.
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Ummdustry @sh.itjust.works - 1mon
that place where the sun sets homie
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Midnight1938 @reddthat.com - 1mon
Dont worry, they will all be increasing shareholder value
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Che Banana - 1mon
They'd better, the fiduciary responsibility of the corporate entity has the one, and only one requirement.
The cancer, deaths, depression, poverty, oppression, etc. is just for fun!
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orca @orcas.enjoying.yachts - 1mon
You can see a mix of escapism and “how do I fast track as much money as possible?”
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HakFoo @lemmy.sdf.org - 1mon
Thwn I'd expect higher figures for musicians, swayed by the top .01% that suck up all the fame and royalties.
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cfgaussian @lemmygrad.ml - 1mon
I think they realize it's quite unlikely to "make it" as a musician.
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Dialectical Idealist - 1mon
It's also obvious just how much work being a musician is. Even a child understands that you can't just pick up an instrument and play your favorite song without training. Whereas the work in being a Youtuber/Twitch streamer is hidden from the audience.
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HiddenLayer555 - 1mon
"DUHH, IT'S BECAUSE SPEECH IN CHINA IS CENSORED AND YOU'LL LITERALLY GET SENT TO A XINJIANG CONCENTRATION CAMP IF YOU TRIED BEING A VLOGGER"
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ShinkanTrain - 1mon
They need to run this survey again now that the Chinese space station has an air fryer.
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Redex - 1mon
The thing I find most surprising is that this many kids want to be teachers. It doesn't sound like something kids would typically be interested in, nor do I remember me nor my friends ever wanting to be teachers.
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salvaria @lemmy.blahaj.zone - 1mon
I wonder if kids pick that because its one job that they understand and attribute positively (to some degree - "a teacher is someone that teaches kids like me at a school and we have fun") whereas jobs that their parents have are more nebulous and more negative in their mind ("my parents leave for the day and then come back angry? I don't want to do that").
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Redex - 1mon
I'm assuming that as well, but it's still surprising to me.
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sobriquet @aussie.zone - 1mon
That was exactly my conclusion as well. At first I was surprised that kids would want to be teachers (having known a few - it’s not a great job! Terrible pay, not much respect… you’ve got to love it). But then I suddenly realised - what jobs would kids know about? All of them would know a teacher…
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LyD @lemmy.ca - 1mon
I know a former teacher in China who told me that it's a very respected profession there, in the same way that doctors and lawyers are respected in the west.
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binarytobis @lemmy.world - 1mon
I knew lots of kids who wanted to be teachers. Ask a kid that age to list their favorite people and their teacher will pop up often, because it’s someone they know. Teaching is something tangible to them.
I also knew several adults who wanted to be a teacher, but quit shortly after starting because they literally couldn’t afford it due to unreasonably low wages. We should really treat good teachers better.
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cfgaussian @lemmygrad.ml - 1mon
A lot more children from developing countries tend to want to be teachers because education is not taken for granted there (even when it has been universally available for a couple generations like it is now in China, the times in which it was not are still in living memory...go back to the 1960s and 70s and you still had many people in especially rural China who had very low levels of education). Education is seen there as a noble profession helping people on the path to a better life, and they look at teachers not too differently from how they look at doctors.
By contrast, developed countries tend to take education for granted, and young people see that education is not really that necessary to become rich, powerful and famous, and the most glamorized people in the society tend to be either some kind of entertainer, sports or pop star, or rich entrepreneurs.
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stray @pawb.social - 1mon
I think this may have to do with the fact that China regulates social media with regard to its effect on society, whereas it's the wild west in English-speaking countries. I don't agree with all of their criteria for regulating media, but I feel like there's probably a good middle-ground to be reached. It's well-documented how harmful social media has been to people of all ages.
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rmrf - 1mon
This might be a hot take, but I think it started with tying internet identities to real identities.
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AppleTea @lemmy.zip - 1mon
Unless I misunderstand, in China it's illegal to distribute VPNs, but simply using one and accessing the wider net is fine. That implementation isn't great, but it could also be a lot worse. Effectively it means anyone who's tech savvy enough can leave the walled garden whenever they like with practically no consequence. Though, it still requires some group of people assume the legal risk of setting up and hosting the VPN infrastructure.
I feel like there must be some means of achieving the same effect without criminalizing people just for providing a service. Like, defaulting to a garden of public and private webpages that meat the standard, but still with some means of leaving that garden provided you pass a minor techincal barrier to entry.
Also forcing every social media site and glorified-website-app to default to chronological sort every time you close the browser tab or leave the app. It's a simple change, but it would do a lot.
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Flickerby @lemmy.zip - 1mon
Careful, that's dangerously close to a Dessalines ban talk right there
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BlameTheAntifa @lemmy.world - 1mon
China actually has a viable space program, so being an astronaut actually seems attainable. And do teachers in China actually make a fair living wage?
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nimrod06 - 1mon
For teachers, I guess they're the biggest figure for students as they grow up. Confucian culture emphasizes enormous respect, and tbf, conformity to teachers.
I grew up wanting to be a YouTuber, and now work as a professor somewhere in East Asia with deep Confucian influence. The teacher-student dynamics here is truly shit.
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Jankatarch @lemmy.world - 1mon
Some children geniuenly respect landlords more than teachers because it's in line with teachings of "the modern philosopher Andrew Tate."
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Dessalines - 1mon
For sure, their space program feats and plans are incredibly exciting, and things we might see in our lifetime. There's a hopeful star-trek-esque optimism about space rn.
I'm not sure about teachers salaries, I'd have to look it up, but I do know teachers are well respected societally.
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notgold @aussie.zone - 1mon
I felt that when I went to the Chengdu science and technology museum. Everyone was in awesome of the space program and the kids really wanted to get involved.
Contrast that to the Melbourne or Canberra science museums and space technology isn't really at the front.
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Jankatarch @lemmy.world - 1mon
Not China but in my country teachers would often get benefits like how US soldiers do.
So for example some apartments had reduced rent and most private schools would accept your children for free and pay off lunch, clubs, school trip fees, etc.
So even tho teachers weren't rich they weren't completely on their own either. Maybe a similar thing happens over there?
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UltraGiGaGigantic - 1mon
private schools
Something wrong with the public schools they work for?
1
deforestgump [he/him, comrade/them] - 1mon
A healthy response to our current brain-rot, screen addict culture.
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TenderfootGungi @lemmy.world - 1mon
China has a space station that makes the ISS looks like a 1950 station wagon.
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manuallybreathing - 1mon
I'd love to see this redone today, except i suspect kids in the us and uk all want to be like, _s_hitler
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Saymaz @lemmygrad.ml - 1mon
China just won the reversed opium wars. [Insert based Xi meme]
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PolandIsAStateOfMind - 1mon
There is quite literal Opium War going right now (and for few decades in the past) but China has nothing to do with it, it's waged by the US government against people of US and some other countries mostly in Central and South America.
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Dessalines - 4w
A few other related ones:
The confirmed cia program to start the crack epidemic and use it to profit off of and impoverish black communities in the US. Read gary webb - dark alliance for more on that.
The historical and still ongoing spread of alcohol to native communities in the US.
The CIA pretty much took over the majority of international drug trade after ww2 via the helliwell plan(modelled on Chiang kai-sheks program) , and used it to fund their covert ops. A lot more on that in williams - operation gladio.
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UltraGiGaGigantic - 1mon
No war but class war.
2
Ep1cFac3pa1m @lemmy.world - 1mon
We’re cooked
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Dialectical Idealist - 1mon
And not educational content creation either. Most of these kids want to be paid for hot-takes and video game streaming.
8
ICCrawler @lemmy.world - 1mon
Being an astronaut was defo something I idolized as being a kid. Then I got older and realized what it'd take to actually live that life, and the risks involved in rocket travel, and things like muscle dystrophy from being in zero G too long. Not to mention all the schooling and training needed. And it's all for... not much, really. Like, at the end of the day, space travel does not actually help humanity that much. Now, satellites have certainly changed things a shit ton, but like, we're not going to other planets anytime soon. We're not gathering resources from other planets. We're not terraforming. Our "going to outer space" is parking your ass in a station in orbit and living with reduced QoL while you run experiments in zero-G. Just like, nah, fuck all that noise.
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cassandrafatigue @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 1mon
Doing science in cool jungles sounds much more fun, while being both safer and more if an adventure.
Deep sea seems like about the same risk but closer to home.
3
MoonMelon - 1mon
Pre-COVID. I wonder what it's like now. Anecdotes from people who work in education seem to say it was pretty devastating for child development, but it's hard to tell if it's above and beyond the perennial "this new generation is totally fucked" sentiment.
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MTK @lemmy.world - 1mon
It's funny when you just read the numbers and it's like the top pick for a US child is to be 29
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geneva_convenience - 1mon
Lot of aspiring young rappers in China it seems
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Darkard @lemmy.world - 1mon
I mean, if given the chance would you rather have a job where you can chat about your hobbies and get people to send you money and gifts related to your hobby?
No child is picking "Soul crushing office work" are they.
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eldavi - 1mon
most of the influencers i follow do both and i was getting the sense last night that some of them do the former to make the latter more bearable.
2
Rooster326 @programming.dev - 1mon
I mean not when the kid pretending to be a roach bum on twitch makes more than I make in a lifetime every single day.
If the turns were tabled - as they were 20 years ago - you'd still have kids wanting to be soul crushingly rich.
1
UltraGiGaGigantic - 1mon
I wanted to be free. Maybe next life.
3
Caveman - 1mon
I wanted to be an inventory that makes crazy gadgets or as wealthy as Scrooge McDuck.
3
MonkderVierte @lemmy.zip - 4w
See? UK is a 90% version of USA.
2
SleepyPie @lemmy.world - 1mon
On the upside, maybe western youngsters value having a personal life they enjoy more.
2
GhostPain @lemmy.world - 1mon
"I'm not seeing the ROI on these "teachers", China.
Have you thought about AI?"
Ex-crypto bros everywhere.
1
LiamBox - 1mon
Country that teaches the west is evil want to become the west genocide army.
dessalines in memes
What do you want to be when you grow up? USA vs UK vs China
18+52+37+47+56=210 for China. Each child could pick up to 3 answers. The average number of jobs the Chinese children picked was 2.
For USA/UK the average was about 1. Very few children selected more than one answer.
That's weird. What a weird poll. Were there only 5 possible choices? I would have told you I wanted to be a veterinarian at that age, if I answered at all. (I did not become a vet, I became a failure lmao)
I wanted to be an electrical engineer, then I saw all the math and settled for electrician, then I saw all the math and settled for Janitor
I wanted to be a naval pilot engineer at four. I’m colorblind, terrified of heights, not fond of authority, sloppy, and scatterbrained as hell. It’s quite possibly the worst possible job for me. To be fair, part of the reason was that I hated the word “bellybutton” and thought anyone who said ”navel” instead had the right idea, so it’s not like I really understood that part of it.
Unfortunate, i know lots of engineers who never learned math.
Not an engineer but I took calculus 1, 2, 3, discrete math, linear algebra, statics, dynamics, and probably others I'm forgetting.
Since school, I needed one trig function for calculating distance between lat/long coordinates that I looked up on Wikipedia and plugged in to a program.
... Statics was fucking cool though.
Statics is good fun. That was one of those courses i spent 40-50hrs a week on.
That knowledge is great for other applications too. For example, it helps with visualizing of how tension laid in fallen trees on saw crews for trail maintenance.
I still use statics at work but i could in theory get by with just basic FEA guess and check.
How are Electricians needing to do so much math? Its basic calculator and lookup table stuff? I mean a janitor does more complication calculations when they dilute cleaning products and estimate how much they will need for a given room.
Man, I really can't get why ppl hate math.
If it doesn't make sense, it sucks
Math is mostly taught as theory. It should be taught in practice.
Teaching people how to calculate an inventory, or taxes in a spreadsheet, is much more useful than teaching them differentials and number theory.
Its like teaching people carpentry but never having them make anything with it. You just quiz them on which tool and material they need to use.
I get where you're coming from but i have to disagree. What your describing is not math but econ, a different subject. Math is about how to calculate stuff with least effort.
I agree with you, its no longer math at thst point, but the application in the service of other fields.
What I am advocating for is that math at most of secondary school level should be taught on the practical basis. Math theory should be treated as a field of specialization. Much like how language is taught after people get over the basic literacy portion.
That's reasonable, but some theory is also good to know. In language class we discuss not just the content of an article but also how it is written. Language itself is a tool here, similar to math.
Another important aspect of school is to ensure that everyone is exposed to many topics. That's why we have art classes even though most people don't become artists. It let's everyone know that this topic exists and what it is about.
The practical implementation of teaching math is bad though, as you said. Sometimes it is just rote memorization, which is the complete opposite of what it should be. I hate that.
It's also possible that these aren't all of the available answers and they only selected the ones they thought are interesting.
It says all the children were given an option to pick up to 3 answers. Given the small sample size, it's likely there were questioned by the same person and that person didn't convey that to children properly.
Or they are all very focused on only 1 path.
Mmhmm, I also noticed that, which is why it's the second sentence in my post.
It's a survey of 3,000? It's still possible that only one person was giving the survey to the Chinese students.
But yeah, it does look like the Chinese students got different instructions or had them explained differently or something. Just a strange poll.
You need to give yourself more credit. You didn't become a failure, it was within you the whole time; you were always a failure...
That concludes my Pep Talk®
I think it’s pretty obvious this is a subset of the answers.
So it seems like, given 3 picks, only 1% of kids are choosing YouTuber as an option. That doesn’t really seem ridiculous.
Edit: it’s 3000 kids total, not per country. So I guess 3% if these are the only 3 countries included.
This poll annoyed me so much I googled it. It's just a really shitty poll. There is no reason to believe the 5 listed jobs is a subset of the answers. This is an infographic summarizing a single question from a survey that seems to be commissioned by LEGO.
Article from the "Harris Poll"
I couldn't find like, an academic paper describing the poll. There's no methodology for it I can find. It's just some corporate fluff piece, frankly.
Yep, only 3 countries. This is just a trash poll.
I just figured if 3000 people responded, they should have 9000 picks. Since we only see a few hundred it seemed like it’s a very small subset of the total answers.
Very shitty poll indeed.
Friend, the totals are percentages, not absolute counts
HOLY SHIT. Please no one pay attention to me
Born too late to explore the oceans.
Born too early to explore the stars.
Born just in time to remind you to hit that like button, share with your friends, and subscribe so you don't miss a thing.
The West is lost.
We know more about our solar system than our oceans. We might have mapped a bit of the floor, but we don't know what is between the surface and the ocean floor.
We should send our billionaires down there... for research purposes of course.
Why don't scientists just point a telescope at the ocean: are they stupid?
We are both actively exploring the stars and the ocean. There's still a lot we don't know and there's still plenty of species being discovered in rainforest all the time.
Bacterias and viruses are also something that you can never finish exploring and there are for sure weird creatures like tardigrades that are still undiscovered.
You're just in time to discover genetics, epigenetics, biomechanics of nutrition, chemistry, biochemistry, how to make custom creatures from DNA building blocks, protein folding applications, mysteries of how the brain works and even math as mature as it is also has tons of undiscovered parts.
Sure you might be too late and to early for a couple of specific things but science discovery is absolutely exploding and random average Joe types are discovering things all the time. I think on the contrary now is one of the most likely things where you can just flat out discover something about the world that nobody has discovered before.
"The West"
Sibling what.
that place where the sun sets homie
Dont worry, they will all be increasing shareholder value
They'd better, the fiduciary responsibility of the corporate entity has the one, and only one requirement.
The cancer, deaths, depression, poverty, oppression, etc. is just for fun!
You can see a mix of escapism and “how do I fast track as much money as possible?”
Thwn I'd expect higher figures for musicians, swayed by the top .01% that suck up all the fame and royalties.
I think they realize it's quite unlikely to "make it" as a musician.
It's also obvious just how much work being a musician is. Even a child understands that you can't just pick up an instrument and play your favorite song without training. Whereas the work in being a Youtuber/Twitch streamer is hidden from the audience.
"DUHH, IT'S BECAUSE SPEECH IN CHINA IS CENSORED AND YOU'LL LITERALLY GET SENT TO A XINJIANG CONCENTRATION CAMP IF YOU TRIED BEING A VLOGGER"
They need to run this survey again now that the Chinese space station has an air fryer.
The thing I find most surprising is that this many kids want to be teachers. It doesn't sound like something kids would typically be interested in, nor do I remember me nor my friends ever wanting to be teachers.
I wonder if kids pick that because its one job that they understand and attribute positively (to some degree - "a teacher is someone that teaches kids like me at a school and we have fun") whereas jobs that their parents have are more nebulous and more negative in their mind ("my parents leave for the day and then come back angry? I don't want to do that").
I'm assuming that as well, but it's still surprising to me.
That was exactly my conclusion as well. At first I was surprised that kids would want to be teachers (having known a few - it’s not a great job! Terrible pay, not much respect… you’ve got to love it). But then I suddenly realised - what jobs would kids know about? All of them would know a teacher…
I know a former teacher in China who told me that it's a very respected profession there, in the same way that doctors and lawyers are respected in the west.
I knew lots of kids who wanted to be teachers. Ask a kid that age to list their favorite people and their teacher will pop up often, because it’s someone they know. Teaching is something tangible to them.
I also knew several adults who wanted to be a teacher, but quit shortly after starting because they literally couldn’t afford it due to unreasonably low wages. We should really treat good teachers better.
A lot more children from developing countries tend to want to be teachers because education is not taken for granted there (even when it has been universally available for a couple generations like it is now in China, the times in which it was not are still in living memory...go back to the 1960s and 70s and you still had many people in especially rural China who had very low levels of education). Education is seen there as a noble profession helping people on the path to a better life, and they look at teachers not too differently from how they look at doctors.
By contrast, developed countries tend to take education for granted, and young people see that education is not really that necessary to become rich, powerful and famous, and the most glamorized people in the society tend to be either some kind of entertainer, sports or pop star, or rich entrepreneurs.
I think this may have to do with the fact that China regulates social media with regard to its effect on society, whereas it's the wild west in English-speaking countries. I don't agree with all of their criteria for regulating media, but I feel like there's probably a good middle-ground to be reached. It's well-documented how harmful social media has been to people of all ages.
This might be a hot take, but I think it started with tying internet identities to real identities.
Unless I misunderstand, in China it's illegal to distribute VPNs, but simply using one and accessing the wider net is fine. That implementation isn't great, but it could also be a lot worse. Effectively it means anyone who's tech savvy enough can leave the walled garden whenever they like with practically no consequence. Though, it still requires some group of people assume the legal risk of setting up and hosting the VPN infrastructure.
I feel like there must be some means of achieving the same effect without criminalizing people just for providing a service. Like, defaulting to a garden of public and private webpages that meat the standard, but still with some means of leaving that garden provided you pass a minor techincal barrier to entry.
Also forcing every social media site and glorified-website-app to default to chronological sort every time you close the browser tab or leave the app. It's a simple change, but it would do a lot.
Careful, that's dangerously close to a Dessalines ban talk right there
China actually has a viable space program, so being an astronaut actually seems attainable. And do teachers in China actually make a fair living wage?
For teachers, I guess they're the biggest figure for students as they grow up. Confucian culture emphasizes enormous respect, and tbf, conformity to teachers.
I grew up wanting to be a YouTuber, and now work as a professor somewhere in East Asia with deep Confucian influence. The teacher-student dynamics here is truly shit.
Some children geniuenly respect landlords more than teachers because it's in line with teachings of "the modern philosopher Andrew Tate."
For sure, their space program feats and plans are incredibly exciting, and things we might see in our lifetime. There's a hopeful star-trek-esque optimism about space rn.
I'm not sure about teachers salaries, I'd have to look it up, but I do know teachers are well respected societally.
I felt that when I went to the Chengdu science and technology museum. Everyone was in awesome of the space program and the kids really wanted to get involved.
Contrast that to the Melbourne or Canberra science museums and space technology isn't really at the front.
Not China but in my country teachers would often get benefits like how US soldiers do.
So for example some apartments had reduced rent and most private schools would accept your children for free and pay off lunch, clubs, school trip fees, etc.
So even tho teachers weren't rich they weren't completely on their own either. Maybe a similar thing happens over there?
Something wrong with the public schools they work for?
A healthy response to our current brain-rot, screen addict culture.
China has a space station that makes the ISS looks like a 1950 station wagon.
I'd love to see this redone today, except i suspect kids in the us and uk all want to be like, _s_hitler
China just won the reversed opium wars. [Insert based Xi meme]
There is quite literal Opium War going right now (and for few decades in the past) but China has nothing to do with it, it's waged by the US government against people of US and some other countries mostly in Central and South America.
A few other related ones:
No war but class war.
We’re cooked
And not educational content creation either. Most of these kids want to be paid for hot-takes and video game streaming.
Being an astronaut was defo something I idolized as being a kid. Then I got older and realized what it'd take to actually live that life, and the risks involved in rocket travel, and things like muscle dystrophy from being in zero G too long. Not to mention all the schooling and training needed. And it's all for... not much, really. Like, at the end of the day, space travel does not actually help humanity that much. Now, satellites have certainly changed things a shit ton, but like, we're not going to other planets anytime soon. We're not gathering resources from other planets. We're not terraforming. Our "going to outer space" is parking your ass in a station in orbit and living with reduced QoL while you run experiments in zero-G. Just like, nah, fuck all that noise.
Doing science in cool jungles sounds much more fun, while being both safer and more if an adventure.
Deep sea seems like about the same risk but closer to home.
Pre-COVID. I wonder what it's like now. Anecdotes from people who work in education seem to say it was pretty devastating for child development, but it's hard to tell if it's above and beyond the perennial "this new generation is totally fucked" sentiment.
It's funny when you just read the numbers and it's like the top pick for a US child is to be 29
Lot of aspiring young rappers in China it seems
I mean, if given the chance would you rather have a job where you can chat about your hobbies and get people to send you money and gifts related to your hobby?
No child is picking "Soul crushing office work" are they.
most of the influencers i follow do both and i was getting the sense last night that some of them do the former to make the latter more bearable.
I mean not when the kid pretending to be a roach bum on twitch makes more than I make in a lifetime every single day.
If the turns were tabled - as they were 20 years ago - you'd still have kids wanting to be soul crushingly rich.
I wanted to be free. Maybe next life.
I wanted to be an inventory that makes crazy gadgets or as wealthy as Scrooge McDuck.
See? UK is a 90% version of USA.
On the upside, maybe western youngsters value having a personal life they enjoy more.
"I'm not seeing the ROI on these "teachers", China.
Have you thought about AI?"
Ex-crypto bros everywhere.
Country that teaches the west is evil want to become the west genocide army.
How convenient.
What?
That's pure projection