A daddy dimed car
American idol
GAP
or all this other crap the suburbanite masses who piss me off have.
No, they have poverty, famine, disease, human rights abuses.
So when they come here I'm glad to see very few of them have their heads up their asses and insist on majoring in stuff that matters. I'm also glad to see they advance their education beyond that of the typical spoiled brat American and get a doctorate or masters.
Sociology, women's studies, philosophy and peace studies majors in OC, take note.
Actually: http://www.nowair.com.eg/
ReplyDelete(not only do they have applebee's, but also poorly planned flash.)
As much as I love America and firmly believe in The American Dream, it is in my mind's eye a minor tragedy that in many places, despite the fact that people might be occasionially offended by western culture, over the last 10 years, bits of our culture here have been taken as trophies there--Applebee's in Egypt is the high end place that city people go to celebrate big occasions. It makes me blush in a manner I would imagine similar to that of a 1st generation American child of folks from a Melanesian cargo cult.
Likewise, the intelligencia and rich suburbanite types _around the world_ that have the means to access such things are as inclined to have international sattelite/cable and consequently tend to be as enamored of the AI/DH crap that is also available here. My upper-crust cousins south of the border surely watch more MTV than I do.
That being said, before I go longwinded (too late!), it is good that some of those that come here do go into "things that matter". But I think it is more of a consequence of those interested enough to pursue these things tending to be interested enough to be willing to pick up everything to pursue them where they are going to be studied best. Which is generally here.
_And_ this is usually not a matter of being some manner of noble savage for not being "corrupted by american cultural exports" nor being "pre-innoculated with poverty, famine, disease, human rights abuses". Because there are also people who come up here with the intentions of picking lettuce. Indeed, I don't have the facts to plot out the "Foreign-Born Share of Employment by Education among Cab Drivers and Day Laborers", but cringe a little to think that they probably look fairly similar.
Yeah, um, the problem with this blanket statment is that we're stuck with our own low acheivers, but no one is shipping the world's low acheivers here to study. You should expect this kind of result. Compare this to Americans studying abroad and their acheivment measured against the local population. We don't export low acheivers.
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