Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Nodrog
American kids apparently have higher ambitions on average than kids elsewhere, regardless of their poor education system. I think that's a fairly strong statement about cultural attitudes and the extent to which a fundamental orientation towards success gets transmitted.
|
Your interpretation is probably correct, but I'd be interested if they defined what "highly skilled" meant to people before asking (I've only skimmed the report briefly so can't tell). What does "low skilled" mean in absolute terms? Is it the same in every country? Japan scores worst in this report (of OECD countries) and Poland is second highest. Maybe "highly skilled" means different things in these nations, I'm not sure.
Either way, it's difficult to nail down what any of this means - if you ask someone "Are you going to be rich?" does this mean "richer than other people" or "rich enough to afford x". What about asking people how likely they thought it would be they'd be homeless or suffer malnutrition in their lifetimes? That seems like a more fundamental question.
I would think it's a fairly obvious though that countries which promote acquisition and consumption as routes to personal happiness are far more likely to have people who want to earn more. I wouldn't necessarily equate this with ambition though, unless it's an either/or decision between earning millions or starving alone in the gutter. Someone who makes it their life goal to earn a million pounds a year by the time they are 25, or own fity houses is not being particularly ambitious imo (if that's the full extent of their goals), if nothing else they're showing a depressing lack of imagination.