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Post by beth on Jun 28, 2009 2:42:05 GMT
This seems strange. I'd have guessed there'd be no difference. US seniors bash Brits in memory test Fri Jun 26, 10:40 am ET PARIS (AFP) – American seniors 'remember when' long after their British counterparts have forgotten what day of the week it is, researchers report in a study released this week. The trans-Atlantic gap, as measured in a "memory and awareness test," amounted to a decade of aging, according to the survey of 8,299 Americans and 5,276 Britons over 65. 75-year-olds in the US, in other words, scored far better than their sun-starved age peers, and equalled the performance of Brits 10 years younger, according to the study, published in London-based journal BMC Geriatrics. The tests measured instant and delayed recall of a series of ten common nouns such as "tree", "village," "baby," etc. Participants were also asked what day, date, month and year it was. On a 24-point scale, US subjects scored 12.8 on average, compared to 11.4 for the English. "The better cognitive performance of US adults was actually quite surprising," said Kenneth Langa, a researcher at the University of Michigan and the study's lead author. "US adults have a higher prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors, which are generally associated with cognitive decline and poorer mental function." Such risk factors include smoking tobacco, obesity, physical inactivity and high blood pressure. Britain has the highest rate of obesity in Europe, but Americans tip the scales even more. Langa speculated that higher education and income levels in the United States may have compensated, resulting in sharper minds going into old age. He also noted that American adults report significantly lower levels of depression than their British counterparts, a factor than can also affect cognitive skills. news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090626/od_afp/healthaginggeriatricsmemoryoffbeat
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Post by Liberator on Jun 28, 2009 18:10:47 GMT
Fascinating. I think it probably has less to do with them now than with their youth. You don't know the kind of people involved but their education would have covered the 1940s when the USA was far better off than the UK and their public education was a lot better in practical matters. The US went ahead much further afterwards while the UK was marking time. The Americans probably had a much more 'inspirational' early age than the Brits.
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Post by Big Lin on Jun 28, 2009 18:50:25 GMT
I think in general US education is better than British.
The average state school is so bad these days that kids learn more outside it than they ever do inside.
As someone who used to teach English as a foreign language, I can tell you that foreigners speak BETTER English than native speakers.
We DRILLED our students; we made SURE that they UNDERSTOOD what we were saying; we followed the logical structure of presentation, practice, performance.
Teachers in our schools are terrible nowadays!
Also our way of life in Britain doesn't help either!
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Post by mouse on Jun 28, 2009 18:55:16 GMT
and they had a much better diet on the whole too as for depression among the old..i am not suprised the old in the uk are more depressed than americans..we have had to endure the ruination of our country for the last 13 yrs..a deliberate ruination of every thing the old were brought up to value honour..truth..loyaty..honesty..integrity we have watched our country sink brought down by what apears to be deliberate policy...its not easy to remain rational when crims are valued above the honset law abiding when grandchildren are uneducated when the health service can kill you quicker than cure when your countries name can hardly be spoken history is re arranged etc etc etc
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Post by Big Lin on Jun 28, 2009 19:54:57 GMT
and they had a much better diet on the whole too as for depression among the old..i am not suprised the old in the uk are more depressed than americans..we have had to endure the ruination of our country for the last 13 yrs..a deliberate ruination of every thing the old were brought up to value honour..truth..loyaty..honesty..integrity we have watched our country sink brought down by what apears to be deliberate policy...its not easy to remain rational when crims are valued above the honset law abiding when grandchildren are uneducated when the health service can kill you quicker than cure when your countries name can hardly be spoken history is re arranged etc etc etc History is one of my great passions, Mouse, so I'd have to disagree that the ruin of Britain only started 13 years ago. I think it started with the Second World War and after that we got stuck with a Stalinism-and-water government under Attlee. Churchill, Eden and Macmillan didn't touch the DOMESTIC side of politics very much and certainly didn't dismantle the welfare state OR try to impose limits on immigration. Mike is older than me so he remembers people before my time. He thinks the rot really set in with Callaghan and it's been a long downhill spiral ever since. My Dad reckons it started with Ted Heath and my Mum reckons it dates back to Macmillan with his consumerist paradise. A whole couple of generations have been raised with the false idea that they can have everything they want without making any effort to work for it. Too many people expect constant handouts, constant luxury and stuff like that. It's very sad.
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Post by june on Jun 28, 2009 22:06:13 GMT
Very true Lin - I blame Thatcherism - you can have it all! It failed to say, if you work for it. It's also a falicy - you cannot have it all.
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Post by mouse on Jun 28, 2009 22:20:24 GMT
i will agree that the rot started before the last 13 yrs it most certainly did........but the last 13 have been the most draconian the culmination of the socialist agenda played to europes tune...before that it was a trickle..blair and his cohorts turned it into a flood tide...the daylight robbery of private pensions...the collapse of education..unlimmitted imigration...the dismantling of the legal and justice system...the politisising of the police and the knee jerk however many hundred new laws[more laws than in the last 400 yrs] the survelience..the collapse of freedoms and liberties..the attempts to repalca england with regions etc etc the drinking laws...the dumbing down of almost every thing...including our universities... the general aceptance of tat instead of quality....da sleb culture...when we have liars and theieves and the unelected running the country what sort of standards do we expect no wonder our old people are depressed.....orwell wasnt far out was he all pigs are equal..some more equal than others
the last 13 yrs have turned rot into fully fledged decay...rot you can cure...decay you have to tear down to re build
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Post by Liberator on Jun 28, 2009 22:26:30 GMT
I think it had a lot to do with the Supermac beginnings of consumerism that led to a nostalgia that everything could just carry on from the 1930s but far better. WW2 utterly changed most of Europe and the USA but Britain really wanted everything to be better as long as it stayed the same. Harold Wilson's white heat of technology (not exactly what he said) just didn't take with unions or management and by the time Thatcher came around the new technologies had not caught on and the old ones were falling apart. All she did was allow spivs to make a fortune out of completing the wreckage and put nothing in its place.
I don't agree about education though: I think American public education has become far worse than British mainly because British started to follow it but never went as far and the US ran its public system down to make money out of private.
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Post by mouse on Jun 28, 2009 22:28:10 GMT
Very true Lin - I blame Thatcherism - you can have it all! It failed to say, if you work for it. It's also a falicy - you cannot have it all. callahan...problem ?? what problem......also PC..HR and HEALTH AND SAFETY....which played nicely into the hands of those who hate our country and wished to destroy it... one thing thatcher disnt want to do was destroy the country..but for all those ex fellow travelers it was their one true aim ..brown..blair..reed...prescott..kinnock.and the rest...all the union brothers such as scargill..jackson et all
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Post by beth on Jun 29, 2009 0:55:37 GMT
Maybe it doesn't have much to do with education systems. Public edu was good here when I was in school. There were efforts to enforce standards for general information, history and pop culture (along with basic ge requirements of course) that no longer exist. But, this study doesn't have to do with knowledge, does it? It's talking about memory - recall of the years of their lives and what happened when. So, I'll guess the difference is in our media barrage. News reports here have been presented as a kind of infotainment starting in the '70s when CNN became a 24-7 presence. No mere education system could program our memory banks the way cable news can (and does). Most people I know have at least one TV running constantly - tuned to cable news. As far as the difference in depression among seniors, everything I've read on the subject in the past pinpoints the role a curious mind plays in general well being. That usually means taking an interest in what happens - not just in the family or the neighborhood - but in the world. I don't know how this might play out in the U. K., but I'm pretty sure it's what improves the outlook of many folks here. What is that old saw - something about unhappy people being interested in themselves, happier people being interested in themselves and other people and the happiest having interest in people AND ideas. Don't remember exactly, but I have to believe computer use via blogs and online social sites is going to give us a boost over the next few years.
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Post by Liberator on Jun 29, 2009 1:32:37 GMT
I think the educational rot started in the USA when socialisation started to matter more than educational knowledge. The US was always geared more practically, where the UK was more academic and not too bothered about the non-university types as long as they knew enough to work for somebody. The US moved to private education, so less money was available for public and fooled the people into thinking that lower tax and paying far more in fees gave them 'choice' - but 'choice' to indoctrinate their kids with Creationism or Racism or the gods know what. The flaw in the USA's obsession with 'rights' is failure to accept that anybody might have rights that restrict those of others, like children against parents, secularists against religious, women against men, and latterly the reverse.
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Post by beth on Jun 29, 2009 3:00:31 GMT
I kind of see what you're saying, but, really, our public school system didn't suffer significantly from a trend toward private schools, probably because the private schools were mostly church connected and not especially known for better systems - just a little different. That said, public schools here are not all equal. The quality of education they provide has a lot to do with whether they are located in an upscale district that pays enough in taxes to support teachers salaries, adequate supplies, buildings, etc. - or a poor district that does not allow for much beyond the necessities. I remember noticing some change in the late '60s when I was in high school and my brother was in elementary. About that time, new math came into being. Not a bad thing, but more geared toward practical, more simplistic skills than a launching pad for college level courses. About that same time, vocational degrees in secondary school were touted as a direct route to career success without college. Then, the ever controversial GQ came into vogue. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligenceblogthings.com/whatsyoureqquiz/ From then on, peer groups didn't necessarily share common knowledge and/or fields of reference as they had before. My age group, for example, shared big blocks of general information that was practically unknown to (for example) gen X. In spite of the edu changes, though, I still think the media info avalanche is mostly responsible for our memory of events in the U. S..
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Post by randomvioce on Jun 29, 2009 10:20:08 GMT
I think it all started once we started to destroy local communities with massive job cuts. Mrs Thatcher once screamed ‘No such thing as society’ as her Government smashed working class communities apart. Well if it wasn’t true at the time she said it, it is certainly true now.
Once the Tories flattened these communities, everything else followed. The breakdown of the family, the breakdown of law and order, the health (physical and mental) of the populace suffered. Social breakdown, the whole system has collapsed under the weight of the pressure brought to bear with the collapse of social society and the ‘grab all you can, as quickly as you can’ ethos.
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Post by Big Lin on Jun 29, 2009 17:24:23 GMT
I think the educational rot started in the USA when socialisation started to matter more than educational knowledge. The US was always geared more practically, where the UK was more academic and not too bothered about the non-university types as long as they knew enough to work for somebody. The US moved to private education, so less money was available for public and fooled the people into thinking that lower tax and paying far more in fees gave them 'choice' - but 'choice' to indoctrinate their kids with Creationism or Racism or the gods know what. The flaw in the USA's obsession with 'rights' is failure to accept that anybody might have rights that restrict those of others, like children against parents, secularists against religious, women against men, and latterly the reverse. I think there's a certain amount of confusion in your post especially in the final sentence. To a certain extent granting ANY rights implies the restriction of others. For instance, if there was a right to murder or rape that would seriously restrict other rights of people. The right to free speech is also a minefield where all kinds of difficult areas - like libel, slander, racism, etc - come into it. The right to strike is another problem area - how far do we take into account the fact that the actions of the strikers, however just their own claims may or may not be, can cost other people who are not even involved in the dispute, their jobs. I could go on but I think you get the basic point. What worries me more is that too many people are focused on what they call 'rights' and forget about their 'duties.'
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Post by Liberator on Jun 30, 2009 0:07:27 GMT
In the end though, it always comes to a comparison between English schools feeling better than their American equivalents with armed guards all over the place,but never with European without need of any of that. Even when my mother was evacuated to England in 1940, she found her education two years ahead of theirs, them incapable of recognising the effect fleeing her home for a foreign culture might have, and they called her 'Froggy' because she was not of their Chosen Master Race. Why should anyone wonder that between the British Reich and the Nazi Empire and the AmeriKKKan successor to both, I find difference only in their rhetorical lies?
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Post by sinistral on Jun 30, 2009 0:52:25 GMT
In the end though, it always comes to a comparison between English schools feeling better than their American equivalents with armed guards all over the place,but never with European without need of any of that. Even when my mother was evacuated to England in 1940, she found her education two years ahead of theirs, them incapable of recognising the effect fleeing her home for a foreign culture might have, and they called her 'Froggy' because she was not of their Chosen Master Race. Why should anyone wonder that between the British Reich and the Nazi Empire and the AmeriKKKan successor to both, I find difference only in their rhetorical lies? Please Lin.....do excuse the following post....I don't usually let rip,but in this case I feel it's justified. Quite honestly ratarse....if your mother's attitude to the English was anything like your's she was lucky she was only called froggy. Happy enough to come and hide in an English funk hole though,wasn't she? Indeed the British "master race" even put up with you bumming an education here. You have made it clear,time after time,on various boards that your sympathies are not with the British who fought the Nazis.Nor is there any sympathy with the Jews,Gypsies or any of the other persecuted minorities that were the victims of the Third Reich. So may I,on behalf of those who believe in true freedom,say to you...... Take your hate filled bigotry of the British,the Americans,the Jews,the Gypsies and homosexuals....and shove it right up your fundament. Once again apologies Lin.
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Post by mouse on Jun 30, 2009 10:28:35 GMT
, them incapable of recognising the effect fleeing her home for a foreign culture might have, and they called her 'Froggy' because she was not of their Chosen Master Race. ? oh dear...we always call the french frogs...so what!! as for not recognising the trauma of her fleeing her home etc...we were dealing with people with real traumas.....evacuees from france were way down on the list.....when it came to real trauma in 1940 as for the master race ;D....are you still holding a grudge because the germans walked in....sounds like sour grapes to me
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