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.
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.
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®
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.
Why don't scientists point a telescope at the ocean: are they stupid?
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.
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.
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?
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.
China has a space station that makes the ISS looks like a 1950 station wagon.
A healthy response to our current brain-rot, screen addict culture.
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.
And not educational content creation either. Most of these kids want to be paid for hot-takes and video game streaming.
We’re cooked
Lot of aspiring young rappers in China it seems
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.
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
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.
On the upside, maybe western youngsters value having a personal life they enjoy more.