Comment by Stormbringer
15 years ago
To say that there is no opportunity in places like Brazil and India is to blame someone else for your not taking the initiative.
Even in the UK and US the vast majority of the students don't really take advantage of the education system. And those who do are often ridiculed by those that don't.
There is just as much pressure to slack off and underperform in the west as there is to do rote memorisation in Brazil or to cheat on the exams in India.
The system is never to blame for you not taking the opportunities that are there. The system is not to blame for your slackness.
So long as you never take responsibility for your results, you will get crap results.
Those guys you see in India who are rich and successful, I guarantee you they didn't sit around pissing and moaning about how because the system is bad there are no opportunities. They grabbed a big double handle of life's balls and went out and made their own opportunities.
That's what i'm saying, the real smart guys know better. I said opportunities are not as abudant as in the US, not that there's none of them (at some point the reverse will be true) . But it's also true that in the emerging economies there is state-sponsored push towards higher education coupled with the rise of the middle classes which leads to these phenomena. You do find disinterested students more often in countries where people don't have an incentive to quit university and pursue their real talents. Unfortunately this leads to lower quality of education. On the flip side, thanks to the internet there's a whole world of information out there readily available to anyone who cares.