My first guess was the other direction. Instant gratification is innate, deferred gratification is learned.
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Hmm, Iâll accept that.
Then, another way of putting it is that many parents prefer not to parent their kids about deferred gratification.
tl;dr: parents. STOP GIVING YOUR KIDS VIDEO DEVICES!! Iâm talking 3-year-olds, not already-ruined teenagers.
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I may have learned this correctly and just got dumber, but I sincerely thought an improper fraction was like â1 3/4â. Which is of course 7/4, but I thought it was in being written that way.
Yep. If these sources are correct, in 1930, only 19% of the population had a HS diploma or more. And, only 30% of teens graduated from HS.
HS may have been more challenging then because fewer kids attempted it.
https://www.infoplease.com/us/education/educational-attainment-sex-1910-2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09fob-wwln-t.html#:~:text=In%201930%2C%20only%2030%20percent,It%20made%20them%20smarter.
Fair enough, speaking as a parent, itâs hard to be like:
âyeah you need to sit up straight, practice Chopin, read Shakespeare, and no screens ever.
Iâma drink beer and play video games 4 hours straight.â
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I think they call this a âmixed numberâ
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Those video games might require you to recognize that Chopin tune to get to the next level and role play as a Shakespearean character.
WTF you doing that for?
Yeaah! {slowly hides wine glass behind gaming PC screen}
Elementary school was certainly more challenging then.
Both my parents only had grade 8 education: they were smart farm kids whose parents couldnât afford the cost of sending them to town to attend high school. Most farm boys stayed home to farm in 1930 in any event. However my parentsâ arithmetic skills were awesome. My dad could do mortgage amortizations: how many grade 8 students could do that now without a device? There were some practical aspects of the old education system that were positive. I canât help but thinking that practicing arithmetic might have been a good brain exercise and helpful in developing brain prowess in other areas.
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I could see it improving math-based skills if the person already had them (faster processing, ability to solve more complex problems, spatial reasoning etc).
However, mathematical ability is likely an inherited trait genetically-speaking, so thats unlikely to do much at the population wide level.
Another gem from that era: apparently during the depression during the winter, spring & fall it was standard operating procedure for mom to make up sandwiches for the whole family every Saturday morning, extinguish the fire and the family would head to the library and spend the whole day reading in the library.
Libraries were heated and free, so it was an obvious way to cut the heat bill. Imagine if nearly everyone spent maybe 35 full days in a library reading every year (more or less depending on the weather). How much more knowledge would people have?
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They would probably kick people out of the library and fine them now for being poor⌠sorry, smelly.
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I think poor families are ok; itâs homeless people they donât want.
A lot of families didnât lose their homes in the depression because they didnât have mortgages; they tended to own the home outright in that era. Theyâd fall behind on their property taxes because they had no money to pay the taxes.
Do you (currently, in 2023) pay property taxes preposterously in arrears? Itâs probably a holdover from the Great Depression. Counties knew people couldnât pay, and there was no benefit to the county to kick people out of their homes, so they extended the due dates. The taxes that were due in August are now due in September. And the ones that were due 6 months later (originally February)⌠well obviously theyâd have to get pushed back at least to March so that theyâre still at 6 month intervals but the county would do one better and make them due in April⌠now two months in arrears. Lather, Rinse, Repeat enough times and the taxes are now 16 months in arrears or something crazy like that.
Renters lost their homes though, if they lost their jobs.
That is 80% of the purpose of arithmetic and maths. It (should) helps you to think more logically and critically.
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You pay your property taxes in 6 months intervals?
I do. We get a bill with 2 pay stubs. One for each half.
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I have paid it both semi-annually and annually⌠seems to vary by state and Iâve owned homes in several.
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I pay it quarterly, but the rates are constant over 6 month periods.
We pay summer and winter property taxes. Theyâre earmarked for different things so thereâs a big and small bill.
We also donât use âescrowâ, where the mortgage company collects a little extra over your mortgage payment to pay your taxes and insurance. I donât know the specifics of what allows this, but probably some combination of our low debt-to-income and high credit. (I couldnât remember if youâre a Canadian so maybe you know.)