Do You Know The One Construction Site In Costa Rica That’s Working 24 Hours Per Day?

There’s only one construction site that I know of in Costa Rica that’s working 24 hours
per day, seven days per week come rain – and it does rain here – or shine…

On more than a few occasions, I have discussed education with my girlfriend’s 15 year old
son and the competition that he will face when he eventually starts looking for a job ‘if’
Milan decides not to take him on as a professional soccer player.

Needless to say, he knows nothing about work and certainly hasn’t got a clue how hard
it is to make a living now never mind how much harder it will be for him in the future
Maybe it’s my imagination but I seem to remember some ancient requirement in school
called ‘homework’ and, what is now an obviously outdated concept which used to be
known as ‘reading a book.’

I mean why read a book when you’ve got YouTube, eh?

But this young man seems strangely proud of the fact that he’s only read three books
this year… Jeez! I’m not in school and read more than that every ten days.

Two Million Minutes (2) is the name of a Robert A. Compton documentary and the amount
of time a student leaves eighth grade until high school graduation. The amount of
education gathered within these 2 million minutes by 3 different super powers of 21st
century is the subject of the documentary.

“What Compton learned in making the film was that high-school students from India and
China surpassed U.S. students on every academic level — which puts the economic
well-being of the U.S. at grave risk in a global economy.”

“In addition, few Americans realize that India and China — which have a combined
population of 2.3 billion people — will have an enormous educated workforce in the years
to come… The two countries have more than 400 million students in K-12 education
compared to the 53 million in the U.S.”

Are any of our educators paying attention to these numbers?

In Bill Gate’s 2009 Annual Letter (2) he spoke of: “The federal No Child Left Behind Act
isn’t perfect, but it has forced us to look at each school’s results and realize how poorly
we are doing overall. It surprises me that more parents are not upset about the
education their own kids are receiving.”

Compton had film crews record high school seniors in the U.S., India and China in 2005
and 2006. “What we saw and what the film portrays is that our culture has a highly
developed athletic and extracurricular system but a deteriorating core academic system,”
said Compton. “In 25 years, America has gone simply from being ‘A Nation at Risk’ to a
nation way behind its largest future economic competitors — India and China.”

I’m guessing that as long as we are fascinated with talentless “celebrities” like Bruteney
Spores and her “extracurricular” activities and we’re reading the latest gossip about
“highly developed” athletes like David Beckham then I guess that’s all we can expect
from our children.

So apart from the fact that our educational systems are failing, the US has an external debt
per capita (3) of US$44,358 which is 95.09% of GDP. The UK has an external debt per
capita of US$153,616 which is a staggering 336% of GDP and China’s external debt as a
percentage of GDP is a mere 20%.

So not only are Chinese children becoming better educated than ours which will help them
to easily compete against our own, they’re better money managers and not saddled with
an outrageous amount of debt and yes! Coming back to that one construction site in
Costa Rica that’s working 24 hours per day, seven days per week?

Yup! You guessed it, they’re all Chinese building the new stadium in the capital city San
Jose.

Written by Scott Oliver, author of How To Buy Costa Rica Real Estate Without Losing Your Camisa and Costa Rica’s Guide To Making Money Offshore and the Director of Costa Rica Living & Retirement – Secrets To Happiness, a new DVD which reveals all with 14 in depth interviews..

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.