This one‘s a bit of a stretch. And from a usually fairly reasonable and reliable source.
So much so, that I’m wondering if it’s actually sarcasm. But…
“Good luck to the west”?
Based on this? OK, Boomer.
If you ask a 8-12 year old what they want to be when they grow up, and you give them just five possible answers of which only one is a “real” job (and they can only choose up to three), then of course you’re going to get fanciful results. So I’m not going to spend too much time on this, because I think it does kind of speak for itself.
That said, how weird that Chinese kids don’t really want to be Youtubers, in a country where Youtube is blocked, and free speech isn’t exactly encouraged. And how weird that American and UK kids don’t want to be astronauts: one of very few professions that would potentially bring them into closer contact with Elon Musk. [/s]
And what’s the issue with 25% of western kids wanting to become teachers? It’s an honourable and worthwhile career, but we simply don’t require that many teachers. Something like 10% would surely more than cover our needs. By the same token, 11% of people aren’t astronauts. I’m sure that the number of astronauts will inevitably increase in the future, but we’re not going to need one of nine people to be an astronaut. That would mean a billion astronauts by 2035. Ridiculous.
And yes, I know that’s a silly extrapolation because this is a silly survey, but it wasn’t me that started with the serious analysis here.
Still, if we’re really taking this as a meaningful questionnaire and a genuine thing to be concerned about, then maybe we should have a look at the results in another way. That being that there were 108% of choices by American children, 105% by UK kids, and an incredible 210% by the Chinese. That, to me, points to a wishy-washy lack of decisiveness; a trait which surely has far greater implications for the future downfall of their society, as they repeated dawdle over making important decisions (just before more than half their population chooses to go into space).
In which case: Good luck to the Chinese.