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In the end they titled their paper “The Weirdest People in the World?” (pdf) By “weird” they meant both unusual and Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. It is not just our Western habits and cultural preferences that are different from the rest of the world, it appears. The very way we think about ourselves and others—and even the way we perceive reality—makes us distinct from other humans on the planet, not to mention from the vast majority of our ancestors. Among Westerners, the data showed that Americans were often the most unusual, leading the researchers to conclude that “American participants are exceptional even within the unusual population of Westerners—outliers among outliers.”

the “weird” Western mind is the most self-aggrandizing and egotistical on the planet: we are more likely to promote ourselves as individuals versus advancing as a group. WEIRD minds are also more analytic, possessing the tendency to telescope in on an object of interest rather than understanding that object in the context of what is around it. The WEIRD mind also appears to be unique in terms of how it comes to understand and interact with the natural world. Studies show that Western urban children grow up so closed off in man-made environments that their brains never form a deep or complex connection to the natural world.

metaphysical questions: Is my thinking so strange that I have little hope of understanding people from other cultures? Can I mold my own psyche or the psyches of my children to be less WEIRD and more able to think like the rest of the world? If I did, would I be happier?

How many? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says, “Employment of mathematicians is expected to increase by 16 percent from 2010 to 2020…. There will be competition for jobs because of the small number of openings in this occupation.”

1) Humankind’s hope for the future lies, as it always has, in the richness of human variability. We differ in experience, situation, aspirations, attitudes, abilities, interests, motivations, emotions, life chances, prospects, potential, and luck. To survive and prosper, these differences need to be exploited to the maximum. The core curriculum minimizes them. (2) Knowledge is exploding at an ever-accelerating rate. Whole new fields of study unimagined even a few years ago are emerging. The explosion isn’t just going to continue, it’s going to accelerate. Thinking we know enough to lock ANY curriculum in place — much less one that’s more than a hundred years old — is either naïve or malicious. (3) The future is unknowable. Period. Even if it were possible to standardize and program kids, we don’t know — NOBODY knows — what they’ll need to know next week, much less for the rest of their lives. They may need technical skills no one now has, or the ability to survive on edible weeds and a quart of water a day. Neither the Common Core nor the tests that manufacturers are able to write can take adequate account of an unknown future.