Whither America's Technological Edge?

baldass_newbie asks: "Ben Stein wrote an editorial titled, 'How to Ruin American Enterprise'. To me, technological innovation is a big outward sign of a successful economy. Sometimes it appears like the U.S. is losing its edge in technology. Well, I was wondering what the Slashdot community at large thinks is wrong (or right) with the U.S. and technological innovation?" The article deals less with technology and more with the society on which said innovation is based, and the problems that may bring it down around our collective ears. Give the article a read, and share your thoughts on whether or not you think it's an accurate assessment on the current and future situation of America's technological advantage.

Comments

Well, duh.

[Skyshadow]

C'mon, this is obvious:

How long can America keep pumping out students whose test scores are in the cellar for industrial nations and expect to maintain an edge in technology? As it stands, a lot of our brains are already imported from India and China.

I live in CA, which should stand as a dire warning to the rest of the country: They limit their property taxes, their schools go underfunded, and as a result California natives largely end up working to repair the cars and wash the floors of the well-educated from elsewhere.

The US needs to get serious about education, and fast. With the tech boom and the world shinking as it is, this is a really bad time to be stupid.

Re:Well, duh.

[MagikSlinger]

The US needs to get serious about education, and fast. With the tech boom and the world shinking as it is, this is a really bad time to be stupid.

It's not just the government. American parents pay lip service to education, but don't really set either a good example nor push their children to excel. I remember in school the classes always had a mix of real poor performers to really good students. The difference was not the teachers, but their home-life and parents. Parents get the kind of education system they want. If they don't care, don't expect the government to care either.

[Insert your favorite bash to blame for this here]

Re:Well, duh.

[Ryu2]

I do agree that education is the root cause, but test scores, etc. are only one part of the story. I'm an American, but I've spent a lot of time in many Asian countries, and have worked with many people over there. The educational system there emphasizes discipline, conformity, rote practice and drilling and unity, in accordance with societal values that traditionally pervase Asian societies.

This may sound good on paper, but there's a sad human side to it as well, in the form of students spending days and nights outside of class in outside of school courses, known as juku in Japan or hagwon in Korea, in a furious rat-race attempt to succeed. All emphasis is placed on getting into the top schools, to preserve the all-so-important face prevalent in Asian society. It's no coincidence that the suicide rate amongst teenagers in Asia is much higher than the general population over there.

Corporal punishment is practiced in classrooms. The curriculum is homogenous across all schools and teaching method is rote memorization and practice, practice, and more practice, which does not encourage the development of free thinking, and all this talked about "innovation" is generally spawned at the industrial rather than the academic level.

While Asia is indeed impressive, all this comes at a price, and blindly following their methods is. IMHO, not the way for the US to go.

Re:Well, duh.

[Skyshadow]

Your solution is to raise property taxes in an area where real estate is already prohibitively expensive? Discouraging people from buying isn't a good idea...

Bullshit.

What you're actually seeing is yet another example of my parents' generation (the boomers) once again thoughtlessly gorging themselves at the expense of their children.

They run up huge debt rather than pay higher taxes. They extend the pyramid scheme that is social security so they can benefit at their children's expense. And they underfund the educational system so they can live in a slightly larger house than they otherwise would.

The CA system only really benefits people who already own homes, not new home buyers. So, it's just another example of our parents living at our expense.

Re:Well, duh.

[leviramsey]

Those societal things are often why the various Asian nations tend not to make advances in science, medicine, and technology, though they may be the ones who best capitalize on it. Innovation, by definition, requires challenging the old order, the hierarchy. Confucian-type values make it very difficult to take this first step.

How many major, reasonably innovative (ie not a clone of Outlook) pieces of computer software (to take an example) are currently or were designed by an Asian (not an Asian American)? I can't think of one off the top of my head. Now how many are being coded by Asians (using design directives from non-Asians)?

This may sound horribly racist, but that is not the intent. If anything, it's pointing out a tension that exists between Confucianism and innovation. The fact that many persons "of Asian extraction" but who grew up in the West are great innovators indicates that it is not an issue of brain capacity; it is an issue of culturally-influenced psychology.

School

[seanadams.com]

7) Encourage a mass culture that spits on intelligence and study and instead elevates drug use, coolness through sex and violence, and contempt for school.

This IMHO is the big one. I went to school in England until about age 12, and then came back to a private school in California. Overnight, I went from doing trig, chemistry, latin, greek, french, to gluing fucking popsicle sticks together. I kid you not, our schools are WAY behind the rest of the world.

If you're an American parent, PLEASE either ship your kids over to Europe, or home school them yourself. American society is way too fucked up to allow for anyone to get a decent education. You would not believe the social pressure - I remember it well, and I had to fight it tooth and nail in order to succeed.

Re:School

[IamTheRealMike]

trig, chemistry, latin, greek, french, to gluing fucking popsicle sticks together,

Wow. You must have gone to an old-skool school :) I'm proud to state that the school I went to is in the top 5% of all comprehensives - it's mixed, non selective and state run. We never did latin or greek, that's rather highbrow. We only learnt French because, well, we're right next door to them. Trig at age 12? Man, we didn't do that until we were 15 or 16 (gcses). I dunno how Brit schooling compares to American, but you're experience seems to have been a lot better than normal.

Oh, and for any Yanks wondering - such articles are regularly published in UK media too, and all the parents stress about lack of quality schooling and how India will kick our ass etc. I think it's a western thing, rather than American.

Re:School

[Knara]

When I was having thanksgiving dinner with my extended family, the wife of one of my cousins was complaining about her kid's schooling. In the same breath she complained about how the schooling was inadequate, and how they give the kids too much homework.

How could this be, I wondered. I added that from my experience (and the experience related by my friends who did not go to a private school like I did), kids needed *more* homework, not less.

Her reply? "Just wait until you have kids, and have to spend your time helping them with their homework."

And there, my friends, is why our educational system is in the crapper.

Re:School

[Anonymous Coward]

I work with schools all the time, and I can tell you the problem with education in the United States is not teachers. It's not even the politicians. It's the general population which seems to be schizophrenic about public education. There are referendums on school vouchers popping up all over the place. That means people are bailing out on public ed. We have to decide whether we want public schools or not and act accordingly.

As far as marketeers, lawyers, etc., those are the people who have always been successful in the United States. You can't claim that the captains of industry have been brilliant engineers or innovators. More often it seems they're simply people who are ruthless, unscrupulous, lucky, or some combination thereof.

I'm also a little tired of people bashing the education system without offering any constructive criticism. It's quite easy to scream about how bad the system is and stand silent when asked for potential solutions. In the States, we educate a more diverse and larger population than most people who claim to have better systems. There are individual states in the Union larger than entire EU nations. In fact, there are two or three districts in West Texas that are larger than sovereign European states. So don't tell me we're always comparing apples to apples.

In short, I think there's a lot of panic about a situation that would better be solved by reason and open discussion. Let's pay our teachers better, put administrative power over schools back at the local level, trim the bureaucratic fat at the state and federal levels, and demand more from our kids.

Forgive me...I've had way, way too much coffee.

Re:School

[KludgeGrrl]

True, I don't think anyone can seriously believe that the public school system in the States is not in deep trouble. We've all heard about the %11 of US students who cannot find *the US* on a map... But this neo-conservative plan for the future would hardly solve the problem.

Apropos of education Stein writes:

"Allow schools to fall into useless decay. Do not teach civics or history except to describe America as a hopelessly fascistic, reactionary pit. Do not expect students to know the basics of mathematics, chemistry and physics. Working closely with the teachers' unions, make sure that you dumb down standards so that children who make the most minimal effort still get by with flying colors. Destroy the knowledge base on which all of mankind's scientific progress has been built by guaranteeing that such learning is confined to only a few, and spread ignorance and complacency among the many."

But later (#10 for all you following at home) he argues against what he perceives to be unfair and heavy taxation. So the US is supposed to improve schools without raising money to do so? At its most simple level, there are two basid problems.

1) Teachers get paid shit in the US. In NYC the average salery for public school teachers is just under $32,000/year (before taxes), which makes it impossible to feed and house oneself in the city (unless there are some other funds coming in, trust fund, spouse, etc). Likewise, a university professor (tenure track) at San Fransico State makes abut $40,000/yr -- in San Francisco! A janitor in a Columbus Ohio high school, on the other hand, makes about $50,000/yr. What does this tell you about the value in which teachers are held?

There are some great dedicated teachers out there, but I have taught more than one, kind well-meaning, and utterly incompetent student who planned to teach high school (and went on to do so). Yes many teachers suck (although I think almost all must be pretty selfless to put up with a very hard job). Look at what we pay them.

Yet Stein is also against those evil teacher unions. I hate to break the news, but most teacher unions are not fighting to lower standards, they are fighting for decent working conditions. Sometimes this involves lowering the bar because standards cannot be held in the conditions in which they work. Bringing us to pt. 2...

2) Given the lack of financial support for education in the US, many schools are falling apart and grossly overcrowded (10% are trying to function at %125 capacity) necesitating teaching in gyms, halls, etc... and creating enormous classes that are impossible for the most dedicated teacher to manage.

So even if we had better teachers, they would have an impossible job to do. So we end up with a nation of illiterates (44 million I think), who don't know anything about the world around them, not to even mention technology or science.

It is all very well to say "Hey we should do a better job teaching our kids," of course we should! But to do that we must spend money. Not that throwing money at the problem will make it go away, but it's a fundamental ingredient for meaningful change -- an ingrediant that the rest of Stein's articles run in the face of.

(sorry for the dangling participle)

Yes, I differ with Stein in a number of ways, we are clearly on different ends of the political spectrum, but I leave it to others to address his other "points to change" in an intelligent fashion. I'm ranted out for the moment ;)

Can I moderate Mr. Stein -1 Flamebait?

[Doktor Memory]

9) Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated, hardworking men and women from friendly nations and, instead, takes in vast numbers of angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us.

Uh huh.

Whatever you might happen to think about our current immigration policy (I don't like it much myself), there's no getting around the fact that this is hyperbolic bullshit. The vast majority of illegal aliens in the US are migrant workers from Mexico. (Following Mexico are El Salvador, Guatamala and Canada. You have to go all the way down to #17 before you find a country with any substantial terrorist activity: our "ally" Pakistan.) Say what you will about Mexico, but it is not exactly a hotbed of anti-American radicalism.

The rest of this article is exactly the sort of mixture of over-stressed common sense and batshit insanity that I would expect from a former Nixon toady.

Re:Well, let's see

[DAldredge]

Except for maybe AMD and Apple all the companies you listed are moving as much work as they can in Support/Design/Dev to India/China/Russia because the only have to pay $500 USD per month per worker.

Sorry. You don't deserve karma.

[glrotate]

"Big business doesn't like innovation. They like the semblance (sp?) of innovation to encourage you to buy "new" things, but completely and truly new things cost money, take away from the bottom line, and transition periods are where big companies tend to get replaced."

IBM spent 5 billion dollars last year on R&D. Microsoft just announced a boost to 5.2 billion dollars for next year.

A company like Ford would do anything they could to develop a substantial innovation over GM and DB.

Big business is always looking for an edge just
like the next guy.

This has nothing to do with big business, it is about the leisure class gone amuck.

Pointing at a problem is not offering a solution

[webster]

We see this all the time. People see terrible things going on and think that all they have to do is point at it while loudly raising alarm, and they have contributed to the solution. Well, it ain't true. Yeah, the education system sucks, but it isn't because those running it want it to suck. TV is a vast wasteland, and always has been, but what, if anything, can be done to improve it? Even offering a solution is dangerous enough, but fixing a social problem without a plan will certainly lead to disaster.

Utopians consistently excel in discovering faults, but those who actually try to fix them usually end up with a situation far worse than the one they were so alarmed about.

Re:Ben , ben ... who cares

[jgalun]

Poor Ben Stein.

Born and raised in privelage then appointed to work for Nixon as an economic advisor. Soon thereafter we had the worst economy since the depression.

I don't know if it's fair to blame the Nixon recession on conservative economics. LBJ had left Nixon with massive military spending on a war in Vietnam and new Great Society spending. And then the Arab nations began their oil boycott.

All three of these factors led to massive inflation (massive spending on the military; massive spending on domestic programs; more young people in Vietnam and fewer young people in the work force; and a rising price of oil, a key price factor in many products). In response, Nixon instituted price ceilings. NOTE: Price ceilings are not a conservative, free-market response to inflation. It is a response generally associated with the left-wing, in fact.

More specifically, blaming Ben Stein for the Nixon recession is foolish - Ben Stein was a speechwriter in the Nixon Administration, not an economic policy advisor.

Things wrong with US Schools

[Codex The Sloth]

* Handing out laptops to everyone is not the answer -- most of those countries that beat US schools don't have access to current books, let alone laptops.

* The internet will not teach your children -- while it's true there is a fountain of knowledge at your fingertips, there's a ocean full of crap to sift though.

* Stop focussing so much money on organized sports when your school is graduating illiterates.

* Kids using Powerpoint is not the answer. Unless the question is -- How do we raise a nation of Marketing drones!

The rest of the way there

[st. augustine]

We're well on our way to hell in a handbasket. What would it take to get us the rest of the way there?

1. Blame all problems with the educational system on greedy teachers' unions. Do not provide sufficient funding for building upkeep and course materials, let alone enough to attract a wider range of more highly qualified teachers. Count on philanthropic parents in rich neighborhoods to chip in to keep their kids' schools going, and let schools in poor neighborhoods go to hell.
2. Allow large corporations to buy unlimited influence in government. Have any legislation that affects a particular industry be written by the lobbyists for that industry's entrenched players. Assume that anyone currently making a profit has a God-given right to their business model, and structure the intellectual property laws appropriately. Claim marketing expenses as R&D.
3. Support a company's right to falsify evidence in favor of their products and suppress evidence against them. If the evidence that a company's products or processes do more harm than good has finally become too overwhelming for them to cover up, shoehorn loopholes into unrelated laws to protect them.
4. Treat CEOs as celebrities, even when all they've done is preside over tanking companies and collect golden parachutes. Confuse blind luck with well-deserved rewards and ruthlessness with business sense. Pretend that we live in a society with equal opportunity, and salute those whose successes have been handed to them on a silver platter as though they'd earned them.
5. Encourage companies to avoid taxes by creating shell offices in Bahamanian PO boxes. Reward them with open-ended government contracts with no cost auditing.
6. Do your best to keep 50% of your productive population out of the workplace. Continue to pretend that a single-income family is viable in today's economy. Provide no support for working parents. Discourage women from intellectual, innovative, or creative pursuits.
7. Discourage cultural and social diversity as much as possible. When immigrants absolutely can't be kept out, do whatever you can to make them, and their citizen children, feel unwelcome and unvalued. (Consider bringing back the educational and religious policies of forced assimilation that worked so well with Native Americans.) Presume in the face of all historical evidence that the children of uneducated immigrants will be unable to contribute to society. Assume that America has nothing to learn from the rest of the world, and do your best to make sure it doesn't.
8. Enact a tax system that encourages the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. Shift as much of the tax burden as possible onto the middle class. Make sure that the wealthy have plenty of ways to exclude their income from taxation, and that the less wealthy have as little access to capital as possible. Encourage them to go into debt, and allow consumer lending companies to set themselves up for a fall approaching the one the Japanese banking system's going through.
9. Take as a given that nothing that works (or doesn't work) in the rest of the world could possibly have applicability to America, unless of course it agrees with your preconceived notion of the direction America should be going. If anyone tries to suggest that something the Europeans or Japanese are doing might be a good idea, accuse them of being socialist or communist. Where possible, try to confuse France with the USSR.
10. Pretend that a health care system that leaves tens of millions of citizens uninsured is "socialized". (Use "socialized" as a dirty word to describe any system that might actually cover all Americans.) Skew what medical care there is toward prolonging the agonies of the terminally ill. Discourage preventative medicine and expect all medical problems to be solved with pharmaceutical "silver bullets".

My list need not end here but I got tired of typing. And anyway, I even agree with one or two of Mr. Stein's points. But just as Mr. Stein did I realized that my list was already the program of many of our elected officials. (Hmm.)

Re:Since When Did America Have a Tech Edge?

[Simon Garlick]

- Who invented the transistor?
- Who started the computer industry?
- Who invented nuclear power?
- Who put human beings on the moon and then brought them back safely 6 times

Actually, now that I think about it...

Transistor, the team at Bell Labs. Score one for the USA.
Computer industry? I'd say the team led by England's Alan Turing.
Nuclear power? I'd say the team led by Italy's Enrico Fermi, or if you look back further, New Zealand's Ernest Rutherford.
Putting humans on the moon? I'd say the team led by Germany's Werner von Braun.

OK, that's one from four. Nothing to really brag about. And my comment about "in our lifetimes" still stands.

Re:Since When Did America Have a Tech Edge?

[Zeinfeld]

the automobile

The internal combustion engine is usually attributed to Benz, a German. The american inventor was a patent fraud whose claim to have invented the engine was thrown out by the US courts in the Ford case.

the sowing machine

The first functional sewing machine was invented by the French tailor, Barthelemy Thimonnier, in 1830. There were about 6 previous patents for sewing machines of which the first US one came in at number 5...

electricity

Try Faraday, Royal Society, London

the light bulb

Swan invented the light bulb first and actually filed his patent first to boot. Edison only got a patent because at the time the USPTO did not recognise foreign inventions or prior art.

bar-b-que

I don't think you can count that since the Hawaiian islanders were having BBQ before the US was founded, before Westerners had discovered it even. I don't think you can count inventions aquired by conquest.

the vaccine

"In 1796 English country doctor Edward Jenner found that if a small amount of material was taken from a cow suffering from cowpox and injected into a healthy human child, that child would become immune to smallpox. " - incidentally the term vaccine comes from the Latin for cows.

Should I continue?

Well since that leaves you with only the atom bomb, the telephone, cotton gin and the laser I don't think you should. I'll disallow the Internet and the computer since the first computer design was British, the first practical computer was german (Konrad Zues Z1 and z2), the first electronic computer was british - the programmable enigma machines but was classified research, the Internet is not an invention it is an implementation of packet switching which was invented on both sides of the pond.