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US Losing its Scientific Dominance
ScaredSilly writes "The New York Times is reporting that the US is losing its dominance in the sciences. They cite lowering research budgets, increased military spending and 'reverse brain-drain': fewer techies staying in the US after school. I personally think that our comparatively crappy K-12 educational system, and an increased dominance of military research over core scientific research plays a big role. (It's easy to get DARPA, DoD and DoE funding, but difficult to get NSF funding). What do you folks think?"
...and now the fact that I went to the US to study will be a liability rather than an asset. Truly, America is declining... Are you guys SURE you want shrub-chimp hybrid for four more years?
The situation reminds me of 1600s Spain, frankly -- the big consumer, the people who crossed an ocean to "conquistar" (black?) gold. So, has the US entered its decadence phase finally?
The education system in this country is a mess. Sure there's a few bright spots here and there, but for the most part it has fallen apart into arguments of political correctness, violence, and debates over evolution vs. creation. More school funding is given to non-science activities such as sports, instead of funding a new science lab.
SmashTech - No smashing of tech involved
So tell me, honestly. Why should someone blindly, without question, love the United States of America?
What is wrong with constructive criticism? If a country is so great, its merits should easily be able to withstand any criticism.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
If you are on a university campus this morning...take a look around; it's no big suprise. Even more so, sit in on some general credit classes...or hell, *simple* college math courses. That's not to say those on higher levels aren't there, but damn, it just seems as though there is a huge influx of...just well, morons. Graduating too many highschoolers thinking they are headed for 13th grade. Sad really....we have so much potential to do better, but we can't get the fucking congress to fund education to the top of the list. We'll get our paybacks soon enough :(
11:21am, "MSNBC Looks At Patent Abusers' Victims"
12:15pm, "US Losing its Scientific Dominance"
Well duh! Let's spend a load of time doing science, I'm sure we won't have to spend millions on a legal defense when somebody sues us for using an obvious idea...
Hmmm, actually there's a lot of science and engineering that goes into military spending. You'd be surprised at some of the great minds they have here where I work (at a defense contractor). The military, although sometimes it has some crazy ideas (Star Wars), is almost always on the tip of new technology and they're usually the first to get and test technology before it (ever) becomes commercial - ARPANet anybody?
Also, it seems that less Americans want to go into the sciences - they'd rather do easy, joke majors in school like Communications or Psychology... and even further before that, in elementary and middle school, being smart and interested in science/engineering/reading isn't "cool" and people tend to shun those types, while elementary/middle schools abroad tend to rever the more intelligent students.
Everything else is globalizing as the field levels across the world. Economies, education, I dont see why we should be so surprised of the same in the field of science.
What with the lax educational system that the U.S. seems to have, not to mention to grossly misappropriated funding by Federal and State gov'ts, it comes as no shock that the country is falling behind others in the realm of scientific research
America is the epitome of short attention spans, loud colorfull comercials, and above all, the need to convince our children that spending is the most important thing they can do.
The corporations that are supported by politicians that YOU DIDNT BOTHER VOTING AGAINST helped this happen. If your child is too busy collecting pokemon cards (because you have been guilted by society into working 60 hours a week to buy them) to pay attention to petty things like math or science, well... tough luck.
Quit lowering the education standards in the US so that anyone that wants to go to college gets in. Not everyone is entitled to go just because they want to. Give me a break. Colleges are offering remedial education to those who do not meet the minimal accepted criteria for getting into college in the first place! Colleges have become a business and education is not a priority. Pay college graduates for what they've learned not just because they can toss a football or slam dunk a hoop.
I, personally, think it's a side effect of "offshoring."
I work in the College of Engineering at a large university. I haven't seen the actual statistics but my impression is that the MAJORITY of our students are citizens of other countries. Why is this, you ask? It's because American kids are SMART.
Engineering is a DIFFICULT field of study. So are Computer Science, Math, Chemistry and Physics. We have students who graduate and HAVE to go to graduate school because they can't get a job in the US at the B.S. level. They (the jobs) have all been "offshored" to India, China, Malaysia and other low wage countries. American kids are just too damned smart to work as hard as they have to in order to earn a degree in the hard sciences or Engineering if there's no payoff for their four (in most cases five) years of grind.
Just my US$0.02
utter rubbish
I've begun to notice that entrepenuers are following the design and production. This business model is generating hot beds of innovation out side the country. If you follow the history of technological innovation, the production and design areas are critical. Sarnoff, Menlo Park, Xerox Park, Silicon valley, etc. You can't design in a vacuum and being near the technicians and engineers that actually make what you are working on is essential.
The way our military is currently structured, I can't believe that anyone would consider loosing scientific dominance would not be a matter of national security.
Our business here have this wierd notion that China and India are second class academically so it is okay to outsource engineering and techinal work because American's will always be the innovators. I have always thought that this was stupid and I'm seeing now that this is simply isn't true.
Every year there is a huge influx of morons into first year.
:P
And also, every year there is a huge *outflux* of morons from first and second years who finally realize they can't hack it.
Every decent university sees this. They encourage it. Hell most overbook themselves on the basis that only 65% of students stay past their first year.
The reason? Why turn away a morons first year tution?
I think the "reverse" is because up until now, brains were drained into the US.
The primary problems lies in economics. Most advanced students in science who don't actually *love* what they are doing plan to leave science. If not for industry (which is still science), then to IP Law or consulting. Most grad students simply don't want to be poor for another few years after receiving their Ph.D. A lot of this perception in remaining poor is fed by the lack of research funding and the very real salaries that 1st year postdocs receive. When looking around in the scientific community, many foreign nationals abound but few Americans actually remain. Following their American Postdoctoral training, most of these foreign nationals inevitably return to their home country.
Our culture is becomming exceedingly more materialistic and money-driven in my not-so-expert opinion. Consequently, people are shifting towards jobs that pay higher and better. Among the most popular majors here at Princeton are (last I knew) Economics and Operations Research & Financial Engineering.
To me, the problem is, people view a job as something you do to make money, and there isn't that much one can do in the pure sciences beyond research (unless you're exceedingly lucky/brilliant and come up with some essential new product) which for the most part, in my limited knowledge, doesn't pay that well compared to other things one can do w/ a similar education (science/engineering people are VERY desired in the financial industry which often pays VERY well).
Solutions I have come up with: a) make culture less materialistic - not happening anytime soon; b) give a lot more funding to pure research so that it'll pay better and also be easier to do - bigger budget means getting more of the toys you need for your experiments
I wonder if the post-9/11 paranoia has something to do with it? One of the US's major strengths in research has always been the ability to attract top scientists from all over the world, but with the more and more draconian immigration and visa laws it's becoming harder and harder for foreign scientists to work in the US... The graph in the article implies that this is a longer-term trend that started in the mid-90s, well before 9/11/2001. That being said, U.S. immigration hassles certainly won't help improve the situation. More to the point, the apparent absence of civil rights for foreign nationals working in the U.S. may be a major cause for concern. Certainly all the news about the government detaining foreigners has had that effect on em. I will be finishing my doctorate in physics this year, and wonder whether I really want caused me to question whether I really want to apply for jobs stateside. Since I'm a big, tall, white Canadian, you have to wonder what people from other countries feel
The article - which I read most of - isn't saying that people in the US are getting stupider. It says that people outside of the US is getting smarter... Quite a different issue, and for the species as a whole, a good one.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
and in order to do it right you have to have people who really want to learn it, and live it.
Our culture does not tend to produce such people. America tends to think on the very, very short term (this is an inevitable consequence of allowing corporate/profit oriented thinking to dominate our culture) and it should come as no surprise that the get rich quick philosophy by which we define success is incompatible with good scientific training. There are always some people who will be scientists, but if you want a lot of them you can't just do nothing to promote science and then expect results.
Frank Herbert said it best - "short term decisions tend to fail in the long term". We constantly make short term decisions - we don't accept anything except instant gratification. So as a consequence the hard, long term skills tend to go undeveloped.
The question we need to ask ourselves is - do we care? I don't mean you or me, but as a country, and as a society, do we value science and other difficult skills enough to give up some of our short term gratification attitude in order to socially promote the long term view? If not, then the result is inevitable. I rather suspect we don't care, as long as our quality of life doesn't drop. The future isn't of much interest to America - we're too busy living in the present. Until that changes, and we start to value long term thinking and decisions (like putting ATTENTION, not $$, into education - $$ are just a feel good measure and do nothing to solve the real problem) we will continue to fall behind.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
"It just wasn't cool to be smart. The smart kids go teased and beat up."
How is this a new phenomena?
-m
1. An administration that restricts basic research based on religious principles. I'm mainly thinking stem-cell research, but there are other areas as well. (51 comments and no-one has mentioned this yet?!)
2. A lack of corporate interest in basic research. If a project doesn't show some return for shareholders in the near-term, it gets no love. This attitude has had a stifling effect on non-government funded research.
3. Shoddy treatment of objective science. Okay, call it bashing, but I have to say that the Bush administration's treatment of science has been apalling. If the research doesn't support the agenda, the scientists must be replaced by industry shills.
4. Lack of funding for basic research from government. This has being going on for longer than the current Bush administration, but it echoes the corporate trend of demanding short-term results. If a program is unlikely to show benefit within the current election cycle, it's hard-pressed to find funding.
5. Complacency. Without an external "threat" (the Soviet launch of Sputnik), science programs like Apollo are hard to fund. This applies in both the government and corporate arenas.
I wish I had solutions to go with my observations.
Bander
What we need more of is science!
I'd put a lot of it down to the post-9/11 environment. They would have to dump a truckload of money on me before I'd even think about moving to the US anymore. This isn't antiamericanism - I'd honestly just be scared witless to live there as a foreign national - one no longer has any obvious legal rights. From what I've seen it is apparently quite possible to be thrown in jail for years at a time with no representation, no rights, no due process, etc.
Gah - thanks but no thanks.
When I came here at the age of 16, one of the biggest cultural shocks for me was that among people my own age, intellect and doing good at school was not encouraged.. even mocked.
...
Those who are born here in the US probably don't even think about it, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that it's incredibly stupid that when someone does well on a test, his reward is getting called a geek by the basketball players, who are on top of the social ladder.
And this stuff doesn't stop at college, when retards who can throw a football get automatic A's in their classes, and get a diploma and a million dollar contract handed to them (maybe I'm exaggerating there, but you get the point).
And with that kind of social values, what the fuck else can you expect from American education system? The opportunity to learn is there - our university system is one of, if not THE best in the world - but
I can't speak for any other country, but in Russia kids wanted to become scientists and astronauts [up until the 90's, but that's another story]. Here unfortunately, kids just don't want to become scientists, or engineers, or anyone of that sort. They want to become Brett Favre, 50 Cent, and Donald Trump (not that there's anything wrong with wanting to become a billionaire).
So my point is, until we will WANT to excel at science, we won't - it's as simple as that.
People think that by throwing money at the problem it will go away.
Money doesn't ever fix anything...
For instance High Schools are a place of social idoctrination more so then places of learning.
There are still places you can get wonderfull education, but they are private. Public schools are controlled by beuaracrates that want to fuffill feel-good BS like anti-drug education (proven over and over to be 100% inneffective), eviroemental and social bullshit.
That's were the money is going to! Why would giving the schools more computers fix this issue?
My little brother may not know how to spell properly, or not know the basics to geometry and triginometry, but DAMMIT he knows not to smoke pot, change diapers just incase he becomes a teenage dad, and he coughs loudly every time we go to eat and somebody across the room smokes a cigeratte!
Now that's what I want! A bunch of social robots telling me that SUV's kill baby seals. Hell they couldn't name you the rights garrenteed to you in the constitution but they know socialist health care is wonderfull and their teachers need to be paid more!!!
Of course 2 + 2 = 5 sometimes, but after all, that's what computers are for. It's not like they have to think anymore!
Poor Nations Stem Brain Drain
US Exports Knowledge Overseas
Will Military Research Yield New Public Sector Products?
You get the idea
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I think the laziness factor is the big one. I went to the Naval Academy, supposedly an institution that only accepts America's brightest well rounded "leaders of the future" and I lost count of the number of times I heard statements like "2.0 and go" or "Poli-Sci and fly."
The real wake up call was getting stationed in Japan and travelling around SE Asia. I simply couldn't believe the work ethics I saw. You can make all the jokes you want about Japan producing mindless robots, but the guys who worked for me didn't just stay after hours until the job was done, they stayed until the job was done right. Most of them were pretty damned creative and willing to try new things too.
I've always been impressed with America's ability to fight back to the top when we realize we are the underdog. The question simply is, when are we going to wake up?
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
And to take this problem further, why are kids thinking everything will be handed to them on a silver platter?
Oh yeah, that would be where the parents come in. Somehow, at some point, maybe it was when both parents had to start working, it became better/easier to just give the kids what they wanted rather then laying down the law.
I can understand, it must be hard to come back after a 60 hour workweek to a screaming kid, a spouse who also had an exhausting workweek. Would you have the energy to deal with all that?
-- taking over the world, we are.
Stip the schools down to reading, writing, math, sciences, and for god's sake Civics. If you want music, art, drama, or sports then goto private lessons or community bands, theater group, art classes, and sports clubs.
Let's get the schools out of the sports business and into the education business.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Maybe science in the U.S is declining (especially in recent times) due to the fear surrounding the "scientist." Consider this, the stereotype of a scientist during the industrial revolution was a nut in a lab with crazy ideas making things that blow up, and eventually developing some revolutionary machine. Nowadays, amature scientists are persecuted as drug dealers and bomb-makers for terrorist organisations, and information and scientific equipment is hoarded to governments and corporations, with individuals needing to obtain a "licence" i.e be considered worthy of conducting research. Its becoming increasingly like the middle ages, with the U.S government and the corporate pigopoly acting like the church back then, preventing people from discovering things that challenge their power and hoarding knowlege to themselves.
In decades past many scientists went to the US to escape oppression and government control.
In the US they were free to publish, free to discuss among their peers, free to do the research that was important to them.
Anyone who follows the news these days can see this is changing. There is much more government scrutiny in all areas of life, and that freedom is beginning to erode.
If things continue along these lines, Russia will eventually be freer than the US.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
Problem is, this boom was seriously unsustainable.
What we are seeing now is a readjustment to the more normal situation, but we are still doing substantially better than pre-WWII levels in terms of science spending/graduates/jobs. I don't necessarily believe this is a zero-sum game, our investment over the past fifty years has paid off very well, and I think we are a better nation and a better world as a result.
Just to give an example of pre-WWII science job market: Feynman's first job was as a plastic chemist, and he spent some time as basically a mechanical engineer (albeit a high-powered one) before he got into the Manhattan project. The point is, only for the past 50 years has there been much money at all for "basic unapplied" research.
Yes for inventions and improvements this is a good idea.
But basic research is less product related.
What is the commercial value of knowing which way a helium atom spins, or how much closer we can get to absolute zero.
How that will later effect us we can't even guess at now.
Militarily, not a whole lot of difference -- although Russia has a lot of trouble projecting its military power the way the US does because there's no middle ground; they can nuke any country out of existence, but they have enough trouble to keep troops on the ground and fighting in Chechnya, for God's sake! That makes Russia, IMO, more dangerous than the old USSR, not less. Decaying empires which see military force as an all-or-nothing option tend to lash out in ugly ways. We can only hope that as the EU and Chinese economies grow, they'll boost Russia's along with them.
But it's really not military power I'm talking about. In the past, Russia has produced some pretty damn impressive science and engineering. These days, the next generation of great scientists and engineers is too busy trying to keep from starving to death to accomplish much of anything. All the money is flowing to crooked businessmen, corrupt politicians, and mobsters. It's like an exaggerated version of where the US is going; I just hope things here never get quite that bad.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Another cause is the anti-scientific, anti-intellectual Bush administration, along with a long-term rise in the influence of religious fundamentalism and other forms of superstition and ignorance throughout American life.
As a scientist in the US, I have to say the biggest fixable problem is the ridiculous immigration policies that have been adopted after 9/11. Sure, public education needs improvement, but most of the world's smartest people never have and never will be born in a country representing 6% of the world population. The lab I work in has three Europeans, one Chinese, one Australian, and two Americans (including me), and it's great. The success of the US scientific enterprise has been (and should be) dependent upon concentrating the best talent from other countries in one place, and the US is going in the wrong direction. I personally know plenty of foreign students and postdocs getting screwed, and news has gotten back to their universities. A friend of a friend was barred re-entry into the US from Portugal after a speeding ticket and forced to drop out of the top theoretical physics PhD program on the West Coast. A coworker has been unable to visit home (China) for six years because if she leaves the country there's a 50% chance she will be denied re-entry for a six-month waiting period, which would destroy all of her experiments. A very good friend of mine was in deportation danger for smashing a guy's car window (the guy deserved it). There was a component of the Patriot Act that required attendance to be taken at all graduate school courses, and a missed class by any foreign graduate student (including Canadians) to be documented and justified.
It's a testament to the strength of American science that foreign applications to US grad schools have decreased by only 25% in spite of the ridiculous situation placed on us by the current government. Funding issues and stem cells aside, things have to change in November.
I'd honestly just be scared witless to live there as a foreign national - one no longer has any obvious legal rights
The same applies if you are an American citizen in certain circumstances. Right now, I can think of about 10 countries I'd rather live in, if I could even afford to move.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
This is a side-effect of the 'greed is good' culture of the 1980's. It used to be that a car manufacturer was about making cars, a movie maker was about making movies, etc, and if they did a good job at what they were about, money came. If they were also good about handling their money, they were profitable and got the chance to make more cars, movies, etc, and make more money to keep doing it.
/. crowd would like to extend it to recorded music, too.
After the 80's this shifted. Whatever you made, it was about making money, and cars, movies, or whatever simply became a way to get the money, but the money came first. The corollary of this is that top management USED to be car or movie men (or women) who also knew how to manage money. Now top management BECAME money men (or women) who *might* also know something about cars or movies.
There are two net results out of this:
* First, it leads our young adults to chase money instead of chasing cars or movies, for careers. It actually denigrates the act of creating cars and movies in favor of managing the money to fund those cars and movies. The best and brightest go where they perceive the best careers are.
* Second, it leads to inferior products. Since those at the top are not really car and movie men, (or women) they don't have the best instincts about their products. Hence you tend get 'follow the herd' products. I can't do too well with the cars, but with movies you get sequel-itis, comic book adaptations, and Michael Crichton movies. Not that Crichton's books are bad, or make bad movies, it's just that you get *too much* repetition of known-good formulas. (Nothing wrong with a known-good formula, we need new stuff, too.)
I've used the samples of cars and movies. I'm sure the
Other causes:
Advertisers and the people to hire them may not even admit it to themselves, but they tend to want to turn us all into consuming idiots who buy their products without thinking. Hence advertising which attempts to bypass the consiousness and go for the glandular reactions.
Another part of the 80's money culture: Get the quarterly report looking good. Research is a drain on this quarter. Of course it's good in the long run, but we must 'balance' the long run against the quarterly results. Guess which way the balance usually ends up tilting.
In the long run, a culture works as long as the most competent rise to the most responsible positions. Education is seen as key in our culture, and we have 'tried' to make it available to all. Aside from the fact that we haven't 'tried' hard enough, take a look at college: It's the gate to the top positions. If you want to take this as a class warfare issue, it's in the interest of the wealthy for colleges to be expensive. That way only the children of the wealthy can qualify for the top positions. In that light, it's simply enforcing a class system while paying lip service to equal opportunity and objective standards. But the real sin to our society is the smart, poor kid who can't afford the education while an academically mediocre rich kid can, and gets the associated opportunities.
Enough.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
K-12 education may not be great, but there are still plenty of smart, qualified American students out there. More than the college/university system can handle... every college has more applicants than it can accept.
If the K-12 system suddenly improved, the college/university system wouldn't have the capacity to absorb the additional students anyway.
As for our science/engineering dominance declining, you can put the blame on offshoring.
Why study science or engineering if you know there won't be a job for you when you graduate? Those are very demanding, challenging fields... there are fields that pay better, involve less work, and are less likely to be outsourced.
That's also why there's a "reverse brain drain"... foreign students come here for an education, then go back home where they can live like kings on $5,000/year from U.S. companies doing offshoring in countries where the per capita income is $500/year.
Beats having to compete in the collapsing U.S. labor market.
Well so far citizens of the US or of other countries are giving their opinion, but the person to ask would be the Foreign Exchange Student! Why? because they've gone to school in their country and the USA and would be better to give an opinion as to who has the better education system along with the homelife of the host family giving insight into everyday family life (both sides) and are they more prepared to take on life in their country, the USA or somewhere else.
And to take this problem further, why are kids thinking everything will be handed to them on a silver platter?
But I'm sure every generation for the past 200 years has said that, "Kids today aren't willing to work as hard". It can't have been true every time, or otherwise we would have died out by now.
Oh yeah, that would be where the parents come in. Somehow, at some point, maybe it was when both parents had to start working, it became better/easier to just give the kids what they wanted rather then laying down the law.
That makes a lot more sense than the usual assumption that it's just some failure of will on a large scale. The question is what do you do about it? Unless the economy gets so good that one parent can stay home it's not going to get better. And I think the chances of that are very, very slim.
I went to High School in the seventies, the class valedictorian was by far the most respected student there. He was not in any sports but was the nicest guy in the entire school. He is now our family doctor. Things are different today, it's not that we didn't have some of the same things going on. But today it's just more extreme. People got beat up in school or about something that happened at school that never got settled, not often but it happened. Today people get killed in school,not often but it happens. There is a big difference. The popular songs talked about alot of things. Sex, drugs, love etc. Now I hear songs that talk about popping a cap in someones ass. Or a dead girl friend in the trunk. Things are different, while alot of themes are similiar, it's just alot more extreme.
Real issue is that kids in US Schools see no reason for work. Why get a Bachelours Degree when the only jobs are at the Minimum Wage. Why get a Maters or Ph.D. when you are not even chosen by the stalf?
Reason is Opportunity. If Opportunity is there people will go to the jobs.
Another reason is Media. Sports are better because they have a grater $ to effort ratio.
American culture does not value intellect. In a country dominated by dogmatic religion and banal entertainment, anyone with half a brain is looked down upon for wasting tax dollars or being too "nerdy." Image is what matters, not content.
U.S. schools focus on passing limited tests that show nothing about creativity; teaching real problem solving skills is much less important than shoveling students through an impersonal and over-wrought system.
When was the last time you saw the President lauding a group of scientists at the White House? Unless your research is focused on new and creative ways of killing people, you're pretty much ignored; religious ideology replaces the scientific method, and society devolves into polarized camps that react rather than think.
Perhaps I'm too blunt, but I'm tired of watching my once-great nation devolve into an international bully, abandoning its legacy of achievement.
All about me
"c me and free me" was the saying at my school. But this has always been the way, its not a new trend.
We know Japanese work long hours. We also know they don't work nearly as hard as Americans.
I do not agree that laziness is a major issue, as much as greed. Management is the number one issue.
Managers or CEOs make almost exclusively short term decisions to make themselves look better; Then they leave for a better job before the piper has to be paid.
America is capitalist, but we are becomming short term only capitalist. Mortgaging our future on almost every single issue.
Universities have seen all forms of gov't grants diminish. It's hard for universities to get funding for research. Why is funding shrinking? G. W. Bush thinks that private companies should be picking up the tab...
So, unless you're researching something that Monsanto (or any other large corporation) is interested in, you're going to have a hard time finding grants. This is the sad truth.
But, I think a shot at government funded research is missing the target. And, the military research budget as a portion of GDP, is nowhere near a high. It is more visible because they've made the bid process less secretive, but overall, still relatively low in comparison to other time periods in the last 50 years. But, the government has never even been the majority player in research. Private industry has been behind the majority of the research efforts in the US.
Don't forget that we're about 15 years into the aftereffects after the transition away from pure research by many of the large private firms. With the exception of a few stragglers, most corporations now have firm policies that all research must be aiming at a clear corporate payoff. So, true blue sky research has been heavily cut by private industry. This was the shortsightedness of the '90s. We heavily shifted research towards the short term. So we essentially pulled researchers off the task of making fuel for the future, and put them on burning the fuel of the past. This gave us a blazing decade, but has left us with ruins.
The NRA and other teacher unions sold every state legislature the biggest falasy ever. You have to have a teaching degree to teach, not a major in what your teaching. When I was in school, (HS Grad '74) all the teachers had a degree in what they taught (math, english, history) and a minor in education. Today your lucky if they have a minor in the subject.
Add all the feel good crap like not flunking someone because it might damage their self esteem. Devaluing grades and diplomas by passing people through no matter what. No self discipline in the students(read lazy).
The problem is obvious, the solution will take a minimum of the 40 years it's taken to screw it up. Meanwhile we produce a couple generations of lazy people with no common sense or ability to think creativly.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Compare classic conservative thought with the "new right". With the new right wing, there is a constant disregard and spinning of scientific thought and a seeming reliance upon patriotic and moralistic catchphrases rather than real thoughtful discourse. I'm not the only one who feels that way, and thats why I included that thought as part of the problem.
Regarding the voucher system, all I see is money steered away from the public education system. This, combined with subjective evaluations of who's gifted and who's not makes for bad karma, do you really advance the brilliant kids, or just the conventional kids who the teachers believe are exceptionally conforming?
When you privatize, you do so at the risk of forgetting the public good and neglecting areas that can benefit from public oversight. If you can't successfully evaluate and improve public schools while having every element having public oversight, what makes you feel that privatization is going to work any better, what with the possibilities of removing many elements of the education process from public scrutany.
The US needs to honestly reexamine its value system and this includes the left as well as the right. The current climate of political discourse is simply divisive and excludes deliberate debate of the issues that really matter and focuses on who has the better 30 second soundbite.
If you can't handle the coursework, either work harder, or have the insight to get out of that major.
Nobody is good at everything... personally, I had difficulties with some coursework in college. I liked engineering, but realized that my natural proclivities would make an undergraduate degree in engineering a herculean task, so I took a different track in something else that I enjoyed (I had planned on pursuing graduate studies in medicine either way, so no harm done).
Nobody is good at everything, and that's just the reality of life. Some people will never work any job but manual trades, while some people become Stephen Hawking... hold onto an objective standard and wash out the non-hackers.
Sorry to offend the self-esteem crowd, but either you can do the job adequately, or you cannot.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
People want Sports teams and Computers in classrooms.
They don't care that most kids can't count, they get calculators in grade school. Music programs are expensive, and the average joe doesn't understand the value of them.
Lots of people have the attitude "I didn't do it and I turned out okay, so my kid doesn't need it either."
I know of kids who got out of required courses because their parents didn't think it was important. They skipped the foreign language requirement to go to play in the gym.
a lot of the research has been outsourced to the lowest bidders in other countries. So of course US organizations are going to lack in research if they do offshore and get p*ss poor results in scientific research.
Our US education system is a joke, kids want to be rappers, skateboarders, sports starts, divas, singers, gangstas, video game heads, etc. Anything but math and science careers like Scientists and Researchers. I partly blame:
#1 Parents for not being strict enough on their children and teaching them a value of a good education and career choice.
#2 Teachers for not encouraging students to do better, or caring enough to guide them and help them to reach their potential.
#3 State, Local, and Federal governments for cutting back on education so they can fund "Pork" projects like Sports Statium building for billionares.
#4 Businesses for refusing to hire US citizes and instead offshoring those jobs, which discourage US Citizens from getting into those type of careers.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Yes, it is true, there is a lot of peer pressure to not be a stand out intellectually. But to be a stand out in sports, thats A OK.
I think sports figures don't intimidate anyone. We all get over a physical beating. But smart students everyone sees as future rich people. And we are all constantly abused by the rich, and its not so easy to get over.
Yeah, because the extensive military funding for science research is a totally new thing introduced by GWB. It sure hurt us in the 50s and 60s, I'll tell ya.
I can't say I have actual numbers for this, but in my experience, both Americans and Japanese put the same amount of energy into their work. Where you see a difference is the mentality that their work must be done right and on time... in Japan, the greater-good mentality pushes everyone to work as hard and as fast as they can. In America, the individualism approach tends to make the over-achievers work harder, and the rest just cruise along at mediocrity.
Looking at the broader picture, I think that in a lot of cases, the American school and support system for sciences probably produces a lot of very talented people, but they're less interested in serving the country that helped them than they are in furthering their careers (by moving abroad etc). Which is not a bad thing. In a choice between having a stable life working for a foreign company and staying at home and living in uncertainty, any well-educated talented person would have to choose stability.
It's a question of making the work environment at home more friendly to talent.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
Is this actually true? I'm from the UK, and there is a stereotype of the American geek as small, weak, beaten up, no girlfriend etc, but I've wondered if this is accurate.
I can tell you from personal experience that this is accurate, at least in high school. But then you grow up and then people realize that nerdiness is a good thing. You get stuff women really want: earning potential and stability.
In exactly that order.
Ahem.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Based on absolutely no evidence at all:
I blame intellectual property, copyright, and patents.
Now you go.
Maybe we can start having decent kids if families can afford to have one parent stay at home.
With drug soaked brains the 60's generation completed their 'long march' through the educational institutions and turned an excellent education system into a pile of steaming crap. The answers to questions like 2+3=? are settled by easily manipulated group opinions, regardless of the truth. If the group thinks 2+3=6 then 6 it is. Combine that with emphasis on 'self esteem' regardless of accomplishments and the disaster is complete.
Now things are so politically correct that in an atmosphere which claims respect for "diversity", it is diversity from far left theology that is not tolerated. If your opinion isn't aligned with the far left then you have no access to the campus forum. Amazing, considerings the hippies protested loudly their 'lack' of free speech by replacing discourse with vulgarity as they rampaged through public buildings.
Now, the chickens have come home to roost.
In the long run it's probably better to have the rest of the world foot some of the heavy lifting R&D bill. It will certainly help minimize the up and downs of funding associated the changing research priorities of a single country. It's time we stop thinking that the only way we can stay successful as a country is keeping every other country down.
The other positive is that this will probably drive up the value of an advanced science degree in this country. With less "insourcing" of foreign talent, those of us left here will advance science degrees should reap a bit more respect and pay. That our we give up on R & D and basically become a country of investment bankers and lawyers, slowly destroying ourselves
It is quite funny to see that someone is actually worried when their favourite country (USA) is "losing" something when the actual amount of new innovations is growing. It feels like someone thinks that in science those "other" countries do not count when they make new innovations. Standard NIH case. I find it very hard to believe that USA or any other country is losing something important if those new innovations and patents are not made there. There is always the possibility that something really good doesnt get invented at all. Like the genetic research which I believe is legally limited in the U.S. So I think it is better to lose the dominance because this technophobic time is making research harder in many western countries.
Just to play devil's advocate (I think), has it become unrealistic to have one parent work and one stay at home?
Or has consumer culture made it seem like you have to have both parents working to get a new TV, new car, etc etc.
I've seen families with both parents working who still have credit debt.
Maybe we should try and just live within our means, even if it does mean not wearing the latest fashions, etc?
We make so much money compared to the rest of the world, yet we seem to be working more and more. How can that be? Shouldn't we all be rich enough to enjoy, at the very least, our families?
-- taking over the world, we are.
"The question is what do you do about it? Unless the economy gets so good that one parent can stay home it's not going to get better."
I agree with the original posting but here is the rest of the story (caution flamebait) --- Why are the parents working so hard to give the kids everything. The brain drain is because kids and parents think they need to have everything and have it given to them because they deserve it.
Jobs go overseas because they people there are cheaper for the SAME work. The IT industry is grossly overpaid, that is why jobs are leaving, not lack of skill. Kids do not study because they get everything they want and see college as a right not a priviledge. College is just a checkbox on the resume these days. And then 5 more years of indentured servitude as a Graduate Student? Why do that, when you can get everything you want handed to you. Americans lack the work ethic of people who have worked for a living.
Americans need to live with less, give less material things to their kids and more time to their kids. That is why foreign kids often get ahead. I'm an American and it pains me that the US is going to have to become a second world country before Americans remember that the nation was founded by hard working immigrants.
Back in 1950, one might note that the U.S. was responsible for half the world's GWP. In 1965, it was down to 25%? Was this a collapse in the American economy? No -- it was Europe and Japan having sucessfully rebuilt from bombed-out postwar husks into a restored industrialized powers. Sure, the U.S. "lost its industrial dominance" in that it was no longer so far ahead of everyone else, but the only way to keep it would have been to militarily force the Europeans and Japanese to stay backwards.
Similarly, in the last 20 years we've seen South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore emerge as modern economies, and India and China reduce the stultifying power of socialism on their economies. The resulting development has been met with an increase in the amount of science and engineering they produce. Sure, the U.S. "lost its scientific dominance" in that it is no longer so far ahead of everyone else, but the only way to keep it would have been to militarily force the Asians to stay backwards.
How can I claim we've stayed even? Well, when we compare ourselves scientifically to those who were fully developed countries in 1983, we're still ahead, as pointed out in Time Europe.
The U.S. science establishment is still healthy. It's just that the science establisments in Asia are no longer invalids.
Alot of times it's true. It's the rare case which it isn't. I was/am a geek and am built like a linebacker and played football. I hung out w/ the jocks and the geeks. The biggest problem is that geeks tend to spend most of their time learning/getting better at the intellectual(or whetever) side of things. And believe it or not I think this is the problem. I found that I got lucky and was ok because I worked at the stuff I was bad at, and not what I was good at. I hit the football field, hit the weight room, got to be sociable and know the other side. As a result I was respected by them. The typical geek (and i may get flamed for this but oh well) is somewhat scared/timid, and will retreat to that which they know best and get better at it, and shrink from the rest of the world. In order to change the stereo type, we need to fit in and get better at what we're not good at...
Anywho, just a long random rant.
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
Work ethic is one of the biggest predictors of student success. For years, I have helped students who have it succeed and those who are lacking it fail (no matter how many meetings, chances, extra help, etc I give.) Unfortunately, it is a moral taught by parents, and the school system has little impact in that area. I am never surprised when I meet the parents of a failing student and find that the parents are no different from the student. I guess breeding is everything.
I'm not certain the situation is as grave as the article makes it out to be. If you notice the article claims that we are loosing our lead in the "sciences". However, as evidence they only provide data on the "number of physics papers published", "number of patents filed" and "number of students leaving this country to return to their country of origin". This data is certainly not sufficient to support the claim they make in the title of the article. The cutbacks made in the number of H1B visas issued is certainly going to force more foreign students to return home, there is a backlash going on in this country against our hopelessly broken patent law, and physicists don't generally make a fortune. If you look at the rest of the stats on the NSF website, you'll see that NSF funding since 1995 has increased consistently year over year, as has the number reaserchers. The recent downtrend is likely only an effect of scientifically oriented students choosing other fields of research over physics. How many software engieers do we have in this country today compared to a decade ago, or how many biomedical researchers? Don't get me wrong, physics is a very important field (arguably the most important research field, as all other research builds upon it in one way or another), but its not the only type of reseach that needs to be done, and I don't think that from the data the article provides we can conclude that we are loosing scientific ground universally.
A half century of elevating athletic stars to godhood and excusing them any and every crime imaginable. Or pandering to anyone who happened to win the genetic lottery and be born beautiful.
Decades of worrying whether a schoolchild has his chi focused instead of making sure he or she can add two single digit numbers in their head.
And letting the clique situation in schools to progress to the level of the Lord Of The Flies hasn't helped, either. When I was in high school, I saw teacher actively engaging in making some students outcasts (usually because they were smarter). I can't imagine what it's like now with the "let's all be mediocre" mindset.
One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space, you can't go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, uh, with fractions - what are you going to land on - one-quarter, three-eighths? What are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something? That's dialectic physics.
--- Ban humanity.
My family has been working as teachers and staffers in my town's
Small Town, USA. Hicksville. You are right. Parents are to blame, much more so than teachers. Why do peoples' semi-retarded moronic kids act like little hoodlums when they get into a school? Because their parents raised them that way. Public schools doesn't exist to educate. They exist to contain kids while parents are at work. They also exist to entertain parents and children (sports). Education isn't a priority.
If you care about your kids' education, do some basic research, and send them to a good private school, rather than dropping them off at the government-provided school just because it's there.
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html (Why nerds are unpopular)
"School vouchers' intentions are to move kids with potential out of the "slum schools" and into private schools that put more an emphasis on education than on checking children for knives as they walk in through the door in the morning."
If only that were the case. The reality of school vouchers is to put public money into private Christian schools, where such blather as creationism, deities, demons, Heaven, Hell, etc. can be promulgated into the squishy matter of impressionable young minds with the full endorsement of the U.S. Government.
I would otherwise be in full agreement with taking studious young intellectual talent out of the craphole that is public education and funding their development, with public money, in private schools.
Note that, to avoid flames from the Manager-Apologist camp, one has to explicitly point out what the problem is. Management makes short-term decisions, which means they completely ignore the long-term. Thus, instead of spending money on basic research, or even any research at all, they spend it on marketing campaigns, creative accounting, and themselves.
I've worked on both sides of the table, sort of. I've done work for a consulting firm in DC, and was an SE in a Board of Ed with 30,000 students.
The fact is that for all the money spent on education over the last 30 years, test scores haven't moved. AT ALL.
The main problem? There are simply too many hands in the pot. Right now, most school systems get local, state, and federal money. And all of them have different requirements! Where I worked, it was nothing to bus the students around to make as many schools as possible 90% free lunch in order to get more federal money, for example. The others were made into "Magnets", so that although they didn't get that money, they got the initial magnet grants, etc. However, because the city votes for one party and the Governor is of the other, they got less state funds, etc. It's all a big money shuffle.
What needs to be done:
* Abolish the Department of Education, and put everything on a STATE level. Why not a local, do you ask? In my town the BoE already takes 62% of the town budget! I'm not willing to trust an ex-teacher-turned-Selectman with the checkbook. Too much like giving the fox the key to the henhouse.
* The state would handle all bidding for contracts. There is *so much* pork and waste in this area, it's awful. For example, the same bus company serves two adjoingin towns where I live. One town pays nearly 20% more per bus (that's times several trips daily, folks) than the other, because of the wording on the bid!!
* Abolish the unions. They do some good, but more harm than anything else. The poor preformers are saved/coddled/kept around, and the excellent are held back.
Just my $0.02
-Markvs
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
The majority of songs on the radio are about sex, love, drugs, etc. Yes, there are some violent songs, but there were violent songs in the seventies as well. Ever hear of Black Sabbath? The Rolling Stones?
Nothing has changed in music, man, nor in kids' attitudes. Smart people DO still get respect if they're not smug about it and have other aspects to their personality. Just because TV shows it the other way around doesn't mean it's true...I can't tell you how many times my brother has talked about some new friend in high school and rounded out the conversation with "He's really smart, too. He gets, like, all 90s and stuff."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
You make the decision as a couple that some things are more important than money and possessions. You deliberately allow your standard of living to be lower than it could, otherwise. My job enabled us to keep my wife home with the kids, though we don't have all the toys, travel, clothing, and house we might otherwise like.
Even now when my kids come home - from high school - there's about a 15 minute window when they spill their guts. IMHO, it has been terribly important for my wife (or me, but it generally falls to her) to be there when it happens. After that 15 minutes they clam up and generally act like teenagers, though more polite and hard-working than many I see. She also works part-time, but in a job that lets her have that contact with the kids at the end of the day.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It is true that foreign students in US have more pressure to "make it", since their VISA status (or rather, continuation of) is dependent on their ability to stay in the program.
But I would like to forward the argument that they are smarter. Why? Because they are pretty much the cream of the crop from those countries that could make it here. In the US, there are so many universities that almost any citizen who wants to go to college could do so (in general). But for a foreigner, the competition to get into a US university is fierce, due to many factors (limited spots, limited financial assistance, LOTS of applicants). The schools here get to choose the best foreign prospects. So in general, those foreigners that ended up in the US schools are smarter than the average US students.
Cheers,
e.
I think that if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't have entered a technical field. Its great money comparitively when you're first starting out, but then it tops out when you're in your 30s. Most people change careers then.
Now, in the past generations, the techies had lifelong jobs at IBM and GE. In this generation, we're all getting fucked. Its not surprising that attitudes regarding scientists have gone down.
Scientists/engineers are just a slightly more expensive cog in the machine.
If you think the level of violence in Black Sabbath or Rolling Stones songs are comparable to what's being played today, you're out of your mind.
I don't necessarily agree it's the "work ethic" as people here in the US typically work over 40 hrs (laborsta.ilo.org) and take far less vacation time than other countries. This may in fact be dissolving the basic "family unit" which traditionally has helped guide us through to maturity and success.
With our techshare diminishing and our workload increasing I think we are the ones who are becoming mindless robots.
Also I heard an interesting thought from an old interview with Isaac Asimov on PBS - He mentioned that the modern idea of "education" has become something that you "finish" or "complete" rather than pursue throughout your life.
homeschooling is NOT the answer. homeschooled children either come out academically great (and/or religiously brainwashed to hell, but i'll say no more about that aspect of it for the moment), but this is for a simple reason: the process is self-selective. those who are excited and passionate about home schooling do it, and thus no wonder their kids turn out better than average.
homeschooling simply doesn't scale to a population. period.
We know Japanese work long hours. We also know they don't work nearly as hard as Americans.
Now that is funny. People assume that Americans work the hardest and are the strongest in various areas. What the NY Times article is pointing out should be a wake up call for most.
Things have changed. It really suprises me how much they have changed. One of the richest people I knew personally was a billionaire, literally. He was my Great Grandfather who was also President Trumans right hand man. In an interview he once responded to the question of how he obtained his wealth as: "The key is to work harder than everyone else and you will succeed." Up until the year 2000, I would have agreed with that statement.
There are two falicies to his logic though. There is the first falicy which is opportunity must be present for that to work, and secondly that you have a clear view of how much everyone else is doing so you can do better. What this article points out is that we have ignored the work other countries do.
Your comment on how Americans work harder was the case in some generations. In the youngest and up-coming generation, I do not believe that is the case. Look at the mentality and work force that is coming up. Where is the emphasis on higher education, in particular graduate studies?
Part of the problem I believe comes from the mentality that the youngest generation was raised with. They are the product of a highy successful, rich and full economy that is now crumbling. Many of them have the "World owes me" attitude. What they fail to realize is that noone owe them anything and being lazy will not pay off.
So to your statement, even though some people work hard, the average person in the work force in the US does their 40 hours and goes home. They don't put in long hours for free. I routinely have to put in 60 hour weeks and longer if emergencies arise. I also have to tell myself that it is ok and that I shouldn't make a big deal of the fact I am salaried and will NOT get compensated for those hours.
In other countries, they don't have to tell themselves that. The compensation for innovation, hardwork, and effort is viewed differently in other cultures.
root 10956 5164 0 Oct 22 - 0:23 sendmail: rejecting connections: load average: 70 (isn't sendmail just too kind)
The solution? It is not the economy, it is the choices that the parents make. When parents realize that they are sacrificing thier kids well being to the alter of "I must have a bigger house, and SUV", they might relize they do not need two parents working full time. Why have kids if you cannot spend the time with them to raise them? Kids today are just another check box to many people. Spouce? Check. SUV? Check. Bigger house? Check. Children? Check. Happiness? ummm?...
This doesn't come as a surprise at all.
For decades the United States have relied heavily on immigration to sustain their technological dominance.
In the fourties, fifties and sixties they had the top notch european scientists which either fled europe during world war II (e.g. Einstein) or were "picked up" by the allied forced after the breakdown of Nazi germany (e.g. Wernher von Braun). Also the increased military spending during the cold war added much to the technological and scientific leadership.
And nowadays the united states benefit from Immigrants leaving China, Korea or India to come tu the US. And there are still enough euroipean scientists which choose teh US because of the excellent working conditions there compared to most european countries. Try a scientific search engine of your choice. A high percentage of the scientific papers you'll find there have at least one co-author which is not a american.
Mind you this doesn't mean that there are only immigrants doing your scientific reasearch but the US relies heavily on those brain drain of other countries.
Alas since 9/11 the US is doing everything it can to stop those immigrants from coming over to their country. Strict immigration laws. Surveillance of immigrants from countries which might be allied to the axis of terror or which didn't bend over when the US asked, etc. pp.. The first casualties of the "war on terrorism" were those scientists which wanted to work in the US.
So immigration has dropped 25% percent in the last year and the Ivy-League Colleges and Universities are already complaining because student echange programmes are not very much sought after. Many of my colleages who two years ago wanted to go to the US are now considering to work elsewhere.
The american educational system is not able to produce enough scientifically skilled people to satisfy their own demand so immigration of highly skilled people is vital to their economy.
With all the sanctions regarding immigrants these skilled people turn to other countries and are lost to the US.
Jeff
p.s. just to prevent spelling and grammar flames: I am not a native speaker.
I am looking to go back to school for a law degree after my last two jobs were outsourced to India. Both my little brother and sister have no interest in going into the sciences as there is no future in it. In fact, my brother, who would start college in 2006, sees no reason to go into massive debt by going to college at all.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
In America, smart kids are not cool. In fact, they are liable to get beat up. In many cases, the smart kids who continue to study hard do so only because they're too small to play football or basketball or don't have musical talent enough to play in a rock band. How does this kind of mentality arise?
The powers that shape our culture (media, advertising, big business) have a vested interest in making sure that the citizenry are a bunch of uncritical consumers -- people who will ultimately buy the goods that the market pushes. Since non-artisan, commodity goods are the easiest to produce in volume (and thus the best engines of capital), it is these, along with a general consumer lifestyle, that are marketed heavily (glorified, if you will) in portrayals, analyses of and references to our culture that bombard us every day: movies, music, television news, magazines, etc., both content and explcit "advertisement" formats.
It is in not the interest of capital and its engines to produce scientists, thinkers, or other critical consumers who will only do "research" that is not profitable in the short term.
It is in the interest of capital and its engines to produce uncritical drones who will work in the same product mills that they also support with their earnings, never noticing that a continuous percentage of their time and labor (cleverly disguised as "profit margins" by these product mills) are skimmed off the top by the ultra-wealthy.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
It appears we have created huge attractive salaried for non GDP professions.
Lawyers as a class contribute very litte to the GNP - but they enjoy high and protected wages.
Doctoring (hate to say it) but doctoring is a statistically self defeating enteprise (We ensure the ability of the weakest genes to survive and procreate - increasing the number of weak genes and polluters - creating more desease, war, famine, and additional work for doctors) This is challenging - but doctoring does not affect the quality of life as much as (for example) good plumbing.
I think we over invest in technologies beyond the point of diminishing returns.
Look at cars and roads - wider roads means faster commutes means more people move away from work creating longer commute, more congestion - and finally the need for more cars and more roads.
We are spending our wealth in self-defeating enterprises. (Welfare encourages larger families of dependancy minded)
etc
AIK
Wouldn't it just be a brain drain?
To begin with, yes, there are some teachers who shouldn't be in the classroom. However, I would say that this number is at worst, the exact same percentage as people in any field. Where I teach, I'd say there are about 3 teachers who should have found a different job a while back, out of a staff of about 75.
Those who want to abolish teachers unions have a point. They do tend to keep those who should go. But without the unions, teachers would be expected to be at every single school event without any extra pay. I've been at schools with bad contract negoations, and teachers were expected to supervise football and basketball games, work ticket booths, work consession stands, and clean up afterwards just to keep their jobs. All this while they're expected to get their master's degrees, keep educated on current trends in education, and in their subject area. What other profession are you expected to get up to your master's degree, but clean tables as well? If it weren't for the unions, it would be worse.
Next comes the pay. Again, with all the education, yet so little compensation. What other profession would tolerate it? People demand qualified teachers, teachers who have degrees in their subject areas, yet get upset at paying for someone who has that level of knowledge.
I'd also like to mention the students. In case any of you aren't around teen-agers on a regular basis, let me share with you. They are not always easy to deal with. I'm not saying all kids are bad. It is a difficult and confusing time in their lives, and this often leads to frustration, and they share this with whoever they come in contact with. It is also a fact of human development that teens concentrate more on themselves than anything else. They expect adults to both understand everything about every aspect of their lives as they see it, while at the same time, they don't wany adults to have anything to do with their lives. Find any human development book that discusses Freud, Piaget, and Erickson and you'll get a better picture.
Finally, there is a general trend in the US to spoil our kids. I think it comes from the depression. People were kids then decided they didn't want their kids to grow up like that, so the baby boomers were treated better than any generation before them. This has mutated into parents blindly backing their children, sometimes in ways that are not int the child's best interest. The most irritating example I run into is the old standby "I don't understand.". I've seen kids successfully pull this with their parents on the simpelest tasks. One student in my algebra class refuses to do any problem that will require him to write down more than one step. The same kids who will play "Prince of Persia" for 5 weeks straight to figure out how to get past a difficult section refuse to take 60 seconds to read a word problem, and possibly another 30 seconds to think about it.
The fault lies everywhere, not with just one group, or one person. Until everyone starts doing their jobs like they should (politicians, teachers, administrators, students, and parents), things are going to continue to go downhill.
Let's not be Polyanna here. The simple reality of today's 'music' and culture is far, far different than it was 20-30 years ago. And this is again, even more removed from the culture 20-30 years before that.
Yes, aspects of racism and injustice have been dealt with (or at least recognized as a problem), but it's been replaced increasing violence and ignorance in other areas. None of which furthers the cause of education. The music is just the reflection of a sad reality.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
They just want the quick profit. Corporate research does not go after breakthroughs. Govt-sponsored research, OTOH, can go after breakthroughs, because it is not driven to obtain quick profits.
The USA has become a corporate vassal, whereas the other Western nations still look to govt sponsored research.
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
Its a lot easier to blame it on everyone else then take some responsibility. Thats why you hear so many complaints about being beaten up and harassed.
Sure it happens but in my experience a persons intelligence, work ethic, and areas of interest have little do with it. Back in highschool most of the people in my AP and advanced classes were involved in school either in atheletics, cheering, or school government. I guess the point is most bright, intelligent, people are not harassed and being an achiever is not the cause of the problem.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
Maybe the reason kids and schools are more worried about social activities and sports is because they want to have successful careers!
In America, MBAs think scientists and engineers with master's degrees who make as much as MBAs are overpaid. And since MBAs make all the decisions and have all the power, well you figure it out. Students are doing just what their culture rewards. Technical prowess is usually a one-way ticket to the middle class (not knocking it, personally I'm happy that way) but many of us Americans are gamblers and want a chance at the big time.
I was actually met with resistence. A lot of people don't want to get ahead. They want to get by
Is there anything wrong with that? Life isn't about work, and it's not about making money. If you've worked enough to put a roof over your head and food in your belly, then enjoy the sunshine on your face and grass against your soles. You've earned it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You are mostly right.
Cut the sports budget by a lot, but keep up with physical education. Students need to have physical activity, especially in this country of morbid obesity and fast-food instant gratification. In fact, I would go as far as to say that mandating four years of P.E. would go a long way in keeping kids healthy, and would help in keeping many important blue-collar fields supplied; it's hard to be a plumber if you can't lift the 5lb wrench.
Ditch competitive sports in high schools, though. We don't need multimillion dollar stadiums for kids who can't read. All you need for a PE program is a couple of retired drill instructors, a field, a swimming pool, and a small weight room. We're talking maybe a few hundred thousand to start this kind of program *from scratch*, and most schools already have the equipment and personnel to handle things now.
Don't scrap art. Or music, or drama. These are all important parts of education, because they are important parts of the human experience. Shakespeare, Strauss, and Michelangelo are all as important facets of our culture as Science, Math, and Civics. Especially for developing minds. Kids, even up through high school, need creative outlets, and often don't have the ability to seek these on their own -- it's not easy being a sixteen year old guy and telling your parents that you want to paint, but signing up for an art class because you 'have to' is easy.
Cut the multimillion-dollar stadiums, stop spending millions on computer upgrades, stop buying into the latest educational trends, and stop buying new textbooks all the time -- basic algebra hasn't changed in fifty years. Just pay the teachers well, give the schools the ability to discipline students who step out of line, and watch education get back on track.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
If you work more than 35 hours a week to make SOMEONE ELSE rich, you are a tool. There is nothing a manager likes to hear more than you think the company's profits come before your social life or health.
If you work 40+ hours running your OWN BUSINESS, then you should be commended for your good work ethic. You are building your skills, wealth, and the economy. Nothing wrong there.
Would you accept less money to spend more time with your family? Obviously not, since your compaint is that people "aren't working hard", since they don't log enough hours.
Let's have an experiment. I'll work a 10 hour week in a coal mine. You work a 40 hour week debugging. The pay will be the same. Let's see who is considered to have "worked harder". If you really think you work harder programming, let's trade- you could use those extra 30 hours a week with your family, right?
Domestic issues revolving around poor K-12 education are a prime reasons why US students are falling behind. The education system is weak and the culture celebrates ingnorance, victimization, and celebrity. None of which motivate individual accomplishment. The world is becoming a relatively safer and freer place. There is less incentive for anyone to stay in any particular place (or to flee a place) due to politics, resources or war. Scientists use to immigrate to the US; now there is much less reason for them to do so. Mobility is key. Most knowledge workers can set up shop just about anywhere today. A major university or research center can be found close to almost anywhere. The internet allows universal scientific colloration and dissemination of information. A scientist could live in Deli, or Little Rock and still work with the best minds around the world.
Since when did science belong to the US as an object to be defended? The sort of mind set that wrote the article and supports its premise is the mind set that resultss in the excessive politicization of science and causes some of its best minds to have to waste their time competing for power in order to compete for money in order to do science which they no longer have time to do because they're busy competing.
And, despite the wide recognition of the failure of the "publish or perish" paradigm, it continues to be the single most important factor in judging someone's scientific worth, while the value and implications of much of that make-work science is ignored.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Yeah, but it's HIS CHOICE to be a tool, if that's the choice he wants to make.
The problem is not only the music (or lyrics) but the entire "merchandise" that surrounds it.
- Musicvideos
- Internet
- TV News
etc.
Are all influencing the way the world is perceived. So even IF the lyrics haven't changed that much the impact they have clearly has changed because the context in which they are absorbed has changed.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
There is a definite trend of US politics having a detrimental effect on science.
This trend is actually at least half-century old. There is at least one known case of a Nobel prize lost by Americans due to politics. It's the case of Linus Pauling attempt to break the gene code. Pauling would most likely do what Watson & Crick did later, but he had no access to the X-Ray photos of the DNA crystal done by Maurice Wilkins & Rosalinde Franklin. He was in the "land of the free", the photos were in the good ol' UK. Pauling wanted to go to UK to see the photos, but was denied passport according to the infamous McCarran Act. That's how the USA lost the race for at least one Nobel. However, there were more less direct cases like this - Maccarthyism destroyed the status of America as the worldwide recognized icon of liberty, gained in 1930's. The brain drain surely continued aftewards, but the scientists coming to the USA were coming for the dollars, not freedom.
Having been working in america as an european for about 5-6 years, it's hell. It's only gotten worse since 9/11 and the generalizations that americans make about europeans in general.
I too am sure glad to be home.
Management makes short-term decisions, which means they completely ignore the long-term.
You have rightly identified one symptom. However, the markets and business schools are driving that thinking. Analysts only care about today's profit. Immediate results are everything. And they keep reinforcing this notion to American investors.
By extension then, thinking long-term is frowned on. This is picked up in the business schools and pushed out to management types. It also clouds the thinking or freezes the action of the boardroom.
I got my degreein Comp-Sci in 1984, but stayed on to get a teaching certifcation( didn't want to go into the industrial-miltiary complex of the time - and ironically enough the teaching post that i first got was to replace someone that went to Aberdeen, MD ). Taught Calculus, precalculs and programming.
Anyhow as part of the teaching certifcation process we had to take courses re history and sociology of education. The big thing that changed from the 60's to the 80's have a lot to do with what we see now: ( no order of signifcance)
1. parents railing ( and sueing) against students being held back a grade
2. Working jobs during school year that rob study time. 3. ( the one i found most telling and experienced while in school as well while i was teaching) that being smart is a talent, so studying is a waste and doesn't really help - ie the idea that since one cant be the best one doesnt have to waste time studying). This perversion of academic success is in my mind the biggest issue.
Of course, these are all generalizations but they exist. And there are other factors as well, all contributinig to this phenomena. this issue often does get hidden, because we do have a large pool of students, and a large pool of talented people that obscure the overall decline in teh educational system.
My "anecdotal stories" are only a couple examples. As I stated, my father, who was a school teacher (and still is, although not actually teaching), has first hand knowledge of social promotion. He was even instructed by his boss (the principal) to use social promotion to "get rid of the bad kids". And I think I proved how social promotion is bad by stating that skills learned in one year are needed for the next year of learning, for example.. learning fractions are later needed for Algebra and Geometry. So... you're saying that this is not the case?
I mean, look.. if a kid is not getting the basic skills in one grade, how can you expect them to perform in the next grade. This doesn't even need "scientific proof"... it just "makes sense".
Also, regarding the NEA, I said they spend more money lobbying politicians than performing REAL functions like promoting the education of their own teachers. If Microsoft was doing this, you'd think there was a problem, no? Also, do you know how much the President of the NEA makes? Maybe you should look at up, because it's very interesting.
People get what they want, what they really want, not what they say they want. A large number of US citizens want a hard core creationist school system and don't really care about the rest. Men should support their families, and women should be pregnant and meek. We should as a whole sing the praises of the Lord and the rest is details.
The rest of the points being made in this thread are valid but off the mark. Talk to the people who live around you and look at what you do yourself. Where have you put your money? Your time and effort. What have you been willing to sacrifice? This is how we know what you want.
I think you make some good points but I would be careful to not co-opt everything that comes out of your tv set. I think that the "world owes me" attitude was propaganda made up by the media precisely to combat the fact that younger memebers of the last 3 generations have cared quite a bit for those around them (starting with Vietnam protests). If you are someone in power and you are faced with a lot of young people who are mobilized against you, then you have to do something. So, starting in the 80's, the media started droning on about "the me generation", and it was largely successful, as quite a few people started to adopt this slogan and look out for number one. Next came Generation X, the "slackers" who worked 60 hour weeks during the 90's. But, I think this is a case of media manipulation, not an accurate assessment of the desire of today's youth, or any generation's youth for that matter. The process of complete demoralization usually isn't finished until one reaches mid-life, and so I think that the terms "slacker" and "me generation" better apply to older Americans than it does to our young. (note that demoralization has two definitions, the first refers to having one's spirit crushed, the second refers to a loss of morals, or in other words, becoming corrupt. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say, "I just don't care." when I describe something like what's going in present day Iraq. In that case, the 2nd definition applies.).
Also, one other point, is that in America we put very little funding into education. Most students are required to put an increasing amount into education. And, well, our high school system is an entire waste of time. So, I don't blame them for not wanting to "give back". I wish we had a society that cared more for it's young, rather than creating a bunch of anti-social automotons, but hey, that's America, richest country in the world.
As far as layoffs go, let's not kid ourselves, no one, and I mean, absolutely no one, not even people such as yourself, can compete with someone who is able to live on 10% of your yearly salary. It is absolutely impossible, and no one, not even the proponents of free trade, would expect an American to work for $6,000 a year, which would hardly be enough to provide a roof over one's head in a studio apartment in a small town, much less a large urban area. Even the proponents of free trade wouldn't say something as stupid as, "Gee, you just need to work twice as many hours per week, and then you might be able to afford food and clothing." The argument they have made is that other jobs will come down the pike, which hasn't happened.
I can't blame my fellow IT workers, many of whom dropped half a mortgage on their college education only to have their career evaporate, for not embracing another degree. Who in their right mind would take that kind of a risk on a degree, given the fact that the job market is so turbulent? I think the biggest problem is the fact that the rich in our country, who benefit from these highly educated workers, are unwilling to spend any of their tax dollars on educating them. Then, when things go wrong and they need talented, educated workers, they whine about the educational system. Well, there's a solution, spend your billions on education. There is no excuse not to do what other, poorer countries have managed to do much better.
I would agree with little brother on one point.
His teachers do need to be paid more. Teachers make such crappy salaries, it's no wonder good ones are hard to come by. I would love to teach, but since I would have to work harder and get paid about one quarter of what I make with a real job, it just isn't practical.
The typical geek (and i may get flamed for this but oh well) is somewhat scared/timid, and will retreat to that which they know best and get better at it, and shrink from the rest of the world.
You've hit the nail on the head. I was exactly this way growing up. I avoided a lot of social situations and spent my time around a small group of (equally socially inept) friends.
I think it's important for men to have a certain quality to their personality that's hard to describe. It's a form of aggression, recklessness, or self-confidence. You have to have the bravery to step up to the plate no matter what you're facing. Because trying matters most, even if you're defeated. You must be willing to put your safety on the line when it matters. That's character. You must also project the image of self-confidence. You must be sure of who you are and how you will allow yourself (and not allow yourself) to be treated by others.
I wish I had known this when I was growing up. I was smaller than everyone and constantly bullied, because they knew I would back down every time. I wish I could go back and tell that kid that he doesn't have to be bullied. Had I leveled the playing field with a 2x4, maybe I would have won, maybe not. And maybe I would have gotten busted for using a "weapon". But it would have ended the bullying then and there.
I'm teaching my sons the right way to be and act, so that it never goes that far for them. I'm teaching them to be strong, but compationate, agressive when necessary, but calm and even-handed in all things. In short, I'm not raising a pussy like my parents did.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Arg! And this doesn't sound too terribly like a troll.
Ok. Listen unto me and repeateth:
Evolution is change in a species due to a change in the environment. There is nothing magical, nothing heretical, and nothing planned about it. We will not evolve into SuperGods just by waiting around a few million years. If our environment doesn't change, then we will be exactly the same come Judgment Day.
You do not and cannot know the ramifications of eliminating genes from the pool. A quirk today will be a lifesaver in the future. The gene that we think of as "weak" and "polluting" will be the genes that resist infection or the onset of a new disease in the future.
Perhaps simpler terms are called for. Take legos. Legos are genes, the building blocks that have collected together and streamlined over time to form us. Sure there are pieces that don't seem to fit, or that we can't possibly imagine a use for, but you'd sure be sorry if it's been tossed when you do think of a use for it.
By preserving our diversity, and encouraging it, we guarantee that we as a species will survive anything that our planet throws at us and gives us a fighting chance against anything from Out There that could be a little deadly to us critters.
That's exactly why America is going down the fucking tubes. People use the intellectually lazy excuse that all candidates are the same. You may laugh at "the proles" but your elitist attude is EXACTLY why the NASCAR and God crowd has taken over the American political system.
Do you seriously think that Kerry and Bush are undifferentiated? Do you think that Kerry would have decided that the best way to take down terrorists was to attack Iraq? Do you think social programs that marry religion with social work would be emphasized so much in a Kerry administration? Do you think tax cuts at all costs would be Kerry's method of pumping economic growth?
Intellectual arrogance may make you feel better about yourself, but it won't do a fucking thing to change the state of American politics.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
IMHO, FAR too many high-schools spend WAY too much money and time on athletics. What's needed is a way of taking the "nerd" stigma out of science & technology. Competitions like FIRST are a step in the right direction. And then there is the Teacher's Union which IMHO is a real problem. You can't axe an ineffective teacher who's got tenure. Oh, and BTW, this problem goes to the university level too. We had a Freshman year General Chemistry exam. When out of 200 points, the mean is a 60, there's something SERIOUSLY wrong with the teachers. Then, there's the problem of too much emphasis on theory and not enough on practical applications which, after all, is what you need to A) get a job or B) start a tech business. Oh, and then there's a latency problem. The engineering university that I attended in the late 80s had an emphasis on defense related topics (who else uses Ada?) but the problem is that defense was in big trouble those days so you had a rough time finding a job. Seems like what's taugh these days would have been marketable skills five years ago but now is passé.
"A lot of people don't want to get ahead. They want to get by..."
Get ahead of what, or whom, precisely?
I thinks there's plenty of room under the tent for the Trumps and Gates, as well as folk to whom a job is a means to get a nice little place and tend the garden on the weekend.
What were you expecting?
homeschooling is NOT the answer. homeschooled children either come out academically great (and/or religiously brainwashed to hell, but i'll say no more about that aspect of it for the moment)
But you're assuming the primary reason people homeschool their kids is religious in nature. I've never heard this. Usually it's to avoid a by-the-numbers education.
I did my highschool and undergrad in India. Back there, the people who were respected were not the jocks or the cool guys, but the smart ones and the toppers.
People looked upto the guy who went to science fairs and won prizes, and the guy who could solve differential equations by graphs.
Coolness was not a factor - how geniune a person you were and how smart a person you were was what mattered. Social life was not a function of how well you pretended or how well you could throw a ball - it was a function of who you were as a person.
Geek and nerd were used as complimentary terms - the smart ones were called "genes" or "genies", a friendly term respecting their intelligence and skills.
I come here and notice that being smart or good is being made fun of - this, despite the fact that I'm in one of the US's top engineering schools. The ones with the social life are the ones who show off or the ones who throw ball. Even here, being really smart or nerdy is looked down. People do not respect the need for some of us to be introverted and reclusive, and people are branded as obnoxious or stereotyped as nerds or geeks, most often in a derogatory manner.
Am I bitter? Absolutely.
I come from an environment where both my parents went to grad school, half the people in my family are PhDs and my uncle is a quantum physicist at CERN. When I was in middle and high school, I wanted to be a physicist or a mathematician. Social life was not an issue, it was always a given.
I thought that the US would be a haven for scientists and engineers, but I come here and see that except for some people in the academia, people do not really respect science. People like to use the work that scientists do, but do not like them - the populace is either scared or jealous of really smart people.
The haven that is equal for all that America once was is gone - today, all that I see is people who are scared of most foreigners, and people who discrimate against the very smart ones in your own country.
People like Jack Valenti are willing to sacrifice the rights of the smartest of America for the profits of a few. People want to justify that not going to school and getting experience is somehow better than people who work their asses through grad school. Money is your new God and Television is all that America seeks.
The guy who used to sit next to me in class and had won International Math and Physics Olympiad championships got a fellowship at CMU, but dropped out because his research needed defence approval. He is now in Tel Aviv working on the same stuff, with no hassles whatsoever.
As I write this, I see an ad on TV advertising for ITT Technical Institute saying how they will change your life, and saying how a career in IT will get you the hot babes and the cool cars. Is that why you want to do science? I wanted to do science because I loved science. I wanted to do science because since childhood, I enjoyed doing it. I did not do it because I wanted the cool cars or the hot babes (although, I did know that I will have a better salary than most and that did help a little).
If you want to set your system straight, look at the problems. Make sure the next generation knows that science and engineering saves lives and improves our quality of living. Throwing a ball does not matter, its not going to pay your bills when you are 40 and has no more entertainment value than a clown. Actors and entertainment artists are given importance. I do not see people going to Orchestras, I see people flocking to Britney Spears.
I grew up in an environment where USSR was India's friend, and had Russian comics. Misha was a popular one, and all the kids in my generation wanted to be like Yuri Gargarin. We all wanted to be as smart as Einstein. Kids wrote essays about winning the Nobel Prize. We grew up in an environment where our parents and teachers helped us make Tesla coils in our middle school, so that they can demonstrate the effects of electricity.
My school libr
I feel sick when I see people complaining about how they need two incomes while they are pumping gas for their luxury SUV that they use to drive 30 miles to work because they live on a 5 acre plot in the suburbs. Those aren't things you need, those are things you want!
My fiance and I have already discussed this and decided that I (I am the male in the relationship) will stay with the kids full time until the youngest is in school and then I will retrain as a high school physics teacher (I am currently a research engineer) so I can get summers off. To accomplish this we plan to buy a house that we can afford on her salary alone. My salary for the time before we have kids will go towards the education of our future children, and our retirement. We also plan on buying that house in a location that makes it easy for one of us to walk to work (she is currently getting her PhD in astro-physics and plans on being a proffesor, universities tend to be easier to live near...).
Anyway the important point is that you need to figure out what you need and what you want, and decide if what you want is worth the time with your kids.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
If it was just bad education or less money for science we could fix it with a bill or two in congress. Unfortunatly this reflects a deep anti-intellectualism in america. If we want americans to be good scientists and engineers we need to make it desierable to be a scientist or engieneer.
This means more than paying them more. It means making them *respected* and not mearly perpetuating the mad scientist or nerd sterotype. Unless the United States starts electing intellectual figures (like tony blair rather than george bush) and stops making fun of nerds it will keep falling in it's scientific prowess.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Rather than directing the blame of our failing science culture to any particular institution or group, let's talk about the image of scientists and engineers in the U.S. The majority of the population doesn't find much romance or excitement in pursuing new science frontiers, or developing technology. These are also the fields which many people view as difficult and arcane. We scientists are the magicians of our time, dabbling in witchery that the public doesn't understand. And doesn't want to. Why should they, when they can dream of being athletes or rock stars, or fat-cat CEOS climbing the corporate ladder. Hell, even doctors have some romantic notions attached to their profession! Why are scientists and engineers any different? I think it's because we really do have intellectually challenging jobs, and the American public is not into challenges, at least ones that don't take more than a couple of hours on a grassy field. I'm not downplaying the actual responsibility and hard work that comes along with nearly all professions. It's the image of science that is suffering. I don't know the solution to this, unless education actually starts teaching relevant material and demonstrating it's utility early on. Computers, electronics, cars, and all sorts of high-tech gadgets need to cease being black boxes to the majority of Americans. Curiosity is the key. Seeking knowledge is not a past time of most couch potatoes who are glued to their mind-raping televisions, of which few know the science behind. To address the slipping of science in America, you need to first ask why people aren't more curious about the world around them, why they don't find romance in the discovery of new technological possiblities, and why they don't wonder about the laws governing our very existence. Science needs a makeover in America, to enlist youth in the ranks of scientists and engineers and to draw support (financial and moral) from the general public. How about we go on strike, to show them how important technology really is to them?
Basically I look at science/math performance in our schools, which every 2 years or so is compared to EU and Japanese kids' scores (we always lose big-time), then point to the focus on consumerism demonstrated by things like Pizza Hut contracts with schools and insane levels of advertising everywhere. Taken together what are these facts telling us? The future of this country is being taught that it's cool to buy lots and lots of stuff, but not to work for the money.
Then I look at the tricks our govt plays to keep us on top. Examples ... the US controls so many satelites flying over Latin America that US companies have used satelite imagery to pinpoint the best farmland and buy it. The native populations don't have access to these pics (at least they didn't 5 years ago when I read about this). Sweatshops, crypto export laws, IMF debt and regulations, and under Bush the military...without these type of "cheats" to slant the playing field in the US's favor I think we would fall rapidly behind the EU and maybe even China in the upcoming decade.
It looks to me like we are living off of the momentum of WW2 generation, and that momentum is running out. I know some flag-wavers are going to get pissed at this and maybe even tell me to love it or leave it. But insulting America is not the point.
The point is that when these congressional cheats are removed or overcome, I'm afraid the US won't be able to stand on its own two feet.
- No-consequence education for various reasons - a student isn't allowed to fail and is always passed through
- No respect for education, intelligence, academic achievement. The highest rewards (social and ecnomic) are for sports and sex-appeal.
- Decreased spending on research by corporations and government, and a repurposing of money towards military applications
- Europe and Asia are coming to parity with the United States.
These all have ruined the ecosystem for science. In this ecosystem some toil on esoteric Math for Math's sake and Science for Science's sake problems. What happens there trickles forward to partical applications.-
The first step are the guys researching pure, abstract science. They might be conducting an experiment bombarding a surface with a certain particle to examine the diffraction caused. In the experiment they notice certain kinds of temperture sensors spike up. These are the guys that figure out that particle causes asymetric molecules to vibrate. The diffraction experiment was a flop, by the way because the nature of the diffraction didn't produce an accurate map of the blah de blah de blah.
-
The next part of the ecosystem are the guys that ask, what does this vibration mean? Can I heat something with these particles. These guys figure out particle X can be used to heat substances containing asymetric molecules like water.
-
The next guy comes along and asks if this can be done efficiently? Can I make a gizmo that's small and tolerably efficient? This becomes more of an engineering problem. Some guy at DARPA decides to see if it can be used to knock missles off their trajectory by heating them.
-
Then some guy at GE decides that he wants to use the gizmo to make a prototype oven. He's the highest up on the food chain from the science side. The DOD funds related research in weaponizing the particle emitter.
But the biggest hit has been the lack of funding for basic research. Without that first layer - there is nothing at the next layers to build on. Military and industry are in the 3rd and 4th layer. At that point we know there is such a phenomena/effect, but the question is can we make it into an oven or blow up incoming missles with it? This is the by-product of research that most people see. Congress credits military research for "the science" that gave rise to the fancy new oven that cooks a chicken in 30 seconds.We have no real respect for funding, advancing and promoting the layers 1 and 2. Most people don't even understand what happens in those layers. How could we not understand what gravity is at every level? Don't we know what atoms are made of? Didn't Einstein figure all that out? Until we respect, value and understand basic research there will be more interest in congressional hearings on steroid usage in sports and bare bossums on television than hearings on best US super-collider sites.
We have more respect for the management team at GE that decided to go ahead with the oven idea. In fact we have much more respect for the attractive eye-candy spokesmodel that shows off the appliance at some trade show. The fact that the two guys at stage 1 that discovered the phenomena recieved a Nobel prize some six years later doesn't even register.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
"Maybe we should try and just live within our means, even if it does mean not wearing the latest fashions, etc?"
I'm not sure if you really mean that having enough food to eat and a place to stay is some sort of fashion, although I do realize that many, many out there MUST supply the obscene fashion industry, among other things with money(because it is huge and outrageously *everywhere*). But a lot of the people I know who have massive debts, didn't ever make enough to survive on in the first place. (And they are usually the hardest workers, too) I'm lucky to live where cost of living is fairly low, but even then...if you only make 2$/hr...you can't exactly afford 500$/month rent for a small single room apartment easily. Especially if you have children.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
and this makes darpa the only player as far as independent businesses doing science are concerned.
It is a great pity that the NSF is so restricted, it should be changed. I would like to be able to apply for non DoD grants for ReiserFS, and have security not be the only thing I can officially get funded.
Add to that, the hoops you have to jump through to BECOME a teacher in the first place.
I graduated from college with a Bachelor's in Geology and Geophysics. I then went into the USAF and flight school, and eventually became an instructor, teaching people on the ground, in the simulator, and in the air.
After I left the USAF, my old high school contacted me about possibly coming back to teach.
And I was interested.
But the hoops I would have had to jump through, going back to college for 2 years to get "certified", when I already had been certified to teach people to deal with life-and-death-level situations, but it wasn't sufficient credentials to teach in a public school.
It's a pity. The old Earth Science teacher was about to retire, and they had the chance to get a bona-fide geologist into the job. . . but bureau-crap kept it from happening.
And THAT was 15 + years ago. . . it's gotten worse, as I see what the schools have become, from seeing my children in them.
Which is why my wife and I now homeschool: the oldest is coding Python and starting Java to prep her for coding in C, and the youngest taught **HERSELF** HTML, Photoshop, and a bunch of other graphics applications. . . they may lack "socialization" skills, but they code better than I do. . . (ok, I'm a security geek nowadays...)
If that film 10.5 isn't enough to convince you of our lack of scientific knowledge, then I don't know what is!
I don't claim that military spending isn't used to build bombs. I claim that the research to make a bigger bomb often comes back in the form of technology returned to the public and applied in non-military applications. I also claim that the US would not be a leader in technology if it wasn't a leader in military, and that (although it might be a large waste) that spending money on military has beneficial side-effects and does produce something.
I don't know for sure, but I'd put money on it that some aeronautical or guidance advances are used by private corporations in the US due to research on the apache or tomahawk.
The scale used to judge the skill levels of the students was removed because it made the low performing students 'feel bad about themselves', meanwhile more and more of the money that was readied for the schools was diverted for 'administrative purposes' or in other words the people who ran the districts decided that they needed a new mercedes and gave themselves a raise.
Many schools became just ways to get a large number of students attending, and a good average grade on the SAT since those are the ways that the school gets its funding.
I can't tell you the amount of time that my teachers in junior high and high school spent drilling us on the SAT instead of actually teaching us.
A number of factors could help the school system in America.
I went to High School in the seventies, the class valedictorian was by far the most respected student there. He was not in any sports but was the nicest guy in the entire school. He is now our family doctor. Things are different today, it's not that we didn't have some of the same things going on.
I graduated from High School 8 years ago (class of '96). Our class valedictorian was a very respected student, one of the nicest girls I knew in the place. I'm not sure what she's doing today, I didn't keep in touch with most of the people in school and moved across the country 2 years ago. Still, I was always impressed by how hard she worked to maintain her GPA, and that she still had time to work part-time and volunteer in the community.
But today it's just more extreme. People got beat up in school or about something that happened at school that never got settled, not often but it happened. Today people get killed in school,not often but it happens.
When I was in school, people got beat up, generally at the beginning and end of the school year, when it was 100 degrees outside and everyone tended to be a little short on temper. My first year of high school, someone brought a gun to school with the intent of shooting one of the Vice Principles (who was generally hated by many students, not that it justifies anything). Someone saw the gun in his bag and reported it before he did anything.
3 years after I graduated, someone brought a gun to the other high school in the same city, and shot a few students. Within hours people from all over the country were discussing why the school should have metal detectors and security officers and this and that. Anyone that ever attended high school in San Diego County (outside of the city schools) could have told them that metal detectors wouldn't work, because every class room's door opens to the outside (as do the bathrooms, where the shots were fired). Security officers were on campus at every school in the district when I was attending, as well as when the shootings took place (but they increased the numbers almost immediately afterwards). A couple of weeks later someone shot at the administrative building at another school in the same district.
In many ways, students have been treated like prisoners from the time I started attending school. In high school I was required to take 5 courses every semester, regardless of what I needed to graduate, simply because a student has to attend for a certain number of hours to be counted for the cash the state hands out to public schools. Students couldn't leave campus for lunch, and were confined to a particular area of the campus to make sure they could be watched. The zero tolerance policies for violence mean that students looking to commit violence know that there's a good chance that the student they want to attack will not fight back, as both students will be punished if that happens. No lockers were supplied to students because they would be expensive and were found to lead to increased drug use and violence (as students kept drugs and weapons in their lockers). But without lockers, students were often required to leave their posessions in classrooms during assemblies, so that searches could be made of their bags without large protests, often with drug dogs brought in to speed things up. One student's parents sued the school because they had signed a waiver allowing the school to force their daughter to take a drug test; they were under the impression (somehow) that they had to sign and submit the permission slip to prevent the school from performing the drug tests.
There is a big difference. The popular songs talked about alot of things. Sex, drugs, love etc. Now I hear songs that talk about popping a cap in someones ass. Or a dead girl friend in the trunk. Things are different, while alot of themes are similiar, it's just alot more extreme.
Most popular songs are still about sex, drugs, love, etc. The extreme ends, or the things that people get up in arm
-PainKilleR-[CE]
I don't know where you went to school, but I have to call BULLFUCKINGSHIT! Where I went to school, if you were smart, your best bet was to hide it, or to stay as hidden as possible so as to not get harassed. I spent almost all of my lunches at school in the computer lab with other smart friends because it was dangerous to go to the cafeteria (and, no, it wasn't just because of the food).
Add in to this the fact that American institutionalized education today is not designed to educate, but rather to make people conform, and you have a recipe for the decline and fall of an empire.
Nathan's blog
My school library was full of books written by Asimov and Clarke, and we grew up aspiring to be pioneers in science and technology.
I thought the US would be like this, but after coming here, its been a disappointment. I'm just very sad, because given your resources and your intelligentsia, you could be so much more.
My only question is, what ever gave you the idea that America (outside the NASA research labs) would be some sort of scientific mecca? It's all over the news these days about all the craziness our administration is doing. Ask any Frenchman what he thinks of American culture. And didn't any of your Indian compatriots call you and tell you what it was really like here?
For some weird reason, immigrants have been coming to this country for over 100 years with some idea that this place was paradise, the streets were paved with gold, etc., just to wake up to bitter reality when they got here. Don't you guys ever watch the news? Or better yet, talk to other people that have already come here? Wake up! This country isn't any better than most out there. If you're looking for a better situation in your life, maybe you should try cleaning up your own backyard instead of abandoning your home and moving someplace else because you've heard some myths about it being wonderful there.
You seem to fail to see that a lot of our cool gadgets and high technology items have their roots in military research. Radar guns for instance, velcro, etc.
Plus military research has a habit of taking previous ideas and prototypes, and turning them into reliable machinery, like large aircraft, submarines (think exploratory subs), and even cars and trucks.
If you want someone to blame for the loss of scientific dominance, then blame ourselves. We allow government institutions like the patent office to continue stiffling innovation with meaningless patents (like software patents). We allow our representatives to draft and pass crazy laws like the DMCA that prevent reverse engineering so that our aspiring engineers cannot learn from the works of those that preceeded them.
Don't blame the budget, don't blame the government, blame us. We are the ones that allowed it to happen.
The reason it wasn't a problem before that time was because intelligent women had zero opportunity elsewhere. They could teach, stay home, or get a menial manufacturing job.
and schoolmasters considered Thomas Edison "addled"... where would we be if we'd culled out those folks?
Actually, we'd have an elephant that wasn't savagely electrocuted for no reason, and Nikola Tesla may have had a more prosperous career, giving us advances and technologies even more wonderous than the AC power system we now rely on.
Edison is a terrible example. Sure, he created a few interesting little inventions like the motion picture projector, but his destructive ego also hindered a lot of progress.
I got my physics Ph.D. five years ago, and the trends mentioned in the article are both readily apparent and not unexpected.
It's important to understand that the USA has been a relatively minor player in basic science for nearly all of its history. Since World War 2 there has been a temporary reversal of this situation, because:
Because of these factors as well as a relatively liberal immigration policy, good scientists flocked to the USA beginning in the late 1930's. Others have pointed out the critical role these folks played in the early US space program, the Manhattan project, etc. Now, with the rest of the world catching up in living standards and the Cold War ending, the USA is returning to its position as a relatively minor player in basic research.
The root cause of this secondary position is cultural. The USA tends to see everything through a very pragmatic lens, where applications are valued much more than the underlying knowledge. The people who can turn basic research into successful applications are held in highest regard, people like Thomas Edison and Jonas Salk. As a Ph.D. student by far the most common question people would ask is, "But what is your research good for?" -- the implication being that if there isn't another breakthrough product or hot IPO coming out the other end, it's just not valuable.
Europe and Asia, by contrast, have long traditions of valuing scholarship/knowledge for its own sake. The role models are Einstein, Darwin, Maxwell, Confucius -- discoverers rather than inventors. They have a greater cultural willingness to fund basic research, and a more highly-educated general population to understand the results. A large fraction of CEOs in Germany have Ph.D. degrees, more evidence of a greater cultural emphasis on academics and research.
Experimental high energy physics is a good example of the differing cultural attitudes. In the USA, this research was always justified on the basis of military advantage, or at least avoiding military disadvantage. Consequently, the end of the Cold War has meant the end of this research in the USA; in another 3-4 years the USA will be effectively out of the accelerator game, with no next-generation facility to compete with CERN's LHC. If you are an experimental high-energy physicist, better start learning French.
David Goodstein, Vice Provost of CalTech on the collapse of the PhD pyramid scheme which drives science education in the USA and started to fail in the 1970s and, in his words: http://www.house.gov/science/goodstein_04-01.htm " In the course of a career, a professor in a research university turns out, on the average, about 15 Ph.D.'s. Many of these would like, themselves, to become in turn professors in research universities and turn out 15 more Ph.D.'s. After all, these were the gems that were selected at each stage of the mining and sorting operation. Becoming a professor seems to many of them the natural culmination of their successful educations. That is obviously one of the principal engines of the exponential growth that lasted for a hundred years in America. Those students are bitterly disappointed when they find out the jobs they want aren't there, and their disappointment seeps down through the ranks, turning younger students away from science. ... The problem, to reiterate, is that science education in America is designed to select a small group of elite scientists. An unintended but inevitable side effect is that everyone else is left out. As a consequence of that, 20,000 American high schools lack a single qualified physics teacher, half the math classes in American schools are taught by people who lack the qualifications to teach them, and companies will increasingly find themselves without the technical competence they need at all levels from the shop floor to the executive suite."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I find it odd how many people from the State's think that they are actually doing any useful work by reading and posting on /. nevermind ass busting levels of work.
They still have credit card debt because they never bothered to do the math.
The vast majority of dual income families have less free income at the end of the month that those same families would have if one of them stayed home.
Child care, added vehicle costs, more days of takeout food for dinner all adds up, quickly. Very few dual income families have the lower of the two incomes actually high enough to come out ahead, completely ignoring the factors around the happiness of their children, their own personal happiness, etc.
I work at a school (IT) and we homeschool our kids and I'm also Bible College graduate and ordained - marry & bury, the whole bit. I don't get how educated people keep banging the same gong, "Sure, homeschooled kids test high and are less likely to fall through the cracks of society - BUT they're not socialized, or they're crazed Christians, or freaks." This is sad coming from geeks who themselves have probably been on the ugly end of teasing from those who think, "Hey, if these guys are smarter than the average 'normal kid' - then we have to bring them down by some other measure." I know some smart homeschooled kids who fit the profile - got the brains but arrogant and not really that great fitting in. But this is an old argument against homeschooling and most modern homeschoolers are hip to the need to get their kids/students out and into the social mix. As far as the Creation thing goes - I think most Christians are now up to speed with a 'Creation Event'. How could they not be with Hawking and others freely using 'God' language?
Ugh. This is some pretty slanted and assuming stuff here.
:)
First off, you're right to a large extent. The US is not a scientific community. You won't earn respect from everyone just by being smart. But this isn't the picture it's painted to be.
US culture emphasizes excelling on all fronts and being an individual, exercising your freedom. This means that you follow your own passions, go where you want to and be good at every facet in your chosen path and in life.
If you're smart, that's a large step to getting there. But you also need passion and individuality. Second, you need life skills. A scientist is a wonderful thing, but a scientist without the ability to effectively communicate with someone not in his field is only good in the lab. You have to have social skills to relate, business skills to sell yourself, mental skills to do a good job and passion to do it well on your own will. Standing on your own feet and presenting a good face on all sides is what we value here. Some do a decent job of faking it -- it sucks, I know some of them. But most off, it's trial by fire. Sink or swim.
Jealousy, envy, rejection of 'being-smart-is-good' mentality? Sure. That's life. Some people are stupid and you'll never get rid of them. Deal with it.
Drug-heads? Boozers? Party animals? Sure. I can't call you wrong here. A lot of our culture emphasizes 'having a good time', 'being a kid', etc. especially during the college years. That said, you can't blame your whole experience on this.
As for your comment about leaders, I believe that it is misplaced. Leaders do a great job at organizing things, but culture is what drives who an American is and what our country values. Leaders do not. If our culture emphasizes 'having a good time', which unfortunately it does in some circles, the leaders can hold all the meetings they want and (in the case of a politician) pass law after law, but it won't do a damn bit of good. The people make a country great, not its leaders.
And in respect to you not growing up here, the opinion of a foreigner is very valuable, as is asking your neighbor or a friend what he thinks of you. But in the end, with all due respect, people who grew up in our education system have more of a right to speak to its merits with a critical eye. You must live the life and be critical to be qualified to give a valuable opinion, but it is not possible to be critical and not live here yet do the same. I think perhaps some Americans would do well to think about who is really qualified to give an opinion on all things American.
For me personally, I've had a number of run-ins with people who hated the smart folks. One year I picked up the nickname 'brain'. I was always the kid walking in just before the bell so I could grab 5 minutes with my science and history teachers to discuss nuclear physics, quantum theory, the Nazi political machine and the like. I am a geek.
When I looked around me, though, nobody seemed to share my passion. Nobody seemed to value doing their best and knowing as much as possible. I felt like the only kid in the school who cared. It was quite disconcerting.
But when it came down to it, my perception was due to my focus on specific interests and my lack of a non-bitter social face. I was hard to approach and deal with -- skills that I spoke of above. My school was not a lab environment, my school was a people environment with folks from all walks of life, not just the upper crust. When I learned to present a more friendly and open social face and attempt to relate to others instead of expect them to join me in my shell, things got better and I saw that people really did care, just not in the way that I did.
I doubt that my post will hold much meaning for you, you appear fairly set in your take on the situation, but perhaps an alternate view from someone in a similar situation might shed some insight on your experience here. Regardless of all, my best of wishes to you, from geek to geek.
Cheers
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
I would strongly diagree with this. They shouldn't be considered as 'day-care' workers. The fact that at many times people view them as such in no way helps the U.S. educational system. Children in these grades can learn quite rapidly - with good teachers. That's why those teaching the youngest students need to be bright and creative, and have good training. The parents are at fault for not doing their part in educating young children. Just letting the kids sit in front of the boob-tube when they're not in school is not a way to ensure their success later in life.
Actually, I think the real problem in the US at the moment has nothing to do with scientific dominance, but rather the degree to which compensation is not tied to the creation of wealth.
It is blatantly true that the closer you are to the money in the US, the more money you make. This goes for lawyers, executives, and the entire management class. Unfortunately, it is also generally true that the closer you are to the money the less you have to do with the actual creation of wealth and the more you have to do with the reallocation of wealth.
To use a somewhat flawed analogy, those who recieve the highest compensation in the US are involved in trying to increase thier share of the pie (or the share of the organization whose interests they represent). While engineers and scientists who are actually *increasing* the size of the pie for everyone are compensated significantly less.
So I completely agree that the US is still one of the dominant players in both theoretical and applied science, but the issue is that it has become increasingly less *rewarding* for individuals to involve themselves in creating these advances.
This disparity between the compensation of those who *create* wealth and those who *redistribute* wealth is one which has continued to grow since the 1950s, and it is not clear that this trend will change. Especially since the management class is strongly motivated to support the status quo, and the relative societal and cultural valuation of management activities versus engineering and scientific activities has continued to trend toward managment.
Before responding off the cuff, take a moment to look at how much your close acquaintainces are compensated as well as what they actually do. There is something wrong with our system of compensation when folks doing innovative work in computing, material science, industrial chemistry, biotechnology, et al, make significantly less than folks doing mortgage underwriting, accounting, money management, real estate, etc.
Personally, the right answer to this conundrum seems to be to do *both*. Unfortunately, there is very little overlap in the skill sets required to exploit innovation and to innovate. In addition, acquiring both is not only rare, but the few folks who do are generally so much better rewarded for exploiting innovation that they have a hard time making a logical case for doing anything else.
Fortunately, most of the folks who innovate do so for emotional and intellectual reasons rather than financial ones. It is sad, however, that the financial rewards for innovation are disproportionately smaller than those for exploiting it.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."