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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?"
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
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.
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
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?
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
Maybe we can start having decent kids if families can afford to have one parent stay at home.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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)
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
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.
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
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.
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
I call bullshit on the whole US education issue. The NASA engineers that put a man on the moon were not a random cross section of the general US populace. The engineers at PARC were not a gaggle of people picked randomly from the general US population. The scientists that developed the LASER, RADAR, every lab coat wearing nerd at JPL and The AeroSpace Corporation in El Segundo CA (the guys that actually did the work for Mercury and Gemini and GPS) - NONE of those guys were or are representative of the 'average' American High School student.
...
Those guys are the top 1% of the top 1% - always have been, always will be. The bottom 90% of the American student body can be a bunch of druggies listening to bad music (see also : the 60's (hippy movement), which also coincides with NASA putting men on the moon) and the elite of the elite will still be worlds apart and above, quite bluntly 'the best.' We have the same people in the workforce we had five years ago - their education hasn't changed one bit, unless it has gotten better via continuing education. Regardless of what is happening in K-12, the American workforce is still full of the same people that brought you all of the wonderful technology the Benedict Arnold CEO's are now saying they can't find anybody smart enough to work on here in the States. Bullshit. Complete bullshit.
What has changed? The work atmosphere, the opportunities available, the ability for those brilliant American employees to find jobs that can sustain a family in a country where the first $2,000 each month goes to taxes, the next $500 each month goes to health insurance, and the next $2,500 each month goes towards a mortgage payment, property taxes, fixed bills like electricity, water, phone, gas, etc. That is $60,000 a year before you even think about putting food in your mouth or getting in a vehicle to drive to work or putting on clothes to work in
It has nothing to do with whether or not a school has a science lab, and everything to do with whether or not there are jobs out there in science labs doing work, research. If the Benedict Arnold CEOs out there want to point fingers for lack of progress in R&D they can point them at themselves for cutting R&D budgets. The people are there to man them, same people that brought you all those nifty tech toys you currently enjoy - where the fsck are the jobs in R&D?
Anybody that thinks that American students on the average are a bunch of clueless stupid losers is correct, inasmuch as that has ALWAYS been the case. Anybody that honestly believes that the top 1% isn't easily as sharp, intelligent, and eager to excel as the top 1% of previous generations is a stupid motherfscker that needs to go visit the kids at MIT, CalPoly, etc.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
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:
The decline in the education system over the years certainly has a tremendous impact in this area but I feel it also has a lot to do with the trend to ship the jobs overseas. It started with manual labor jobs and has slowly worked it's way to the tech jobs.
.com bubble), and many of the companies folded or downsized. When people went looking for jobs elsewhere after losing their jobs, they found that the jobs they were looking for were paying too little, no longer available, or being shipped overseas.
The US has approximately a 5:1 ratio of jobs shipped into the US by foreign companies vs. jobs shipped out of the US by US companies. In other words, we gain far more jobs from foreign companies shipping jobs overseas than we lose by shipping jobs overseas.
Of course, there is a slight lag in the types of jobs being equatable. When people started complaining that jobs in the automobile industry were being shipped overseas, there was a period during which there weren't many foreign auto makers opening new plants in the US. Now, though, if you buy a Japanese or German car in the US, it's almost (or possibly more) as likely to have been built in the US as an American car.
As was the case in the past, the jobs being shipped overseas are most often jobs that require fairly limited skills that are easy for people to pick up. Additionally, people were getting used to getting paid fairly well for those jobs (in the past due to labour unions negotiating wages too high to be sustainable for the corporation--the same thing happened in some companies in the Asian auto industry in the last decade; in the case of tech jobs due to the
The simple reality is that there are fewer openings available for people in those positions, even when you include all of the openings that are now appearing overseas. Furthermore, because we've managed to reduce the expectations of customers to the point where even the higher levels of tech support are handled with fairly simple scripts, the lowest levels of support, where you'd normally hire the most people with the least amount of education, can, in many cases, be completely replaced with a computer and a handful of more highly educated individuals to support and maintain that computer (maybe even the upper-level support staff can handle some of this burden, such as adding new questions/answers to it's database).
Declines in the education system can probably be addressed with a completely new post. It's really almost irrelevant because many of the people these jobs are being shipped to are being educated specifically to perform these jobs (improving their English and studying linguistics to remove accents as best as possible in a short time), and because the level of education comes down to less than that expected (but not always shown) from a high school graduate.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
- 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.
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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.
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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.
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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
In 1963 - 1968? If I had to guess, I would say that a most if not ALL of the tech nerds at NASA were Americans.
:-P
"All", you say? After 48 seconds of googling, I found that at a minimum, 32 of the aerospace engineers were Canadian. From this site:
Many of the engineers who lost their jobs with the Arrow's cancellation went to other aerospace firms, and 32 joined the U.S. space agency NASA, where they helped put American astronauts on the Moon.
What else did your superior U.S. education teach you?
BTW, I thought it was common knowledge that the best rocket scientists in the U.S. during the space race were Germans brought over after WWII.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
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.