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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?"
from the DOD and other areas because they have modernized their websites and bid / awards area. Most likely this is because of the money they receive from the government, but running a small scientific firm I know that I get at least four mailings about how to apply for DOD grants for scientific research while I get none from any other government agency. I have appled for grants through NSA and others so they have our company information. I think science in general in the public sector is poor. The whole thing, from NASA to NSA to their websites looks like it was developed with the 1960's in mind. Beyond medical and geographic reasearch, public scientific information and research is very limited.
There is a rage in me to defy the order of the stars, despite their pretty patterns.
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...
I don't believe it's where the funding goes that's the big problem. I came from a school district that had pleanty of money for all areas. It just wasn't cool to be smart. The smart kids go teased and beat up. Who wants that.
There is also an increase in laziness in the US. Kids today don't want to work hard for anything. Just take the easy road. I know because they are my friends. They think I am nuts for reading and working hard at things.
So, in K-12 education it's not cool to be smart and you get torn into if you are added with the US laziness equals less qualified people to do the jobs
Example: in college engineering 4 of the top 5 students were foreign. Either Arabic or Asian.
Evolution or ID?
As a counterpoint though, the US education system does exactly what the powers that be need it to do by turning out unquestioning conformists that can be easily placed into low-tech, low-wage positions with a minimal amount of uproar.
"We stand at a pivotal moment," Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader, recently said at a policy forum in Washington at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the nation's top general science group. "For all our past successes, there are disturbing signs that America's dominant position in the scientific world is being shaken."
I thought science was the one area where there should be no borders. Why is it so disturbing that other countries are doing well in scientifical-type stuff?
Mr. Daschle accused the Bush administration of weakening the nation's science base by failing to provide enough money for cutting-edge research.
Okay - this is ridiculous. The graphs cover 20 years - 1983-2003. Bush has been in office for ~3 years. Explain again how this is his fault...??
PS I'm not defending Bush - I'm defending basic math skills.
Oh, and here is a link to the printer-friendly version. Kudos to the submitter for including a link to the reg-free version.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
My family has been working as teachers and staffers in my town's public school system for almost 30 years. In those 30 years, the school budget has been approved only 28 times. No one wants to pay for education. However, people are more than happy to pay for our HS's absurd sports program. Every year the administration tries to move money from sports to academic programs, but outraged parents always reverse the decision. Last year the administration faced such a budget shortfall that they put a referrendum out to the town - Cut the sport's budget by 50% or cut music/wood|metalshop/arts/home-economics entirely from the budget. Guess which one the people chose?
The DoD will fund a lot of different things. Many different scientific areas. Not just bombs and missles. They fund so many different areas because most of the Military isn't guns and missles. It's logistics. They fund materials, methods, health related things and more. They may get used by the DoD later but they can have many purposes. They are a great springboard for science.
Evolution or ID?
the US will have lost its dominance except militarily. we will not have high tech jobs, all workers will be working at service jobs, and the only way we will not fall apart is to, at some point in the next 2 decades, do a structured pull back from the level of influence and projected power we currently have.
I personally think that Europe is headed for the same fate and the 3rd world due to sheer numbers and industrial output will have surged into the same power league as the EU and the US.
this power struggle will be the cause of the 3rd world war, after which, the balkanization of nations and cultures will begin to disappear and we will come together as a planet some time near the end of this century.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Europe and Asia are ascendant, analysts say, even if their achievements go unnoticed in the United States. In March, for example, European scientists announced that one of their planetary probes had detected methane in the atmosphere of Mars -- a possible sign that alien microbes live beneath the planet's surface. The finding made headlines from Paris to Melbourne. But most Americans, bombarded with images from America's own rovers successfully exploring the red planet, missed the foreign news.
... er, Spanish ... er, British ... er, American, damn it! ... cultural arrogance. We've been the most powerful country in the world in every way -- not just militarily, but scientifically, economically, culturally, and politically -- for somewhere between six decades and a century, depending on your specific measure. We're used to thinking of that state of affairs as though it will last forever, as though it were personally handed to us on a silver platter by God Himself. But it doesn't work that way.
... but there were and are other nations fitting this description that didn't get so far. The reverse is also true; consider that (just barely) within living memory, a small island in the North Sea controlled the biggest empire the world has ever seen, and its language and culture are still the closest thing to universal in human history. A nation's position on the world stage is primarily determined by its culture.
IOW, the real problem is Roman
Ideally, of course, it doesn't matter where the knowledge is -- knowledge is knowledge, and an American is not diminished if the latest miracle drug or neat gizmo he uses to make his life better comes originally from outside our borders. But it adds up over time. Part of the reason for America's dominance of most of the 20th c. was simply that we were a huge nation with lots of natural resources
We are not, hopefully, going to turn into Russia: a Third World nation with nukes. But if we don't pay attention, we are going to see the permanent decline in living standards for the average American, in not only relative but absolute terms. This trend has already begun. That's not the future I want for myself and my children.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It does simply boil down in the end to a total lack of government concern about the education system.
Most states have lowered the amount of funding they are providing to education at all levels.
From K-12 through the college system the amount of funding is in constant decline and is doing nothing more than hurting the youth of america today and hurting america as a whole in the future.
If that were not enough, those students who are actually prone to creative and/or intelligent thought are often stifled by a system that looks more like the Special Olympics with the every student is equal approach that prevents them from advancing at the proper pace.
5 Ways to Improve the system:
1. More available private school systems
2. More funding for education programs
3. Allow students with talent to advance
4. Advanced schooling for aforementioned students
5. In college, more research opportunities for undergrads.
The last one may seem a bit iffy but I can state from personal experience that I would have loved to get more time actually working on stuff in my field and be left out because I wasn't a grad student yet.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
As a Grad Student rushing/hating to finish his Master's Thesis, I think I can offer something here.
Typically there are two sectors where research is done, academia or industry. In the USA, Industrial research unfortunately is usually the first to take a hit during bad economic conditions as we are presently in. Furthermore although some companies still do longterm innovative research that may not yield results for many years, this is becoming less common. What little research is still being done is done more for immediate application based work.
The traditional research for the general betterment of society without much regard for profit happens in academia. Unfortunately, academic research is suffering recently in the US. First as mentioned, due to the recent emphasis in defense funding and more grants available from DARPA, DoE, DoHomelandSecurity, research is focused into the application/results based work these agencies require rather than the open knowledge for discovery's sake approach of the NSF.
Furthermore, the core element of academic research are the Grad Students that do all the grunt work. In the US, most Science/Engineering grad students are international students. Given current visa restrictions, harrasement and a host of other problems, international student applications to the US have dropped significantly. This is having a noticable impact on research in universities.
Finally, meaningful R&D is now not exclusive to the US as it was a few decades ago. Many other countries are now making breakthroughs, or striving to establish resesarch institutions. For example, Indians know that their outsourcing days are limited, either 'cause either the outsourcing trend will stop or someone else (Phillipines, etc) will do it for even cheaper. So their next big thrust is to bring R&D into the country.
Nothing too organized there, just a few random musings that I thought could add to the discussion.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
I asked a guy I worked with to write a C function to compute the distance between two points.
He didn't know how. So I wrote the formula down for him.
"What's that", he asked, pointing to the symbol for square root.
I asked if he had a high school diploma.
"Of course", he exclaimed.
Now, how does someone get through high school not knowing what a square root symbol is?
Then there are the smart kids that get bored after going over the same material year after year. Why? Because Johnny half-brain needs the lesson again. And since we're all just have to be one big happy group of robots, all the same, well, we'll just have to wait for him to catch up so that we're all equal at the end.
There's plenty more to complain about. Am I bitter? Sure. I was tested gifted. I was a clever kid. I should have gone to a university when I was 18. Instead, I was going to summer-school just to graduate.
Why? Because the lesson of public education isn't education, it's busy work. Well, I didn't need busy work like Johnny half brain to understand the lesson. My punishment for understanding the material without doing all the busy work was failure.
I was intellectually a free spirit and I wouldn't follow their plan.
And I payed for it. I'm still paying for it.
I don't know if we previously performed better, but for the past 7 years, when I've been tracking a few of the world wide computer science challange competitions, I've always felt conflicted about the fact that even the most prestigious U.S. C.S. Universities (MIT, Stanford, etc...) never achieve higher than 4th or 5th place. Inevitably, there are Russian, Chinese, or Indian universities that whup our butt.
Yet, people live and die to go to these U.S. Universities, and never consider going international.
Parent is flamebait.
This has nothing to do with "who is running the country" today. The results we see today are a consequence of 30 years or more of problems. This kind of thing just doesn't creep in overnight. What we're seeing is a consequence of the actions of the past, not the present.
I agree with the poster that it's the education system. A couple weeks ago in NYC parents and students protested a 3rd grade proficiency test which they claimed was racist. Children needed to get a 40% on the test in order to matriculate to the 4th grade. Parents and some "public officials" claimed the test was racially biased, but never backed up their claims. This is just one example of where our education system is going. We can't even demand a 40% proficiency from a child before he's pushed ahead.
Social promotion is the KEY problem in our education system. My father was a teacher in Illinois in the 70s. He tells stories of parents complaining about the bad grades of their children, going to the administration, and then they letting the children pass onto the next grade. This kind of social promotion weakens the child's ability to grasp more complicated subjects. If a child can't understand fractions, how are they going to get Algebra or Geometry? It's a slipperty slope.
On another instance, attempts by the "right wing dominancy" is provide a "way out" through school vouchers to inner city children has been beaten by the liberals to death. 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.
And finally, the NEA is terribly corrupt. They spend more money from dues collected by teachers for lobbying Washington politicians than they spend on continuing the education of their own teachers or ANY OTHER activity. We have a union that's just as corrupt as any big company that lobbies the Congress for their own special interests, except you never hear about THIS special interest because it's one the liberals support.
King of the Hill (yes, cartoon) had an interesting commentary on cultural impacts of studies in our public schools. While, yes, it was maybe drawn out a little bit, it shows how historical facts (like in this case the story of the Alamo) are being drowned out for oblivious and unimportant facts like what the state cactus is. The point is, don't talk about the Alamo because it'll offend someone.
And I have to agree. As a freshman in high school, we used 30 year old ancient history books as opposed to the new ones because the teacher felt the new books were loaded down with crap and didn't have any real substance. He then would proceed to fill us in with the "latest discoveries" in Egypt, Greece, Italy, etc in order to bring us up to date.
I would not blame Public Education entirely...
What disappoints me about the US is its screwed up immigration policy. I am University educated and hold a degree in technology. Classically what the US would like. I once tried to immigrate, but learned that all I could get is an H1B. The H1B would allow me in the US while I might get a greencard. I looked at that and said no way as I would like to build a life.
Then I read Business Week and read the article, "Aliens: A little less alientated". Essentially it talks about how illegal aliens can get bank accounts, driver's licenses, mortgages, etc. I just read that and shook my head. I am not shaking my head at the aliens, but the fact that the aliens get so many rights. On the one hand I want to do things by the book and become part of society. Then I read the way to do it is become an illegal alien in the US. IT JUST DOES MAKE SENSE...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
"they'd rather do easy, joke majors in school like Communications or Psychology"
Psychology has two main branches - clinincal and cognitive. Most people do clinical (counselling), and yes, that's often a joke. Cognitive (which is a very small field) is a pure science. I'm going to get my doctorate in it, and while I know that most people don't know the field exists, I try to correct them when possible. Cog psych uses physics, neuroscience, computer science, biology, engineering, chemistry, etc. to understand the functioning of the brain. I've spent the last three months working on a single set of stimuli for a reading experiment (eye-movement tracking) - we take our science seriously.
G
It just wasn't cool to be smart. The smart kids go teased and beat up.
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.
In the UK, (at least, in my highly subjective experience) this doesn't happen. I'm really geeky, and am recognised as such, but I've still got a lot of friends/girlfriends/social life, and I, nor any of my friends get "beaten up" or teased for being intelligent/liking science/computers etc.
Maybe it's a cutural thing?
One of the biggest German political magazines, the Spiegel, has a story about this topic in German. Here is the automatic translation into something similar to English.
... ohhh, I should ask too, I guess.
Personally I do know at least one person that won't be allowed to study in the US anymore. She is listed in one of those mysterious lists and as a consequence isn't allowed to study in the US anymore. She can't figure out how and for what reason she came into that list. Perhaps she knows the wrong people like some of my friends and
One of the reasons our schools are ineffective is this: If we had standards, a lot more kids would flunk out of school, putting more criminals on the street.
The reason for that is that parents don't teach a work ethic. School is "uncool", and work sucks.
In the short term, raising standards would create more delinquents and criminals. If we did introduce standards it would take more than a few generations to undo the damage and bring the passing rates back up.
Many students do poorly in school due to lack of work ethic in their parents. Many students, such as myself, do poorly in school, because school really sucks, due to the lack of work ethic in other students. (I did great in college.)
Many teachers see this and feel like it would be futile to try to fight the status quo.
The dominance of military research is nothing new in the U.S. The U.S., with its very strong belief in free market economics, has always had a hard time with federally-sponsored R&D. In the past, however, we've always done it, yet called the vast majority of it military, even though it often wasn't. Military research floated all boats, the way that space research does. [Similarly, we don't directly subsidize Boeing's production of airliners, the way the EU subsidizes Airbus, but we do give Boeing big contracts to build military aircraft.]
:-)
IMHO what has changed recently is that military research sponsors (notably DARPA) now call for very short-term turnaround in research results. Typically they like to see substantial results from a project in six months now. This means that there are new difficulties for using DARPA funding for basic research.
At the same time that military funding has been emphasizing short-term versus long term research, industrial research labs, and general industrial support for research, have collapsed. Essentially, corporate funders have been deterred by examples like Xerox PARC, Bell Labs, and IBM labs. They don't believe that corporate research generates results for the funding enterprise. This suggests that research must be funded as a social good, like highways, etc.
Unfortunately, military and enterprise funding for research has gone away at precisely a time when ideological sympathy for funding social goods through taxation is at an all-time low. And, of course, the federal budget is squeezed between tax cuts, recession, and the war effort. On the up-side, we don't have to balance the budget any more...
I have no doubt that our primary education is at fault for the lack of strong math, science and analytical thinking skills in the US, and the institutions are colluding to dumb-down our students in math and science every day.
Case-in-point: Our single most important indicator of student ability, the S.A.T., is administered by a unabashedly profit-driven agency, the College Board. The Board has proposed a major revision to the test beginning in 2005 which will raise the total points possible to 2400 by tacking on an essay and a grammar section, while eliminating analogies (the closest thing to a real 'logic' quiz on the verbal section) and quantitative comparisons. The claim is that this shift is designed to (*cough* increase fees *cough*) better address learned knowledge of students, rather than raw ability (the test was initially intended to be sort of a IQ test you could prepare for).
So what are we saying to kids? 2/3 of the MOST important indicator of student ability tests language (and just white america's OWN language!)? 2/3 of your time as a student should be devoted to learning how to read and write in english? Is it really that hard, or important, to test students on the ENGLISH language as a primary indicator of their potential? The fact is this: schools are increasingly prone to test what they know students are good at, and what better way to soften up scores than add an entire section which, by nature, must be graded on complete subjectivity? Schools *know* they cannot teach math/science well, perhaps due to students' reluctance to embrace the subject, perhaps due to the pathetically low salaries and disrespect the average american pays to primary school teachers...so they just test what students are good at, and do it in a way that is so fluid that they can literally raise the scores of a nation with this "essay dial" whenever they need to answer to the neo-conservatives and the bitching liberals.
The problem isn't entirely schools and teachers. Sure, they can be contributors - but like most problems there are multiple factors.
The single, largest factor is the child's immediate social group. Typically starting with parents, branching out to siblings, then to cousins & friends. If this social group puts no value on an education, does not read, is not curious - then the child is almost guaranteed not to develop much intellectually. Oh sure, there are exceptions, but just that.
And the parents can almost completely compensate for a poor school system if they want, here's how:
1. restrict all non-productive distractions. This includes television, gameboys, and computer games. In my household there is ZERO broadcast television, ZERO non-public radio, ZERO gameboys, and about 2-4 hours of computer games a week. Some folks think this is hard it isn't - you especially realize this when you find that your children never beg for toys around christmas time - they just don't see the commercials.
2. read stories to your children every day. There's a wealth of great children's literature, and I have yet to find a pack of boys that could resist for a moment a reading of Kipling's Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Once the television is off, once you start reading the good stuff, and there butts will be solidly planted. You can give them paper & pencils to draw with as well. BTW, I'd consider the fun authors to read: Roald Dahl, Kipling, EB White, Grahame, Mary Norton, Sid Fleischman, Elenor Estes, Joan Aiken, Louis Sachar, Walter Brooks, etc. Oh yeah, and if you've waited until your kids are 15 to start this it might not work. Sometimes it does, sometimes it's too late.
3. Provide them books as gifts
4. Fill the house with books
5. Spend time with them at the library every week
6. Help the children find interesting ways to approach homework
7. Encourage good grades (with allowances tied to grades, etc)
8. Pursue your imagination with them: just do things that are fun and interesting that they can learn from: - bulid a trebuchet - travel to a foreign country - every night read a poem - join a story-telling group - just use your imagination I've got two boys that are in the top of their class in a pretty good school system. We never pushed them - we simply read to them. That's all it took. Once their imaginations were engages the rest happened all of its own.
The single biggest reason that most children leave school with a poor education - is probably that their parents assumed that they could simply "out-source" the responsibility of education to an institution. I suppose this is a recursion problem isn't it?
Life is just a series of decisions. People have become so split in the U.S. it's amazing we can accomplish anything at all. On the one side, you have people who work and try to prove themselves by doing the best job possible, and you have those for whom existence is all they need. Then sometimes you have people like me with contrary goals - want to work and get ahead, but also want to spend as much time with my family (and doing my own things) as possible.
Recently, right here on Slashdot, we had a lot of discussion about the 35 hour work week. I don't remember how it came about, or what the main topic was, but I got into a lengthy discussion about how I abhorred the very idea - if I wanted to work hard to get ahead, and sometimes that means working more than 40 hours (with no extra compensation, just the desire to do the best job I can), then please let me do so. We don't need the government restricting how many hours I can work.
I was actually met with resistence. A lot of people don't want to get ahead. They want to get by, and if they can do it at 35 hours a week, then they'd be happy if the government stepped in and required that employers cannot have people working more than 35 hours. Meaning that it's not optional. The government has already decided that 40 hours defines the workweek, and anything more is overtime... now some people want a maximum number of hours allowed to be set.
I don't know where everyone else works, but people where I work do plenty of overtime (mostly compensated, I'm the only one in my department on salary). They don't do it just for the money, they do it because we have drop-dead deadlines and they need to finish things, but what amazes me is, even after a long day and the possibility of overtime, they will nit-pick about things that most other people wouldn't notice and they spend time fixing every little problem they possibly can.
I know it's probably the exception to the rule, but I wanted to point out the contrast that you can see... we're becomming the nation that shuns hard work and belittles those that work hard as "tools."
Stupid sexy Flanders.
"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."
Like all stereotypes, this has an element of truth. In this case, it's a large element of truth. I'll answer each element in turn:
1) American geeks tend to be smaller and non-violent (I'm 5'8" and 170 pounds, somewhere around "average" to "small"), and tend towards software development because I'm not particularly drawn to physically demanding activities. This in itself is a relative distinction because an overwhelming number of American males in my age group are "large" due to all the huge amounts of extra fat they carry.
2) When I was growing up in the public school system, I was teased, taunted, picked on, and generally made to be a borderline social outcast because I didn't play sports (which is extremely boring stuff). I tended towards intellectual activities, something which was highly frowned upon by my peers in the U.S. I ended up learning Okinawan Kempo just for the psychological terror it inflicted upon the school bullies. A short demonstration as part of a required class presentation (subject matter was at the student's discretion) was the key to freeing me from the "targets" list.
3) Not having a girlfriend is hit and miss, as it is in most walks of life in America. Being the brunt of cruelty does a lot to damage one's self-respect, and therefore one's ability to interact with other people and with the opposite sex. Not being a part of the mainstream opens one up to this type of cruelty in America. There is also the matter of a small pool of desirable and available women, part of another very true American stereotype: more Americans than not, of both sexes, are grotesquely fat.
So yes, it's largely a cultural issue. America has turned into a cesspool of worker bees happy to pull in a small weekly paycheck in exchange for not having to stress their brains too hard.
It just wasn't cool to be smart. The smart kids go teased and beat up. Who wants that.
There is also an increase in laziness in the US. Kids today don't want to work hard for anything. Just take the easy road. I know because they are my friends. They think I am nuts for reading and working hard at things.
We send our kids to school expecting the schools to overcome our culture. Our culture is lazy. Our culture values television, movies, and sports over intelligence. Parents inadvertently raise their kids to be lazy and to have no interest in learning. Parents don't think smart is cool - they think beauty or athleticism is cool. That passes right on to their kids.
I just finished reading The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (a collection of various things Feynman said). When he was a kid, his father used to teach him to learn by teaching him to question everything. Instead of just saying "that bird is a robin", he would ask what makes that bird different that the other birds. They would then observe the bird's behavior and try to deduce reasons for what it was doing.
Example: in college engineering 4 of the top 5 students were foreign. Either Arabic or Asian.
These are cultures that value hard work and discipline. Sure, you can make the stereotype that Asians are smarter. It's not likely that they are genetically smarter. It's much more likely that they are raised with different values.
We need to start embracing responsibility and discipline. We need to start valuing hard work over luck. There is much reward in working hard and accomplishng great things. Everyone is all about the almighty dollar and not about accomplishment.
DARPA, DoE, DoD, NSA, JPL etc. have done great science - science that will go down in history as groundbreaking - on their budgets.
The USA may be losing its dominance as far as "science" goes - i.e. if you take every scientific discipline as equal in utility and then delineate nations' scientific populations without prejudice, it is. But add the weight of "useful" - as in, has produced tangible benefits to humans - and the USA is still mightily dominant, with no competitor in sight.
A significant number of great advances in science and medicine have been incidental to military research; that's a fact. The entirety of the materials comprising your PC? All of it is a result of military research in some age or another. It's a sad fact, but according to history, humans only really come up with revolutionary technology when they need it to commit war. Successful, peaceful civilizations always have stagnated at a technological plateau, until either a raiding party or a trade route came their way.
In the UK, (at least, in my highly subjective experience) this doesn't happen. I'm really geeky, and am recognised as such, but I've still got a lot of friends/girlfriends/social life, and I, nor any of my friends get "beaten up" or teased for being intelligent/liking science/computers etc.
It depends on the mix of income backgrounds. You hear of kids committing suicide because they were bullied for being academically successful in the small town ("townie") schools, where the career path for the majority of students is to go on the "social" and do casual labour. That doesn't happen in the exclusive or dominantly middle class schools, where the ethos is to prepare everyone for university.
It's more of a financial thing.
In high school i was just mocked incessantly for being a geek. In college I was still mocked occassionally but everyone would be my friend when they needed computer help.
My last year of college (jan 03-dec 03) I did a social experiment. When I talked with new people I expressed my interests as being motorcycles, mountain biking, that I was a Business Management student (I am), etc, but I never mentioned computers.
Not only did girls stop asking me to fix their computers all of the time, I started getting laid.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
This book was written by Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America's classrooms.
This "dumbing down" was done on purpose, and she has the paper trail to prove it. hard to go forward as effectively in research when the defaultposition is to brainwash the kids into being corporate moo slave consumers and statists instead of just a quality education.
Then look at the trends in finance where we developed the technique of corporate raiding, junk bonds, hedge funds and derivatives, and lying at top levels of the economy as a proper business model, and you can see that the get rich quick, something for nothing attitude has become more important than actually researching and producing products and services as the top priority for the nations "business community". There's no way around it, long term research won't equate a "postive cash flow" in this quarters statements, so they abandoned it. When eventually it lead to a severe decline in profits (as it was bound to), they switched to outsourcing what they could, in sourcing cheaper labor for that which couldn't be outsourced, and bribing politicians more to keep laws passed that would maintain short term profits over longer term profitability and stability.
Now look at something else, back to the children, we've also seen the most curious phenomenon of the forced drugging of children in the schools, to go along with the deliberate brainwashing and dumbing down. Been going on a long time now, now it's quite normal, but it was simply unheard of just a few decades ago, it's totally new, and completely wrong. I think it's funny as all get out, I can drive into town and go by an elementary school, outside they have a DARE sign, when inside 1/4to 1/3 of the students are drug addicts on purpose. The irony is delicious but disturbing, because few of the parents and even fewer of the JBT "drug warriors" can see it.
And my pet peeve, the thoroughly ridiculous emphasis on schools being the farm teams for the major professional sports leagues, and addicting generation after generation of people into their complete scam profits machine. And it's not just the schools, look at any local news broadcast in the evening, 1/3 of the total non commercial time is devoted to this "bread and circuses" to keep up the addiction. How much of that news time do you ever see any reference to the hard sciences, or anything actually intellectual compared to the scores for the "big games"?
We lost it culturally on purpose, it's not good enough to be our own smart workers anymore, we need managers, marketers, entertainers, middle man skimmers and gamblers, and most importantly, mercenaries-but not deep thinkers or actual productive workers. Our foreign policy now, both civilian and military, is based on L
Here is my outlook on Education in the U.S.
Who ever said that schools are funded enough is living on a different planet. In Maine, and to my knowledge most other states, High School teachers make less money than a Manager who works for McDonalds; why is that? If you want kids to take school seriously, you better damn well have teachers who can answer their questions (e.g. we should be hireing Masters for our teachers not Bachlors) and we need to re-think the way we teach. In most schools, we teach democracy but preech dictatorship. The school staff is constantly trying to control the students forcing them to rebel, forcing the teachers to tighten thire grip-- it's a downward spiral.
All too often brilliant kids "slip through the cracks" because the classes are only taught to tailor to a single style of learning. For athletic students, it's not uncommon that their "coach" talks to the teacher and lest them slip by classes... creating one click, then you have the kids who are bored with the material (not fast enough) another click (note these kids often do bad because they simply dont bother) then you have the "go with the flow" kids who do everything their told and are disliked by the other groups because they're selling their souls to satan...err the school board.
I could go on for hours listing problems with todays school system but instead I'm going to assume that you (the reader) are an inteligent being (to a certain extent, granted you probably did attend american schools...)and throw out some ideas on how to fix things:
Eliminate "Grades" as in Kindergarden, Freshmen, Senior... etc. This is a stupid concept. Why should we hold back a student from learning higher level Mathmatics because he/she is not so good at English or History? Let each subject have it's own level system and let the student advance at his/her own pace. E.g. Mathmatics level 5, English level 3, History level 8, etc. Eliminate the grouping of age with subject matter. Do this, and you will find that peer presure of not wanting to at a low level will start to make kids WANT to learn.
Let the students decide what they want to learn. The student should have an assigned Mentor (each mentor should have a limit of 10 or so students at once) which they can talk to for guidence and information. It is up to them to take the initaive to choose the course they want, choose the professor they want, and do what the professor requires for them to advance. Teaching style should be a pleathera of differnt styles with focus on individual attention if needed. E.g. secudled lectures (not too often, but long enough to get things done, like 3 hours), Labs, Trips, Recomended Reading/Viewing, etc. The student should be able to get everything he/she needs out of the text book; everything else is to help if needed. One-on-one meetings with the professor during office hours are recomended. It is up to the professor to determine weather the student is ready to advance or not, be it by interview style orally, by writen exam, or by project. None of the actual tests will go into file, instead (for quality assurance) a writen (noterised, and signed) report/certificate will be writen up (each unique, no standard form) giving a detailed review of what the student knows and that he/she has met the level requiements... Checks will be done on professors at the higher levels (if the professor teaching the next level of the subject determines that the student is not ready they must file a report on the previous professor, so many infractions and the professor risks loss of license and job)
This will teach american students that:
THEY need to take inititave (nothing will be given to them)
They need to WORK for what they want
That they ARE good at something (e.g. subject that they excell at)
And through the process, have a better idea of what they want to do in life.
Of course, this is just fragments of a plan of mine... most are against it because it requires that children be remov
Yeah, after I posted I thought it wasn't quite phrased right. I know there are a lot of people who stay in the US and work for foreign companies remotely, because there aren't as many quality jobs for American companies. I know a few people that moved from Europe to the US to work for a company that ended up doing most of its work for a European corporation.
I don't know that the whole argument of scientific leadership really works as well in these times, upon reflection. If half of a major US firm's workforce is based in India, is that an American science leader, or an Indian one? If an American company is really just a shell for a European corporation, who gets the "credit"? Half the people I know in the tech industry these days work for companies outside the country they live in, but I'm not sure how they'd be counted.
I'd say the days of the US dominance in science is over, only because it's getting harder to pin down the criteria for counting.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
Those are very intresting ideas. Most of which I agree with.
I would like to make a few observations I have made working in various countries.
Most people do like to go home at 5:30pm. Regardless of the country. In the Uk, I never saw people working late, even in the tech culture. I worked in a building with 3 other software companies, and i was actually surprised at the laxness and lack of REALLY long hours people tended to put in compared to what I was used to on the west coast.
Lots of western european countries have laws in place to protect smaller companies, such as retail stores. Try going shopping for a TV on a sunday afternoon in even a city like Zurich. in 2000, it was not really that possible. AFIK it's still the same in Germany.
We have 5 software engineers working for me on a project we are doing. This is the 3rd project we have taken (major) and the second company the guys have worked at together. They have no problems working weekends, nights mornings, whatever.
IMHO the hardest working people I have ever met are eastern europeans. Of course, keep this in mind, i have only worked with a few dozen in Bucharest Romania, Ukrain and Poland. (After doing offshore dev teams for almost 6 years, you stick with what you know). These guys run circles around most american or european groups I have worked with. They code because they are hungry and we pay them -very- well (pretty much a western salary), we don't treat them like cheap labor. I guess if i was working for the equivilant of 200k dollars per year, I would be working my ass off too.
Anyway, the point of what i am saying. Don't discredit or generalize a generation as a whole. I hear my friends in europe saying the same thing about the younger generations that live there. I have been saying the same thing about my 17 year old sister. Imagine what your grandparents where saying about the people growing up in the 70s.
There will always be hard working people that learn to capitalize on their situations and environment. They will learn to take advantage of their skills, and domiinate their areas of influence. I don't think history has disproven that only 3-5% of the population will succeede in that way. I doubt that much will change as time goes on, and there will always be people that are splashed with a cold blast of reality and rethink what their goals are.
As for brain drain out of the United States. i believe this if it's visa workers going home, but not americans. I believe that most that leave will be back before long. I actually, don't believe for a moment that a lot of people are leaving the country for jobs off shore. Having been working in europe as an american for about 5-6 years, it's hell. It's only gotten worst since 9/11 and the generalizations that people abroad make about americans in general.
I am sure glad to be home.
You could take it one step further. If you look at Nobels as an indicator of leadership, the US are clearly ahead. Yet a very large percentage of the scientists winning those Nobels for the US are actually foreigners doing only their doctoral or post-doctoral studies and research in the US. The secondary and tertiary education that layed the foundation for their critical thinking was usually acquired in their home countries. So you have to wonder what was more important: their foundation education, or the money that enabled the research? Ideally both, but looking at the list of US Nobel Prize winners, I'm wondering if China, Germany and Russia would not be better off financing a bit more research at home to stop this brain drain to the US. Germany in particular has the resources but has been loath to put money into high-risk research with questionable ROI.
Regarding national dominance, given the globalization of the market place it's hard to pin down a particular nationality on any of the large players anymore. In particular in the high-tech field you get ingredients from all over the place. If you look at high-profile products like airplanes and cars, they're a standardized grab bag of components from all over the world. Even traditionally national brands don't really indicate country of origin anymore. If you buy Siemens or Bosch components in the US, they were most likely manufactured in the US, using components designed in Europe by engineers educated in the US--or vice versa, who knows.
There is a very simple reason why science and math education, indeed all education, is poor in America:
Quality of educators. It's a no-brainer. Anyone who is proficient in science or math is not going to waste their time teaching at the elementary or high school level.
Additionally, (and this is true of education in general), it used to be that many professions were closed to women, but teaching wasn't. Consequently, our best and brightest women used to be school teachers. This is no longer true. The brightest women, just like the men, are going into other fields.
Proverbs 21:19
I wonder if smart high school students are turned off to science and engineering by the perception that workers in these fields are underpaid (relative to managers and lawyers), underfunded, and underappreciated by management?
When I was in high school, in the 1970s, an engineer came by in a three piece suit and told us if we wanted to be engineers, we needed to position ourselves for the transition to management, or lose our jobs to the next wave of cheap new grads.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Actually, I do care, but I think I can see why there isn't much focus on either of these today. We're surrounded by devices that make use of math and science, but abstracted away to the point where it's completely invisible (read: computers). Computers have become synonymous with "Windows", "browsers", watching movies, playing games, etc. To the Slashdot crowd, all of these things obviously require knowledge of math and science to be able to create these programs, but the one-click interface of most of these programs require practically no knowledge of, well, anything.
.sig for rent.
I think about how my daughter is growing up; she always wants to see the back of the camera because she thinks she'll see the picture I just took of her immediately. Everywhere I look, we've developed a one-click or single button solution to the "problem" because we want it now Now NOW! And when it's all abstracted away, you really have no idea how it works, and because you're so used to it, you don't really care.
So I can see that our zeal for instant gratification, ease-of-use, and a rather arrogant demand that everything be, above all else, as simple as possible will lead more and more to think of math and science as "the hard stuff" that they are simply incapable of dealing with because it requires thought and concentration, with no "reward" being given at the end, and no understanding of how it affects their daily lives. It's like schools that teach latin with the presumption that if you know how languages are put together, you will learn the derivations easier. Most simply complain that latin isn't a good language to impress chicks with, and study something else instead.
This
Do you think the goal of medicine is to produce a more efficient, 'genetically good' human race? Actually I thought the whole point of medicine, and in fact most other economic activities (agriculture, etc) was to promote the well-being of humans as they exist, and their offspring, as they exist, not to engage in some kind of bizarre project in eugenics. Don't confuse means with ends; efficiency, economic activity, and even 'good' genes are all means to an end: the well-being of humanity. Letting people starve, even lazy people, is not an effective way to promote their well-being.
If you want an efficient system, try fascism. Yes, it's more 'efficient' than anything at increasing production numbers, getting rid of those pesky weak and sick people, etc. But there's a reason why the vast majority of people on the planet do not want it: because we're willing to put up with a few lazy people free riding on benefits and a little bit of slacking to have a generally better quality of, and respect for human life.
i think this is highly interesting. whenever i talk to americans about it, i get the feeling that american high school is hell - a place where the small get bullied, the ugly girls are outcasts, and generally there is mobbing, backstabbing, and most importantly everybody gets judged by an arbitrary and cruel standard. the dark side of the american dream.
while i am pretty sure that is not all true, in the place where i grew up (Austria, Europe) none of that was an issue. at all. sure, there were people who didn't do well in sports, and people who were uncool (like myself in my later teens for not smoking or drinking or getting any girls) but in general, those people had their place and were never terrorized. we were all part of the group. we had jocks and nerds, but they would hang out together.
i am sure part of the reason is that the class system is very different: you get a group of 25+ kids, call that a class, and they stay together for 5 years or so, teachers come by to teach classes, and there is very limited choice in subjects. e.g. you spend all your time with the same people. and there are lots of social activities with those people.
i don't think that explains it though. UK has the same system as america...
Exactly how is questioning the scientific elite at any time in history "detrimental"? Many of the greatest discoveries came from just such opposition and debate.
SciAm has been a political organization for many years now (is it fair to say their inception?). They're working in their own best interests on many issues, which largely "tilt left" in bent. Hence, the attack on the current administration. It has much to do with competing ideologies that threaten long-standing, but still far-from-proven, theories in the biological and environmental sciences, along with ethical issues which history tells us are often tragically considered ex post facto.
The best way to raise the hackles of any scientist is to challenge their intellectual endeavors on any level. Refute their theories, threaten their funding, refocus research (money) into other fields - any of these tactics will kindle their ire. SciAm is but one mouthpiece. UCS is but one other.
And let's not forget the most important fact of all: This is a presidential election year in the United States. That, my friends, says it all.
In the 50's it was the rockefellars and whatnot. All the smart guys were famous.
For me growing up, I read all the time.. got beat up for knowing how to read. (jealousy).. That just fed me to continue.
Now, what role models do the young men have? Nothing of any worth. The women (who are by far surpassing men in every American field now) have many many role models and a lot to look up to. I personally cannot think of a public role model who is successful and smart and not villified by the media (think Bill Gates).
All these young kids have nothing just ignorant rappers and other leeches on society that should never be role models because they are be "subversive" for money. Today, the guy in a high school who listens to classical or something non-violent would be considered "alter".
Anyway, they are all doing the same things, everywhere you look and it is sad. I suppose the world will always need trash guys and janitors, but having an entire generation of them is just plain sad.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
It's not just SciAm that has observed this creeping Lysenkoism either -- see also the International Herald Tribune, and that bastion of left-leaning reporting, the Washington Post (with the sub-head, "Changes Renew Criticism That the President Puts Politics Ahead of Science").
And by the way, do you consider any and all criticism of the President in an election year invalid by virtue of perceived politicking? Sometimes things are just wrong at any time.
John Henry Gatto, the author, taught for 31 years in the NYC school system, was named teacher of the year and is a brilliant historian and scholar.
I am still working my way through this book (free online at http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.ht m) and am amazed at how it all comes together.
Our system of factory education was originally created in Germany by the Prussians to totally regiment their culture. It was designed to do that. Read Gatto, by God, read the history of compulsory education and the educrats and and the scales will fall from your eyes. Find it at:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.ht m
For a shorter piece, an essay that was published in Harpers in 2001, go to this link:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/hp/frames.htm
So why are students failing? They are supposed to. The built-in systemic goal of modern mas compulsory education is to create an unthinking, uneducated, obedient mass of socially constructed worker bees. It is not an accident. Why is copulsory government schooling mindless? It is intended to be mindless. Why do kids with any brain go crazy in the hothouse atmosphere of factory high schools? Because any right-thinking human being would go crazy! The problem isn't students not wanting to learn, but schools wanting to teach kids things that clearly do not serve students' best interests, but the interests of the Machine.
Regrettably, we have forgotten this, although the elitist theorists of education who set the system up were quite blunt about it back in 1850, 1880, 1900, 1920. They spoke of using government schooling to limit the curiosity and independence of children in order to better fit them their assigned industrial tasks.
If you want to understand the roots, the history, the development of the system, go read Gatto at
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.ht m.
Sorry to reply to myself, I *knew* I forgot something...
Another thing that caught my eye is the brain-drain at AT&T Labs. Starting around 2001 about half of the top research scientists have either been laid off or left on their own. The ones that left cited budget cuts and, more importantly, a shift in the time until their research has to result in profits. Research used to have a ten year window before it had to earn money, now that window has been cut to 18 months. I thought this might just be an AT&T Labs anomaly until I talked to a mid-level manager at Network Associates and found the exact same scenario. This tells me we are sacrificing the future for the very-near future. No one wants to fund any research anymore and the government isn't picking up the slack unless it has a military use (like putting missiles on satellites, YAH!). Managers cut spending by slashing long-term research, look like heroes, then leave before the negative repurcussions of not investing in the company's future hit.
This seems to be the case with the government as well. Here in California we had (and still have) a massive budget shortfall. So we booted our Governor out and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger. His first move was to role back a temporary tax that tripled car registration fees. Note that registration fees are much more expensive for upscale, new cars, so this was going to hit the upper-middle class hard. Also note that tuition fees for the University of California system went up BY $1000 DOLLARS (from just over 4k to over 5k - huge percentage increase)! The UC (and Cal State) system is the only chance a lot of lower-class kids have to go to a quality University because they are so affordable, less so now. Rather than keep the car tax, or add a provision for poor people to get off lighter, Arnie rolled back the car tax and kept the tuition hikes. He chose SUVs over education and everybody fucking cheered.
"I did my highschool and undergrad in India."
By high school in India all the people that don't want to learn have dropped out. US schools are chock full of people that have no interest in learning and no ability to learn. The "average" student in an Indian english language high school is already the geek elite.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Don't be bitter. Just realize that in only a few decades your society will be far more wealthy than this one. Get you education, and go home with the prestige that supplies, and get yourself a good job in a country that's on the way up, not on the way down.
The US has always had a tendency to be anti-intellectual. It once didn't matter much, as things were simple enough that most people could understand them and make the correct decision. Now absolutely nobody can, and those who can face this are abused by those who can't. We can't even hope for enclaves that aren't polluted, as the only such groups are 1) those who neither watch TV nor listen to the radios (possibly the newspapers also figure in here, but they are a much weaker influence) and 2) those who are impervious to being influenced, because they already felt that way.
The first group is divided into those who voluntarily isolate themselves from society and those who are coerced into isolation (e.g., children of Memmonites). Neither the first nor the second group make suitable leaders for a civilization. And so we are left with those whose personalities and view of the world are shaped by TV and other popular media. Which, examination quickly reveals, is a very poor model of actual reality.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There are two sides to that story. My wife and I both have science PhDs from one of the top-five research universities in the world, and the only cities where we could both find jobs commensurate with our degrees were Boston, LA and San Francisco. The median house price in Pasadena is $635,000 dollars, and it's higher in San Francisco. A newly-minted PhD in physics can expect around $70k. How the he!! are you supposed to afford a $600k house on one salary? Of couse, we could live out in the suburbs; in LA that's at least 50 miles.
Not all dual-income couples buy SUV's. But even a Prius is expensive. I drive a 10-year old Sentra and spend $150/month on gas, and another $90/month on road tolls.
It's nice for you to talk about priorities. But you've just admitted you gave up being a research engineer. Maybe that education was wasted on you? (actually, we need good high-school physics teachers, so good for you!)
My point (related to this topic) is that of course the U.S. is losing its scientific dominance when being a research scientist in this country ends up requiring the sacrificies it does. Specifically: salary (staying in academia was at least a factor of 3 cut compared to my other offers. Heck, the contractor doing my lawn makes $500/day - or he would've if I'd been that stupid.), flexibility (there are really only a very small number of places where you can find a science job, especially if your spouse is also a scientist - the "two-body problem"), family (it's very difficult to juggle having a family with working 10-12 hour days together with 2 hrs spent commuting. Not to mention getting daycare).
Getting back entirely on topic though; I'm not at all surprised that the U.S. science dominance is waning. I see it in my own field. We have never had a secondary-education system that produced enough sufficiently qualified students. For a long, long, time the U.S. has imported smart PhD's from all over the world, because they couldn't live as good a good life where they came from. Now that is beginning to change. Couple that with the recent spate of xenophobia (I know of several guys in my field who went home for vacations to places like China and Poland and either couldn't come back for months, or haven't been allowed back yet. You bet that sh$t like that is having an effect) and it is no surprise that we're losing speed. And then of course there is the area of bio-sciences, where the government is not only not supporting research, but actively outlawing it. Are you surprised that more progress in that area is being done in South Korea than here?
I have to laugh though. People talk about the knowledge ecomomy, and basically assume that Americans are somehow smarter than everyone else. That we have some sort of lock on innovation. That somehow we'll avoid becoming a second-rate economy. Personally I'm not so sure. I can easily see a world where China has the manufacturing middle-class, India has the software-engineering upper middle class, Europe is a big theme park, and the States is divided into a few ultra-rich investors, and a whole lot of minimum-wage service employees. What a cheerful thought.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?