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State of US Science Report Shows Disturbing Trends
coondoggie writes to mention that the National Science Board is concerned about certain indicators in the science and engineering fields for the United States. "For example, US schools continue to lag behind internationally in science and math education. On the other hand, the US is the largest, single, R&D-performing nation in the world pumping some $340 billion into future-related technologies. The US also leads the world in patent development."
...we spending the most money, on the dumbest researchers?
Are we saying that Patent Trolling is the same thing as Developing?
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
This is a natural cycle of markets. (or greed, or laziness or whatever...) now the US is resting on their laurels, reaping the benefits of engineers past and eventually will pay dearly economically for this culture's unwillingness to churn out better engineers.... and 70 years from now you'll probably see another surge of ingenuity and wonder in western-hemisphere technology.
It seems to me to be the height of hypocrisy that business leaders (Gates and company) complain about a lack of scientifically/technologically trained Americans, and thus we need to increase H1-B visas. These same leaders then turn around and support republican candidates who don't believe in evolution and want to water down the science curriculum by introducing Intelligent Design.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
This is going to sound really cynical, but I feel inclined to say: No wonder current tech is not forward-thinking and is only innovating at a "comfortable" pace. You know, the kind of pace that enables companies to really milk as much as they can out of products without having to do very much R&D to improve the tech.
This is why we are still using countless seperate devices for our various everyday communication/information needs that can't communicate with each other, and why the concept of "integration" of the technological extensions of ourselves is largely overlooked. Oh, it's also why we pay $50+mo for, frankly, the most basic of cell phone and internet connectivity, for example. Companies that have the funds to do amazing R&D and amazing advances in the "human" aspects of technology aren't bothering, because they're rich as hell one way or another - they can crawl along at a comfortable pace with no problem (especially because "everyone else is doing it too").
Yeah, a bit of a tangent there, but I've been thinking about this stuff a lot lately. You know, we 100% have the means for technology to be so much more, but it's as though no one cares.
Is this truly a good thing. Are US patents even valid outside the US (ie international treaties that govern patents)? There seems to be a big difference between using R&D to come up with commercially-viable products and generating patents of ideas that may or may not be viable.
Consider:
That's what I hear from my freshman-sophomore math majors nearly every day. Sorry to pass the buck, but I suspect that HS math is either dumbed down or grade inflation prevents the kids and their parents and their parents' lawyers from complaining too much. So, they get A's in a "hard" subject, get lots of kudos because this must indicate that they're smart, and so some decide (quite logically) to choose math as a major in college.
Then if you get a prof who expects excellent performance for an A, average for a C, and F if you never did work enough to catch on, and then their world turns absolutely upside-down.
Should students study harder? Absolutely. And _13 years_ of public education ought to provide adequate training in how to study. If not, we'll get more of these "disturbing" trends.
The greatest challenge in education is the disintegration of two-parent families and strong communities. This is particularly pronounced in minority communities. The very occasional teaching of ID in public classrooms is probably not even a factor. But I guess confronting real problems isn't as much fun as kicking religious people, is it?
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
U.S. students don't underperform their international peers because the school system sucks (although, it does suck). They underperform for two reasons. One is demographics. The U.S. has a much larger lower class than do most other nations to which it is compared. Kids who grow up in poverty with terrible home situations will, surprise surprise, not shine when it comes to academic performance. The second reasons is cultural. If you look at kids not from this underclass, a disproportionate number lack the desire to acquire math/science skills, or, really, the desire to excel academically in any field. One possible contributor to this is that students in the U.S. needn't pass an exit exam in order to graduate high school and enter college. The other is general cultural malaise, but it's harder to define that in any exact sense. There is a "culture of achievement" present in some countries (Japan and Germany come to mind) that is simply lacking in the United States.
I'll be devil's advocate here and suggest that the average scores don't mean much.
Does it matter that somebody with the median score in high school math isn't particularly good at it, if he's working as a salesman or a mechanic?
Now, I could argue in a liberal arts kind of way that it does matter, because with a better grasp of science these people will be better informed citizens. But from a vocational standpoint, you want to know that if there are N slots for graduates with science skills, the top N science students are very good indeed. And since every job that requires science skills requires strong math skills (but not necessarily vice versa), you want more students to be good at math, but not necessarily every student.
The trend is towards business giving up on American science, engineering, and know-how in general. So why spend four years after high school gaining skills that aren't wanted? Why spend the money to increase student performance when we can enjoy the use of that money today, and it won't make any difference to their lives except maybe in some kind of woolly headed liberal notion of citizenship? If we were really concerned about the future of our students, it'd be like beating the Soviets in the Cold War, no effort to improbable of success to try, no cost to outrageous to bear.
It doesn't pay to be better than the rest of the world but get paid more as well. You've got to be a better value. Therefore by in the name of business efficiency, Americans deserve to see their incomes drop until they're on a par with India and China. When the few Americans who, despite economizing on our schools, have attained some level of scientific or engineering skill look like an incredible bargain, the jobs will come back.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Is the R&D figure still bigger than other countries when it's expressed as a percentage?
How much of the "R&D budget" is spent developing new weapons?
No sig today...
what i see as most disturbing not only in the article, but in the responses, is that no one seems to worry about what is referred to as "basic" research anymore. basic research is the research you do to figure out what is happening in a system normally, figuring out how it's supposed to work. this is the first step in ANY major breakthrough, no matter the field.
but it's the least funded.
i work in basic research in the medical field. the NIH is currently funding between 9 and 10 PERCENT of the proposals handed to them. hopefully they are picking the cream of the crop. we don't lack the manpower. there are LOTS of capable people to do the work. it's funding. there is VERY little funding for research unless someone stands to make a great deal of money from it. the problem is, most of the important things we need to figure out are not going to make anyone a pile of money. they may, down the line. but it isn't that likely.
call me a socialist, but the government needs to get the act together and push their funding toward basic research, and let industry pay for R&D.
Actually look to europe first for the next big technology group. China is still only copying ideas.
The first big sign of the downfall of the USA is when OPEC switches Oil from Dollars to Euros to make more money.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
But I guess confronting real problems isn't as much fun as kicking religious people, is it? I doubt anyone would really argue that support from home is not a strong factor in a child's educational success. However, why not confront all the problems we can, including the mindset that comes along for the ride with ID?
I agree that the parent / community plays an integral role in intellectual development. That being said, if a community does not place great importance on truth and consistently uses baseless arguments to critique well-founded theories in science (evolution, big bang, etc..) then why would any child in this environment that develops into an adult want a career in science?
You're right, parents and strong communities are critical - but it's distortion of truth by said people that is the REAL problem.
The religious have been used as a pawn for the party of big business. Maybe if they voted in their communities best interests, and left religion in thier chruch and private homes, we wouldn't need both parents working 6 days a week.
The problem also lies with legal immigration. As someone with experience in and published a thesis on control systems, I find it impossible to get a dream job without having at least a Greencard. The problem is applying for a Greencard will rob me of at least, at least 5K$ if not about 10K$ (all about the right lawyer, you see). After that, comes the waiting game. How long? About 4 years at least! Longer, normally. So you see, after a couple of years, I am thinking! Heck! Screw this. I am going home. After all research opportunities are much better than what they used to be a decade ago. This reverse brain drain (Trust me, the home country has been lamenting about brain drain for decades) is going to further affect the R&D scope here.
I'm sorry... Is this a troll? American freedoms "vastly outclass the rest of the world"? Centralized education is a mighty fist of the state? Have you been reading a bunch of captain america comics or something? Exactly how ass backwards do you think the rest of the world is? "Freedom" doesn't generate research, money does and America is a large portion of the world economy. That's about all there is to it. China is a rapidly growing competitor in research, are new "freedoms" there responsible for this? The USSR had a massive research infrastructure, was that due to freedom of any kind beyond the government having the idea that technological advancement is a good thing?
As for your second statement, centralization isn't the issue with education, the fact that a huge number of highschool students are coming out of american schools largely uneducated is. I should think the last thing we would want is to continue churning out increasingly economically uncompetitive students, whether that's done through centralized means or other (what do you even mean by "centralized"?) seems secondary.
Science is not anti-religion. We don't waste our time trying to prove religion is false.
Religion is anti-science. The religous do pick fights with existing scientific explanations, but in a non-testable "god did it" kind of way.
I don't hate the religious, I pity the ignorant. I see ignorance and lack of education as a more serious threat to this country than any foreign terrorist organization.
The Gospel according to lolcat
It's not a paradox. Look, do we imagine that everybody is capable of being a first class brilliant scientist or engineer? Clearly not. Therefore, if you have a system where the difference between the best and the worst (in any field) is small, then you have a system which fails to promote the best. You have a system where everyone is at the "average" level, and the people who ought to stand out, don't, for whatever reason.
On the other hand, if you have a system where the difference between the best and the average is high, what does that tell you? It tells you the system works well to promote the best and give them the tools they need to produce. Fact is, there is a natural heirarchy of ability among human beings in any field. Most are at some ordinary level, and only a few are very good. If you don't see the natural ability heirarchy reflected in the accomplishment heirarchy, then something is wrong. Since it's impossible to bring ordinary folk up to the extraordinary level, what must be happening is that the extraordinary folks are being held down (which is fairly easy to do).
Compare to sports. The difference between your average high-school athlete and Olympic or world-class athletes has never been greater, and the very few at the very top are amazing. Do we look at this pyramid of accomplishment and say, gee, there must be something wrong with how we promote and train people in sports, because there are so few at the top? Because the average 35-year-old pick-up basketball player, measured on the same scale that includes the championship Los Angeles Lakers, sucks? Not if we have any brains, we don't. We realize that the better a system is at sifting and placing people according to their abilities and motivation, the more pronounced the heirarchy, the greater the difference between the best and all the rest. Only in some doofus Lake Wobegon mode of (non)thinking do we imagine that a successful system would look non-heirarchical, with everyone above average.
The fact that heirarchies of accomplishment are more evident in the United States than elsewhere is no proof that the mass of people are being held down. It may well be evidence that in the United States the best are better able to rise to the top, to find their natural level of achievement, whereas in other places considerations of social class, restrictive groupthink education, or cultural barriers to personal ambition and radical innovation tend to keep the best from ever showing their stuff and emerging above the sea of average folk.
wow, nice try.
Religion has been omnipresent for most of human history. By that definition, nearly everything humans have ever done have been done "when religion and religious influence where strong". Including our greatest atrocities, the dark ages, pogroms, crusades, witch hunts, etc...
However, the fact that the last 50 years has seen a diminishing influence of religion and also the greatest period of social and technology progress that humanity has ever seen, if you chose to be intellectually honest rather than extremely selective, would seem to indicate that perhaps religion and religious influence are not quite as helpful as you might seem to think. At best, you would be forced to conclude that it is irrelevant when considering its impact on progress, and more honestly you might have to conclude that it might actually be harmful to progress.
But, keep clinging to that fantasy, troll.
That is why countries like Finland, which has a higher divorce rate than the US, top the rankings? Stop pushing your "morality" based agenda without facts to back it up.
That's a nice view and all and it may even give you that fuzzy feeling in your tummy but unfortunately it doesn't have anything to do with reality. At all. The US's R&D success was accomplished and is maintained through a single factor: money. Lots of money. It has absolutely nothing to do with freedom nor other patriotic drivel. The US is a very rich nation that dumps loads of cash into research. If you happen to be a talented researcher who happens to like receiving recognition in the form of cold hard cash then you will find that combination attractive, specially if your current job doesn't offer you the research funding you need and your current salary is less than 2000 dollars a month.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
I don't know what America you grew up in, but in my part of America, I knew plenty of kids who were raised in single parent households and did just fine. "Strong communities" and "two-parent families" are and have always been myths perpetrated by religious and social organizations as tools to increase their power.
Religious organizations benefit when everybody is dropping by on their pre-determined day and putting money in the collection plate. Their monetary power increases. Their social power increases too because maybe, just maybe some of those who attend will listen and follow the precepts and guidelines of that religion and support policies and causes that the church wants. One of the tools that these religious organizations use is the spiritual myth of marriage and the talking point that only sanctioned (who performs the weddings?) and married people are socially, spiritually, and monetarily qualified to have children. Hence the myth that two-parent households are better.
Social organizations benefit from strong communities as well, but not in the same way as religious organizations. Social organizations, led by people who have a personal agenda, want members. Members are votes to them, and dues are more money in the coffers to fight for what the head of the organization wants. The more people they have listening to them, the more money they have coming in, and the more votes they can drum up to support their leader's personal agenda. These organization benefit from a strong, tightly knit community who all belong one or several of these organizations. It makes their power grab easier to pull off. Hence the myth that strong communities are better.
Both of these systems are wide open to manipulation and are tools to control you. Education is to free you. These organizations are the opposite of that freedom. Their impact on education is the opposite of what you claim - they stifle personal freedom and destroy the environment of learning and education that they claim to promote.
The real problems are lack of parental involvement in education and a culture controlled by religious and social organizations. Parental involvement is important, but the elimination of the influence of social organizations and mass media is just as important. Systems that cannot be thrown off as of yet because of the lack of intelligence and the complete indoctrination of these organizations values and norms into children as a result of public education.
...not just science and math.
First of all, to the people who blame this trend on I.D., give it a rest. Our education system has far greater problems to confront, such as:
1. Parents - more an dmore parents don't take an active role in their kids' education, and blame the schools for their kids' failure.
2. Basic literacy - more and more kids cannot even read at grade-level. And we expect them to understand concepts like evolution??
3. Critical thinking - thanks ot NCLB, kids are taught to take a test, not think for themselves.
4. Qualified/dedicated teachers - thanks to unions, teachers have little motivation to actually give a shit about whether or not their students are actually learning anything.
5. No Child Left Behind - the great unfunded mandate that promotes the fantasy that there is no such thing as a dumb, unmotivated kid. One-size-fits-all education only harms good students, and it sure as hell doesn't make the bad ones any better.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Want domestic job security? Get security clearance. I bet a lot of the "real engineers" are working on things that cannot be outsourced for national security reasons...
I don't know, but I don't like it one bit. I remember when I had just graduated high school, and decided to go to into engineering I was thinking to myself "at least I'll get a job when I graduate". What do you know, at graduation I got a call for an interview. On graduation day, while at the ceremony no less I set up the interview for the job I have now. There will always be demand for engineers, and competition from overseas only helps.
Contrary to all the mumbo jumbo about the US moving to a service economy, that isn't going to happen. We can't support our country by all doing each others laundry and making each other sandwiches. I think the first thing we need to fix is the rampant anti-intellectualism in our country. Since when did it become a Very Bad Thing to be educated? Its like we've decided as a society that its just too hard to compete in the global economy, so lets all just give up. I think thats just a tremendous load, and will do more to hurt us than help us. You know why the U.S. is such a dominant force in the global economy? Because were good at it. There are resourceful innovators here, in tech and in business. Now we are charged with developing the next generation of such innovators, and we are failing miserably. We have to ask ourselves, why?
And more on point, how do we fix this?
I don't believe that our education system is so broken as to be beyond repair. We need to fix it. We know we need to fix it. And B.S. standardized tests, No Child Left Behind, the laundry list of other federal and state crap isn't helping.
You know what worked in the past might just work again. Maybe we should try another "space race" style program. There's nothing like a little healthy competition to get people pumped up about science education. Any ideas for what we could try this time? I don't think going back to the moon is gonna do it. I think we gotta get something new on the plate, and our little energy crisis might just be the problem to solve. We all know that global warming is going to be an issue, and we need to start curbing emissions just as soon as we can. So lets set a lofty goal, by 2050 lets cut the carbon footprint of the US by 1/2. Thats practically impossible. Were gonna have to get some wicked bad ass engineers on this one, and if we set this as a goal soon we might just see a push for more homegrown US engineers. This should put pressure on schools to improve science education, and students will be more engaged in science. Colleges would have more research money, especially in the basic sciences and engineering, allowing kids to get some more scholarship money so it might even be cheaper to become an engineer instead of a liberal arts major or finance grad (right now engineering is a little more expensive). Just a thought.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. The answer is simple, its not the government, its the parents. How can we hold the government and teachers 100% liable for the education of our children if we as parents do not get involved on a daily basis with our children's lives and education? I personally believe this lack of involvement is the catalyst for a series of other disturbing issues.
My wife is a teacher at a middle school, while lack of funding is an issue, the lack of interest displayed by a lot of parents is just down right scary. Seriously, if mommy and daddy don't care why should the child?
With a lack of involvement, and doing things such as using the TV and video games as a baby sitter, its no wonder why the test scores of kids here in the US are so poor when compared internationally.
From my observations, there are way too many kids who are extremely disrespectful to their parent, and will do anything to get there way. The parents of such kids, will do just about anything for the kids, and really just want to be their "friend". I call BS! Be a parent! If a kid mouths off to you don't hesitate to tan his hide! Now, I am not an advocate of "beating" kids, but I do support controlled and metered punishment. Spanking can and should be given when appropriate.
I better get off my soapbox now.
I'm an actual high school student, and I can tell you from years of observation that ID and religious based scientific teaching is *not* the reason that science education is on the downward spiral. In fact, it's decidedly a non-issue - such teachings have been unfairly criticized to such a degree that they are not even mentioned once in a normal school day in most places.
The problems are many -
(1) People just don't care anymore. Kids are getting lazier and lazier.
(2) Increasing problems at home due to the destruction of the nuclear family structure.
(3) A general lack of support and enthusiasm in education.
(4) The educational system as a whole being a massive failure to begin with, for a multitude of reasons.
(5) Destruction of morality and values - Cheating is becoming unbelievably prevalent.
I bet it's fun to bash religion, seeing as you atheists have nothing better to do and have a complete lack of hope in general. but maybe you should bash something that actually deserves to be bashed in this instance.
Religion is a NON-ISSUE in the degrading scientific education system in America. Period!
It single family parents where the parent sits on the couch watching TV and slurping Brawndo all day, vs Finland, where the parent (and maybe even the gov't) is much more involved in the community.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
If you're just going to assert that without evidence, I can assert the opposite - 99% of the potential scientists for most of history got derailed by religion. Who knows how fast science could have developed if people had been taught to question, rather than obey, authority. If people hadn't been told that disease was caused by demons and God's curses, so prayer was the only answer. If the money for opulent temples had been spent on research. If the smartest and most educated people hadn't been pushed into being priests.
If one ancient culture had torn themselves away from superstition, we could have had the Enlightenment thousands of years ago. It took 5000 years to get from wooden boats and riding horses bareback, to slightly better wooden boats and riding in saddles, all while the divine right of kings and religious explanations were virtually unopposed. Then in 2% of that time span, while civilization has been more secular, we've gone from the first real alternative to wind and muscle (steam) to nuclear submarines and spacecraft. To me, that says a lot.
Now that I'm done with my rant, how do you reconcile your beliefs with the fact that scientists are the least religious segment of our society? Doesn't that suggest that there's some correlation between a lack of religion and success in science?
However, I assure you I am not.
I honestly believe that the US would not be lagging so far behind in sciences if we finished converting fully to the metric system.
An acquaintance of mine is taking his first college-level physics class, and the professor stated on the first day that since this was an exact science, there would be no use of US customary measure, only SI units. More than half of the class was simply unaware of what these non-customary units were, and as a result, they spent a week's worth of courses going over grams, litres, metres/kilometres, etc., all the while the students bemoaned having to learn a "foreign" unit of measure. I can even recall something similar happening in my high school physics classes. What a waste!
If we're going to teach our kids to be proficient in math & science, the least we can do is give them a Base-10 system of measure with no fractions and simple conversions.
It seems that you inadvertently touched the point where the European and American perspectives clash. It's not how easy or hard it is to become wealthy but the very perception of what being wealthy means.
What struck out from the beginning is your implicit obsession with money, as if it is the dominant objective in mind. Being successful means not only stockpiling the most money but also showing it off the most extravagant exterior signs of wealth. Another incomprehensible detail is how Americans perceive class as being showing off as many exterior signs of wealth as possible. That means that in america a character like Paris Hilton is seen as classy and successful, when the truth is that a character like that is nothing more than cheap white trash. Just because you can afford real diamonds instead of plastic trinkets or you live in a suite instead of a trailer it doesn't mean you are any more posh. Yet, somehow Americans perceive her, and others who emulate her, as successful, posh people. Even as role models. Europeans aren't obsessed with material wealth as Americans are. Europeans do enjoy consumerism and do buy a lot of stuff but Americans just act like that was their sole purpose in life. Well, that isn't healty at all.
Indeed and yet again Europeans do have more economic freedom. Europeans do pay a lot of taxes but those taxes are used to fund basic, fundamental services that benefit the entire fabric of society. The public health service is an European institution that pretty much defines if a society is civilized or not. The public education system is also an European institution. As soon as no citizen is barred from progressing academically (which does more to climb the class hierarchy than money) due to economic constraints or receives a de-facto death sentence due to being poor, the entire society benefits. It constantly amazes me how a society can accept the idea of success and even the concept of life and death can and should depend on the money you make.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Nice try but no cigar. ;) I happen to come from a country with one of the world's highest gun ownership ratios. We get hand guns. We get silencers. A 15 year old can get a gun with parental permission. You can try guess which country.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone