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State of US Science Report Shows Disturbing Trends

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the from-a-head-start-to-no-child-left-behind-in-the-blink-of-an-eye dept.

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."

3 of 574 comments (clear)

  1. Comparisons with the rest of the world by pubjames · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think it is time to stop comparisons like "the US is the largest, single, R&D-performing nation in the world pumping some $340 billion into future-related technologies", because they give a distorted view of reality. The main reason the USA comes out on top so often with this kind of statistic is simply because it is sound a large populous county.

    For example, the USA wins the most gold medals at the Olympics. But does that mean the USA is the best at sports? No. If we look at gold medals per capita, then Australia easily beats the USA. If we add countries together so we have equivalent populations, then we get another picture - Europe would often beat the USA if it entered as a single country, for instance.

    If you looked at R&D per capita, or R&D as a % of GDP, or any other more reasonable metric that just comparing countries of different sizes, I expect you would get a very different picture than the summary suggests.

  2. Re:"It's so hard!" by futuresheep · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It is dumbed down. I highly recommend that everyone takes a hard look at the math curriculum in your areas schools. Too many now are using programs like TERC and Everyday Mathematics that stress self discovery, group work, calculator usage, and a spiraling learning path instead of mastering a topic and moving forward. They deemphasize standard algorithms, multiplication table memorization, and long division. Thank god there are states like Texas and California that have recently found these programs to be deficient, and are no longer using them in their schools.

    Links to information and curriculum reviews:

    http://www.wheresthemath.com/
    http://www.wheresthemath.com/blog/curriculum-reviews/
    http://www.nychold.com/
    http://www.weaponsofmathdestruction.com/
    http://128.208.34.90/ramgen/archive/weekday/conv20070313.rm

  3. Re:anti-intellectualism by nerdonamotorcycle · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yup, those are all good examples of the sort of anti-intellectualism I'm talking about. It goes way back, too. America's cultural heroes, at least as far as practical invention goes, are people like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison who lacked formal education and who succeeded by doing things contrary to the conventional and accepted wisdom of people who had formal education.