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Obama Kicks Off Massive Science Education Effort
In a speech at the White House today, President Obama launched a new campaign, "Educate to Innovate," designed to get American students fired up about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The full text of the speech is also available on whitehouse.gov. "The new campaign builds on the President's Inaugural Address, which included a vow to put science 'in its rightful place.' One of those rightful places, of course, is the classroom. Yet too often our schools lack support for teachers or the other resources needed to convey the practical utility and remarkable beauty of science and engineering. As a result, students become overwhelmed in their classes and ultimately disengaged. They lose, and our nation loses too. The partnerships launched today aim to change that. They respond to a challenge made by the President in April, when he spoke at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences and asked the nation's philanthropists, professional and educational societies, corporations, and individuals to collaborate and innovate with the goal of reinvigorating America's STEM educational enterprise. The partnerships announced today — dramatic commitments in the hundreds of millions of dollars, generated through novel collaborations and creative outreach activities — are just the first wave of commitments anticipated in response to his call."
America's artistic value continues to decline with each hollywood blockbuster to be released. No studies whatsoever have been made to test if it could possibly be correlated to poor schooling in the fields of Language Arts, Drama/Theatre, and Humanitarian studies.
Up Next, a story about how a 3 legged dog saved a baby.
still can't compete with PS, Xbox, Wii, DS, etc.
Which is why we're heading towards second-world country status.
I void warranties.
Massive cash awards to US scientists. These kids choose not to go into science because it is not cool. Why is it not cool? Lots of hardwork and small incomes. If you give scientists boat loads of money, they become cool.
Instead we will waste another $huge_amount dollars on some lame education effort only to have the kids still want to be Kobe Bryant, or Dr. Dre.
...designed to get American students fired up about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
No offense, Mr. President, but you want to know what really gets us fired up about those things? Getting paid for it. There are a select few of us that are willing to work for peanuts making the world a better place, spending hours working intractable problems, and sacrificing our social and sex lives all for the sake of The Greater Good. The rest of us -- we want to be paid for our work. The work isn't glamorous -- it's demanding, thankless, and for most requires an expensive education that they aren't reimbursed for. This field in particular (information technology) was gutted about seven years ago under the last administration in the name of short term profits. There is no R&D budget left for innovation, and not much has happened that's revolutionary in this industry since the bubble burst.
If you want to showcase our science and technology, start by making this country the best place to be for it once again -- rather than watching as Europe turns on the LHC while ours sits half-finished in Texas. Send some money to the Department of Energy to fund some physics over here. Give some grant money out so we can deploy a successor to the internet that doesn't suck, controlled by private interests who only want to sell us viagra, cheap thrills, pay per view, and piss-poor last mile connections. Put us back in space, which was once a source of national pride and now languishes as an embarassment. And cancel Enterprise -- goddamn that show sucks!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Unless the proposal includes some tactics for getting the parents involvement, it'll be doomed before it starts. Education happens outside of the classroom just as much as in it and a child's mindset regarding education (no matter the field) is strongly influenced by their parents' mindset.
I went to the city because I wished to live without deliberation.
Parents, parents, parents.
They are in the best position (or should be!) to motivate their kids. If they can't, no billion dollar program will either.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The teacher unions complained loud and early about this plan. They pushed hard for (and eventually) got numerous changes to the original proposal.
Most of my kids' teachers have been good people generally interested in educating kids. The unions, on the other hand, are out of touch with the classroom and mostly interested in their own survival.
Sorry to be so cynical - and I only speak from personal experience - but I have yet to see the unions fight to get their way about something (tenure, testing methods, school hours, curriculum, etc.) and get a positive result in the end. And with this much money at stake...
Not going to happen.
A post-doc doing biomedical research (which is the highest-paid field) makes $40k at NYU. This is after spending 4 years in college, and then doing research for 6 years making a $25k/year stipend. With a conversion rate of under 1 percent for faculty positions (which don't pay that much more anyway), why in the world would anyone actually do that to themselves?! You'd have to be REALLY driven to want to work 60+ hour weeks, under the perpetual stress of having your grant pulled, for less than subway ticket clerks make.
Even better, in our new future we'll hamstring doctors and nurses pay, and make sure that nobody gives a damn about that kind of science too.
As for physics and chemistry (and I am not even talking about Mathematics), we've already driven them into the ground. No need to worry any further.
Heh, except that game testing is boring, boring, boring. You (mostly) don't play the game, you have to go to every last little place on the level, see if you can walk through it, see if effects, weapons, etc. work in weird places, and document that stuff.
And if the game you're working on is a stupid pile-of-crap, you don't get the option of saying "this sucks" and putting in your favorite game instead.
As for physics and chemistry (and I am not even talking about Mathematics), we've already driven them into the ground. No need to worry any further.
The problem is there just isn't a big market for science. I really can't advise anyone to take science at all. Not for money anyway.
There is however a big market for Quants.
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It's just another way to sew up left-handed votes from the teachers' unions.
The actual efficacy of science education is almost entirely driven by culture, and that's almost entirely driven by the way a kid is raised. He's going to be in a science classroom ready to thrive and learn and see the big picture, or not ready to - because of how his parents have armed him for a world view that takes it all rationally into account. Parents with no sense of wonder about science? Kids without one, too.
How this administration thinks it's going to change the culture which sends kids to school - in a way that will make them happy sponges for science - even as it seeks to establish an entitlement Nanny State funded by borrowing money from countries where science (pure and applied) is actually valued and cultivated... no idea. But then, Obama has no idea, either. This is Community Organizing, around a slogan, at its classic best. Empty, meaningless platitudes that don't actually call on parents to actually do the hard work of hatching out and maintaining a curious, intellectually honest child.
Why? Because the left's power comes from asserting that parents can't and shouldn't be responsible - that the state should be in charge of those young meat computers, instead. An administration that's all about lefty group-think and completely empty utterances about Hope and Change is not actually interested in a culture of innovative, self-sufficient thinkers operating in any sphere. The want a thin layer of academics calling the shots from the top, and lot of It-Took-A-Village kids raised to vote for a Nanny State to keep them employed and in power. This particular iniative is a joke, in the context of who's cheerleading for it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The silver bullet for education is very simple: Fix society. There's nothing inherently wrong with our schools. The problem is that schools are nothing but a microcosm of our society. We think that because schools are full of kids we have some special control over them, but that's generally not true. Kids learn what to value first from their parents, second from their role models (which are usually popular media figures), third from their peers, and only then from teachers. It's even worse when you think you can control teenagers who are not children.
Parents that do not value education produce kids that do not value educations. Parents with no ambitions produce kids with no ambitions. A society that values fame and fortune over science and progress produces kids that value fame and fortune over science and progress.
Quite simply, sick schools are a symptom of the real disease, a sick society. Of course few want to admit our society is sick, and even fewer want to make an effort to fix it. They'd rather just pretend that there's a magic trick to turning blank children (who aren't really blank) into perfect adults. Well sorry adults, but a) kids will turn out fine without you trying to "fix" them, and b) YOU are the real problem. We have to do what we want kids to do: We have to take responsibility and try to fix things instead of pushing problems onto somebody else, i.e. another generation.
Fix society, and you fix schools. It's that simple. Fixing society isn't that simple? Tough. Either do it or stop complaining about schools.
Only suckers do science right now.
And people that actually love it.
It'd be nice to reward that category before rewarding people that just want to make money and don't care about the field.
Corp america doesn't care how many millions of kids become engineers or scientists. It'll always be cheaper to hire an engineer in India/China than in the US. My company (large IT company), hasn't had any layoffs, but all the hiring that has been happening has been overseas. So when the CEO gets on the quarterly call and says that the company has continued to hire people; he leaves out the little footnote about how 90% of them are overseas.
The Quality Counts report, a publication from Editorial Projects in Education, which publishes the trade magazine Education Week, rated the 50 states and the District in six areas of education performance and policy.
The District was ranked 51st in the report
Maybe we should return control of local school systems back to local school boards. And let Congress and the DOE control only the DC school system. When the DC school system is ranked among the top 25 then perhaps we might want to pay attention to the example set by Washington. Pay attention to the example - not do as they say. Under local control, some schools would undoubtably do better, some might do worse, but DC is dead last right now - so even your religious nutjob nightmare districts are still likely to do a better job than the nations capital.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Right wingers don't have a problem with ADULT stem cells, just embryonic stem cells. So there won't be any problems.
Funding embryonic stem cells is pretty pointless anyway. All current breakthroughts involve adult stem cells. And even if embryonic stem cells were successiful, you'd have to take anti-rejection drugs for life since those aren't you're cells. It's much simpler to just take your own cells, and if necessary, fix problems in the DNA than deal with the problems of embryonic stem cells.
Conservatives declare war on science to spite "the liberal agenda" in ...
Nevermind, they declared war on science some time ago. As much as I love my job I hate the fact that my entire field is a political football, kicked around everytime the leadership in Washington changes. Why on earth supporting scientific research has become a partisan issue is beyond me; scientific research benefits people of all political persuasions.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I've been to different parts of the world where kids have much less to learn with and yet reach very high in education. They have a value in their home that causes them to strive for the most. Here in America, there is much less emphasis placed on how hard we must try, because ultimately, if you drop out and do nothing, the government will still give you a home, food, and soon all the health care you may need. In other places in the world, if you don't try hard the government will give you nothing and watch you starve.
Let be honest with ourselves, we're not going to be really striving hard until it is essential for survival...like it is in most of the rest of the world. We're our own worst enemy in making life easier and easier and requiring less and less effort. It seems that we ultimately desire to just sit back and let the world feed us while we just monitor the computer screen and get paid lots of money.
Throw all the money you want at school, but ultimately I'm for looking the parents straight in the eye and asking them what they're doing.
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99% do not have the money to pay for their own care, the reality is most private bankruptcies are the result of a medical issue.
We are paying for their medical care, like it or not, who do you think pays when the patient files bankruptcy?
Our system is so messed up I have turned down better paying jobs due to the cost of their insurance.
We have health discount plans not insurance. I do not need someone to pay every time I get the sniffles, I need millions in case I get brain cancer. Instead we have the worst of both worlds.
The other half of the story is that 30 million of those Americans are uninsured but covered by government programs like SCHIP and Medicare. The remaining ones are illegal intruders (non-citizens).
You left out lawful tax-paying immigrants not yet naturalized, and you also left out people whom all the available insurance companies have declined to cover due to a preexisting condition.
"What I do NOT believe is that you can force your neighbors to pay the bill."
FTFY.
What he really means "I am a heartless selfish asshole who would rather watch unfortunate poor people die in the gutter than pay a pittance for a decent universal health care scheme".
I pay into 1.5% of my salary above 30K Australias universal health care and am happy to do so. It works very well. We have good health care for everyone. If you want private insurance you can have that too, and get a tax rebate.
Our government spends less to give universal health care than yours does to NOT provlde it.
Drink the republican kool-aid much.
And Asia one day will be where we are.
Don't forget your history. In the 40s, 50s, and 60s, scientists and technicians were practically revered in this country. We valued the idea(l) of progress, and were convinced that we could improve our lives through the application of knowledge. And we did. Learning was valued, and science was respected.
That's all changed now, of course. But respect for learning isn't a uniquely Asian cultural phenomenon: rather, it's what you see in a society after it's become prosperous, but before it's become decadent.
Actually, the rest of the goddamn civilized world shows us that the system we're trying to build here is the one that actually works, and it is ours that is the known-broken one.
But I don't expect ideologues like you to apply reason to these things. After all, America, Fuck Yeah!
When Tony Blair came to power a decade ago he listed his three priorities as "Education, Education, Education". Since that time New Labour have lowered standards in education to the point where school leavers are now totally unemployable and near illiterate. The UK education system renders most children unemployable and 20% of youths between the age of 16 and 24 are currently out of work. I was interested in becoming a teacher at one point but after visting a secondary school and seeing what was being taught I was completely put off the idea. GCSE students were learning what I would expect to be taught in a primary school and the textbooks were filled more with New Labour propaganda than anything of value. With no skills it's little wonder none of them can get a job upon leaving education.
So, what does any of this have to do with President Obama? Like New Labour Obama is obsessed with "Equality for all" and where there is not equality he will create false equality. Instead of accepting that all men are not created equal and that students have widely differing levels of academic ability he will force a false equality. The only way you can force equality in education is to lower standards to the level of the least gifted student, and at that point everyone will attain the same incredibly low standard of education thus total equality.
Tony Blair did exactly what Obama is doing now, making s speeches about the importance of science with his usual sound bites like the future is “lit by the brilliant light of science”. Now there is absolutely no science being taught UK schools, at least nothing anyone here would call science. Science can be very complicated and if some students don't understand it then we won't have "Equality for all" so it has to be discarded from the curriculum. In order to achive his "Equality for all" Obama will have to do exactly what New Labour has done and I therefore expect that Obama will do for the US education system what Tony Blair and Gorden Brown have done for the UK.
While everyone likes to criticise the Chinese government they have undoubtedly got their education system bang on right, separating students into different schools by ability and pushing the most gifted students to achieve in education. With a solid foundation of knowledge these highly educated individuals will go on to make the scientific and technological breakthroughs of the future, and China will reap the economic benefits associated with these breakthroughs. Meanwhile in the west our children won't even be able to write their names and western civilisation will collapse into poverty.
"Equality for all" doesn't work and any attempts to force it, particularly in education, will destroy a nation.
With our modern obsession with applicability and utility, where nothing seems to mean anything unless it makes money, we need to remember what science really is. Science isn't just a collection of facts. It isn't just an engine of economic growth. Science is above all a method of exposing nonsense for what it is. Science provides a method for anyone to identify truth from nonsense. When a dispute arises over whose assertions about the physical world are correct, we all agree to look to the physical world as the ultimate arbiter of truth, not to a priest, nor a CEO, nor a minister. Science cannot prove truth. It can only disprove nonsense.
If we, as citizens of a democracy, lose the ability to tell nonsense from truth, then our civilization is in trouble.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I'll readily agree with you that we have some lousy teachers, but the problems go far beyond them. Unions sink any disruptive reform that threatens their status or wealth, for instance. But there are deep structural problems with our very method of education, starting with the education major itself in colleges. We should frankly chuck education degrees for junior high and high school teaching. And there's no getting around the fact that education majors in most colleges are almost always from the lowest tier of ACT/SAT scores. We could debate all day about the virtues and vices of government involvement in education.
But equally as big is the problem of students and their parents. Frankly, lots of people simply don't care about schooling. Many parents see school mainly as a place to get rid of their kids for 7 hours a day. Most kids see school as a chore to be endured, from one degree to another.
Look at countries like Finland, where they spend less per pupil and less on facilities than we do. Their kids spend fewer days in school per year and fewer hours in class per day, and fewer years in what we would call the K-12 system. And yet they outgain US kids in all phases of standardized testing. Why? Simply put, there's a culture of responsibility.
Until we find a way to change attitudes among parents and kids, all of the money and legislation in the world won't make a difference.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
If you listen to Fox News long enough, you'll be able to simultaneously believe that Obama is an Atheist, Muslim, Indonesian, Kenyan, a radical black Christian, and . . . have they gotten around to him being a reptoid yet?
Doublethink is a form of trained, willful intellectual blindness to contradictions in a belief system. Doublethink differs from ordinary hypocrisy in that the "doublethinking" person deliberately had to forget the contradiction between his two opposing beliefs — and then deliberately forget that he had forgotten the contradiction. He then had to forget the forgetting of the forgetting, and so on; this intentional forgetting, once begun, continues indefinitely. In the novel's notes, Orwell describes it as "controlled insanity".
-- Wikipedia on Doublethink.
I disagree with your other 50%. The other 50% of the problem is parents who steadfastly refuse to guide their children expecting the school system to become defacto parents, all the responsibility but none of the authority. Teachers (myself included) for the most part desperately want the kids to do better. But when little Johnny has a diet disproportionately consisting of Sugar, does not get enough sleep, doesn't study as much as others, and I can go on and on. When a parent isn't doing their job, the teachers job is infinitely more difficult. The problem with American education is American culture.
load "$",8,1
Ouch, can you say "out of touch" even more loudly?