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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.
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.
Now we can give Obama the Nobel prize for Chemistry and Physics as well!
ws
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
...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
The definitions I learned are broadly similar to yours, but make no mention whatsoever of "Nato" and "Warsaw Pact." Maybe you shouldn't be so quick to assume your paradigm is the one and only correct one.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
I really think someone should bring back Public Service Announcement education (a la "Schoolhouse Rock") in a big way. Keep the lessons small and bite-sized, fit them into 30 second spots. Just keep banging away simple concepts that are aimed at middle-schoolers and adults who forgot all of that stuff. Using simple math to figure out gallons of paint required for a wall of a given size. Linking fuel purchased to pollution created in numbers. Explaining the difference between anecdotes versus statistical norms, like the recent breast-cancer-screening recommendations. Illustrating the kinds of technology Europe, Asia and the Americas had in 1400 AD or 1600 AD or 1800 AD. Heck, even just quoting and explaining each of the Constitutional Amendments during shows like "24 Hours" or "CSI" would have a profound impact in the long run.
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We should set up small groups around the country to independently engage in the study of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math... call them STEM Cells, and watch the right-wingers line up to ban funding them, on reflex.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
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!
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.
This looks like a job for...Sagan-Man!
More top down central planning of the government schools isn't going to lead to more productive outcomes. Science isn't a rigid, unchanging system that can be taught as dogma. Instead of throwing another stifling straitjacket onto the failed government schools, he might emulate the diverse and decentralized environment of scientific achievement, and allow competition with government schools, and competing curricula that will over time lead to increasingly more beneficial outcomes.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
You mean, his anti-stem cell research policy where he shrunk the previous administrations budget of $0.00 to several millions. Is that the anti-stem cell research policy you are talking about? I guess you would have been much happier if he just kept the previous administrations spending level on this research.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
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.
The Cold War ended 18 years ago... OMG, that's what causing Global Warming(TM)!
I was going to say stop paying executives and lawyers so much.
But then I realized an even more fundamental problem.
Science is hard. Degrees are expensive in the U.S.
Knowing science does not result in either good pay or security.
So smart people choose other fields which require boots on the ground, better security, and better social status.
Only suckers do science right now.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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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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.
To you and people who think like that (sibling post by techno-vampire going even further in this)... I'd like to note that there is a reason why we need standardized tests. If each school acts on it's own, some might become better than now, others worse. You could look at two people's papers and not know how good they are compared to each other unless you are well familiar of quality of every school in the country. We really need standardized tests to fix this, to give some guideline with which to compare students' knowledge to others.
Your argument is really not that much against standardized tests. It is against badly used standardized tests, which can be fixed if it is made into a priority. I can't comment on this one as I'm not from USA and have never gone through such. However, here in Finland there are pretty few standardized tests but they are important: At the end of highschool you are put to national tests about each subject (a group of good teachers evaluate all tests without knowing to whom they belong to or even what school are the exam takers from) and everyone gets a grade relative to others. On each year, 5% best get the best grade, those who aren't in 5% but are in 20% get the next best one... Of course there are some variations (a score that would have been just enough for the best grade on one year could be just below the limit on the next) but overall it gives a pretty good result.
If people from one highschool consistently get lower grades, the school get a bad reputation and nobody wants to go there. Publicly funded schools (=practically every single one) get funded based on how many students graduate so schools have some interest to compete with other schools when it comes to quality of education.
Obama is a member of the One World Order muslim kenyan atheist conspiracy and is only interested in promoting America-Last policies like Darwinism, heliocentrism, and rational thought.
YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!
>>>Republican pundits would say as much about Democratic proposals for U.S. universal health care.
- We believe in the right to get health or sickcare.
- We also believe in the right to choose smoking, drinking, or overeating.
- We even believe you have the right to replace your damaged lung, liver, or fatty heart.
What we do NOT believe is that you can force your neighbors to pay the bill. Most Americans consider that theft of another man's labor. We are amazed that Europeans do not. If you wanted to make a "safety net" to help-out those who can't afford their own care, fine, but 99% of Americans have enough money to pay the bill themselves and should do so.
Also the "40 million American are uninsured" is only half the story. 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).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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
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.
Spin that with your broad generalizations about the left and a hilariously old reference to Hillary Clinton's book just shows that you're hopelessly mired in ideological cliches with no objective reasoning whatsoever...something I might add is important when discussing science.
I, on the other hand, am actually happy that government is actually paying attention to science and not making an enemy of it.
Warning! Anecdotal evidence ahead, my own two cents, etc....
My wife is a teacher now for 6 years and from what I can make of it, teachers are there own worse enemy when it comes to any improvements in the schools. They regularly resist any change, argue over almost any point, and back stab each other the smallest perceived slight. I think, at least in part, its comes from just a lot of burn out and frustration with students, but as I said this comes to be second hand from my wife so I know I don't have the clearest view.
My wife was an accountant and got her MBA before deciding to get out of the corporate life and to take up teaching. She went through an accelerated course to get her teaching degree. Now teaching business at the high school level for several years, but continues to be look down on by many of the teachers at the school. She didn't get a normal degree in education, she one of the "transplants". Such narrow mindedness....
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data.
"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.
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!
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
Your argument is that UK education was ruined by Tony Blair trying to equalize it for all.
Have you considered the possibility that Tony Blair was a neocon who simply lied? That education was never a priority for him, and that it's fallen into disrepair through neglect, not through well-meaning but ill-conceived repairs?
Blair didn't really want to fix education. His only goal was to destroy it for short-term political points. The same disease that's afflicted us on this side of the Atlantic has also infected you.
you're actually claiming that education is actually a political ploy to garner more support for the left?
... and investing in the next round, when he'll need organized labor even more, since a lot of independents are going to be WAY more skittish this time around.
No. I'm saying that the teachers' unions are dependable voters for Obama's party, as long he continues to throw them a bone in the form of money and power of far-reaching programs that involve the continued employment of their members under their terms. Education (especially as it relates to science) doesn't stick in a kid's head because of large government programs. It sticks in their heads because their parents have made them receptive to it in the first place. Big government programs don't cause parents to be more thoughtful about how they interact with their own kids.
Obama knows this, just like every educator knows this. Which makes large, money-centric programs like this all about the people to whom the money goes: the unions. And the unions then take the dues they collect, and advertize on behalf of the politician than promises to deliver more of the same. Such unions were a big part of how Obama got elected, and he's doing payback, that's all
You're arguing that your partisan gain is more important than the success of the next generation
No. I'm saying that such programs have nothing to do with the success of the next generation, and are in fact all about the partisan gains pursued by the party dishing out the cash. Simple as that. Of course, you already knew that.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
That expression goes back way before she trotted it out, and it's still being used, ad nauseum. Google it.
Of course this is true, but context is everything. Seeing that you threw this in during your general rant against liberals and then capitalized the words, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what you're implying.
More to the point of your question though is that you never do address the very thought of what you think is wrong with science education, which is the only way to have proper science education is get the parents involved. So how do you propose to do this, pray tell? Wave some magic wand to make parents who are too set in their ways to somehow imbue them with the necessary curiosity and objectivity to pass it on to their kids?
But the government proposes a plan to spur science education and your fault is with the people who proposed it. Might as well throw up your hands and admit you either 1) don't think there is anything wrong with science education today or 2) admit that we cannot possibly change the status quo and give up. Seriously, I would love to hear your proposal to get all parents more involved with their children's education. I don't think you have any idea on how that can be accomplished, but if you have something, I'm all ears.
Really? You stop being interested when you're reminded that your current president's only executive experience prior to his current OTJT, was his holding of that title? Yeah, I can see why you'd rather not be reminded of that.
Seriously? This doesn't have a thing to do with the topic. And who cares about this unless you have some sort of cognitive dissonance about who got elected into office. Obviously, this weak argument didn't hold enough water during the campaign, you think I give a shit about it now?
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.
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