Future of US manufacturing begins with education

[Igel]

7. Mostly self-serving crap.

Too much to argue against.

Class size until recently has shrunk pretty monotonically even as achievement has held flat. You can't blame last year's class size increases for falling achievement in the '90s--what led to NCLB.

Not every creationist is anti-science; not every anti-science American is a creationist. It's a self-serving error: He gets to argue in a nearly fact-free way that what he believes is wrong is wrong. Very creationist of him, in fact.

I know a lot of fine creationist scientists and engineers. They're working in materials science, civil engineering, mechanical and chemical engineering. Not places where biological evolution plays a big role. Lots of MEngs, MSs, and the occasional PhD. The OP has conflated different categories of different sizes to make his point. The result is his point is spurious.

The problem isn't creationists per se. The problem is a large contingent of Americans who insist on things being short-term practical and personally relevant combined with a resistance to accepting authority for the sake of authority. This is more common in some areas, in some communities. Other Americans are lazy and self-satisfied. Far too many are utterly self-centered. Better self-expression in evaluating a novel about somebody like yourself (or about somebody that the teacher thinks you need more empathy towards) than trying to understand hybrid d orbitals or why a specific energy transition in electron orbitals produces light of a certain wavelength. Or even stress patterns in girders or concrete. The first is all about the student; the second isn't about the student at all. And if Americans are all about anything, it's about themselves.

Others have been taught that technology is bad; some use this as an excuse. Yet others have engineer parents and know that the real power and money is in pushing people around. Some set their eyes on being MBAs and in HR, lawyers. Others set their sights on being government bureaucrats. Power and money, baby. If everything is economic and everything is political, then those two are the only worthwhile goals. If you question all authority, you get to set your own standards for what to do when you reach those goals.

It doesn't help that a lot of people don't see the glass as 90% full: They see it only as 10% empty, and can't imagine that the other 90% is worthy anything. They *assume* that being in the 90% isn't for them or theirs and make their living encouraging discouragement. "In this field there's 2% unemployment." The fact-free response is, "Yeah, and they're all black."

I have over 160 students in my science classes. A handful are openly religious. Far more are openly anti-religion and even more are openly non-religious. Very few fail to be anti-science at some level. Then again, they're actually more anti-math (which is something the OP seems to miss).


Then we've screwed up the school system. Not *. "We."

When I was in high school there were three clear tracks: AP, level subject, and general subject. Level subjects were algebra II, chemistry. General subjects were general math 11 or general science 10. AP was clearly top-level, college bound. Level subject students were often college bound, or thinking about it. General subject kids weren't going to major in those subjects and probably not go to college. That all changed. Level subjects got tougher, and then general subjects went away. Even in the most crappy high schools they could distinguish between level and general courses. Even if they couldn't handle actual AP biology or physics.

The system collapsed. Then pre-AP subjects were born. Level subjects were to be rigorous but include kids with no interest in the material. So you get kids in chemistry who failed algebra I and can't do the gas laws problems--yet you can't fail 20% of your class. So you pass them and everybody knows they can slack off. If you're in an under-achieving school without the possibility of AP classes, pre-AP classes are an oddity. Thank you, government and education departments of America.

We then commit the great act of innumeracy by comparing *all* American students with the European students just in *academic* schools. We compare the average American college kid with those who come here to study from other countries--typically the best, typically older. Why? Because we can use this bit of innumeracy to whine about how bad our domestic opponents are. We can use this to push for money and power.


And most of us fail to say the real problem(s).

Take the OP. He mentions immigrants. He mentions certain groups. He says that they value education because they haven't yet assimilated. Yet Latinos score lower than average. It's not the case that they've assimilated: They came not only "pre-assimilated", I'd have to assume, but out-doing American attitudes. This, of course, would be to say something negative about the wrong group. But this little fact is beside the point--it highlights that the problem the OP is pointing out is not the actual problem at all. The OP has a thesis and in it there's a hypothesis: He can't name the largest immigrant group because it falsifies his hypothesis.

We're so screwed. We have every reason to not name the problem, because naming the wrong problem gets us money, prestige, and short-term power. We blind ourselves to the actual problems because they're not personally relevant, short-term practical, or even help in self-fulfilment. (Let's leave aside "scared" because to name the problems would offend many parents and students and even educators.) We go back and forth between saying all good must be "common good" and the real focus of "good" is at the purely individual level--depending on what it gets us.

Now this is American.