Report: U.S. Lags in Science Education

Science - AP ^ | 2004-05-05 | Adam Ashton

[Junior]

I chalk it up to lack of rigor in the elementary/secondary educations.

[Junior]

Need to cap output on lawyers, education majors, ethnic and gender studies, and other such garbage.

Not in a free society, we don't.

[John Will]

Michigan Technological University
Don't know where I am going for the doctorate.

[Professional Engineer]

Entertainment addiction of Americans and their children is the cause imo

I chalk it up to lack of rigor in the elementary/secondary educations.

Both of these statements have merit. My expirience is that teachers lack the background in the subject they're teaching to be able present them rigorously. Math is an excellent example. When a kid asks, honestly or not, "What will I use this for?", most math teachers haven't a clue. "To pass the test" is an incredibly lame sanswer.

There are numerous root causes for the entire problem. Repairing the situation is not going to be an easy process.

[dhuffman@awod.com]

Read The Flight From Science and Reason, edited by Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt and Martin Lewis (NY, New York Academy of Sciences/JHU, 1996) and Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science, Paul R. Gross & Norman Levitt (MD,JHU, 1994).

[Robert357]

bump for later referece

[Little Ray]

Even in a free society, we can change people's minds; most colleges and universities get Federal money - simply lower the amount they get based on what sort of graduates they turn out.

[Quix]

I ASSURE YOU,

CHINA

IS NOT

LAGGING BEHIND

but is racing ahead as fast as their heavy handed bureaucracy can carry them.

[Doctor Stochastic]

As long as Patrick Henry University is held up as a school for leadership, this will continue. (PHU offers less science than my high school did.)

[PatrickHenry]

As long as Patrick Henry University is held up as a school for leadership ...

I guess it falls to me, as the bearer of my screen name, to speak up for good ol' PH. To begin with, it's Patrick Henry College, not University. Then, there's the matter of what they purport to teach. From their website: Patrick Henry College, they have only a Department of Government and a Department of Classical Liberal Arts. Not yet an educational collosus.

The website says: "Students majoring in Government may choose from three tracks--Public Policy, Journalism, and the most recent addition, Strategic Intelligence. ..." Liberal Arts offers majors in Literature and History. "The Literature major has two tracks--Masterworks and Creative and Professional Writing."

Anyway, they're not a science or engineering school. And I don't see any biology being offered. So PH doesn't bother me at all. I might add that we've had, to my knowledge, two Presidents who were trained as engineers: Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter. (Whatever that proves.)

[JudgemAll]

No kidding. With abortion rates like ours, who would have thought our kids were not hated and taken care of in our schools...