U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences

The United States has started to lose its worldwide dominance in critical areas of science and innovation, according to federal and private experts who point to strong evidence like prizes awarded to Americans and the number of papers in major professional journals.

Foreign advances in basic science now often rival or even exceed America's, apparently with little public awareness of the trend or its implications for jobs, industry, national security or the vigor of the nation's intellectual and cultural life.

(snip)

The rapidly changing American status has not gone unnoticed by politicians, with Democrats on the attack and the White House on the defensive.

"We stand at a pivotal moment," Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader, recently said at a policy forum in Washington at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the nation's top general science group. "For all our past successes, there are disturbing signs that America's dominant position in the scientific world is being shaken."

Mr. Daschle accused the Bush administration of weakening the nation's science base by failing to provide enough money for cutting-edge research.

more…
http://nytimes.com/2004/05/03/science/03RESE.html?hp

We cut money from schools (even universities) and from scholarships and from student loans and from student grants. This pretty much ensures that lots of students are cut out of a good education unless their families wealthy. And in that case, why would they want to work hard to become a scientist? They can have an easy life with their family's wealth.

What did they know that threatened the honchos.

scientific fact and replacing it with creationsim, (sarcasm)there are going to be a whole lot of young people who can only qualify for jobs at kmart or taco bell in the future. (/sarcasm)


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/arts/01DINO.html?ex=1084388448&ei=1&en=4acfaab545bdf565

hence the "sarcasm" tag, i would assume. the problem isn't one instance, it's the systemic rot of which this one instance is a small part.

maybe systemic rot isn't the right way to say it, though. i would think it's at least as likely that we haven't really been "losing" scientific proficiency here in the states. we've always had a very large section of the population which has been distrustful of, if not openly hostile to scientific inquiry. it goes by many names. the most appropriate, i think, is "the republican base."

anyway, i think the problem is that we haven't been moving forward. we've been resting on our laurels. if other nations have been making advances in science training, and we haven't, then we've lost ground relative to them. no surprise there.

When the Nazi Republicans push creationism and biblical interpetations that contradict established science, one should not be surprised, as I've said before, unless we remove the Nazi Party from power,China will surpass us and we will collapse.

:thumbsup:

Just read the GOP platforms in states like Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Oregon etc. It's frightening when you really think about the long-term consequences this madness will have on our country.

You know, we're just gonna get we deserve though. Thats my attitude. You can't be as morally and intellectually bankrupt as the U.S. has been since the end of WWII (and the 80's in particular) without facing some consequences down the road.

maybe spent more time worrying about other things, maybe we could begin to regain our 'edge'. Americans have the priorities all screwed up.

FROM THE ARTICLE AND THE ORIGINAL POST:

"Mr. Daschle accused the Bush administration of weakening the nation's science base by failing to provide enough money for cutting-edge research."

Hell's bells folks, we have wars to pay for, tax breaks for the rich that we have to cover, slush fund for Rummy to dump billions into, how could anyone think that education is important. The government is trying to strangle the public school systems and make it next to impossible for any but the wealthy to get a college education. In fact, that's the plan. Dumb 'em down is the new battle cry. And from what I can see, it's worked quite well.

The others being undercutting teacher unions (big Democratic Party base) and shifting funds to "faith-based" fundamentalist religious education.

The right wing has a lot to gain by destroying public education in the USA.

xtians are called "sheep" because sheep are some of the dumbest animals on the planet. In fact, they scorn learned people who question because informed decision eclipses blind faith, which is an important component of xtian belief. To seek your own answers, to find out for yourself goes against what they're trying to achieve.

It was easier to control people way back in the day when only the king and the clergy could read---the populous was told what they were going to believe. If they didn't, they were tried and burned for heresy.

The bible in English was banned on and off from around 1535 until 1559 in England. The Catholic church didn't make English language service legal until Vatican II in the 60's.

The only thing that rethug neocons will accomplish by dumbing down the populous is to weaken their grandchildren's global competitiveness with countries whose grandchildren won't be mired down in a backward religious rhetorical education.

More than a little bit ironic, huh.

Bake

:eyes:

"Leave No Future Scientist Child Behind".

Another winning program from the Bush administration that financially keeps schools, teachers and students from actually being successful in their scholastic endeavors. :crazy:

...scientists and engineers were heroes. Look at what we did -- we walked around on the moon, ferchrissakes. We found out what was inside cells and even atoms. We could do anything, and we made all the best stuff in the world. At least, until accountants started running everything, ruining American cars for a while, and then everything else.

For the last 25 years our heroes have been people who are good at shuffling capital around. We hardly make anything here anymore.

Of course research isn't a priority with Bush & people like him -- right-wingers think they already know everything worth knowing, and science might turn up a fact or two (or a hundred) that just doesn't jibe with their simple little axioms.

US scientists were the driving force in the Human Genome project, which was truly on the order of going to the moon. We also set it up as a collaborative project, and included scientists from around the world. Even more, you can access all the fruits of this scientific project on line: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

This was truly an amazing milestone in science. And, the driving force was publicly funded science research.

The 'Pubs are earmarking the heck out of research budgets these days. Send money to pet projects, at the expense of the general research budget. Good projects can't get funded. It's not uncommon for projects to get excellent reviews and not get funded for two or three years, meaning that researchers have to spend more time scrambling for money, less time getting work done. I'm at that point in my career where I need to move on to a "permanent" job, but the money's not really there. It's getting harder to convince myself that it's worth staying in research.

I went to a "recruiting talk" from a major business consulting firm a couple months ago. They hire lots of PhD scientists, for no other reason than to tell their clients that they have a lot of PhD scientists on staff. And, it's really tempting. I have years of specialized training and knowledge that I'd rather use to help understand disease... But, it's hard not to "take the money and run". Especially when I watch established researchers who have done outstanding work for decades having a terrible time getting cutting-edge work funded.

Then there won't be any shortage of (biological) scientists in this country. Give it 5...10 years maximum. It's coming.

-SM, biologist, cynic...

biotech brains are now in India ( a guy called Clyde Prestowitz
who is associated with a think tank was quoted in the article).He says that it would be a waste of resource not to tap into this brain power and wants to encourage American Corporations to establish reserach centers in India.There goes your biotech future. May be
if the Bush Administration can also reclassify Hamburger making
as a biotech manufacturing job, we can save both biotech and manufacturing industries in one stroke!

I keep encouraging my father to re-hang his shingle. He worked when there was a recognition of the phrase "feduciary responsibility".

I know what you mean - losing manufacturing, losing IT and R&D.

And we're consuming faster than ever. Doesn't look very promising.

is where our priorities are....

That's when the big science push came. Kennedy was a driving force in improving the science education of American kids.

Now look at us. With school boards trying to foist creationism on classrooms, of course we're falling behind. This country doesn't deserve to be ahead in the sciences. In fact, we're falling backward into a new Dark Age of superstition and belief in miracles.

prices? Don't get me wrong, over 50% of my research group is foreign nationals, and it has certainly enriched my experience. But I think many institutions of higher learning now accept way too many students for cheap teaching labor. They know that they hold the status of the foreign student in their hands, as they will be deported if they leave grad school.

all the answers GWB needs, so why waste money on science?

As long as Bushco can shoot their way into Oslo, and demand there be a Nobel in this category, supremacy is assured.

They're making a comeback. And Nancy Reagan can help out with astrology.

Really, you guys push the panic button too soon.

Remember, it's mourning in America!


Edit:

I forgot to add Alan Greenspan's contribution to alchemy, changing worthless fiat currency into promissory notes.

that attend the best schools are selected based primarily on high SAT scores, that only test how well you can solve trivial puzzles in a limited amount of time. No wonder that all these "geniuses" get the best education and never contribute anything, except maybe more stupid puzzle trivia.

has dumped all the scientists from its ranks in favour of dittoheads who toe the Repuke party line instead. our own damn people can't even get reliable scientific data anymore about anything because it's all censored by Herr bu$hler and Co...

there is no evidence that condoms help prevent AIDS. Nope. None...

HA!

Gods and Goddesses help us all..

When you have an administration and a majority in Congress who are openly hostile to any ideas that challenge cherished notions of evangelical Christian sensibilities.

The Manhattan project was conceived and executed by imported expatriates and former German scientists. These folks gave us the space program after Russia got there first. We have never invested the quality resources in public education to generate this level of genius for one simple reason, the powers that be would no longer be in charge. Think BFEE and their ilk.

It's interesting to hear that an over-reliance on importing talent has been going on for decades. International students who were admitted to my old grad program were always more prepared, more respected, and frankly performed better academically than US students. I think part of it is that we (US students) were less prepared than they were, but a lot of international students come here overly prepared in hopes of ensuring they'll survive in the US (i.e., stay + get a good job, visa, etc). I also found that in my field (a mathematical science) and my grad program that the gap between US undergrad and grad school is as large as the Pacific Ocean for US students (this is supposed to be figurative, but given the wonderful talent of Indian students in my field it could be literal). I would imagine it to be similar in some other programs as well. I completely agree with another post that professors thrive on using international students like this because these students do not require further education and mentoring -- some of them are professors in their home countries!! They don't even need to learn, they can just start producing the papers and grant proposals. There was an underlying, unspoken (but palpable) hostility toward US students in my former grad program. When I interviewed for a tenure-track position at a large land grant university, the chair of the dept told me flat out that "American students are lazy." The profs have no shame (that guy was even an American!).

The Earth is only 5,000 years old!

The "tests" are inconclusive...

are nothing but a demonic deception!

Thank you Jay-Zeus! Time to handle the snakes!

or are you being snarky?

That is why "tests" is in quotes...

believe that the caveman discovered fire?

it was created in 4004 bc, making it 6008 years old. exactly. now that we know that, no more discussion is required on this topic thank you very much.

less of an ingorant and loud public influence elswehere about science.

at our major universities the last 20 years or so, and this result would have been entirely predictable...

major in these fields, or so they were saying as long as 25 years ago at my university in southeast Louisiana. The reward is too uncertain. You spend years to get degrees that may only provide you a career for five years or less. The aerospace industry and the oil industry were already disturbingly cyclical, and people don't go to college to be laid off for years at a time. Now it seems I never meet anyone in aerospace although I know Michoud et. are still there, I guess they are more "efficient" (less employees), and the story of the oil industry consolidating and shedding thousands of employees just in New Orleans alone is too depressing to be repeated here.

Why study science or engineering, investing a huge amount of time and money, only to compete with students from foreign countries who are having their studies paid for by their foreign governments so they don't have to be stressed about debt and the future of their careers? The pressures on American students at their own universities seem to be greater, while the chance of reward seems smaller. Americans aren't stupid. If science and engineering are too risky to invest one's time and money exploring, people will turn away from these areas.

We have the best public schools, and the best universities, in the world -- oher nations recognize this even if we don't appreciate what we have and this is why our graduate programs are choked with foreign studies being subsidized by their governments. People who blame the public education or overall American education system are on the wrong track. The kids who are victims of Bible school creationism don't get into grad programs anyway, they are an irrelevance to this discussion. The American public is not any more dumbed-down than any other public -- however, since we live in a hostile capitalist environment where going to school can entail tens or even hundreds of thousands of debt that usually can't be escaped by bankruptcy, we are in a VERY difficult place. Science, at least the geo-sciences and aerospace and computers, have their booms and busts; if students go into debt, they are unwise to get into these fields when they can't save themselves through bankruptcy if a protracted "bust" period occurs.

We would have NO small business in this country if businessmen could not protect themselves through bankruptcy. If we want to guarantee that students cannot choose to pursue the riskier careers, we should keep to this path of refusing bankruptcy protection to students who are unlucky enough to end up with the "wrong" majors. I would propose that bankruptcy protection from student loans AT LEAST be made available to science/engineering students who can't get jobs that pay enough to let them live and pay their debt. It's a pretty modest proposal but it would allow kids to take that much more risk.

Kids are smart, and right now they have to make financial based decisions because we live in a very money-oriented nation. Science is rarely as financially rewarding as it should be unless you are gifted at office politics as well as the science. Many of the most gifted science/engineering types are completely incapable of networking/office political science and thus are completely screwed. Then the young people coming up see these people getting screwed and they start to think, Hey, that could happen to me.

according to the "Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study". Eighth grade results:

http://nces.ed.gov/timss/results.asp

So I think to say the USA has the best public schools in the world is pushing it. If you're saying they've already given up on math and science by the eighth grade because of the cost of university courses, then it's a crappy system that needs reform.

when you try to run a country as a theocratic state, and much of science becomes taboo to teach in schools because it's not biblical.

The RW that's running our country is very anti-intellectual and anti-science. They are seriously interfering with cutting edge research like stem cell research. In other sciences they dismiss any data that contradicts their political agenda, ie global warming.

This is bound to catch up with us sooner or later.

We have a leadership that seems not to realize that it is impossible to maintain status as a military and economic superpower if you destroy your scientific and technological base. Maybe they think God will maintain our superpower status for us.

Jocks roolz! Geeks droolz! Yeah! Woooohooooooooo! Just leave science to those effeminate cultures like France and junk! All we Merkins need is sports and beer!

TOGA! TOGA! TOGA!

The Bush Administration is not interested in doing any type of research to advance human knowledge unless it can in some way help us to kill more people more efficiently, or let rich folks get richer.

When the tax base starts to contract - and it will - things will get very interesting. Not pleasant...

The cost of keeping one non-violent prisoner locked up one year, would pay for two PhD's to stay in school for that same year.

America now has the biggest prison system in the world. Our prison system sucks out the tax dollars that should be going to universities. We're paying for prison guards instead of college professors, and prison cells instead of class rooms.

We should be naming our prisons after these Republican politicians who want them instead of colleges. We don't need to name a university after Ronald Reagan, we should name our prison system after him.

One of the best ways to get FIRED and BLACKLISTED is to make a breakthru that becomes a major part of the company's product line and is featured in the Annual Report. Mg't will give the credit to one of their young vacant-eyed white-bread fast-track buddies, fire you, then blacklist you to punish you for daring to expect to be promoted on performance -- and to make damned sure that you can't go to work for a competitor.

There's nothing quite like being fired & blacklisted by a manager with the IQ of George W. Bu$h, and seeing some vacant-eyed white bread bozo who said it couldn't be done being hailed as the hero for "inventing" something that has your patent numbers on the bottom.

And young people are catching on -- which is why so few of them are going into science.

And the majority of my foreign-born colleagues have gone back home to their original countries. Better to be appreciated in a third-world country that's working its' way up than treated like dirt by Rethugnican managers in the US.

Vitruvius

Actually, more of an acquaintance, from another message board. She has grad degrees in microbiology, etc. and she discovered a new process or something and got nothing but shit for it by the company (who is using it and profiting by it). She's entirely demotivated to do anything productive for them again. She's looking, but having a hard time finding a new job.

This message is loud and clear to engineers and other hard science professionals.

Why work to get very advanced degrees if US corporations are not willing to compensate people appropriately, or worse yet, outsource the job overseas.

Regrettably the corporations have been allowed to define a society that supports their view of an exploitive economy instead of making an economy that supports a society.

Education, especially at the primary level is a local issue. Many people don't read to their children, they don't participate in school activities or even concern themselves with what books their kids use.

The cycle continues until they get older.

Do I think our people are stupid..NO. But I do think a lot of people are educationally lazy. They use the excuse that if they didn't learn something in school...that somehow there is no way to learn it now. How about picking up a book?

Our culture focuses on the quick buck..the quick fix.....and learning is a lifelong pursuit which may or may not enrich your waller but will enrich your mind.

oh wait its open 1-9 on Wednesdays

But who has time? got two parents working overtime or late hours so the kids can each have their own room and the latest sneakers and video games and afterschool programs and karate lessons and soccor uniforms and braces for their teeth and whatever the Jonses bought for their kids last month.

Seems the job either numbs your brain completely or else requires 15 hours of specialized study each week of which 12 hours worth will be obsolete in 3 years.

Same shit happens whenever religion tries to stick its superstitious nose into the scientific method.

are for terra-ists.:dunce:

Care to burn a witch or heretic today, anyone?

We still lead in Creation Science.

Any challenge to faith is un-Godly.

American scientists are still brilliant, creative and hard-working.

Unfortunately, most of them are working in various "Black" projects and their breakthroughs will not be reported in journals nor in the mainstream press.

The good news is, they've developed 72 new flavors of Kool-Aid.

that are being outsourced. Engineering and scientific. These are the jobs that can be done anywhere in the world.

Now to fill out that grad school application....

and we mint HOW many new lawyers/MBAs per year?? I promise you that's where a lot of the students that would've been scientists a generation ago have gone....

This really isn't anything new. Being a U.S. citizen in a Graduate program within the sciences or engineering was unusual twenty years ago. Perhaps it was the lure of good paying jobs waiting for anyone with a BSSc, that kept us from investing ourselves in Graduate work. Or the lower rate of return for investments in advanced degrees? Maybe that society doesn't value a PhD!

and engineering.

I heard about this a lot.

No public discussion was/is wanted for fear state legislators would decide to cut grad programs in science, engineering and math because 'the taxpayers of this great state should not be expected to pay for the education of students from other states and (horrors!!!!) other countries.'

I'm in grad school for bioorganic chemistry right now. I'm at a decent school, so there aren't dire recruitment problems, but we still have seen the quality of graduate student slip a bit. However, most countries are seeing major drops in grad school enrollment. Scientists must be better treated, or the worldwide community will hit the crapper.

As far as taxpayer funding, most graduate students in the physical sciences are paid by grants from national institutions; the graduate student isn't nearly the burden on the taxpayer that the undergraduate student is.

I teach an advanced computer science class at one of the universities here in Houston. If I'm lucky, I might get one or two Americans in the class. Most of the students are from India and China. Even when I worked with NASA, many of the engineers were not born in the U.S.

Now, in this class I don't teach some obscure, academic theory. I teach advanced Java which is one of the most important languages used today. Furthermore, the class is held at night. You would think that I would get a few more computer professionals to take the class in addition to full time students.

I've been interested in this trend for some time, and I frequently talk to my students about it. According to my students, our universities are still the best in the world. They are also the easiest to get into. Most students want to stay in the U.S. after graduation. The only reason they want to stay is because of the higher salaries. However, my students have also told me that the salaries in India are starting to rise - especially for specialists or senior engineers. Once foreign salaries match U.S. levels, there will be no incentive for these people to stay (and many are very talented).

I think this will be a good thing for the U.S. As a country, we only want to solve problems after the fact. But once faced with a challenge, we do pretty well (assuming we send the idiot back to Crawford). We just need a wakeup call. Perhaps China landing a man on the moon, or India becoming the next super power will do it.

But why bother if the companies will only outsource more and more technical jobs because they don't want to pay US salaries.

I'd do real well in a graduate CS program - temperament and interest.

However, the return is not worth the investment in time.

I agree that outsourcing has eliminated some programming jobs. However, I think that the tech bust in 2000 coupled with 9/11 eliminated far more tech jobs than outsourcing.

One of the biggest problems I've found is that venture capitalists have been very reluctant to invest in startups after the tech industry collapsed. I think the industry is finally starting to see investment again, and hopefully, the Google IPO will help kick start investment in the tech industry.

I'm optimistic about the tech jobs picture because many of my students are starting to get jobs again. This was not the case the last two years. Some are even landing internships which are generally the first to go in a bad economy. I think that outsourcing works for call centers. However, for moderately complex software projects, I'm not so sure that outsourcing will be cost effective.

This is the New America. We burnt that bridge to the twenty-first century and elected a "man of the people" who isn't such a smarty pants like them liberals. If it ain't in the Bible then it is BS anyway.

Bush-League Lysenkoism from Scientific American, May 2004

Starting in the 1930s, the Soviets spurned genetics in favor of Lysenkoism, a fraudulent theory of heredity inspired by Communist ideology. Doing so crippled agriculture in the U.S.S.R. for decades. You would think that bad precedent would have taught President George W. Bush something. But perhaps he is no better at history than at science.

In February his White House received failing marks in a statement signed by 62 leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, 19 recipients of the National Medal of Science, and advisers to the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations. It begins, “Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world’s most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy. Although scientific input to the government is rarely the only factor in public policy decisions, this input should always be weighed from an objective and impartial perspective to avoid perilous consequences. . . . The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle.” Doubters of that judgment should read the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) that accompanies the statement, “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making” (available at www.ucsusa.org). Among the affronts that it details:

The administration misrepresented the findings of the National Academy of Sciences and other experts on climate change.

It meddled with the discussion of climate change in an Environmental Protection Agency report until the EPA eliminated that section.

It suppressed another EPA study that showed that the administration’s
proposed Clear Skies Act would do less than current law to reduce air pollution and mercury contamination of fish.

It even dropped independent scientists from advisory committees on lead poisoning and drug abuse in favor of ones with ties to industry.

Let us offer more examples of our own.

The Department of Health and Human Services deleted information from its Web sites that runs contrary to the president’s preference for “abstinence only” sex education programs.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control made it much more difficult for anyone from “hostile nations” to be published in the U.S., so some
scientific journals will no longer consider submissions from them.

The Office of Management and Budget has proposed overhauling peer review for funding of science that bears on environmental and health regulations —in effect, industry scientists would get to approve
what research is conducted by the EPA.

None of those criticisms fazes the president, though.

Less than two weeks after the UCS statement was released, Bush unceremoniously replaced two advocates of human embryonic stem cell research on his advisory Council on Bioethics with individuals more likely to give him a hallelujah chorus of opposition to it.

Blind loyalists to the president will dismiss the UCS report because that organization often tilts left—never mind that some of those signatories are conservatives. They may brush off this magazine’s reproofs the same way, as well as the regular salvos launched by California Representative Henry A. Waxman of the House Government Reform Committee and maybe even Arizona Senator John McCain’s scrutiny for the Committee on Commerce, Science
and Transportation. But it is increasingly impossible to ignore that this White House disdains research that inconveniences it.


J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE AP Photo
Bush-League Lysenkoism
THE EDITORS editors@sciam.com
STANDING UP for science—
or stepping on it?

About half of our country believes creation over evolution. They also believe the world is 6000 years old, was specially created in 7 days by God, and occupies a special place in the universe. Mind you, I believe that God created the universe, but people taking the Bible so literally is bit moronic in this age of science. With so many people completely ignorant of Astronomy, Cosmology and Biology, is it any wonder that we're losing our dominance in Science?

The fed government has been the primary funding source for scientic research for decades. They have also been underfunding this for a long time now.

The nat'l institutes of health, an organization known for never funding cutting edge stuff, receives massive funding. For 2005 the NIH gets $28.804-billion and the NSF $5.745-billion. DoD and DoE also provide research funding as well. The NSF funds all areas of science, NIH just medical and disease stuff. The imbalance is clear - you cannot advance in medicine without corresponding advances in basic sciences across disciplines. Funding for all areas of research (except NIH) has been flat for years. Underfunding public research leads to more corporate sponsorship of research (hey, profs gotta eat) which is applied and not basic.

US industry has also abandoned basic research on a wholesale basis. Only IBM still does much general science research any more. Places like Bell Labs managed to develop little things like the 'transistor', once upon a time, and was considered as good a place to be as any university. Increased security and foreigner witch-hunting is also damaging the research efforts at nat'l labs like Los Alamos.

So, you take a culture that devalues science and engineering in favor of stock market wizzes and get-rich-quick marketers, cut R&D funding, slash science in schools in favor of math & reading due to standardized testing, and what do you get? An overall decline in the quality and amount of work done and a drop in students interested in the hard work necessary to make careers in science & engineering.

Now add the stupid new BushCo restrictions on foreigners that is driving the best foreign students to go to Canada & western Europe or go home after studying here, and an article like this is no surprise.

Test: name one famous living scientist. (those of you in science programs keep yer yaps shut ;-)). Now, eliminate Stephen Hawking and Brian Green from your list and try again. Now name 100 captains of finance and business. Interesting, eh?

yup, that $28 billion the nih receives sure is massive - what - that'd keep the military going for 2 weeks or so?

oh well, at least the military is out there protecting us from evil - and god only knows how dangerous evil is (compared to actual diseases like aids and cancer that prematurely kill only a few hundred thousand americans each year).

Fundamentalist opposition to evolution is certainly a factor. If you believe in creationism and refuse to study evolution, biology is closed to you, and so is much of physics.

There is also the social stigma of being a science geek. Ask the average American middle class parent whether they'd rather have their child make an all-state team in any sport or get the state's highest score on the Putnam exam (a notoriously difficult national math exam). Guess which achievement would be covered in the local newspaper. Guess which achievement would make the young person a hero among other students and which would make the young person a target of bullies. Look at the lists of science competition winners. You'll see a lot of Asian names, not because Asians are smarter, but because recent Asian immigrants haven't yet caught the prejudice against intellectual achievement.

In addition, a lot of people lack the skills to go on in math, and this is where overcrowded elementary and middle school classrooms are to blame. I used to tutor street kids for the GEDs, and I found that nearly all of them (ages 15 to 21) could read, at least in the sense of sounding out words, although they varied in their ability to understand what they read. However, few of them were comfortable with math, or even basic arithmetic. Most of them viewed long division as an insurmountable brick wall. Okay, I'm no math genius, but I'm comfortable through the level of college algebra, and I handle everyday math just fine, so I was dismayed to see all these kids who couldn't do long division.

I asked them about their math training in school, and most of them said that they had trouble with math beginning in fourth or fifth grade, and they didn't blame their teachers, because there were too many kids in the classroom, and the teacher was playing whack-a-mole with all the kids who had behavior problems and wasn't able to monitor each child's progress in math. (This was in Oregon, where the schools have been cut back every year since 1990, after just barely recovering from the Reagan recession.)

In other contexts, I ran into people who couldn't multiply or divide fractions and didn't know their multiplication tables. Worse yet, they couldn't set up a problem to do it on a calculator.

Just last night, I talked to an old acquaintance who is now at a community college taking the prerequisites for nursing. She was ranting about how her younger fellow students not only have poor math skills but also seem not to have caught on to the fact that math knowledge is cumulative, so that they're astonished to learn that they're supposed to retain their basic algebra skills--instead of forgetting them after the chapter test-- for all higher math courses and for all science courses.

So I think that a lot of elements have come together to slow down American progress in science. I know that Japan educates its general population in science and math much better than the U.S. does and that Japanese students at most levels are about two years ahead of U.S. students of the same age. (I used to have a Japanese 11th grade math textbook, which contained stuff that I didn't see until college algebra.)

In fact, in most Western countries outside the U.S., you can't graduate from high school without taking math and science all the way through.

Curricular freedom sounds good in the abstract, but in practice, it means letting students opt out of classes that they may have an undiscovered talent for. If we let students stop with ninth grade general math and science, just because their parents "were never any good at math" or "don't want Ashley and Ryan exposed to evolution," we may be throwing away students who are good at math or science and don't know it.

....where science teaching beyond the 8th grade is often textbook driven and dreary. The Third International Math and Science report gave a pretty strong indication of why science in schools is in decline. In 4th grade we lead the world, in 8th grade we hold even, by 12th grade we are last. Look at science teaching in HS - dreary, dull, fact driven all too often. The science sequence dates from 1896 for heaven's sake. Stop piling on accountability and tests and standards. Start putting the practice of science back in the school lab.
There are many elements at work here I know. But science teaching is one of them. Just take a look at what the AAAS itself says about education.

back to more fundamental teaching in math, reading, writing. We should study how other more successful countries are teaching their children and try to emulate it.

What do you expect when we have fundamentalist (i.e. "fossils were put here by Satan to test our faith") nutcases like Bush, Cheney, and DeLay running the country? Give Bush four more years and we'll see a mass exodus of scientists to Europe and Asia. And the fundies will cheer.