Thursday, October 05, 2006

We Think We Can, But Sadly ...

George Bernard Shaw once said, "One man who has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't."

If he is right, we're in trouble. According to a report from the Asia Society on"Math and Science Education in a Global Age: What the US Can Learn From China," While we can certainly talk the talk, let's just say we're not really walking the walk.



Article and photo credit goes to the Atlantic.

Interesting lessons abound surrounding humility and achievement, as well as a pretty strong message that we are deceiving ourselves as to how competitive we are. Sound like a recipe for disaster to me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

HERE! HERE! HOW TRUE! BUT WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? ON THE OTHER HAND WE SEEM TO STILL GET NOBEL PRIZES AND DEVELOPMENT OF TECHNOLOGY SEEMS TO MOVE ON. PHIL

Phillip Alvelda said...

TThe people winning Nobel prizes today are the ones that were in 8th grade 35-40 years ago. Our schools were much more competitive on a global standard, having been bolstered by the Apollo era and the Kennedy-induced technocracy that followed.

The problem is that those folks will be retiring soon, and 40 years from now, unless we do something NOW, today's 8th graders won't have enough math or science background or inclination to win a Nobel prize when competing with the more humble, yet more technically inclined developing Asian communities.

What to do? We clearly need to make substantial changes in the time, money, training, and resources that the nation is currently investing in science and technology education. And while I love helping individual schools, this initiative needs to be conducted on a national scale to have sufficient impact. And for that to happen, we need a Presidential administration which truly understands what science is, who will use it responsibly, and will truly foster a Renaissance in science and technology education and research across the board.