9 ms·

America is losing another generation to science illiteracy

90 points by shrikant 15y ago

nomdeplume 15y ago
We must be doing something right since we have Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.
- mkr-hn 15y ago
  That's like saying our current road planning and funding is fine because we have the interstate system.
- larsberg 15y ago
  All of whose founders had at least one parent with a PhD or law degree. And who also had either exceptional access to early education (private schooling) or extra-curricular education (HP lecture series) or both. Unless by "doing something right" you mean "continuing to provide an environment where the already-successful can have successful children." :-)
- bmj 15y ago
  I'm assuming this is snark, but I admit that the statement "where would we be without Apple" isn't necessarily the strongest argument for better science education--did the author put Apple in the same basket as gene therapy? That's not to say Apple hasn't raised the bar of industrial design (and made some folks very rich), but I'm not sure that Apple is a critical piece of Anerican's science landscape.
- jballanc 15y ago
  When I was working at Apple the number of foreign-born engineers I interacted with was greater than the number of American-born engineers. If you added together foreign-born with 1st generation Americans (i.e. one or both parents were foreign-born), that number was far greater than the number of "purebred" Americans. Not sure about Google and Microsoft, but it does say something that 50% of Google's founders were foreign born. Anecdotally, in graduate school I have noticed a troubling trend. 10 years ago, foreign students would come to the U.S. to get advanced degrees and then stay in the U.S. to get good paying jobs. Today, many of those students are returning to their home countries for work... In other words, the U.S. is riding a wave that was started by the educated class in the 1940s and 1950s and was increasingly supported by the immigrant class in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. When the immigrants stop coming, if the educated class is found to be missing...then, yes, the U.S. is screwed.
  - moultano 15y ago
    When I came to Google, of my team of 25 people only 6 were from the US. The remainder were about evenly divided between Europe, India, and China.
  - mahyarm 15y ago
    The US sure doesn't make it easy for those graduates to stay!
    - Natsu 15y ago
      I know what you mean. A friend of mine is trying desperately to stay, but unless she can get a job that will sponsor her, she'll get tossed out after her studies are finished.
  - potatolicious 15y ago
    I used to work for Amazon - and while I was there, my team was 10:6 immigrant vs. native-born. Less if you consider only third-generation and beyond as "native-born". And let me put it this way, while we were hiring, the number of qualified candidates we saw was mostly foreign. In fact, the last 3 hires we made before I left was all foreign - not out of preference, but because that's where the supply sits. I'm personally Chinese-Canadian, and something my folks said to me when I was younger has really stuck with me through the years: people who have suffered work harder. Much, much harder - not 20% harder, more like 1000% harder. Hard work pays off.
  - kamaal 15y ago
    10 years ago, foreign students would come to the U.S. to get advanced degrees and then stay in the U.S. to get good paying jobs. Here in India, Going to America is very fashionable and earns a lot of respect in society. A lot of friends went to America for further studies for just 'America returned' brand factor. Indians have a lot of misconceptions about America. Some of the most ridiculous economic assumptions. a. Everybody in America is ultra rich. b. There are no poor people in America, Everybody in America is a millionaire. c. Everybody owns a car in America. d. In America all houses have gardens, beautiful parks around them. e. If you are in America you are in heaven. Thereby the mad rush to get settled in America, somehow. Some people take ridiculous loans to study there. Ultimately leaving no other option but to stay back in America work there even for throw away prices just to pay of the massive debt back home. People back here in India, find it very difficult to believe that there are a lot people in America who have to work very hard just to make ends meet.
tokenadult 15y ago
Upvoted because the issue is important and there are intelligent people to discuss the issue here. I regret that the article's key factual statement is "Testing does not motivate engagement, passion, creativity and innovative thinking," without any evidence to back that up. There is no suggestion in the article where to look around the world to find an example of a school system with differing practices that motivate engagement, passion, creativity and innovative thinking. There is a huge research base on science education (it is considered an important national priority in many different countries) all around the world, but the submitted article doesn't discuss what good practice looks like. The TIMSS study is another international study to look at for information about science education in various countries. Most studies of education policy suffer from the same defect of not having a truly experimental design: http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html that is, most of those studies don't have random assignment of students to treatment and control groups, but rather look for correlations between academic performance and other observations, with nothing in the study design being able to give assurance of causation. Science textbooks used in the United States have long been very lousy, http://www.textbookleague.org/ http://www.textbookleague.org/ and as I have had a chance to see science textbooks from other countries, particularly Taiwan, China, and Russia, I hazard the guess that improving textbooks in the United States would help more learners learn science more successfully. General improvement of teaching technique along the lines discussed in another current HN thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2960085 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2960085 would probably also be helpful, but the policy incentives needed to improve teacher performance are not easy to come by in the United States. After edit: To answer a question asked in another comment below the submitted article, scientific illiteracy is an important public policy issue because scientific illiteracy in a democratic republic results in voters voting for stupid policies because they don't understand science. The reason to know science isn't just to get a job, but to be a more thoughtful citizen and voter.
- Alex3917 15y ago
  "Testing does not motivate engagement, passion, creativity and innovative thinking" Obviously there are a lot of different types of testing. But I think Alfie Kohn does a pretty good job covering the literature of competition, intrinsic motivation, standardized testing, etc. Obviously each different style of test has its own strengths and weaknesses, but if we are talking about the types of tests that are most commonly used in school today then I think the statement is generally accurate. "most of those studies [of educational policy] don't have random assignment of students to treatment and control groups" There are several different types of studies used in education. The studies that don't have random control groups are just as useful as the ones that do, they just tell us different things. E.g. compare the psychology research in Alfie Kohn's books with the research in Riordan's book Equality And Achievement. Completely different types of research, but both are essential for determining education policy.
gmonk 15y ago
If you can't read or have a basic working knowledge of mathematics, what's the point of science?
- jballanc 15y ago
  Biology is one of the most dynamic, rapidly advancing fields of science today. Can you name an important equation in biology? Quite a bit harder to do than for chemistry or physics... It's also worth noting that the people who generally tend to be anti-science in America are typically not anti-law-of-gravitation or anti-atomic-theory-of-matter types.
  - wtvanhest 15y ago
    jballanc, Your point is good, but it is still true that you need both math and English to advance in science. Any real advance in biology will require a well written paper for example. Also, if the person wanted to have access to the best minds, they will need to be accepted in to a good school at a minimum. Math and English are great places to focus as amazing building blocks.
    - jballanc 15y ago
      Yes, but my point was that science is its own field of human thought, not merely an emergent property of sufficient skill in Math and English. Deductive reasoning, single-variable analysis, control experiments...these are all skills which I would classify as "science". These are skills that I learned very early on in my education (6th and 7th grade, primarily), and I feel they were key in guiding me down my present path.
  - pewpewlasergun 15y ago
    I would argue that biology without equations is just as useless as physics or chemistry without them. Yes, its interesting to know about evolution and how cells work, but to interact with a cell or guide evolution in any meaningful way you need to know the equations that describe flux over a membrane or evolutionary equilibrium. Just like its interesting to know the order of the planets and that rubbing a balloon against your head will make your hair stand up but if you actually want to send something to space or use electricity you need to add the equations. The advancement of biology is driven by the development of algorithms and equations and to suggest that it is somehow less dependent on them than other branches of science does it a disservice.
mnemonicsloth 15y ago
America is falling behind in the race against China and India. America was falling behind in the race against Japan in the 1980s. America was falling behind in the race against Eastern Europe in the 1950s. America was falling behind in the race against the Russian communists in the 1930s. America was falling behind in the race against the Germans in the 1920s. And in the late 1800s, America created a universal public education system. Why? Because Irish and Italian immigrants were building Catholic schools that offered an education to anyone who wanted one. So American Protestants began to worry that if they fell behind, Catholic priests would brainwash America's children into willing accomplices to an insidious Vatican plot to dominate the world. I am not kidding. This was published in Harper's in 1875. The artist is Thomas Nast, inventor of Uncle Sam, (the contemporary) Santa Claus, the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey: http://www.harpweek.com/09cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon-Large.asp?Month=May&Date=8 http://www.harpweek.com/09cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon-Large.... ETA: Obviously, American education is not perfect. But it would probably be better if we could resist the temptation to panic about it.
- jlarocco 15y ago
  On the other hand, maybe competing against the perceived threats is what's driving us to improve?
- haberman 15y ago
  I found this 20/20 report pretty distressing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw (video) http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338 http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338 (text)
- Alex3917 15y ago
  "America is falling behind in the race against China and India." While it may be bullshit that America is currently falling behind China and India, the fact that the majority of American adults are not functionally literate is a serious problem. Americans can never ever achieve any real scientific literacy at their current reading literacy levels. It's flat out impossible, and the fact that the authors of this article are complaining about scientific literacy out of context shows you that they don't know shit about the causes of the various problems within our schools. Hell, roughly half of American adults are so illiterate that they can't even read the one sentence instructions on their medications. That's why you have stuff happening all the time like this: "A two-year-old is diagnosed with an inner ear infection and prescribed an antibiotic. Her mother understands that her daughter should take the pre- scribed medication twice a day. After carefully studying the label on the bottle and deciding that it doesn’t tell how to take the medicine, she fills a teaspoon and pours the antibiotic into her daughter’s painful ear." To quote the most recent report on health literacy, "90 million adults with limited health literacy cannot fully benefit from much that the health and health-care system have to offer." Despite all the media jokes about people researching their own diseases, the fact is that only roughly 10% of American adults are even literate enough to read popular articles about medicine, and only ~3% are able to actually understand the academic literature. When they say that 90 million adults can't participate in the medical system, they aren't talking about adults who can't research their own symptoms and medications and help the doctor on collaborating on a diagnosis and treatment; rather, they're talking about people who literally can't even do what their doctors tell them to do. Roughly 25% of all doctors visits result in the patient not doing what the doctor tells them to do, and a large percentage of the time it's because they literally can't understand the simple instructions the doctor is giving. We spend roughly 1.2 trillion per year on the health system, which means that up to (but probably significantly less than) 300B of that is going right out the window due to poor adherence, especially since those with low adherence have good outcomes roughly 26% less of the time than those with high adherence, so they end up costing a lot more money in the longrun. I forget what percentage of low adherence is due to literacy/education, but I know that it is one of the largest factors. The fucked up thing is that "among those scoring in the lowest level on the prose literacy scale [1st-ish grade level], only 29 percent reported they did not read well and only 34 percent reported they did not write well. The majority of those performing at this level perceive their reading and writing skills to be adequate. Among those in the next highest level [4th-ish grade level] the results were even more surprising, as only 3 percent said they couldn’t read well and 6 percent said they couldn’t write well (Kirsch et al., 1993; see Chapter 2 for more information on the NALS)." If you ever actually go into a real science classroom you'll see that if the teacher actually tried to teach science it would be a complete waste of time. Virtually none of the kids would actually be able to understand any of the lessons, let alone transfer them to real life situations. And while it's true science textbooks and the way science is taught is terrible, the vast majority of students aren't going to become scientifically literate no matter how you try to teach it.
csomar 15y ago
This is my opinion in education, and it tends to differ than the author one: You don't need to teach science in primary schools to have a science literate population. Teach them to read, only. Why: Because reading is key. What I learnt on my own reading books in one year was more than what I was taught in all these primary years. They have helped, but even if I didn't take these classes that wouldn't be a roadblock. How I envision a successful education: 1. Language is priority: Reading, writing and communicating. Dedicate long hours for reading and daily writing. This is better than science or math. I need to be able to read, and also communicate effectively with others (forums, chat...) 2. Math: Math is also important. Dedicate a good amount of hours for a solid math education. 3. Others: It includes science, geography, history... What does the average person need of information to be relatively literate? Give it that amount of information; only. The bare minimum so he can understand things like nuclear radiations, ADN, therapies... And then? Let people decide. Science is not for everyone. There is a writer, designer, business analyst... They don't need science, but they are in need in the society. Let everyone decide what he wants to be. You allowed him to read and communicate effectively. Don't worry about what will happen next.
- SamReidHughes 15y ago
  Science education probably does a lot to change people's view of the world. After all, chemistry and biology teach people that they're made of chemicals and cells that, as far as we can tell, act deterministically (or randomly), or at least cells act autonomously. How is that less important than trigonometry?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - mkr-hn 15y ago
    You don't need to spend 12 years in grade school to understand and appreciate those things.
  - MarkPNeyer 15y ago
    deterministically or randomly? neither of those could be farther from the truth.
Hawramani 15y ago
While it seems intuitive that a more scientifically 'literate' population is 'better', is 'scientific illiteracy' really a problem? To me it would be a problem if there were lots of openings for jobs that require scientific skills without there being anyone to fulfill it. As things stand, to me it seems that there are tens, if not hundreds, of qualified people for every possible job opening, whether in academia, government, or the private sector.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  What makes you think they are qualified? Certainly there are a lot of unemployed folks, and there is plenty of work for qualified people to do, but that doesn't necessarily back up your point (in fact, the very issue at hand is that it doesn't).
  - Hawramani 15y ago
    For the claim that 'there is too few qualified people in the US' to be a scientific claim, it needs to be falsifiable. In other words, what evidence do you need to see, in the future, to convince you that yes, now there are enough qualified people? What data-points will you use? My entire problem is that all of the data-points I've seen used so far are extremely questionable, and there doesn't seem to be enough people questioning them. The fact that US students have dismal scientific knowledge to a naive person suggests, but in reality in no way proves, that the US has, or will one day have, a shortage of scientifically qualified people. I hope there are enough intelligent people who are uncomfortable about making the leap of faith from 'US students have bad science grades' to 'the US will experience a shortage of scientifically-qualified people'. Any redesign of the education system needs to be grounded in science, not fashionable rhetoric.
    - bluedanieru 15y ago
      >I hope there are enough intelligent people who are uncomfortable about making the leap of faith from 'US students have bad science grades' to 'the US will experience a shortage of scientifically-qualified people'. How about the leap of faith from "there are heaps of scientific and technical jobs for which no qualified candidates can be found" to "science education in the US sucks?" And also the fact of increasing reliance on immigrants to fill those roles when a suitable local (i.e. native) doesn't appear? Seems falsifiable to me. edit: basically what I was getting at is that your original statement: "As things stand, to me it seems that there are tens, if not hundreds, of qualified people for every possible job opening" is false afaik.
Astrohacker 15y ago
There is an enormous amount of information about science readily accessible to anyone who wants to learn it. Perhaps many people just don't care about science. If that's true, forcing them to learn it probably isn't going to accomplish anything.
- mkr-hn 15y ago
  I haven't found this accessible information. Can you point to some?
  - Astrohacker 15y ago
    There are tons of free textbooks available. Google for physics or math textbooks. There are also tons of free lectures available on YouTube and Khan Academy.
    - mkr-hn 15y ago
      I see pages of commercial textbook companies on Google, and videos wont help non-visual learners.
      - jerf 15y ago
        Last I knew, science is not currently very kind to the old "styles of learning" theories, which turned out to be Yet Another Educational Theory Spun From Whole Cloth by "educators" unqualified to be spinning such theories. (I give it a "Yet Another" appellation because this turns out to describe nearly every educational theory you've ever heard. The standards of rigor in the field of education study could stand to be improved quite a lot.)
        _delirium 15y ago
        I can doubt some of the more specific claims, but it would be a fairly remarkable result, unlike almost any other area of human activity, if there weren't some sort of person-to-person variation in the [(amount person X gets out of a textbook) - (amount person X gets out of a video on the same subject)] function. The alternative would be the hypothesis that learning ability varies in a 100% correlated manner (people who are more skilled at picking up physics from physics textbooks are exactly as more-skilled at picking up physics from physics videos, and vice versa). Even if you ignore the visual/textual/etc. distinctions, they have other properties as media; for example, textbooks are easier to use in a random-access/skimming manner than videos, and can be more easily taken outside or marked up. It could just be my concentration, but I also can't get through watching a YouTube video, while somehow I have no trouble reading through a book.
aphexairlines 15y ago
Well, does a strong science education pay off for the student as a career path?
- wnight 15y ago
  Not like pushing bad mortgages.
- serge2k 15y ago
  Does a strong english education? It's a fundamental tool, but by itself it is pretty worthless. You can say anything but will have nothing really to say.
nazgulnarsil 15y ago
Linear extrapolation of trend X. Horrifying conclusion! seriously do the commenters on HN have to debunk an article of this format every day?
perfunctory 15y ago
> A quick look at the countries where children outperform the U.S. on the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) shows that none of them do anywhere near the amount of testing that is done in the United States. I am not American so please tell me if it's just a prejudice but looking from outside, Americans seem to be very reluctant to learn from other nations.
- seagaia 15y ago
  Well, I wouldn't generalize everyone living in America into a bucket of "Americans" - although I'll just assume that's not what you meant. Certainly there is a good portion of Americans unwilling to learn from other nations or change or care about anything else, yes, they exist. But there exist Americans of the other kind, too. And this doesn't just apply to America, it applies to any group of humans, really.
  - danssig 15y ago
    True, but honestly it applies to Americans more so than a lot of other nations. It's only to be expected when, starting at a very young age, one constantly hears about how the US is "number 1" (what ever that means). I mean, look at the Olympics. The US wasn't winning the most golds anymore so the news media actually changed the metric to use "most overall medals" so the US could be number 1 again.
meow 15y ago
Considering most of google's revenue comes from ads, may be English Language Arts (ELA) isn't such a bad thing :)
DanielBMarkham 15y ago
Something was bugging me about this article. After writing 3 potential comments, then deleting them all, I finally got it. This is formulaic. I have seen this article, or radio stories like it, over and over again over the past few years. As I understand the situation, in the United States we decided to have common tests for reading and writing -- you cannot manage what you do not measure -- and since then, the people being measured have written dozens or hundreds of variations on this theme. The formula goes something like this: pick a topic not covered by the tests. Could be music, history, science, or civics. Demonstrate how poorly students are doing in this area. Demonstrate (or just give a good rant) about how important this area is for the future of our society. Complain about teachers having to teach so much to the tests and how bad that is. Argue that getting rid of the tests would free up time and resources so that we could regain some of what we desperately need. There are many logical problems here. First there is the problem of limited resources. We must make funding decisions and choose some things to emphasize over others. Governance is about making choices. Second, and it amazes me that this isn't obvious, unless you can read and write effectively your choices in life are severely restricted. A good reader and writer who shows an interest in science, art, underwater basket weaving or whatever? They can go learn more. They can choose a subject, dive in, and self-educate. Somebody who is functionally illiterate but loves Beethoven? Aside from a kid with nice tastes, whose life is probably a tiny bit happier, we're not accomplishing much. Reading and writing are multipliers in a way other subjects are not. If you don't like or agree with that position, fine. Then choose something else you want to stress. Then measure it. Waving your arms around about how important each and every subject is does not constitute a system of making choices. I am especially befuddled with this argument about teachers teaching to the tests. It's as if we are using the way teachers act as some kind of rationale for justifying the testing -- which is exactly backwards. Obviously we've had teachers create literate students over the past several hundred years without testing, and they didn't teach to the test. Why do we assume that because teachers are acting a certain way now that it is in their best interests to do so? Maybe most systems of teachers just don't know how to educate kids, and focusing on testing is the only thing they've got? If so, then we need to improve education systems, not eliminate the measurement. You don't make people better basketball players by taking away the scoreboard. I have no idea why this reasoning passes as informed logic in this debate. My opinion as an interested observer is that once we actually starting measuring how poor of a job we do, all hell has broken loose. Not surprisingly, there's a huge push to stop measuring. This is not a good idea. Yes, science literacy is a great thing. Let's work on general literacy first, then take whatever resources we have left over and instill a love for science. General literacy will get you a lot farther than scientific literacy will. (I also have some serious questions about what passes for scientific literacy which I'll save for another day.)

90 points by shrikant 15y ago

nomdeplume 15y ago

We must be doing something right since we have Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.

mkr-hn 15y ago
That's like saying our current road planning and funding is fine because we have the interstate system.
larsberg 15y ago
All of whose founders had at least one parent with a PhD or law degree. And who also had either exceptional access to early education (private schooling) or extra-curricular education (HP lecture series) or both. Unless by "doing something right" you mean "continuing to provide an environment where the already-successful can have successful children." :-)
bmj 15y ago
I'm assuming this is snark, but I admit that the statement "where would we be without Apple" isn't necessarily the strongest argument for better science education--did the author put Apple in the same basket as gene therapy? That's not to say Apple hasn't raised the bar of industrial design (and made some folks very rich), but I'm not sure that Apple is a critical piece of Anerican's science landscape.
jballanc 15y ago
When I was working at Apple the number of foreign-born engineers I interacted with was greater than the number of American-born engineers. If you added together foreign-born with 1st generation Americans (i.e. one or both parents were foreign-born), that number was far greater than the number of "purebred" Americans. Not sure about Google and Microsoft, but it does say something that 50% of Google's founders were foreign born. Anecdotally, in graduate school I have noticed a troubling trend. 10 years ago, foreign students would come to the U.S. to get advanced degrees and then stay in the U.S. to get good paying jobs. Today, many of those students are returning to their home countries for work... In other words, the U.S. is riding a wave that was started by the educated class in the 1940s and 1950s and was increasingly supported by the immigrant class in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. When the immigrants stop coming, if the educated class is found to be missing...then, yes, the U.S. is screwed.
- moultano 15y ago
  When I came to Google, of my team of 25 people only 6 were from the US. The remainder were about evenly divided between Europe, India, and China.
- mahyarm 15y ago
  The US sure doesn't make it easy for those graduates to stay!
  - Natsu 15y ago
    I know what you mean. A friend of mine is trying desperately to stay, but unless she can get a job that will sponsor her, she'll get tossed out after her studies are finished.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  I used to work for Amazon - and while I was there, my team was 10:6 immigrant vs. native-born. Less if you consider only third-generation and beyond as "native-born". And let me put it this way, while we were hiring, the number of qualified candidates we saw was mostly foreign. In fact, the last 3 hires we made before I left was all foreign - not out of preference, but because that's where the supply sits. I'm personally Chinese-Canadian, and something my folks said to me when I was younger has really stuck with me through the years: people who have suffered work harder. Much, much harder - not 20% harder, more like 1000% harder. Hard work pays off.
- kamaal 15y ago
  10 years ago, foreign students would come to the U.S. to get advanced degrees and then stay in the U.S. to get good paying jobs. Here in India, Going to America is very fashionable and earns a lot of respect in society. A lot of friends went to America for further studies for just 'America returned' brand factor. Indians have a lot of misconceptions about America. Some of the most ridiculous economic assumptions. a. Everybody in America is ultra rich. b. There are no poor people in America, Everybody in America is a millionaire. c. Everybody owns a car in America. d. In America all houses have gardens, beautiful parks around them. e. If you are in America you are in heaven. Thereby the mad rush to get settled in America, somehow. Some people take ridiculous loans to study there. Ultimately leaving no other option but to stay back in America work there even for throw away prices just to pay of the massive debt back home. People back here in India, find it very difficult to believe that there are a lot people in America who have to work very hard just to make ends meet.

tokenadult 15y ago

Upvoted because the issue is important and there are intelligent people to discuss the issue here. I regret that the article's key factual statement is "Testing does not motivate engagement, passion, creativity and innovative thinking," without any evidence to back that up. There is no suggestion in the article where to look around the world to find an example of a school system with differing practices that motivate engagement, passion, creativity and innovative thinking. There is a huge research base on science education (it is considered an important national priority in many different countries) all around the world, but the submitted article doesn't discuss what good practice looks like. The TIMSS study is another international study to look at for information about science education in various countries. Most studies of education policy suffer from the same defect of not having a truly experimental design: http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html that is, most of those studies don't have random assignment of students to treatment and control groups, but rather look for correlations between academic performance and other observations, with nothing in the study design being able to give assurance of causation. Science textbooks used in the United States have long been very lousy, http://www.textbookleague.org/ http://www.textbookleague.org/ and as I have had a chance to see science textbooks from other countries, particularly Taiwan, China, and Russia, I hazard the guess that improving textbooks in the United States would help more learners learn science more successfully. General improvement of teaching technique along the lines discussed in another current HN thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2960085 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2960085 would probably also be helpful, but the policy incentives needed to improve teacher performance are not easy to come by in the United States. After edit: To answer a question asked in another comment below the submitted article, scientific illiteracy is an important public policy issue because scientific illiteracy in a democratic republic results in voters voting for stupid policies because they don't understand science. The reason to know science isn't just to get a job, but to be a more thoughtful citizen and voter.

Alex3917 15y ago
"Testing does not motivate engagement, passion, creativity and innovative thinking" Obviously there are a lot of different types of testing. But I think Alfie Kohn does a pretty good job covering the literature of competition, intrinsic motivation, standardized testing, etc. Obviously each different style of test has its own strengths and weaknesses, but if we are talking about the types of tests that are most commonly used in school today then I think the statement is generally accurate. "most of those studies [of educational policy] don't have random assignment of students to treatment and control groups" There are several different types of studies used in education. The studies that don't have random control groups are just as useful as the ones that do, they just tell us different things. E.g. compare the psychology research in Alfie Kohn's books with the research in Riordan's book Equality And Achievement. Completely different types of research, but both are essential for determining education policy.

gmonk 15y ago

If you can't read or have a basic working knowledge of mathematics, what's the point of science?

jballanc 15y ago
Biology is one of the most dynamic, rapidly advancing fields of science today. Can you name an important equation in biology? Quite a bit harder to do than for chemistry or physics... It's also worth noting that the people who generally tend to be anti-science in America are typically not anti-law-of-gravitation or anti-atomic-theory-of-matter types.
- wtvanhest 15y ago
  jballanc, Your point is good, but it is still true that you need both math and English to advance in science. Any real advance in biology will require a well written paper for example. Also, if the person wanted to have access to the best minds, they will need to be accepted in to a good school at a minimum. Math and English are great places to focus as amazing building blocks.
  - jballanc 15y ago
    Yes, but my point was that science is its own field of human thought, not merely an emergent property of sufficient skill in Math and English. Deductive reasoning, single-variable analysis, control experiments...these are all skills which I would classify as "science". These are skills that I learned very early on in my education (6th and 7th grade, primarily), and I feel they were key in guiding me down my present path.
- pewpewlasergun 15y ago
  I would argue that biology without equations is just as useless as physics or chemistry without them. Yes, its interesting to know about evolution and how cells work, but to interact with a cell or guide evolution in any meaningful way you need to know the equations that describe flux over a membrane or evolutionary equilibrium. Just like its interesting to know the order of the planets and that rubbing a balloon against your head will make your hair stand up but if you actually want to send something to space or use electricity you need to add the equations. The advancement of biology is driven by the development of algorithms and equations and to suggest that it is somehow less dependent on them than other branches of science does it a disservice.

mnemonicsloth 15y ago

America is falling behind in the race against China and India. America was falling behind in the race against Japan in the 1980s. America was falling behind in the race against Eastern Europe in the 1950s. America was falling behind in the race against the Russian communists in the 1930s. America was falling behind in the race against the Germans in the 1920s. And in the late 1800s, America created a universal public education system. Why? Because Irish and Italian immigrants were building Catholic schools that offered an education to anyone who wanted one. So American Protestants began to worry that if they fell behind, Catholic priests would brainwash America's children into willing accomplices to an insidious Vatican plot to dominate the world. I am not kidding. This was published in Harper's in 1875. The artist is Thomas Nast, inventor of Uncle Sam, (the contemporary) Santa Claus, the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey: http://www.harpweek.com/09cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon-Large.asp?Month=May&Date=8 http://www.harpweek.com/09cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon-Large.... ETA: Obviously, American education is not perfect. But it would probably be better if we could resist the temptation to panic about it.

jlarocco 15y ago
On the other hand, maybe competing against the perceived threats is what's driving us to improve?
haberman 15y ago
I found this 20/20 report pretty distressing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw (video) http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338 http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338 (text)
Alex3917 15y ago
"America is falling behind in the race against China and India." While it may be bullshit that America is currently falling behind China and India, the fact that the majority of American adults are not functionally literate is a serious problem. Americans can never ever achieve any real scientific literacy at their current reading literacy levels. It's flat out impossible, and the fact that the authors of this article are complaining about scientific literacy out of context shows you that they don't know shit about the causes of the various problems within our schools. Hell, roughly half of American adults are so illiterate that they can't even read the one sentence instructions on their medications. That's why you have stuff happening all the time like this: "A two-year-old is diagnosed with an inner ear infection and prescribed an antibiotic. Her mother understands that her daughter should take the pre- scribed medication twice a day. After carefully studying the label on the bottle and deciding that it doesn’t tell how to take the medicine, she fills a teaspoon and pours the antibiotic into her daughter’s painful ear." To quote the most recent report on health literacy, "90 million adults with limited health literacy cannot fully benefit from much that the health and health-care system have to offer." Despite all the media jokes about people researching their own diseases, the fact is that only roughly 10% of American adults are even literate enough to read popular articles about medicine, and only ~3% are able to actually understand the academic literature. When they say that 90 million adults can't participate in the medical system, they aren't talking about adults who can't research their own symptoms and medications and help the doctor on collaborating on a diagnosis and treatment; rather, they're talking about people who literally can't even do what their doctors tell them to do. Roughly 25% of all doctors visits result in the patient not doing what the doctor tells them to do, and a large percentage of the time it's because they literally can't understand the simple instructions the doctor is giving. We spend roughly 1.2 trillion per year on the health system, which means that up to (but probably significantly less than) 300B of that is going right out the window due to poor adherence, especially since those with low adherence have good outcomes roughly 26% less of the time than those with high adherence, so they end up costing a lot more money in the longrun. I forget what percentage of low adherence is due to literacy/education, but I know that it is one of the largest factors. The fucked up thing is that "among those scoring in the lowest level on the prose literacy scale [1st-ish grade level], only 29 percent reported they did not read well and only 34 percent reported they did not write well. The majority of those performing at this level perceive their reading and writing skills to be adequate. Among those in the next highest level [4th-ish grade level] the results were even more surprising, as only 3 percent said they couldn’t read well and 6 percent said they couldn’t write well (Kirsch et al., 1993; see Chapter 2 for more information on the NALS)." If you ever actually go into a real science classroom you'll see that if the teacher actually tried to teach science it would be a complete waste of time. Virtually none of the kids would actually be able to understand any of the lessons, let alone transfer them to real life situations. And while it's true science textbooks and the way science is taught is terrible, the vast majority of students aren't going to become scientifically literate no matter how you try to teach it.

csomar 15y ago

This is my opinion in education, and it tends to differ than the author one: You don't need to teach science in primary schools to have a science literate population. Teach them to read, only. Why: Because reading is key. What I learnt on my own reading books in one year was more than what I was taught in all these primary years. They have helped, but even if I didn't take these classes that wouldn't be a roadblock. How I envision a successful education: 1. Language is priority: Reading, writing and communicating. Dedicate long hours for reading and daily writing. This is better than science or math. I need to be able to read, and also communicate effectively with others (forums, chat...) 2. Math: Math is also important. Dedicate a good amount of hours for a solid math education. 3. Others: It includes science, geography, history... What does the average person need of information to be relatively literate? Give it that amount of information; only. The bare minimum so he can understand things like nuclear radiations, ADN, therapies... And then? Let people decide. Science is not for everyone. There is a writer, designer, business analyst... They don't need science, but they are in need in the society. Let everyone decide what he wants to be. You allowed him to read and communicate effectively. Don't worry about what will happen next.

SamReidHughes 15y ago
Science education probably does a lot to change people's view of the world. After all, chemistry and biology teach people that they're made of chemicals and cells that, as far as we can tell, act deterministically (or randomly), or at least cells act autonomously. How is that less important than trigonometry?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- mkr-hn 15y ago
  You don't need to spend 12 years in grade school to understand and appreciate those things.
- MarkPNeyer 15y ago
  deterministically or randomly? neither of those could be farther from the truth.

Hawramani 15y ago

While it seems intuitive that a more scientifically 'literate' population is 'better', is 'scientific illiteracy' really a problem? To me it would be a problem if there were lots of openings for jobs that require scientific skills without there being anyone to fulfill it. As things stand, to me it seems that there are tens, if not hundreds, of qualified people for every possible job opening, whether in academia, government, or the private sector.

deleted 15y ago
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bluedanieru 15y ago
What makes you think they are qualified? Certainly there are a lot of unemployed folks, and there is plenty of work for qualified people to do, but that doesn't necessarily back up your point (in fact, the very issue at hand is that it doesn't).
- Hawramani 15y ago
  For the claim that 'there is too few qualified people in the US' to be a scientific claim, it needs to be falsifiable. In other words, what evidence do you need to see, in the future, to convince you that yes, now there are enough qualified people? What data-points will you use? My entire problem is that all of the data-points I've seen used so far are extremely questionable, and there doesn't seem to be enough people questioning them. The fact that US students have dismal scientific knowledge to a naive person suggests, but in reality in no way proves, that the US has, or will one day have, a shortage of scientifically qualified people. I hope there are enough intelligent people who are uncomfortable about making the leap of faith from 'US students have bad science grades' to 'the US will experience a shortage of scientifically-qualified people'. Any redesign of the education system needs to be grounded in science, not fashionable rhetoric.
  - bluedanieru 15y ago
    >I hope there are enough intelligent people who are uncomfortable about making the leap of faith from 'US students have bad science grades' to 'the US will experience a shortage of scientifically-qualified people'. How about the leap of faith from "there are heaps of scientific and technical jobs for which no qualified candidates can be found" to "science education in the US sucks?" And also the fact of increasing reliance on immigrants to fill those roles when a suitable local (i.e. native) doesn't appear? Seems falsifiable to me. edit: basically what I was getting at is that your original statement: "As things stand, to me it seems that there are tens, if not hundreds, of qualified people for every possible job opening" is false afaik.

Astrohacker 15y ago

There is an enormous amount of information about science readily accessible to anyone who wants to learn it. Perhaps many people just don't care about science. If that's true, forcing them to learn it probably isn't going to accomplish anything.

mkr-hn 15y ago
I haven't found this accessible information. Can you point to some?
- Astrohacker 15y ago
  There are tons of free textbooks available. Google for physics or math textbooks. There are also tons of free lectures available on YouTube and Khan Academy.
  - mkr-hn 15y ago
    I see pages of commercial textbook companies on Google, and videos wont help non-visual learners.
    - jerf 15y ago
      Last I knew, science is not currently very kind to the old "styles of learning" theories, which turned out to be Yet Another Educational Theory Spun From Whole Cloth by "educators" unqualified to be spinning such theories. (I give it a "Yet Another" appellation because this turns out to describe nearly every educational theory you've ever heard. The standards of rigor in the field of education study could stand to be improved quite a lot.)
      - _delirium 15y ago
        I can doubt some of the more specific claims, but it would be a fairly remarkable result, unlike almost any other area of human activity, if there weren't some sort of person-to-person variation in the [(amount person X gets out of a textbook) - (amount person X gets out of a video on the same subject)] function. The alternative would be the hypothesis that learning ability varies in a 100% correlated manner (people who are more skilled at picking up physics from physics textbooks are exactly as more-skilled at picking up physics from physics videos, and vice versa). Even if you ignore the visual/textual/etc. distinctions, they have other properties as media; for example, textbooks are easier to use in a random-access/skimming manner than videos, and can be more easily taken outside or marked up. It could just be my concentration, but I also can't get through watching a YouTube video, while somehow I have no trouble reading through a book.

aphexairlines 15y ago

Well, does a strong science education pay off for the student as a career path?

wnight 15y ago
Not like pushing bad mortgages.
serge2k 15y ago
Does a strong english education? It's a fundamental tool, but by itself it is pretty worthless. You can say anything but will have nothing really to say.

nazgulnarsil 15y ago

Linear extrapolation of trend X. Horrifying conclusion! seriously do the commenters on HN have to debunk an article of this format every day?

perfunctory 15y ago

> A quick look at the countries where children outperform the U.S. on the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) shows that none of them do anywhere near the amount of testing that is done in the United States. I am not American so please tell me if it's just a prejudice but looking from outside, Americans seem to be very reluctant to learn from other nations.

seagaia 15y ago
Well, I wouldn't generalize everyone living in America into a bucket of "Americans" - although I'll just assume that's not what you meant. Certainly there is a good portion of Americans unwilling to learn from other nations or change or care about anything else, yes, they exist. But there exist Americans of the other kind, too. And this doesn't just apply to America, it applies to any group of humans, really.
- danssig 15y ago
  True, but honestly it applies to Americans more so than a lot of other nations. It's only to be expected when, starting at a very young age, one constantly hears about how the US is "number 1" (what ever that means). I mean, look at the Olympics. The US wasn't winning the most golds anymore so the news media actually changed the metric to use "most overall medals" so the US could be number 1 again.

meow 15y ago

Considering most of google's revenue comes from ads, may be English Language Arts (ELA) isn't such a bad thing :)

DanielBMarkham 15y ago

Something was bugging me about this article. After writing 3 potential comments, then deleting them all, I finally got it. This is formulaic. I have seen this article, or radio stories like it, over and over again over the past few years. As I understand the situation, in the United States we decided to have common tests for reading and writing -- you cannot manage what you do not measure -- and since then, the people being measured have written dozens or hundreds of variations on this theme. The formula goes something like this: pick a topic not covered by the tests. Could be music, history, science, or civics. Demonstrate how poorly students are doing in this area. Demonstrate (or just give a good rant) about how important this area is for the future of our society. Complain about teachers having to teach so much to the tests and how bad that is. Argue that getting rid of the tests would free up time and resources so that we could regain some of what we desperately need. There are many logical problems here. First there is the problem of limited resources. We must make funding decisions and choose some things to emphasize over others. Governance is about making choices. Second, and it amazes me that this isn't obvious, unless you can read and write effectively your choices in life are severely restricted. A good reader and writer who shows an interest in science, art, underwater basket weaving or whatever? They can go learn more. They can choose a subject, dive in, and self-educate. Somebody who is functionally illiterate but loves Beethoven? Aside from a kid with nice tastes, whose life is probably a tiny bit happier, we're not accomplishing much. Reading and writing are multipliers in a way other subjects are not. If you don't like or agree with that position, fine. Then choose something else you want to stress. Then measure it. Waving your arms around about how important each and every subject is does not constitute a system of making choices. I am especially befuddled with this argument about teachers teaching to the tests. It's as if we are using the way teachers act as some kind of rationale for justifying the testing -- which is exactly backwards. Obviously we've had teachers create literate students over the past several hundred years without testing, and they didn't teach to the test. Why do we assume that because teachers are acting a certain way now that it is in their best interests to do so? Maybe most systems of teachers just don't know how to educate kids, and focusing on testing is the only thing they've got? If so, then we need to improve education systems, not eliminate the measurement. You don't make people better basketball players by taking away the scoreboard. I have no idea why this reasoning passes as informed logic in this debate. My opinion as an interested observer is that once we actually starting measuring how poor of a job we do, all hell has broken loose. Not surprisingly, there's a huge push to stop measuring. This is not a good idea. Yes, science literacy is a great thing. Let's work on general literacy first, then take whatever resources we have left over and instill a love for science. General literacy will get you a lot farther than scientific literacy will. (I also have some serious questions about what passes for scientific literacy which I'll save for another day.)