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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 i

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.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  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. Just curious, do you have a citation for this? It seems very surprising to me, and I suspect that whoever cooked up this statistic may have set a very high bar for "functionally literate".
  - Alex3917 15y ago
    Study here: http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/PDF/2006470.PDF http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/PDF/2006470.PDF There are a couple example questions in that, but if you want to understand the full methodology you'd have to read this: http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11267 http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11267 Basically the situation is that: According to the National Adult Assessment of Literacy (NAAL), the largest and most authoritative survey of adult literacy in America, only 13% of adults are able to read English at a 'proficient' level. This means that 87% of American adults lack the minimum level of literacy skill necessary to complete simple tasks like comparing the viewpoints in two editorials or computing the cost per ounce of food items. In other words, the overwhelming majority of Americans lack the minimimum amount of education required to participate in the knowledge economy or to contribute anything meaningful to the democratic process. Source: Table 1 on p. 3, Figure 2 on p. 4. Adults unable to read prose at a 'proficient' level, by race/ethnicity: White - 83%, Asian/Pacific Islander - 88%, Hispanic - 96%, Black - 98%. Adults unable to read prose at a 'proficient' level, by educational attainment: High school graduates - 96%, College graduates - 69%, Graduate studies/degrees - 59%. In other words, the majority of graduate students are incapable of fully understanding a newspaper, let alone an academic journal article. And virtually all high school graduates are functionally illiterate. (And again, being 'proficient' does not mean being able to read academic journal articles, which is sort of the minimum requirement for being an independent thinker in society. In fact at least 2 / 3rds of those who score 'proficient' still do not possess this more advanced measure of literacy.) John Taylor Gatto also gives his analysis of the situation here based on the 1992 data. (The data I cited was 2003) http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3j.htm http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3j.htm Gatto throws in a couple weasel words, and I think sometimes his analysis is a bit reaching, but overall it seems to be generally accurate. Even if you don't fully buy into the idea of an enormous decline over the last 100 years, the current methodology of the National Adult Literacy Survey seems pretty solid. (That's currently the gold standard for literacy estimates in the US.) But what about the CIA World Factbook, which estimates that the United States has a 97% literacy rate as of 2002? Where do these figures come from? To quote from Jonathan Kozol's book Illiterate in America, "For one hundred years, starting in 1840, the census posed the question of the population's literacy level in its ten-year compilations. The government removed this question from its survey in the 1940 census. The reason, according to a U.S. Census Bureau publication, was a general conviction that 'most people [by this time] could read and write ...' In 1970, pressured by the military, the Bureau of the Census agreed to reinstate the literacy question. Even then, instead of posing questions about actual skills, the census simply asked adults how many years of school they had attended. More than 5 percent of those the census reached replied that they had had less than a fifth grade education. For no known reason, the government assumed that four fifths of these people probably could read and, on this dangerous assumption, it was publicly announced that 99 percent of all American adults could read and write. These are the figures which the U.S. government passed on to the United Nations for the purposes of worldwide compilations and comparisons." You can read the rest of chapter 5 here, which further explains the methodology and how the CIA figures are propaganda rather than science: http://eserver.org/courses/spring97/76100o/readings/kozol.html http://eserver.org/courses/spring97/76100o/readings/kozol.ht...
waitwhat 15y ago
America can't win every race indefinitely (American Exceptionalism aside.)
_delirium 15y ago
> And in the late 1800s, America created a universal public education system. Nitpick, but widespread public schooling in the U.S. dates back more to the early 1800s; Horace Mann (1796-1859) is one of the education reformers often associated with it. It's true that they became more formalized into school districts in the late 19th century; before then, the "common schools" had been somewhat more ad-hoc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_school http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_school).
- bradley 15y ago
  Our K-12 system was modeled on the system the King of Prussia used to produce compliant citizens, efficient workers, and obedient soldiers starting in the late 1700's, using the factory model with children as both raw product and finished material, grading said product as A through F grade, etc. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system)
dr_ 15y ago
Hallelujah! Finally someone is saying it like it is. The American education is far from perfect - it will always be far from perfect. Even for those who fully go through it, you have to question, at least up through basic college, what kind of an education they are really getting for the price they are paying. Unfortunately, a solid education system in most every part of the world (especially in places like India and China) requires following a rigid architecture with little room for creative thinking. But this, with some exception, by and large creates a population of drones. Creative thinking is what is required for innovation - and innovation creates new industries and employment. It's one of the reasons we've done so well despite a relatively lackluster basic education system. I do hope our system improves somewhat - I've felt a better educated population would make better decisions when they are voting, although I'm not as convinced of that anymore - but a good education begins at home, not in the schools, and until people realize this, nothing is going to change.

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.

yummyfajitas 15y ago
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. Just curious, do you have a citation for this? It seems very surprising to me, and I suspect that whoever cooked up this statistic may have set a very high bar for "functionally literate".
- Alex3917 15y ago
  Study here: http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/PDF/2006470.PDF http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/PDF/2006470.PDF There are a couple example questions in that, but if you want to understand the full methodology you'd have to read this: http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11267 http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11267 Basically the situation is that: According to the National Adult Assessment of Literacy (NAAL), the largest and most authoritative survey of adult literacy in America, only 13% of adults are able to read English at a 'proficient' level. This means that 87% of American adults lack the minimum level of literacy skill necessary to complete simple tasks like comparing the viewpoints in two editorials or computing the cost per ounce of food items. In other words, the overwhelming majority of Americans lack the minimimum amount of education required to participate in the knowledge economy or to contribute anything meaningful to the democratic process. Source: Table 1 on p. 3, Figure 2 on p. 4. Adults unable to read prose at a 'proficient' level, by race/ethnicity: White - 83%, Asian/Pacific Islander - 88%, Hispanic - 96%, Black - 98%. Adults unable to read prose at a 'proficient' level, by educational attainment: High school graduates - 96%, College graduates - 69%, Graduate studies/degrees - 59%. In other words, the majority of graduate students are incapable of fully understanding a newspaper, let alone an academic journal article. And virtually all high school graduates are functionally illiterate. (And again, being 'proficient' does not mean being able to read academic journal articles, which is sort of the minimum requirement for being an independent thinker in society. In fact at least 2 / 3rds of those who score 'proficient' still do not possess this more advanced measure of literacy.) John Taylor Gatto also gives his analysis of the situation here based on the 1992 data. (The data I cited was 2003) http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3j.htm http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3j.htm Gatto throws in a couple weasel words, and I think sometimes his analysis is a bit reaching, but overall it seems to be generally accurate. Even if you don't fully buy into the idea of an enormous decline over the last 100 years, the current methodology of the National Adult Literacy Survey seems pretty solid. (That's currently the gold standard for literacy estimates in the US.) But what about the CIA World Factbook, which estimates that the United States has a 97% literacy rate as of 2002? Where do these figures come from? To quote from Jonathan Kozol's book Illiterate in America, "For one hundred years, starting in 1840, the census posed the question of the population's literacy level in its ten-year compilations. The government removed this question from its survey in the 1940 census. The reason, according to a U.S. Census Bureau publication, was a general conviction that 'most people [by this time] could read and write ...' In 1970, pressured by the military, the Bureau of the Census agreed to reinstate the literacy question. Even then, instead of posing questions about actual skills, the census simply asked adults how many years of school they had attended. More than 5 percent of those the census reached replied that they had had less than a fifth grade education. For no known reason, the government assumed that four fifths of these people probably could read and, on this dangerous assumption, it was publicly announced that 99 percent of all American adults could read and write. These are the figures which the U.S. government passed on to the United Nations for the purposes of worldwide compilations and comparisons." You can read the rest of chapter 5 here, which further explains the methodology and how the CIA figures are propaganda rather than science: http://eserver.org/courses/spring97/76100o/readings/kozol.html http://eserver.org/courses/spring97/76100o/readings/kozol.ht...

waitwhat 15y ago

America can't win every race indefinitely (American Exceptionalism aside.)

_delirium 15y ago

> And in the late 1800s, America created a universal public education system. Nitpick, but widespread public schooling in the U.S. dates back more to the early 1800s; Horace Mann (1796-1859) is one of the education reformers often associated with it. It's true that they became more formalized into school districts in the late 19th century; before then, the "common schools" had been somewhat more ad-hoc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_school http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_school).

bradley 15y ago
Our K-12 system was modeled on the system the King of Prussia used to produce compliant citizens, efficient workers, and obedient soldiers starting in the late 1700's, using the factory model with children as both raw product and finished material, grading said product as A through F grade, etc. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system)

dr_ 15y ago

Hallelujah! Finally someone is saying it like it is. The American education is far from perfect - it will always be far from perfect. Even for those who fully go through it, you have to question, at least up through basic college, what kind of an education they are really getting for the price they are paying. Unfortunately, a solid education system in most every part of the world (especially in places like India and China) requires following a rigid architecture with little room for creative thinking. But this, with some exception, by and large creates a population of drones. Creative thinking is what is required for innovation - and innovation creates new industries and employment. It's one of the reasons we've done so well despite a relatively lackluster basic education system. I do hope our system improves somewhat - I've felt a better educated population would make better decisions when they are voting, although I'm not as convinced of that anymore - but a good education begins at home, not in the schools, and until people realize this, nothing is going to change.