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I could have told you that without testing. There leaders are running on anti-science platforms and getting lots of press and support for doing so. (Creationism

I could have told you that without testing. There leaders are running on anti-science platforms and getting lots of press and support for doing so. (Creationism, global warming deniers, forced conception denial.) What about our culture promotes science and math? Yes, there are pockets that deviate from the mean (like HN for instance) but as a society, the US is pretty anti-intellectual. For me, that's the scariest thing about this country (that I love).

cciesquare 14y ago
The bright side is that in my opinion it's improved, the status of science and math. Again just the status, the education system pre college is still a mess. I am going to go out on a limb and say controversially, that it's because education falls under state rights. You just have too many different philosophy of education across all the states. For something so important it should be at a national level.
- Gormo 14y ago
  > For something so important it should be at a national level. Could you elaborate on this? To me, the conclusion would seem entirely opposite: a single, homogeneous educational policy would prevent meaningful variation, and thereby make the status quo all but immutable.
debacle 14y ago
There are entire states that deviate from the mean. The reality is that there's a large percentage of the US that is quite dumb, and it drags states with good education systems down.
- Gormo 14y ago
  > and it drags states with good education systems down. How does poor-quality education in one state adversely affect better-quality education in another?
  - debacle 14y ago
    Ignoring your question, I was speaking more about the whole "US kids are stupid." thing. The average is abysmal, but that doesn't mean that education is bad across the board. Often times, the media makes it out to be so.
  - keithpeter 14y ago
    I think the author of the parent post to yours meant that if an average or aggregate grade of some kind is calculated for the whole of the USA, then the resulting figure may not reflect the performance of much of the country because of a large variation between the states. Of course, many of the countries in the study have populations smaller than some states within the USA. Perhaps the comparisons should be conducted at state level?
    - Gormo 14y ago
      Which makes one wonder as to what the justification was for aggregating the data in the way it was aggregated, or aggregating it at all in the first place, other than to contrive a statistic to argue for whatever policy position the authors already support. If the honest purpose of the study is to compare the results of various educational methodologies, I don't see that there'd be a useful unit of analysis any larger than an individual school, and even that might be too coarse. It's true that American states have de jure authority over public schools, and that there isn't any singular "American educational system" to speak of, but even within the individual states, there's still a great deal of variation from district to district and from school to school. Plus, there are plenty of schools outside the conventional public education systems, whose methodologies aren't determined by policy from any government.
  - rprospero 14y ago
    It's not that the existence of poor schools makes the students at good schools dumber. It's the horrible quality drop between the good and bad schools makes the statistics misleading. The report could be titled in a completely different way: "American 8th graders significantly better at science than European 8th graders." I went to the actual data set ( http://nces.ed.gov/timss/idetimss/dataset.aspx http://nces.ed.gov/timss/idetimss/dataset.aspx ), selected the 8th grade science tests, and asked for the average score from the European nations. The result was 501 +- 0.9. The American score was 520 +- 2.9. Now, I'm a bit concerned about their averaging methodology, since I don't think that it's accounting for population density (adding the scores for each country and dividing by the number of countries gives the average returned by the dataset). Still, if we assume that the results are correct, then the United States is doing significantly better than Europe in science education. Of course, the English and the Hungarians, with scores of 542 and 539, respectively, have nothing to fear for the average American, while Turkey, at 454, should be pretty concerned. Which brings us back to the diversity of educational quality in the US. While the average might be 520, I wouldn't be surprised, as a Hoosier, to find Indiana down near Turkey's 454. On the other hand, I'd expect Massachusetts to compare favorably with England's 542.
- dsr_ 14y ago
  This needs to be emphasized. US primary education is governed state-by-state. If you compare Massachusetts to the world leaders, you'll discover we have an excellent educational system. If you compare Alabama to the world leaders, you'll see that we are a third-world nation. States fund education differently. They establish different standards for what children are going to learn, subject by subject. In almost all cases, the basis for these standards is more political (and frequently religiously inspired) than scientific. Useful reading: http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/the-state-of-state-science-standards-2012.html http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/the-state-of-state-... http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/
- bwanab 14y ago
  Exactly, I suspect many U.S. states (e.g. Massachusetts, Minnesota) perform quite well against their international counterparts, but most news stories never make that point clear (or even at all).
  - dsr_ 14y ago
    Stories in local media in those states do: http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/12/11/mass-8th-graders-among-worlds-smartest-in-math-science/ http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/12/11/mass-8th-graders-among... http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_22168278/states-8th-graders-gain-math-science-testing http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_22168278/states-8th-g...
blhack 14y ago
Oh for crying out loud. Keep this ridiculous circlejerkery on reddit, please. The United States has some politicians who are running on this because they are pandering to the people that actually go out and VOTE for them. They'r marketing, and they're tailoring their marketing scheme to the largest fraction of the 50% of people that actually go out and vote. The United States has MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Stanford. We also have some of the largest arts festivals in the world. We have Silicon Valley, arguably one of the most active centers of innovation in the world. Google is headed here, with all of the PhDs and "crazy mad scientist" research. So is Microsoft, so is IBM. Sure, there are lots of dumb people here. Guess what, there are also lots of the smartest people in the entire world here.
newsoundwave 14y ago
I would argue that two of the nations listed at the top (Singapore and South Korea) have many similar problems. Both are fairly religious societies and have pretty strong anti-intellectual politicians. As someone who's attended high school in both the United States and South Korea, I'm also not seeing how the Korean society is any less anti-intellectual - we have moronic interest groups, we believed in fan death for generations, our public schools are absolutely horrid, and we enjoy censoring large swaths of the internet (although admittedly a lot of that is pornography). The only "leg up" I can think South Korea has is their focus on Hakwons (basically after school tutors).
yummyfajitas 14y ago
I could have told you that without testing. It's hilarious to start a post this way and then complain about anti-scientific attitudes.
- wmeredith 14y ago
  I suppose I could have written, "I could have told you that." There are also typos in my post about education. Grrrr...
droithomme 14y ago
People constantly complain about schools supposedly teaching creationism, and yet it's impossible to find public schools teaching that, and the private schools that teach it get much higher achievement, disproving the hypothesis that teaching it is leading to worse results.

cciesquare 14y ago

The bright side is that in my opinion it's improved, the status of science and math. Again just the status, the education system pre college is still a mess. I am going to go out on a limb and say controversially, that it's because education falls under state rights. You just have too many different philosophy of education across all the states. For something so important it should be at a national level.

Gormo 14y ago
> For something so important it should be at a national level. Could you elaborate on this? To me, the conclusion would seem entirely opposite: a single, homogeneous educational policy would prevent meaningful variation, and thereby make the status quo all but immutable.

debacle 14y ago

There are entire states that deviate from the mean. The reality is that there's a large percentage of the US that is quite dumb, and it drags states with good education systems down.

Gormo 14y ago
> and it drags states with good education systems down. How does poor-quality education in one state adversely affect better-quality education in another?
- debacle 14y ago
  Ignoring your question, I was speaking more about the whole "US kids are stupid." thing. The average is abysmal, but that doesn't mean that education is bad across the board. Often times, the media makes it out to be so.
- keithpeter 14y ago
  I think the author of the parent post to yours meant that if an average or aggregate grade of some kind is calculated for the whole of the USA, then the resulting figure may not reflect the performance of much of the country because of a large variation between the states. Of course, many of the countries in the study have populations smaller than some states within the USA. Perhaps the comparisons should be conducted at state level?
  - Gormo 14y ago
    Which makes one wonder as to what the justification was for aggregating the data in the way it was aggregated, or aggregating it at all in the first place, other than to contrive a statistic to argue for whatever policy position the authors already support. If the honest purpose of the study is to compare the results of various educational methodologies, I don't see that there'd be a useful unit of analysis any larger than an individual school, and even that might be too coarse. It's true that American states have de jure authority over public schools, and that there isn't any singular "American educational system" to speak of, but even within the individual states, there's still a great deal of variation from district to district and from school to school. Plus, there are plenty of schools outside the conventional public education systems, whose methodologies aren't determined by policy from any government.
- rprospero 14y ago
  It's not that the existence of poor schools makes the students at good schools dumber. It's the horrible quality drop between the good and bad schools makes the statistics misleading. The report could be titled in a completely different way: "American 8th graders significantly better at science than European 8th graders." I went to the actual data set ( http://nces.ed.gov/timss/idetimss/dataset.aspx http://nces.ed.gov/timss/idetimss/dataset.aspx ), selected the 8th grade science tests, and asked for the average score from the European nations. The result was 501 +- 0.9. The American score was 520 +- 2.9. Now, I'm a bit concerned about their averaging methodology, since I don't think that it's accounting for population density (adding the scores for each country and dividing by the number of countries gives the average returned by the dataset). Still, if we assume that the results are correct, then the United States is doing significantly better than Europe in science education. Of course, the English and the Hungarians, with scores of 542 and 539, respectively, have nothing to fear for the average American, while Turkey, at 454, should be pretty concerned. Which brings us back to the diversity of educational quality in the US. While the average might be 520, I wouldn't be surprised, as a Hoosier, to find Indiana down near Turkey's 454. On the other hand, I'd expect Massachusetts to compare favorably with England's 542.
dsr_ 14y ago
This needs to be emphasized. US primary education is governed state-by-state. If you compare Massachusetts to the world leaders, you'll discover we have an excellent educational system. If you compare Alabama to the world leaders, you'll see that we are a third-world nation. States fund education differently. They establish different standards for what children are going to learn, subject by subject. In almost all cases, the basis for these standards is more political (and frequently religiously inspired) than scientific. Useful reading: http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/the-state-of-state-science-standards-2012.html http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/the-state-of-state-... http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/
bwanab 14y ago
Exactly, I suspect many U.S. states (e.g. Massachusetts, Minnesota) perform quite well against their international counterparts, but most news stories never make that point clear (or even at all).
- dsr_ 14y ago
  Stories in local media in those states do: http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/12/11/mass-8th-graders-among-worlds-smartest-in-math-science/ http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/12/11/mass-8th-graders-among... http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_22168278/states-8th-graders-gain-math-science-testing http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_22168278/states-8th-g...

blhack 14y ago

Oh for crying out loud. Keep this ridiculous circlejerkery on reddit, please. The United States has some politicians who are running on this because they are pandering to the people that actually go out and VOTE for them. They'r marketing, and they're tailoring their marketing scheme to the largest fraction of the 50% of people that actually go out and vote. The United States has MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Stanford. We also have some of the largest arts festivals in the world. We have Silicon Valley, arguably one of the most active centers of innovation in the world. Google is headed here, with all of the PhDs and "crazy mad scientist" research. So is Microsoft, so is IBM. Sure, there are lots of dumb people here. Guess what, there are also lots of the smartest people in the entire world here.

newsoundwave 14y ago

I would argue that two of the nations listed at the top (Singapore and South Korea) have many similar problems. Both are fairly religious societies and have pretty strong anti-intellectual politicians. As someone who's attended high school in both the United States and South Korea, I'm also not seeing how the Korean society is any less anti-intellectual - we have moronic interest groups, we believed in fan death for generations, our public schools are absolutely horrid, and we enjoy censoring large swaths of the internet (although admittedly a lot of that is pornography). The only "leg up" I can think South Korea has is their focus on Hakwons (basically after school tutors).

yummyfajitas 14y ago

I could have told you that without testing. It's hilarious to start a post this way and then complain about anti-scientific attitudes.

wmeredith 14y ago
I suppose I could have written, "I could have told you that." There are also typos in my post about education. Grrrr...

droithomme 14y ago

People constantly complain about schools supposedly teaching creationism, and yet it's impossible to find public schools teaching that, and the private schools that teach it get much higher achievement, disproving the hypothesis that teaching it is leading to worse results.