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Comments: 801 +- Science: Obama Kicks Off Massive Science Education Effort on Monday November 23, @03:58PM
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In a speech at the White House today, President Obama launched a new campaign, "Educate to Innovate," designed to get American students fired up about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The full text of the speech is also available on whitehouse.gov. "The new campaign builds on the President's Inaugural Address, which included a vow to put science 'in its rightful place.' One of those rightful places, of course, is the classroom. Yet too often our schools lack support for teachers or the other resources needed to convey the practical utility and remarkable beauty of science and engineering. As a result, students become overwhelmed in their classes and ultimately disengaged. They lose, and our nation loses too. The partnerships launched today aim to change that. They respond to a challenge made by the President in April, when he spoke at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences and asked the nation's philanthropists, professional and educational societies, corporations, and individuals to collaborate and innovate with the goal of reinvigorating America's STEM educational enterprise. The partnerships announced today — dramatic commitments in the hundreds of millions of dollars, generated through novel collaborations and creative outreach activities — are just the first wave of commitments anticipated in response to his call."
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Submission: Obama Kicks Off Massive Science Education Effort by Anonymous Coward
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And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Insightful)
America's artistic value continues to decline with each hollywood blockbuster to be released. No studies whatsoever have been made to test if it could possibly be correlated to poor schooling in the fields of Language Arts, Drama/Theatre, and Humanitarian studies.
Up Next, a story about how a 3 legged dog saved a baby.
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news politicians still haven't made the connection between an arbitrary and inherently abusive disciplinary system of absolute authority with no accountability or responsibility layed over the top of a system of "education" designed around teaching students to do well on a few standardized tests and students becoming "disengaged".
Ditch zero tolerance and standardized tests and the problem will solve itself.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even better, ditch the Department of Education with its centralized planning, heavy handed bureaucracy and one-size-fits-nobody policies and return the control of education to local school boards. Let them decide for themselves what's right for their district and what isn't because no two school districts are alike, and what works for one fails for another.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, after all, it was the DoE's fault that Kansas wanted to teach creationism - oh, wait, that was the Kansas board of education.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not if they're going to ask for food stamps when they can't compete against students who are not taught science out of the bible.
Look at the countries that are doing better jobs of teaching their children. You think they teach creationism in science class? How much time you think Japanese or Korean students spend in school prayer?
Parents have 18 years to fill their kids' heads with whatever kind of mush they want. Can't they allow them a few short hours a day, 9 months a year, to at least have a shot at competing in the world? C'mon, give your kids at least a fighting chance.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Interesting)
Having a wife who went through Catholic schools, and 2 kids who went to Catholic high school, I can say that it's at least partly because they don't confuse religion with education. There are religion classes, but they're NOT in the science classes. Plus before you get too upset about religion classes, in some other school they might be counted under ethics or some form of social studies. Neither of my kids nor my wife complained about the religion classes being some form of indoctrination. (My wife is a self-professed liberal, and proud of it.)
One other ingredient is a little discipline. Not the sort that stamps out all fun, but the sort that keeps an anti-education counter-culture from growing. (Not physical discipline, either.) My son was thrilled after his first day in high school, because when some kid started cutting up, the rest of the class shushed him.
By the way, the Catholic schools are privately funded. Even at that, the cost per pupil is cheaper than the public schools, I suspect at least partly because they're not the baby-sitter-of-last-resort. Unfortunately I paid both tuition and taxes for the schools - it hurt, but it was worth it.
Nor do they neglect sports or the arts, just for a little further completeness.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm actually aware of that, having gone to a Catholic school. Just to expand on this a bit, in Catholic school they teach religion and science in two separate classes. They teach the creation story as a parable, and evolution and the big bang as facts. They also teach the history and beliefs of every major religion, not just Christianity, so you get a balanced view. Personally, I always liked Buddhism and Hinduism.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always been a little concerned that the campaigners to keep religion and existential philosophy out of schools
Has anyone been saying this, ever?
No one wants to keep this out of schools. We want to keep it out of science class.
you can't actually control what the children are thinking about or the questions they will internally ask.... if you think a policy of "no philosophical or religious discussion allowed" will stop children from thinking and internally asking those religious/existential questions,
You seem to be assuming (mistakenly) that we want children to stop asking these questions.
We don't. There is a time and a place for such questions. A few possible places in school include religion class, philosophy class, or ethics class -- all of which are important, but are not science class.
Suppose a student stood up in math class and asked, "What is knowledge? How can we really say that we know, or have proved, anything?"
That's an important question, and it may even be somewhat relevant to math, but it is inherently not math, it's offtopic, and it's disruptive when the intent is to actually teach math.
So the answer to all of these questions would be, very simply, "That's an interesting question. Why don't you ask that in philosophy?"
A better answer would be to actually explain why that question is outside the domain of science. Carl Sagan's "dragon in my garage" might be a good start.
And if you wish to stop those questions from being discussed in class, then frankly you might as well put up a sign saying "only government pre-approved questions may be asked, and only government pre-approved answers will be given"
Really?
You really can't see a difference between trying to keep things on-topic and a totalitarian government pre-approved list of questions and answers?
The empirical evidence in Europe is that science applications to universities appear to have fallen as society and schools have become more secular. And the empirical evidence in Europe is that it seems to be the religious schools that produce the best science results
Nice evidence. Now, how do you connect it with this conclusion:
and part of that is that they most certainly do make space in their schools (in RE classes) for discussion of what (let's face it) society has always called "the big questions" about the meaning of life.
Really?
How do you know that? Especially given that the person you are replying to claims that this is actually not what happens -- that the religious schools absolutely do keep religion out of the science classroom, and instead tell their students to ask in a more appropriate class?
they expect them to think about everything, not just science.
That's a good idea.
Why don't you think about what you've learned here, if you've been paying attention. Two important things:
First, read the post before replying.
Second, make an effort to understand what your opposition says, rather than creating elaborate strawmen.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Interesting)
Catholic schools don't teach creationism since the Catholic Church does not believe such rubbish, even as far back as St. Augustine. Catholic schools simply care about teaching children. Even though there is a religious element, it is not nearly as pervasive and forceful as creationist-fuckwad-controlled public schools.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not giving tax credits for having children would be a good start. Why reward the uneducated for breeding?
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Insightful)
Blaming the DoE, standardized tests and zero tolerance for education failure is like blaming extra paper cups for the bankruptcy of Enron. It might contribute, but it isn't the big problem.
There are tons of other countries with bigger standardized tests, even less tolerance and bigger departments of education with more heavy-handed bureaucracy that produce way more scientists per capita. Look at any east Asian country, for instance.
The big problem is really obvious. It's the quality of teachers. And it's not that the teachers are bad per se, it's that they're unmotivated to do better. Teacher's unions make it so that you get paid on years on the job and tenure, not how well you teach. Decoupling rewards with results in this way has been the single worst decision in education in this country.
Look at most charter schools. They flourish. Why? Because the teachers are motivated to teach well, not just do well until they get to tenure status.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Insightful)
The big problem is really obvious. It's the quality of teachers.
It's not that obvious, nor that's the primary reason. It certainly might be contributing reason, but it's also unfair to a ton of good public teachers out there.
I think the pres touched on the real reasons: demand for a good education by the parents. It's really the quality of parents that's the problem, not the quality of teachers. The parents don't value science, and neither will their kids. If they did, more people would enter the field. If parents demanded good educations, they would not tolerate poor teachers. They would also want teachers to get more money to be retained.
Charter schools flourish because of the parents. Non-religious charter schools will lose all their students if they try to teach creationism as science, while religious schools might lose a good portion if they did the opposite. This is why charter schools flourish -- they teach what the parents want taught. When you shove them all together in a public school, you get conflicting parental desires for education, and then everything goes to hell.
Parent
Teachers aren't the ONLY problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll readily agree with you that we have some lousy teachers, but the problems go far beyond them. Unions sink any disruptive reform that threatens their status or wealth, for instance. But there are deep structural problems with our very method of education, starting with the education major itself in colleges. We should frankly chuck education degrees for junior high and high school teaching. And there's no getting around the fact that education majors in most colleges are almost always from the lowest tier of ACT/SAT scores. We could debate all day about the virtues and vices of government involvement in education.
But equally as big is the problem of students and their parents. Frankly, lots of people simply don't care about schooling. Many parents see school mainly as a place to get rid of their kids for 7 hours a day. Most kids see school as a chore to be endured, from one degree to another.
Look at countries like Finland, where they spend less per pupil and less on facilities than we do. Their kids spend fewer days in school per year and fewer hours in class per day, and fewer years in what we would call the K-12 system. And yet they outgain US kids in all phases of standardized testing. Why? Simply put, there's a culture of responsibility.
Until we find a way to change attitudes among parents and kids, all of the money and legislation in the world won't make a difference.
Parent
Re:Teachers aren't the ONLY problem (Score:5, Insightful)
You hit +5, so I won't try to upmod you anymore. I taught HS science for 5 years. You hit the nail on the head. There are lots of other issues, but that was the primary one I saw.
The kids who's parents demanded they get a good education did. The other kids, the majority, did not. Intelligence was only part of the equation, for sure.
Parent
Re:Not just teachers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Teach What Science Really Is (Score:5, Insightful)
With our modern obsession with applicability and utility, where nothing seems to mean anything unless it makes money, we need to remember what science really is. Science isn't just a collection of facts. It isn't just an engine of economic growth. Science is above all a method of exposing nonsense for what it is. Science provides a method for anyone to identify truth from nonsense. When a dispute arises over whose assertions about the physical world are correct, we all agree to look to the physical world as the ultimate arbiter of truth, not to a priest, nor a CEO, nor a minister. Science cannot prove truth. It can only disprove nonsense.
If we, as citizens of a democracy, lose the ability to tell nonsense from truth, then our civilization is in trouble.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's obvious that local school boards can't run their schools according to standards. We should have a national educational governance with the ability to override the folly of local school board.
For further information, see "Creationists take over local school board and fuck everyone's chances of being accepted into a college"
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, how do home-schooled children do when compared to children of reasonably well-educated parents who take a lot of interest in the child and his or her education? There's a tremendous amount of selection bias here.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Funny)
Getting an MBA sure seems like confirmation of the earlier diagnosis :)
Parent
Re:Standards? (Score:5, Insightful)
The countries that are kicking our asses in science education don't have "less Federal inerfernce" they have more. Plus, the countries that are most successful in teaching their children have free education, financed by taxpayers.
When you scratch the surface of the "let the free market run everything" argument, you don't have to go very far before you start to see the FAIL showing through.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>Substituting experts making decisions on a national scale is a pretty good idea.
Perhaps but it's not authorized. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In other words the right to regulate education belongs to your local State government, until you expand the Constitution with an amendment.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Informative)
Is it indoctrination to show a child that 2 + 2 =4?
If not then teaching evolution is fine, if so we have a real problem.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know I think they (meaning the government) have this backwards. Engineering and science is FUN. You get to learn all kinds of neat facts, and do cool projects like building solar-powered cabins or toy cars while going through your high school & college courses.
It's the real world that sucks. I enjoyed my engineering/science right up to the point where I graduated, and they stuck me in a little tiny cubicle, by myself, staring at boring code and schematics. Day-after-day. Week-after-week. Year-after-year.
That's when it stopped being fun.
Parent
Re:And In Unrelated News... (Score:5, Insightful)
You grew up.
Don't ever do that.
Parent
Easier solution: (Score:4, Insightful)
Massive cash awards to US scientists. These kids choose not to go into science because it is not cool. Why is it not cool? Lots of hardwork and small incomes. If you give scientists boat loads of money, they become cool.
Instead we will waste another $huge_amount dollars on some lame education effort only to have the kids still want to be Kobe Bryant, or Dr. Dre.
Re:Easier solution: (Score:5, Informative)
It's true - when growing up I was among the more technically inclined kids and thus was slightly interested in computer sciences. While programming was fun I wasn't sure if its what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
However, when I was old enough to start looking at the numbers, I realized it was a good field to get into. Little Post secondary required to land a high paying job.
When scientific research reaches such a status, I'm sure the same thing will happen. A handful of people I know wish they could become theoretical physicists, but because the money isn't there, they go into Engineering.
Parent
Re:Easier solution: (Score:5, Funny)
Being cool means kids don't feel stigmatized if they enter a field. The study comes later after choosing a career. Lawyers and doctors are often portrayed as smart, powerful, as well as highly paid in movies and TV. Compare that to the lead scientist in Independence Day. He couldn't even afford decent pants.
Parent
Re:Easier solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Easier solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it really necessary to have 8 years of education to become the equivalent of an organic engineer (doctor)? No.
Ummm... says who? Personally, I like the idea of having my doctor know what he's talking about. Not just "Oh, I saw this done once," but actually be able to explain to me what muscles he's going to be working on, what they have to do with my eye, why the curvature of the lens is important, etc. There's a ton of information there. And it's not like you can section one part of the body off, it's very helpful to know about the entire thing.
But hey, if you want undereducated doctors, feel free to go to surgeons in another part of the world. Hospitals and American-educated (and Indian, to some extent, I guess) doctors frequently complain about foreign-educated doctors. They don't know as much, they are somewhat careless, and their English is hard to understand (hehe). No, not a slam against all non-Americans... but I think American medical education is very good. Costly? Yup. But very good. Which is why every rich person in the world goes to an American university to get care. Ok, over-generalization, but ....
Medical education is a huge deal. And I'm willing to pay for a perhaps over-qualified doctor.
Otherwise you get a double standard. Yeah, you can solder and debug a circuit card... but what if that circuit card was irreplaceable and if you messed up your soldering you would die on the spot. Do you think you'd like to have a qualified, if not MASSIVELY OVERQUALIFIED person do it? And pay extra for it? Or would you still go out and hire the cheapest guy who can say "Oh yeah, I've been soldering for years now. So, what does this circuit board do, again? Why can't you just get a new one?"
Not a direct analogy, but seriously... when you are touching my eyes, my hearts, my lungs, my kidneys... I want you to be pretty qualified, educated, and skilled. And I'm willing to pay extra for that.
Parent
Excellent! More awards! (Score:5, Funny)
Now we can give Obama the Nobel prize for Chemistry and Physics as well!
ws
fired up, huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
...designed to get American students fired up about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
No offense, Mr. President, but you want to know what really gets us fired up about those things? Getting paid for it. There are a select few of us that are willing to work for peanuts making the world a better place, spending hours working intractable problems, and sacrificing our social and sex lives all for the sake of The Greater Good. The rest of us -- we want to be paid for our work. The work isn't glamorous -- it's demanding, thankless, and for most requires an expensive education that they aren't reimbursed for. This field in particular (information technology) was gutted about seven years ago under the last administration in the name of short term profits. There is no R&D budget left for innovation, and not much has happened that's revolutionary in this industry since the bubble burst.
If you want to showcase our science and technology, start by making this country the best place to be for it once again -- rather than watching as Europe turns on the LHC while ours sits half-finished in Texas. Send some money to the Department of Energy to fund some physics over here. Give some grant money out so we can deploy a successor to the internet that doesn't suck, controlled by private interests who only want to sell us viagra, cheap thrills, pay per view, and piss-poor last mile connections. Put us back in space, which was once a source of national pride and now languishes as an embarassment. And cancel Enterprise -- goddamn that show sucks!
bucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Not going to happen.
A post-doc doing biomedical research (which is the highest-paid field) makes $40k at NYU. This is after spending 4 years in college, and then doing research for 6 years making a $25k/year stipend. With a conversion rate of under 1 percent for faculty positions (which don't pay that much more anyway), why in the world would anyone actually do that to themselves?! You'd have to be REALLY driven to want to work 60+ hour weeks, under the perpetual stress of having your grant pulled, for less than subway ticket clerks make.
Even better, in our new future we'll hamstring doctors and nurses pay, and make sure that nobody gives a damn about that kind of science too.
As for physics and chemistry (and I am not even talking about Mathematics), we've already driven them into the ground. No need to worry any further.
Parent
Re:bucks (Score:5, Insightful)
When you're really young, you might think that doing something you like and getting enough money to pay for a small apartment and some Ramen noodles is a good deal. However, when you get a little older, you realize there's more to life than work. Many people like the idea of dating and getting married. Many of those like the idea of also having children.
No decent woman is going to marry you if you have a job working 100 hours/week (which means you're never home to spend time with her) and only make $25k (which means you can't even support her). No decent woman will want to have children with you when you're never home, and don't make any money to buy them decent clothes and food, forcing her to apply for welfare. Dating is a competition with all the other males out there, and not many women are going to choose you when they can get some other guy who makes 3x as much money and who has time to spend helping her raise the kids.
Asking prospective scientists to give up their chances at marriage and family is beyond insulting.
Parent
soundbite lessons as PSAs (Score:5, Interesting)
stem cells (Score:5, Funny)
We should set up small groups around the country to independently engage in the study of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math... call them STEM Cells, and watch the right-wingers line up to ban funding them, on reflex.
Not without the parents (Score:5, Insightful)
Parents . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Parents, parents, parents.
They are in the best position (or should be!) to motivate their kids. If they can't, no billion dollar program will either.
Re:Parents . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was about 4 years old, dad put a cup of ice water on the counter and told me to come back in about 10 minutes. After the time had elapsed, I did, and there was condensation on the outside of the glass. Dad asked me how the water got there. I speculated that it had somehow leaked through the glass.
I can't remember if he told me how the water actually got there, but that was the first time I can remember deliberately forming a hypothesis about something I'd observed
Also, for as long as I can remember, my folks had science books just floating around--lots of them with pictures like the Time-Life science books, which I had thumbed through many times before I even knew how to read. Plus they had a set of World Book Encyclopedias. I was always re-readings those.
I do wonder if I'd be as science-minded as I am today without such encouragement, or if I was just born that way to begin with. I'm sure the encouragement didn't hurt.
Parent
Practical utility and remarkable beauty (Score:4, Funny)
Yet too often our schools lack support for teachers or the other resources needed to convey the practical utility and remarkable beauty of science and engineering.
This looks like a job for...Sagan-Man [xkcd.com]!
Government intrusion and control isn't innovative (Score:4, Interesting)
Red flag No. 1: Teacher unions like this plan (Score:5, Insightful)
The teacher unions complained loud and early about this plan. They pushed hard for (and eventually) got numerous changes to the original proposal.
Most of my kids' teachers have been good people generally interested in educating kids. The unions, on the other hand, are out of touch with the classroom and mostly interested in their own survival.
Sorry to be so cynical - and I only speak from personal experience - but I have yet to see the unions fight to get their way about something (tenure, testing methods, school hours, curriculum, etc.) and get a positive result in the end. And with this much money at stake...
Re:Red flag No. 1: Teacher unions like this plan (Score:5, Interesting)
On the flip side in states where you can't unionize, North Carolina for example, in order to balance the budget they gave teachers a retroactive pay cut which means your next paycheck gets docked all the money you got payed earlier in the year to bring it down to your new lower salary level. For all you people who think I typed something wrong because that sounds too illegal and crazy to be true, it is, and it did happen. The Governor apparently has broad constitutional rights to balance the state budget. Teachers that had a lot of money already taken out for things like medical spending and the like actually had to PAY the state back. That sorta thing doesn't exactly help get good teachers in our state.
Now compare that to the quality of education in the state of New york where I first lived and they did have teacher unions....
Parent
The Education Silver Bullet (Score:5, Insightful)
The silver bullet for education is very simple: Fix society. There's nothing inherently wrong with our schools. The problem is that schools are nothing but a microcosm of our society. We think that because schools are full of kids we have some special control over them, but that's generally not true. Kids learn what to value first from their parents, second from their role models (which are usually popular media figures), third from their peers, and only then from teachers. It's even worse when you think you can control teenagers who are not children.
Parents that do not value education produce kids that do not value educations. Parents with no ambitions produce kids with no ambitions. A society that values fame and fortune over science and progress produces kids that value fame and fortune over science and progress.
Quite simply, sick schools are a symptom of the real disease, a sick society. Of course few want to admit our society is sick, and even fewer want to make an effort to fix it. They'd rather just pretend that there's a magic trick to turning blank children (who aren't really blank) into perfect adults. Well sorry adults, but a) kids will turn out fine without you trying to "fix" them, and b) YOU are the real problem. We have to do what we want kids to do: We have to take responsibility and try to fix things instead of pushing problems onto somebody else, i.e. another generation.
Fix society, and you fix schools. It's that simple. Fixing society isn't that simple? Tough. Either do it or stop complaining about schools.
No impact on corporate america (Score:5, Insightful)
Corp america doesn't care how many millions of kids become engineers or scientists. It'll always be cheaper to hire an engineer in India/China than in the US. My company (large IT company), hasn't had any layoffs, but all the hiring that has been happening has been overseas. So when the CEO gets on the quarterly call and says that the company has continued to hire people; he leaves out the little footnote about how 90% of them are overseas.
Re:STEM... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:STEM... (Score:5, Funny)
The Cold War ended 18 years ago... OMG, that's what causing Global Warming(TM)!
Parent
Re:In Russia, commie govt gives health care to YOU (Score:5, Insightful)
99% do not have the money to pay for their own care, the reality is most private bankruptcies are the result of a medical issue.
We are paying for their medical care, like it or not, who do you think pays when the patient files bankruptcy?
Our system is so messed up I have turned down better paying jobs due to the cost of their insurance.
We have health discount plans not insurance. I do not need someone to pay every time I get the sniffles, I need millions in case I get brain cancer. Instead we have the worst of both worlds.
Parent
Re:In Russia, commie govt gives health care to YOU (Score:5, Insightful)
"What I do NOT believe is that you can force your neighbors to pay the bill."
FTFY.
What he really means "I am a heartless selfish asshole who would rather watch unfortunate poor people die in the gutter than pay a pittance for a decent universal health care scheme".
I pay into 1.5% of my salary above 30K Australias universal health care and am happy to do so. It works very well. We have good health care for everyone. If you want private insurance you can have that too, and get a tax rebate.
Our government spends less to give universal health care than yours does to NOT provlde it.
Drink the republican kool-aid much.
Parent
Re:In Russia, commie govt gives health care to YOU (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the rest of the goddamn civilized world shows us that the system we're trying to build here is the one that actually works, and it is ours that is the known-broken one.
But I don't expect ideologues like you to apply reason to these things. After all, America, Fuck Yeah!
Parent
Re:Naming? (Score:5, Informative)
You mean, his anti-stem cell research policy where he shrunk the previous administrations budget of $0.00 to several millions. Is that the anti-stem cell research policy you are talking about? I guess you would have been much happier if he just kept the previous administrations spending level on this research.
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