We Americans have become quite comfortable with our relatively recent designation as the world's only superpower. That's a mistake, since we won't be alone at the top for long.
In a generation or so, the Chinese will be a superpower, too. Indeed, if the United States doesn't get a grip on science and math education, the Chinese will be standing alone astride the globe, while we will have fallen to a second-tier standing.
It's easy enough to see how that could happen. Chinese leaders (and parents) take science and math seriously. High school and college students work hard to master chemistry, physics, biology, engineering. For that matter, so do Indian students. American students, with precious few exceptions, don't.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that China is graduating four times as many engineers as the United States. (Japan, with less than half our population, graduates twice as many.) Yes, China has four times our population, but the United States supposedly has a far superior educational system.
Perhaps we did once, but we're busy destroying it now. Indeed, the extremist edge of America's religious right has instituted a war on science. The teaching of evolution, which most scientists accept as the foundation of modern biology, is under assault in classrooms from Kansas to Georgia to Pennsylvania.
President Bush has insisted on severe limits on stem cell research, which not only has the potential for treating several serious diseases but which also could eventually create thousands of high-paying jobs. Though the state of California is starting its own stem cell research initiative, much of that cutting-edge science will be developed in other countries.
The Bush administration routinely intimidates or silences its own scientists if their findings contradict administration policy or would anger Christian conservatives. A Web page of the National Cancer Institute used to state, correctly, that the best research shows "no association between abortion and breast cancer." Now, the Web site says the research is inconclusive. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been similarly hampered in efforts to give people the facts about condom use.
One thing that hasn't changed much is American consumer behavior. We still love a bargain; we're just paying the money to somebody else. It may appear, for example, that the Wal-Mart cashier is putting your twenty into the cash drawer, but actually it's flowing straight to Shanghai. And as Americans export their earnings to China in exchange for cheap TVs, plush toys and Hawaiian shirts, Beijing is lavishing all that extra cash on its military and on research and development.
Writing this month in The Wall Street Journal, Norman Augustine, a former CEO of Lockheed Martin Corp., and Burton Richter, a Nobel laureate in physics, said:
"As a percentage of GDP, federal investment in physical science research is half of what it was in 1970. . . . [By contrast], in China, R&D expenditures rose 350 percent between 1991 and 2001, and the number of science and engineering Ph.D.s soared 535 percent."
Speaking last month to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich cited significant challenges facing the country, including China's rise and the decline in science and math education here.
"If we don't really take seriously the rise of China and India . . . and what it is going to take for us to be competitive, you should assume that by the middle of the century your children and grandchildren will live in a country which is no longer the leading country in the world," he said.
What a difference a couple of decades makes. Back in 1957, the United States was startled when the Soviet Union beat us into space with the successful launch of Sputnik. Washington responded with a massive investment in math and science education. (Some problems can be solved by throwing money at them.) The result came in 1969: Apollo 11 landed on the moon and established a U.S. hegemony in science that has lasted until now.
But it probably won't last much longer. Just as the Chinese are learning the enormous benefit of pouring money into science education and research, our science infrastructure is under attack from religious extremists. And the rest of us are letting them get away with it.
Source: http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/tucker/2005/051505.html
Indeed. I had this conversation with Chinese native last Saturday when we met him at one of mountains where we were riding the mountain bike. He mentioned to me that America is going to make a biggest mistake by "shove" the science out while "force" the creationism down in our throat. I don't know if you people did keep up with news or not... I do and it worried me. China and Europe Union are getting stronger and stronger everyday due to their devotion to science and other things.
In a generation or so, the Chinese will be a superpower, too. Indeed, if the United States doesn't get a grip on science and math education, the Chinese will be standing alone astride the globe, while we will have fallen to a second-tier standing.
It's easy enough to see how that could happen. Chinese leaders (and parents) take science and math seriously. High school and college students work hard to master chemistry, physics, biology, engineering. For that matter, so do Indian students. American students, with precious few exceptions, don't.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that China is graduating four times as many engineers as the United States. (Japan, with less than half our population, graduates twice as many.) Yes, China has four times our population, but the United States supposedly has a far superior educational system.
Perhaps we did once, but we're busy destroying it now. Indeed, the extremist edge of America's religious right has instituted a war on science. The teaching of evolution, which most scientists accept as the foundation of modern biology, is under assault in classrooms from Kansas to Georgia to Pennsylvania.
President Bush has insisted on severe limits on stem cell research, which not only has the potential for treating several serious diseases but which also could eventually create thousands of high-paying jobs. Though the state of California is starting its own stem cell research initiative, much of that cutting-edge science will be developed in other countries.
The Bush administration routinely intimidates or silences its own scientists if their findings contradict administration policy or would anger Christian conservatives. A Web page of the National Cancer Institute used to state, correctly, that the best research shows "no association between abortion and breast cancer." Now, the Web site says the research is inconclusive. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been similarly hampered in efforts to give people the facts about condom use.
One thing that hasn't changed much is American consumer behavior. We still love a bargain; we're just paying the money to somebody else. It may appear, for example, that the Wal-Mart cashier is putting your twenty into the cash drawer, but actually it's flowing straight to Shanghai. And as Americans export their earnings to China in exchange for cheap TVs, plush toys and Hawaiian shirts, Beijing is lavishing all that extra cash on its military and on research and development.
Writing this month in The Wall Street Journal, Norman Augustine, a former CEO of Lockheed Martin Corp., and Burton Richter, a Nobel laureate in physics, said:
"As a percentage of GDP, federal investment in physical science research is half of what it was in 1970. . . . [By contrast], in China, R&D expenditures rose 350 percent between 1991 and 2001, and the number of science and engineering Ph.D.s soared 535 percent."
Speaking last month to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich cited significant challenges facing the country, including China's rise and the decline in science and math education here.
"If we don't really take seriously the rise of China and India . . . and what it is going to take for us to be competitive, you should assume that by the middle of the century your children and grandchildren will live in a country which is no longer the leading country in the world," he said.
What a difference a couple of decades makes. Back in 1957, the United States was startled when the Soviet Union beat us into space with the successful launch of Sputnik. Washington responded with a massive investment in math and science education. (Some problems can be solved by throwing money at them.) The result came in 1969: Apollo 11 landed on the moon and established a U.S. hegemony in science that has lasted until now.
But it probably won't last much longer. Just as the Chinese are learning the enormous benefit of pouring money into science education and research, our science infrastructure is under attack from religious extremists. And the rest of us are letting them get away with it.
Source: http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/tucker/2005/051505.html
Indeed. I had this conversation with Chinese native last Saturday when we met him at one of mountains where we were riding the mountain bike. He mentioned to me that America is going to make a biggest mistake by "shove" the science out while "force" the creationism down in our throat. I don't know if you people did keep up with news or not... I do and it worried me. China and Europe Union are getting stronger and stronger everyday due to their devotion to science and other things.
