

Starving the Future - rosser
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/blow-starving-the-future.html

======
squonk
There are attributes of American society that enable the country to excel, and
which have nothing to do with quality of public education. First, parents in
general are less active in managing their kids' time than other countries.
Kids have more leeway to determine what they do with their time. Many do slack
off, or get into trouble, and sometimes it is serious. But many others find
out what really interests them. They are not told they have to prepare to be a
doctor, lawyer or engineer. They are more likely to be able to try everything
and see where their mind returns to over and over. No cookie cutters or
escalators.

Second, we have a different view of failure than many other nations. The
relatively low social and legal consequence of failure allows Americans to
stand back up, shake off the failure and try again. Think about how many
restaurants there are and the number that will fail within a year or two. It
is millions of failures annually. In Germany, for example, if a business does
not notify its creditors 30 days before running out of cash, the president can
go to prison. In the US, a business has no requirement to ever notify their
creditors at all. We seem to see failure as a consequence of taking a risk,
not as a scarlet letter. To never fail, is to never try.

If you combine the two, we have a society where people not only have a better
opportunity to discover their passions, they feel much less encumbered by the
prospect of failure than in other countries. Passion drives innovation,
creativity, persistence and the competitive spirit. Can you imagine Apple,
Microsoft, Walmart, Amazon, MacDonald's or any other 'huge success' without a
passionate, risk-taking founder? Even Subway has such a story.

The product of our education system may not do as well on tests as their peers
from other countries, but when they get into college and choose a major, they
are more likely to be passionate and self-motivated and excel in their chosen
curriculum.

Our educational system needs help, there is no doubt. Since my grade school
days, funding for the arts has completely disappeared. Schools are run down to
the point of being shameful. But the key ingredients that produce greatness
are still there.

~~~
thronemonkey
Moreover, can you imagine America being so good at science without people the
will to fail and fail again and again in order to pursue their passion?

------
batgaijin
Wow, this is a pretty depressing response from the ycombinator crowd.

I wonder what you guys think about this?:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=N...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NXIR9ve0JU0)

~~~
confluence
I think Tyson is using hyperbole is what I think. National boundaries on
science are completely arbitrary. He's also making the same damn mistakes that
I listed in my above comment - growth measurement without understanding
starting points and growth ratios will lead to faulty reasoning.

China/India are growing fast - but then again they are third world nations -
they are starting from zero - grow 1 point and you've just doubled in a year -
vs. mature America which is already running at 100% (how do you grow 100%? -
you can't - you can only stabilise or fall).

~~~
tzs
Did you watch that Tyson clip all the way to the end?

Unless you classify Europe as third world, the final map refutes you
convincingly.

~~~
confluence
I wasn't talking about Europe. But let's consider. What type of graph is it?
Is it in ratio or is it absolute?

If it it is absolute - Europe has nearly double the population of America.

If it is in ratio - what were the comparative starting points?

Furthermore - how is he measuring the research growth? Just by the number of
papers? What about the paper quality? What about impact? Are there
duplications in translation? Are Europeans optimising for "publish" over
Americans? What is really going on - nothing is explained about the statistics
- and anytime that happens - I call bullshit - even on Tyson (no one is
sacred).

Furthermore America has - and continues to be - the biggest spender on science
the world has ever seen. Stating that they aren't "growing" as fast as
everyone else is a false statement - they are already the largest by a wide
margin (growth constrained by GDP).

It looks like Tyson is tweaking statistics to make a point - which feels very
underhanded - but it's for a good cause at the very least.

More here: [http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-
back/2012/08/22/...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-
back/2012/08/22/is-american-science-in-decline/)

> _China could overtake the U.S. in the output of science publications as
> early as 2013 based on a simple linear extrapolation of current publication
> levels and rates of increase.

While this trend is noteworthy, the value of global science research relates
more closely to the quality than the quantity of scientific publications. The
quality of science research is challenging to measure and may only be known
many years after research becomes available to the scientific community. One
popular, albeit rough, measure of quality is the number of times one
scientific research article is cited by other articles.

The research contributions of the U.S. and China are most affected by
evaluating scientific publications by citations rather than article volume.
During the period 2004-2008, U.S. science research accounted for 30 percent of
global article citations, even though the U.S. only contributed 21 percent of
article publications, as shown in the chart above. China accounted for just 4
percent of article citations, despite contributing 10 percent of article
publications._

Source: [http://www.globalsherpa.org/research-science-technology-
inte...](http://www.globalsherpa.org/research-science-technology-
international)

> _Global science publication authorship –

USA - 21%

China – 10%

Japan – 6%

Number of Patents per year -

USA – 121179

China – 3303

Japan – 46978

2011 Research and development spending in billions, US dollars

USA – 405

China - 153

Japan - 144_

Sources:

Attribution: <http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/282676/detail/>

Number of patents year; 2010 USPTO:
<http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/cst_all.htm>

Royal Society Global Science authorship:
[http://www.globalsherpa.org/research-science-technology-
inte...](http://www.globalsherpa.org/research-science-technology-
international)

Spending:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending)

> _Measuring growth only is what screwed up the world economy. I doubt that
> it’s very helpful in science. Any country that had zero scientific research
> before 1990 and has a bit now, will score high on the growth map. Whereas a
> country already doing well research-wise will eventually hit the ceiling and
> won’t be able to grow anymore._

[http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/neil_degrasse_tyson_on_th...](http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/neil_degrasse_tyson_on_the_decline_of_scientific_research_in_america.html)

------
confluence
This is such an astonishingly bad article that I really don't even know where
to start.

I saw this exact same type of drivel with the Japanese in the 80s and the
Asian "Tigers" in the 90s. "Oh no! The Asians are growing at 10% a year -
we're screwed!". Give me a break - it's like comparing a toddler to an adult -
"Oh no! Little Timmy is growing at 10% per year - all of us fully grown adults
don't stand a chance in hell against that kind of growth!"

> _“between 2000 and 2008, China graduated 1.14 million people in the STEM, or
> Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, subjects; the United States
> graduated 496,000.”_

> _“by 2017, India will graduate 20 million people from high school — or five
> times as many as in the United States.”_

Firstly - absolute numbers are pointless since both India and China are 3-4
times larger than America (~300 million to ~1+ billion each). Tell me per
capita rates - then we're talking.

> _We’re cutting back, while our children’s future competitors are plowing
> ahead._

What does that even mean?

India/China are third world nations - of course they are plowing ahead - they
haven't even began to produce IP on the world stage yet. You're not comparing
growth rates in ratio - you can't say a toddler is growing insanely fast - and
then state that he is going to become a giant and "destroy us all".

> _Enroll 40 million children in preschool, a 50 percent increase from today._

> _More than double enrollment in higher education._

If I'm missing a leg - and I get a prosthetic - I do grow my ability to walk
by 100% (as in I double it). But that doesn't mean anything - since everyone
else already has two damn legs! My growth was just getting back to normal.
China/India are like amputees who are slowly acquiring prosthetics. They are
starting from an unfortunately low baseline and growing towards normal - they
will not overtake us.

This is alarmist drivel written by the "won't you think about the children"
crowd coupled with poor reasoning, improper understanding of the uncertainty
present in future projections - 2030 for heaven's sake! - and a thorough
misunderstanding of what growth really implies.

This faulty reasoning is also applied to "wunderkids", best exemplified by
Peter Thiel's 20 under 20, and startup growth numbers:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104407>

~~~
potatolicious
It gets worse - there is context to the Chinese numbers he's conveniently
neglected to mention. I'm not Indian, so I don't dare comment on the Indian
side of things, perhaps someone can jump in.

China is currently undergoing tremendous backlash and loss of public faith in
their postsecondary institutions. A glut of knowledge-based jobs, a remarkable
increase in income over the past two decades, and the age-old Chinese affinity
for academic achievement has meant the creation of countless "colleges" that
barely deserve the name, existing only to bilk their students and hand out
degrees of questionable legitimacy and worth.

Countless students are graduating now in China with "college degrees" and
finding themselves woefully unemployable and a lot poorer to boot. Public
sentiment is turning against these schools and demand is rising for government
to step in and regulate quality.

To put it mildly, China's "200 million college grads" will be mostly way, way
out to lunch. Let's compare the graduating rate of legitimate, quality
institutions and we'll have a better idea of who's gonna kick whose ass.

Even with the quality problem aside, they still face the problem that other
heavily industrialized Asian nations have faced already: the dramatic value
loss in post secondary education when _everyone_ holds a degree. Both Japan
and Taiwan suffer extensively from this, as job requirements climb in response
to universal and pervasive college education. Newspapers and websites are
abound with horror stories of entry-level data entry positions requiring a
masters for consideration.

No matter which way you cut it, using college graduation rates is a piss poor
proxy for economic power or even employment.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'm not Indian either, but I used to live there. Your description of China
seems similar to the situation there. There are a plenty of terrible schools
teaching "ethical haking" (i.e. windows firewall for dummies) or web design
for a few thousand bucks.

------
tsotha
I will never understand why this guy has a column.

------
prostoalex
While

> many of our children are literally too hungry to learn

here <http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html> we learn that

> Approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2—19
> years are obese.

So SNAP in its current incarnation is not as clear-cut of a panacea as Charles
M Blow suggests. Even USDA happily reports
<http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/retailers/eligible.htm> that

> Soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream are food items
> and are therefore eligible items

> Energy drinks that have a nutrition facts label are eligible foods

------
Claudus
Most of this article seems to be directed at some proposal of Paul Ryan's that
supposedly reduces food stamp funding by 17% over 10 years, and a weak attempt
to link that to education with sketchy anecdotal evidence.

------
melonakos
Lame class warfare article. The left is full of whining idiots like this.

Higher preschool enrollment will not help. Fewer split homes and dual-income
families with kids is the only way to ensure kids get the nurturing they
deserve.

~~~
HotKFreshSwag
How is the article class warfare or leftist? The article seems banal and
centrist to me.

Kicking in open doors and saying we should help poor people not go hungry and
invest in education is what every politician does.

