

How Our Culture Keeps Students Out of Science - crocus
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=03hp5gr19z5sb0cdvhtsk5qgp3yhdttf

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3flp
You guys in the US & friends probably don't see it as clearly. The US focus on
self esteem - justified or not - and the vague post-modern concern with
various shallow attributes, like gender, background etc., is actually quite
stunning to me. I've grown up in a progressive part of the eastern bloc. The
schooling in science and math there has traditionally been focused on tangible
results.

From the year 1 onwards. Unannounced in-class tests used to be common. If you
solved the math problem you got good marks, if you didn't you get poor marks.
There was nothing judgmental about it. And you could not move into higher
education if you didn't have good marks.

Let me give you an analogy. Have you met the wacky person on a party who is an
awful dancer, but doesn't realise it? You know, like Elaine from Seinfeld.
Embarasing, obnoxious and feeling good about it. If it were a child, the
US&friends school system would tend to encourage them and telling them how
awesome they are, lest their feelings get hurt. An eastern block school would
just give them bad marks and let them move on...

(And in soviet russia, the party embarasses you!)

~~~
ewanmcteagle
We don't fully understand what the best approach is. Yes, we can see that a
lot of US education is poor but the US also generates a huge amount of
creative output and invention and it isn't all from immigrants. It's also not
clear that it would be good to penalize students so strongly (by not allowing
them higher education) if they did poorly in school. There are a lot of
developmental reasons why someone might do poorly in school and be successful
later in life. One of the strengths of the US system is that a person can go
onto higher education in one way or another or even go back to school when
old. It's possible that the US (by accident) may be doing something right.
Maybe it could be better but too much "better" may also cost something else.
Comparisons of education system based on academic achievement risk leaving
something out of their analysis.

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menloparkbum
These articles always take the same approach: letting us know how lack of
students graduating with science degrees hurts our culture and our
competitiveness.

These articles would be far more interesting and more of a catalyst for change
if they could explain how graduating with a science degree can benefit a young
person's life.

I don't mean abstract benefits like "problem solving skills," either. I mean
concrete benefits, like getting a job. For example:

Imagine you are 22 and just graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a
degree in Physics. You don't have the best GPA, but not bad, either. Let's say
a "B" average. You had to program some stuff in one of your classes, but you
aren't really a programmer. For whatever reason, you aren't going to graduate
school. So, you need to get a job. You'd like to stay somewhere in the upper
midwest to be close to your friends and family.

What kind of job do you apply to, and where?

~~~
RK
Is this where you suggest becoming a bum in Menlo Park (Wisconsin)?

~~~
menloparkbum
I changed some of the details but I know someone in the position I described
and I don't have any good advice. I was hoping perhaps the denizens of HN
might have interesting suggestions.

~~~
RK
Sell your "problem solving skills". It's completely vague, but it's supposedly
the essential skill you've learned (actually mathematical modeling, testing,
and data analysis, hopefully).

Apply to any and all entry level engineering type jobs and just try to
convince them that you are able to learn what they need as a physicist.

Better yet, go back to UW and get an MS in medical physics. They apparently
only need a master's and make decent money.

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msluyter
I think that if the article's "self-esteem/diversity education = bad" thesis
were valid, we'd see problems across the board, but we still seem to graduate
plenty of lawyers and doctors, both degrees that require self-discipline,
dedication, etc...

As someone else noted here, the problem probably has no _one_ cause, but
numerous interrelated ones. I have a couple of suggestions to add to the list:

a.) Standardized testing -- studies have shown that _extrinsic_ rewards tends
to dampen one's _intrinsic_ desire to do something. (In the study, children
given a reward for playing with blocks lost interest in them sooner than
students who weren't rewarded.) I can't help but wonder whether increased
focus on testing -- and the uninspired teaching that goes along with it -- is
undermining whatever sense of curiosity and wonder students might have about
various subjects. Now, one might note that other cultures (Japan, for example)
place even greater weight on testing than we do, but they're more culturally
homogeneous and may view science with more esteem. And in poorer countries, an
engineering degree might be one of the few paths into the middle class.

b.) The nerd factor -- Paul Graham has touched on this. It's always been
uncool to be a nerd or to be good at school. I was a loner who had few friends
in high school. Has this cultural pressure intensified?

c.) Distraction -- hell, I barely have the attention span to skim the
newspaper these days. I can't imagine what it must be like with added hormonal
turbulence. My cousins (in high school) visited recently and they were on the
computer checking facebook every 15 minutes. Is it simply becoming harder to
muster the long spans of attention it takes to solve a complicated math
problem? Because,

d.) Math is the cornerstone. If we made math fun and interesting, interest in
science would follow naturally. It saddens me that we seem incapable of doing
this.

~~~
MaysonL
I read textbooks (math, computers & science) for Reading For the Blind and
Dyslexic <http://rfbd.org> for a number of years, but finally got so
enraged/disgusted by the horrible quality that I gave up.

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me2i81
What a bunch of tripe. Summary: concern about self-esteem and diversity has
caused our students to become shiftless. Proof: because he said so.

~~~
donw
I'm not sure that's really the point, but I'd say that there is a heavy force
in education against science, math, and all other forms of critical inquiry.

One of the biggest reasons people would leave the Mathematics department at my
university was because they couldn't deal with being told that their proofs
were crap, and that they needed to get the quality of their work up if they
wanted to succeed.

It's not that the work was "too hard". It's that students couldn't get coast
on extra credit points and pure-opinion essays, like they had gotten used to
in high school and junior college. Finishing a complete trip through Math,
Engineering, or any of the sciences required actual effort, as well as the
ability to handle criticism, a skill that many students lacked after over
twelve years of education.

I also had a chance to see the other side of the coin, because my second
degree was in a foreign language. My Japanese degree consisted of nearly four
years of classes which required almost no effort whatsoever. Loads of extra
credit and students handing in work months after the deadline were the rule,
not the exception.

Many of my fellow students in the Japanese program were majoring in Asian
Studies or Asian History, and complained incessantly about the difficulty of
their classes. Even though their major fields were focused _heavily_ on Japan,
many of them couldn't even read at the equivalent of a fourth-grade level,
after studying the language for four years.

I asked many of them why they chose their majors, versus engineering or
mathematics, and the most common responses cited how harsh their previous Math
and Science professors had been, by not allowing extra credit, late homework,
and so on.

While this does not constitute any sort of proof or rigorous study, it
illustrates the point that our schools are far too lenient on students, and
lenient schools do not produce graduates who can survive the crucible-like
atmosphere of even an undergraduate science program.

~~~
donw
I think it's worth noting that I don't think the people in my Japanese classes
were inherently stupid, lazy, or anything else of the sort. Merely that
they've been spent years being indoctrinated to avoid criticism, and that the
end result of this has been them shifting to the easiest possible path through
college, rather than trying something _because_ it was hard.

~~~
jimbokun
One irony I find in this is that I studied Japanese (along with my Logic and
Computation major) because I thought it was hard.

Although, I wish I had some of the lenient teachers you describe :). I didn't
have much trouble with memorizing words, grammar rules, etc. But speaking and
listening real time I found to be quite a challenge.

And I can empathize with people who had trouble reading Japanese at a 4th
grade level :). Wasn't there an article on here a while back about the
difficulties of studying Chinese compared to other European languages? I
related to much of that.

~~~
donw
Dual-majoring in two separate fields is a challenge, no matter what you decide
to do, so as a fellow person who seems to kick his own ass too much, I salute
you. _grin_

Japanese is certainly harder for an English speaker than German, French, or
Spanish, but even so, it should only take a dedicated student about two years
to attain fluency in the language.

I was not a dedicated student, so I've got another year before I think I'll
pass the JLPT 1, bringing the total to about six years, which is (somewhat)
respectable, given that this is just a hobby.

But the majority of my classmates were majoring in the subject, with many
planning on going on to graduate school. Even so, most were utterly
incompetent, thanks to an education system that has taught them to avoid
effort. I think that, if some of these kids had had their asses kicked, and
gotten some real challenges, that they would have done some incredible work.

I actually feel sorry for my teachers; I could see that they wanted to push
the students harder, but that they knew that it just wouldn't work, and that
they had no power, because it was such a small department at the University.
So, if they ticked off too many people, they'd be out of a job. The head
teacher, who is a really sweet woman, has had a couple of nervous breakdowns
over the past year, partially due to the stress of dealing with her classes.

She's actually one of the motivations for my study tools project, because it
should help her out quite a bit.

------
anaphoric
I have to agree in large part with the author's lament w.r.t. American
students. There seems to be a new generation that is especially glib and
shallow. There are many counter examples of course, but in general it is no
surprise that they are drifting away from tougher fields. And the grade
inflation at U.S. universities, oh my...

In the final analysis it smells like decline. And yes I agree that it probably
has cultural roots.

------
otto
"Gates has a compelling point — largely because the shortage of Americans
holding or pursuing advanced degrees in fields like computer science defies
conventional market explanations. The average annual salary in the field is
more than $100,000. Meanwhile, we have a robust supply of high-IQ baristas and
college graduates with jobs that a generation ago would not even have required
a high-school diploma."

Where? My first offer was for 50k, increasing to 60k after six months in LA
County. Is this a PhD average salary?

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ojbyrne
When (and how) did the "Chronicle of Higher Education" become such a
superficial rag?

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time_management
On a cultural front, this has a lot to do with role models. The average
American grows up associating the pinnacle of achievement not with inventors,
professors, or entrepreneurs, but with CEOs, people of relatively mediocre
talent who manage to exploit private-sector bureaucracies and navigate their
way to the top.

US&A : A second-rate producer of scientists, but a world leader at producing
bullshitting rainmakers. Yay.

~~~
gaius
Nah, that's not true at all. The pinnacle of American/Western cultural
achievement is a media celebrity who is famous just for being themselves, e.g.
the "winner" of a reality TV show, an "it girl", a supermodel, etc. I don't
think the average person is really even aware of CEOs.

Incidentally, a CEO has probably worked for longer to get to where they are
than a given celebrity has even been alive, and probably makes a tenth as much
money.

~~~
jimbokun
"probably makes a tenth as much money."

Really? CEOs have been doing pretty darn well recently.

Put it this way: in most cases it is probably a CEO deciding how much to pay
that celebrity. I'm skeptical that the CEO is going to pay the celebrity more
than he's paying himself.

ARod is rich. But he's not in the same league as George Steinbrenner.

