
America is losing another generation to science illiteracy - shrikant
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2011/08/23/america-is-losing-another-generation-to-science-illiteracy/
======
mnemonicsloth
America is falling behind in the race against China and India.

America was falling behind in the race against Japan in the 1980s.

America was falling behind in the race against Eastern Europe in the 1950s.

America was falling behind in the race against the Russian communists in the
1930s.

America was falling behind in the race against the Germans in the 1920s.

And in the late 1800s, America created a universal public education system.
Why? Because Irish and Italian immigrants were building Catholic schools that
offered an education to anyone who wanted one. So American Protestants began
to worry that if they fell behind, Catholic priests would brainwash America's
children into willing accomplices to an insidious Vatican plot to dominate the
world.

I am not kidding. This was published in Harper's in 1875. The artist is Thomas
Nast, inventor of Uncle Sam, (the contemporary) Santa Claus, the Republican
elephant and the Democratic donkey:

[http://www.harpweek.com/09cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon-
Large....](http://www.harpweek.com/09cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon-
Large.asp?Month=May&Date=8)

ETA: Obviously, American education is not perfect. But it would probably be
better if we could resist the temptation to panic about it.

~~~
Alex3917
"America is falling behind in the race against China and India."

While it may be bullshit that America is currently falling behind China and
India, the fact that the majority of American adults are not functionally
literate is a serious problem. Americans can never ever achieve any real
scientific literacy at their current reading literacy levels. It's flat out
impossible, and the fact that the authors of this article are complaining
about scientific literacy out of context shows you that they don't know shit
about the causes of the various problems within our schools.

Hell, roughly half of American adults are so illiterate that they can't even
read the one sentence instructions on their medications. That's why you have
stuff happening all the time like this:

"A two-year-old is diagnosed with an inner ear infection and prescribed an
antibiotic. Her mother understands that her daughter should take the pre-
scribed medication twice a day. After carefully studying the label on the
bottle and deciding that it doesn’t tell how to take the medicine, she fills a
teaspoon and pours the antibiotic into her daughter’s painful ear."

To quote the most recent report on health literacy, "90 million adults with
limited health literacy cannot fully benefit from much that the health and
health-care system have to offer."

Despite all the media jokes about people researching their own diseases, the
fact is that only roughly 10% of American adults are even literate enough to
read popular articles about medicine, and only ~3% are able to actually
understand the academic literature. When they say that 90 million adults can't
participate in the medical system, they aren't talking about adults who can't
research their own symptoms and medications and help the doctor on
collaborating on a diagnosis and treatment; rather, they're talking about
people who literally can't even do what their doctors tell them to do. Roughly
25% of all doctors visits result in the patient not doing what the doctor
tells them to do, and a large percentage of the time it's because they
literally can't understand the simple instructions the doctor is giving. We
spend roughly 1.2 trillion per year on the health system, which means that up
to (but probably significantly less than) 300B of that is going right out the
window due to poor adherence, especially since those with low adherence have
good outcomes roughly 26% less of the time than those with high adherence, so
they end up costing a lot more money in the longrun. I forget what percentage
of low adherence is due to literacy/education, but I know that it is one of
the largest factors.

The fucked up thing is that "among those scoring in the lowest level on the
prose literacy scale [1st-ish grade level], only 29 percent reported they did
not read well and only 34 percent reported they did not write well. The
majority of those performing at this level perceive their reading and writing
skills to be adequate. Among those in the next highest level [4th-ish grade
level] the results were even more surprising, as only 3 percent said they
couldn’t read well and 6 percent said they couldn’t write well (Kirsch et al.,
1993; see Chapter 2 for more information on the NALS)."

If you ever actually go into a real science classroom you'll see that if the
teacher actually tried to teach science it would be a complete waste of time.
Virtually none of the kids would actually be able to understand any of the
lessons, let alone transfer them to real life situations. And while it's true
science textbooks and the way science is taught is terrible, the vast majority
of students aren't going to become scientifically literate no matter how you
try to teach it.

~~~
wisty
The USA is special, when it comes to demographic statistics. I've heard the US
is often bimodal - there's one distribution for people who live in reasonable
areas, and people who live in places where there is generational poverty, gang
violence, drug dealers everywhere, no jobs, and so on.

OK, immigrants also do a little poorer, especially informal immigrants. And
some states are wealthier than others. But this is all stuff that other
countries deal with as well.

The US seems to allow large areas of their cities to become extremely poor.
Maybe it's a hold-over from the semi-apartheid days before the civil rights
act, when there were black areas and white areas; I don't know.

Maybe the solution is for local councils to try and mix up the communities
more, encouraging low-income housing to be dispersed throughout the city.
Yeah, it sucks to have a few poor families in the neighbourhood, but it's
better than having whole neighbourhoods of poor people.

~~~
w1ntermute
> The USA is special, when it comes to demographic statistics. I've heard the
> US is often bimodal - there's one distribution for people who live in
> reasonable areas, and people who live in places where there is generational
> poverty, gang violence, drug dealers everywhere, no jobs, and so on.

> OK, immigrants also do a little poorer, especially informal immigrants. And
> some states are wealthier than others. But this is all stuff that other
> countries deal with as well.

Just stop beating around the bush with PC euphemisms and say what you mean -
"blacks and Hispanics are much worse off than whites, to the point that they
have their own set of statistics. The states that have lots of them are
significantly worse off than ones who don't."

> The US seems to allow large areas of their cities to become extremely poor.
> Maybe it's a hold-over from the semi-apartheid days before the civil rights
> act, when there were black areas and white areas; I don't know.

> Maybe the solution is for local councils to try and mix up the communities
> more, encouraging low-income housing to be dispersed throughout the city.
> Yeah, it sucks to have a few poor families in the neighbourhood, but it's
> better than having whole neighbourhoods of poor people.

Yeah, that doesn't work in America. Unlike those "other countries" you
mentioned, we have virtually unlimited space, and the minute (poor) blacks or
Hispanics move into a neighborhood, you get white flight all over again.

~~~
Alex3917
Race doesn't really correlate much with literacy beyond SES. The reason why
it's important is that the children being born in the U.S. today are over half
'minority', so it's important in terms of being able to easily understand the
longterm trend.

~~~
yummyfajitas
On the contrary, SES (or at least income, which is easy to measure) explains
very little of racial gaps in education.

[http://www.umich.edu/~rdytolrn/pathwaysconference/presentati...](http://www.umich.edu/~rdytolrn/pathwaysconference/presentations/craig.pdf)

<http://www.jstor.org/pss/2963200>

~~~
Alex3917
"Together these research sources demonstrated that although SES exerted
statistically significant direct and indirect effects on reading, oral
language skills – especially oral language comprehension skills – were a much
stronger influence on reading achievement outcomes."

In other words, you want to choose a definition of SES that predicts how the
parents interact with the children before age five, as it's not (mostly)
income or race that creates the achievement gap. E.g. just separate the
parents into welfare, working class, or professional, like Hart & Risley do in
Meaningful Differences. I think in order to understand how SES effects the
achievement gap, you need to choose a definition of SES that is broad and
qualitative rather than quantitative and limited.

------
csomar
This is my opinion in education, and it tends to differ than the author one:
You don't need to teach science in primary schools to have a science literate
population. Teach them to read, only.

Why: Because reading is key. What I learnt on my own reading books in one year
was more than what I was taught in all these primary years. They have helped,
but even if I didn't take these classes that wouldn't be a roadblock.

How I envision a successful education:

1\. Language is priority: Reading, writing and communicating. Dedicate long
hours for reading and daily writing. This is better than science or math. I
need to be able to read, and also communicate effectively with others (forums,
chat...)

2\. Math: Math is also important. Dedicate a good amount of hours for a solid
math education.

3\. Others: It includes science, geography, history... What does the average
person need of information to be relatively literate? Give it that amount of
information; only. The bare minimum so he can understand things like nuclear
radiations, ADN, therapies...

And then? Let people decide. Science is not for everyone. There is a writer,
designer, business analyst... They don't need science, but they are in need in
the society. Let everyone decide what he wants to be. You allowed him to read
and communicate effectively. Don't worry about what will happen next.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Science education probably does a lot to change people's view of the world.
After all, chemistry and biology teach people that they're made of chemicals
and cells that, as far as we can tell, act deterministically (or randomly), or
at least cells act autonomously. How is that less important than trigonometry?

~~~
MarkPNeyer
deterministically or randomly?

neither of those could be farther from the truth.

~~~
bluedanieru
The universe isn't deterministic? You've solved this? Please share!

~~~
thehotdon
There's a man in the clouds jiggling us around with puppet strings, obviously.

And the man in the clouds, well, I guess he's controlled by a mystic turtle in
outer space...

~~~
bluedanieru
And you've discovered that determinism implies an omnipotent creator/deity?!
Truly we are breaking ground here on HN that the best philosophers and
scientists throughout history have grappled with for tens of thousands of
lifetimes!

~~~
MarkPNeyer
quantum mechanics is neither deterministic (due to quantum superposition) nor
random (we can make predictions).

i don't see how this is controversial or silly.

~~~
ajuc
I don't know which meaning of random you have in mind, but we can make
predictions about random "things".

If I understand correctly if we measure qubit that is in 10/90 superposition
of 0 and 1, we have 0.1 and 0.9 chance of it becoming 0 and 1 respectively. We
can predict, that it would probably be 1, but it is still random.

Or am I wrong?

------
tokenadult
Upvoted because the issue is important and there are intelligent people to
discuss the issue here. I regret that the article's key factual statement is
"Testing does not motivate engagement, passion, creativity and innovative
thinking," without any evidence to back that up. There is no suggestion in the
article where to look around the world to find an example of a school system
with differing practices that motivate engagement, passion, creativity and
innovative thinking. There is a huge research base on science education (it is
considered an important national priority in many different countries) all
around the world, but the submitted article doesn't discuss what good practice
looks like.

The TIMSS study is another international study to look at for information
about science education in various countries. Most studies of education policy
suffer from the same defect of not having a truly experimental design:

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

that is, most of those studies don't have random assignment of students to
treatment and control groups, but rather look for correlations between
academic performance and other observations, with nothing in the study design
being able to give assurance of causation.

Science textbooks used in the United States have long been very lousy,

<http://www.textbookleague.org/>

and as I have had a chance to see science textbooks from other countries,
particularly Taiwan, China, and Russia, I hazard the guess that improving
textbooks in the United States would help more learners learn science more
successfully. General improvement of teaching technique along the lines
discussed in another current HN thread

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2960085>

would probably also be helpful, but the policy incentives needed to improve
teacher performance are not easy to come by in the United States.

After edit: To answer a question asked in another comment below the submitted
article, scientific illiteracy is an important public policy issue because
scientific illiteracy in a democratic republic results in voters voting for
stupid policies because they don't understand science. The reason to know
science isn't just to get a job, but to be a more thoughtful citizen and
voter.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_To answer a question asked in another comment below the submitted article,
scientific illiteracy is an important public policy issue because scientific
illiteracy in a democratic republic results in voters voting for stupid
policies because they don't understand science._

If this is the case, why don't we strip the scientifically illiterate of the
right to vote, or perhaps give their votes a lower weight? Similarly, we could
rejigger our immigration policies to raise the average level of scientific
knowledge (e.g., deport all low skill immigrants, eliminate family
reunification immigration, and give immigration preferences to engineers).

If our main purpose in increasing education is to improve the signal/noise
ratio in the electoral process (rather than preparing people for more
productive jobs), it seems far cheaper to reduce noise than to increase the
signal.

Note: I'm not advocating this policy, I'm merely asking why it isn't a cheaper
way to achieve the stated goal.

~~~
jerf
For the right to vote: Because rather than bringing science into politics, it
would bring politics into every facet of science. Funding large amounts of
science via politically-based processes has done a good job of that as it is
but this would make it orders of magnitude worse.

And what happens when the official government position on a bit of science,
upon which your voting rights rest, turns out to be wrong because science, in
its capacity as an ever-changing best-current-snapshot of our best guesses has
moved on? Oh, and it turns out it is in the best interests of some interest
group to keep it wrong just the way it is, because otherwise it might let
entire battlefield states sway the other way in the next major election
because more of the "wrong people" will now accidentally get that question
correct on the next voter survey. Not to mention creating the ultimate
"teaching to the test" situation for the voters.

Interesting question, BTW.

For immigration: Isn't that actually our official, legal policy? I don't think
we officially import low-skill immigrants. We unofficially do it, wink-wink
nudge-nudge.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Because rather than bringing science into politics, it would bring politics
into every facet of science._

Simple solution: stick to non-controversial science. There is plenty of it,
after all. Focus on atoms and molecules, electricity, archimedes principle,
newtonian motion/gravitation, things like that.

It is quite possible to test basic understanding of science without delving
into areas where political/religious/tribal beliefs cause cognitive dissonance
(e.g., vaccinations, racial disparities in intelligence, evolution).

Even better, one could merely test the ability to follow scientific inference
on the basis of hypothetical experiments. That would make it more difficult to
"guess the teacher's password".

 _I don't think we officially import low-skill immigrants._

The majority of immigrants to the US come in under family reunification visas.

[http://www.migrationinformation.org/usfocus/display.cfm?id=1...](http://www.migrationinformation.org/usfocus/display.cfm?id=122)

~~~
jerf
I stand corrected on immigration.

I thought of that approach to the science problem, but I just don't think you
can hand the big "disqualify voters _en masse_ " stick to the political world
and not expect them to use it. It absolutely would start out as you describe,
but the pressures to exploit the non-scientific views of any of the major
political orientations would just be too strong, and any attempt to fix
_those_ problems with further rules cause their own problems. (The first one
that leaps to mind is "kick out any question that 60% of the population
doesn't get right", but I can still play a lot of nasty political games within
that constraint.)

------
Astrohacker
There is an enormous amount of information about science readily accessible to
anyone who wants to learn it. Perhaps many people just don't care about
science. If that's true, forcing them to learn it probably isn't going to
accomplish anything.

~~~
mkr-hn
I haven't found this accessible information. Can you point to some?

~~~
Astrohacker
There are tons of free textbooks available. Google for physics or math
textbooks. There are also tons of free lectures available on YouTube and Khan
Academy.

~~~
mkr-hn
I see pages of commercial textbook companies on Google, and videos wont help
non-visual learners.

~~~
jerf
Last I knew, science is not currently very kind to the old "styles of
learning" theories, which turned out to be Yet Another Educational Theory Spun
From Whole Cloth by "educators" unqualified to be spinning such theories. (I
give it a "Yet Another" appellation because this turns out to describe nearly
every educational theory you've ever heard. The standards of rigor in the
field of education study could stand to be improved quite a lot.)

~~~
_delirium
I can doubt some of the more specific claims, but it would be a fairly
remarkable result, unlike almost any other area of human activity, if there
weren't _some_ sort of person-to-person variation in the [(amount person X
gets out of a textbook) - (amount person X gets out of a video on the same
subject)] function. The alternative would be the hypothesis that learning
ability varies in a 100% correlated manner (people who are more skilled at
picking up physics from physics textbooks are exactly as more-skilled at
picking up physics from physics videos, and vice versa).

Even if you ignore the visual/textual/etc. distinctions, they have other
properties as media; for example, textbooks are easier to use in a random-
access/skimming manner than videos, and can be more easily taken outside or
marked up. It could just be my concentration, but I also can't get through
watching a YouTube video, while somehow I have no trouble reading through a
book.

------
perfunctory
> A quick look at the countries where children outperform the U.S. on the OECD
> Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) shows that none of
> them do anywhere near the amount of testing that is done in the United
> States.

I am not American so please tell me if it's just a prejudice but looking from
outside, Americans seem to be very reluctant to learn from other nations.

~~~
seagaia
Well, I wouldn't generalize everyone living in America into a bucket of
"Americans" - although I'll just assume that's not what you meant.

Certainly there is a good portion of Americans unwilling to learn from other
nations or change or care about anything else, yes, they exist. But there
exist Americans of the other kind, too. And this doesn't just apply to
America, it applies to any group of humans, really.

~~~
danssig
True, but honestly it applies to Americans more so than a lot of other
nations. It's only to be expected when, starting at a very young age, one
constantly hears about how the US is "number 1" (what ever that means).

I mean, look at the Olympics. The US wasn't winning the most golds anymore so
the news media actually _changed the metric_ to use "most overall medals" so
the US could be number 1 again.

------
nazgulnarsil
Linear extrapolation of trend X.

Horrifying conclusion!

seriously do the commenters on HN have to debunk an article of this format
every day?

------
gmonk
If you can't read or have a basic working knowledge of mathematics, what's the
point of science?

~~~
jballanc
Biology is one of the most dynamic, rapidly advancing fields of science today.
Can you name an important equation in biology? Quite a bit harder to do than
for chemistry or physics...

It's also worth noting that the people who generally tend to be anti-science
in America are typically not anti-law-of-gravitation or anti-atomic-theory-of-
matter types.

~~~
pewpewlasergun
I would argue that biology without equations is just as useless as physics or
chemistry without them. Yes, its interesting to know about evolution and how
cells work, but to interact with a cell or guide evolution in any meaningful
way you need to know the equations that describe flux over a membrane or
evolutionary equilibrium. Just like its interesting to know the order of the
planets and that rubbing a balloon against your head will make your hair stand
up but if you actually want to send something to space or use electricity you
need to add the equations.

The advancement of biology is driven by the development of algorithms and
equations and to suggest that it is somehow less dependent on them than other
branches of science does it a disservice.

~~~
rdtsc
I disagree if you mean "usage" to be "direct usage".

My guess would be that most "equations" in biology curriculum are not really
related to biological or physical processes directly, but rather to
statistics, experimental setup, i.e. data interpretation and manipulation.

Now, of course, stats are very important and are probably basic knowledge is
key in reading and critically analyzing any scientific paper. So I am not
criticizing that. However my opinion is that mathematics is not as critical to
biology as it is critical for physics.

------
DanielBMarkham
Something was bugging me about this article. After writing 3 potential
comments, then deleting them all, I finally got it.

This is formulaic.

I have seen this article, or radio stories like it, over and over again over
the past few years. As I understand the situation, in the United States we
decided to have common tests for reading and writing -- you cannot manage what
you do not measure -- and since then, the people being measured have written
dozens or hundreds of variations on this theme.

The formula goes something like this: pick a topic not covered by the tests.
Could be music, history, science, or civics. Demonstrate how poorly students
are doing in this area. Demonstrate (or just give a good rant) about how
important this area is for the future of our society. Complain about teachers
having to teach so much to the tests and how bad that is. Argue that getting
rid of the tests would free up time and resources so that we could regain some
of what we desperately need.

There are many logical problems here. First there is the problem of limited
resources. We must make funding decisions and choose some things to emphasize
over others. Governance is about making choices. Second, and it amazes me that
this isn't obvious, unless you can read and write effectively your choices in
life are severely restricted. A good reader and writer who shows an interest
in science, art, underwater basket weaving or whatever? They can go learn
more. They can choose a subject, dive in, and self-educate. Somebody who is
functionally illiterate but loves Beethoven? Aside from a kid with nice
tastes, whose life is probably a tiny bit happier, we're not accomplishing
much. Reading and writing are multipliers in a way other subjects are not. If
you don't like or agree with that position, fine. Then choose something else
you want to stress. Then measure it. Waving your arms around about how
important each and every subject is does not constitute a system of making
choices.

I am especially befuddled with this argument about teachers teaching to the
tests. It's as if we are using the way teachers act as some kind of rationale
for justifying the testing -- which is exactly backwards. Obviously we've had
teachers create literate students over the past several hundred years without
testing, and they didn't teach to the test. Why do we assume that because
teachers are acting a certain way now that it is in their best interests to do
so? Maybe most systems of teachers just don't know how to educate kids, and
focusing on testing is the only thing they've got? If so, then we need to
improve education systems, not eliminate the measurement. You don't make
people better basketball players by taking away the scoreboard. I have no idea
why this reasoning passes as informed logic in this debate.

My opinion as an interested observer is that once we actually starting
measuring how poor of a job we do, all hell has broken loose. Not
surprisingly, there's a huge push to stop measuring. This is not a good idea.

Yes, science literacy is a great thing. Let's work on general literacy first,
then take whatever resources we have left over and instill a love for science.
General literacy will get you a lot farther than scientific literacy will. (I
also have some serious questions about what passes for scientific literacy
which I'll save for another day.)

~~~
Someone
Counterarguments:

1\. Kids probably know more today when they leave school, but they must. The
bar has been raised significantly since say a century ago. What worked a
century ago is insufficient now; there aren't any jobs for the illiterate
anymore.

2\. I think teachers used to optimize a different function than they do now.
Currently, they try to minimize the number of fails; the curriculum is
designed to allow say 90% to pass, so teachers direct their attention at the
20%-30% range of students. With fewer repercussions on the absolute number of
fails, teachers used to sort-of optimize for maximal average improvement. That
meant that they would help all kids, and take pride both in getting the less
bright to pass exams, and in getting bright kids to rise above themselves.

#2 is pure opinion, but I do not think it is completely besides the truth.

------
meow
Considering most of google's revenue comes from ads, may be English Language
Arts (ELA) isn't such a bad thing :)

------
aphexairlines
Well, does a strong science education pay off for the student as a career
path?

~~~
serge2k
Does a strong english education?

It's a fundamental tool, but by itself it is pretty worthless. You can say
anything but will have nothing really to say.

------
Hawramani
While it seems intuitive that a more scientifically 'literate' population is
'better', is 'scientific illiteracy' really a problem?

To me it would be a problem if there were lots of openings for jobs that
require scientific skills _without_ there being anyone to fulfill it. As
things stand, to me it seems that there are tens, if not hundreds, of
qualified people for every possible job opening, whether in academia,
government, or the private sector.

~~~
bluedanieru
What makes you think they are qualified? Certainly there are a lot of
unemployed folks, and there is plenty of work for qualified people to do, but
that doesn't necessarily back up your point (in fact, the very issue at hand
is that it doesn't).

~~~
Hawramani
For the claim that 'there is too few qualified people in the US' to be a
scientific claim, it needs to be falsifiable. In other words, what evidence do
you need to see, in the future, to convince you that yes, now there are enough
qualified people? What data-points will you use?

My entire problem is that all of the data-points I've seen used so far are
extremely questionable, and there doesn't seem to be enough people questioning
them.

The fact that US students have dismal scientific knowledge to a naive person
suggests, but in reality in no way proves, that the US has, or will one day
have, a shortage of scientifically qualified people.

I hope there are enough intelligent people who are uncomfortable about making
the leap of faith from 'US students have bad science grades' to 'the US will
experience a shortage of scientifically-qualified people'.

Any redesign of the education system needs to be grounded in science, not
fashionable rhetoric.

~~~
bluedanieru
>I hope there are enough intelligent people who are uncomfortable about making
the leap of faith from 'US students have bad science grades' to 'the US will
experience a shortage of scientifically-qualified people'.

How about the leap of faith from "there are heaps of scientific and technical
jobs for which no qualified candidates can be found" to "science education in
the US sucks?" And also the fact of increasing reliance on immigrants to fill
those roles when a suitable local (i.e. native) doesn't appear?

Seems falsifiable to me.

edit: basically what I was getting at is that your original statement: "As
things stand, to me it seems that there are tens, if not hundreds, of
qualified people for every possible job opening" is false afaik.

------
nomdeplume
We must be doing something right since we have Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.

~~~
jballanc
When I was working at Apple the number of foreign-born engineers I interacted
with was greater than the number of American-born engineers. If you added
together foreign-born with 1st generation Americans (i.e. one or both parents
were foreign-born), that number was _far_ greater than the number of
"purebred" Americans.

Not sure about Google and Microsoft, but it does say something that 50% of
Google's founders were foreign born.

Anecdotally, in graduate school I have noticed a troubling trend. 10 years
ago, foreign students would come to the U.S. to get advanced degrees and then
stay in the U.S. to get good paying jobs. Today, many of those students are
returning to their home countries for work...

In other words, the U.S. is riding a wave that was started by the educated
class in the 1940s and 1950s and was increasingly supported by the immigrant
class in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. When the immigrants stop coming, if the
educated class is found to be missing...then, yes, the U.S. is screwed.

~~~
mahyarm
The US sure doesn't make it easy for those graduates to stay!

~~~
Natsu
I know what you mean. A friend of mine is trying desperately to stay, but
unless she can get a job that will sponsor her, she'll get tossed out after
her studies are finished.

