Don't panic just yet,I'm sure the Prez has an affirmative action type of plan to bring students up to par.

Perhaps more Black and Hispanic studies courses will do the trick.

Those darned Asians, I just don't know WHY they test so high in science and math! Perhaps we should study THEIR cultural sensitivity courses. ;-)

I guess that explains why so many journalists and followers of the MSM swallowed the global warming nonsense.

You say "...compound in Idaho." like it's a bad thing.

hu needz sience when you got XBOX n Halo to play all day?

Talk about history repeating itself! In case no one remembers, the US tackled the "Sputnik moment" with a bunch of German scientists. In fact, the entire space race was driven by German scientists in the US and the Soviet Union. Maybe the best way to beat the Chinese is by using their best and brightest against them. Their incentive is the opportunity to get rich, and live in a free country. That's a very powerful incentive.

Have no worry America. You still have a well educated and motivated army of young people educated in gender studies, Ebonics, feminism, black studies and other important thingies that I am very certain will elevate America to the top.

Sure, the kids are failing at math and science and reading, and probably history and home ec and phys ed too, but they feeeeeeeel good about themselves. That's gotta count for something.

What do you expect? When you tell your kids that evolutionary biologists, geologists, and physicists are clueless, and the earth is only 6,000 years old. When you tell 'em that climatologists, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians are all wrong, and CO2 is completely harmless. When you tell them that doctors and biologists are all part of the eeevil Big Pharma plot to take their money and poison them through vaccines and drugs, instead of giving them "successful" treatments like homeopathy.

Given the general anti-science attitude amongst adults, how can you possibly expect the children to show any interest?

George Will has a good article on the subject over at WaPo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/26/AR2011012605580.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

Alex- Allowing them to fall in step with hysterical, politically motivated movements won't help our children, either. Most of the people voicing opposition to AGW are doing it for practical reasons, not religious reasons.

Quote:

“Low-income and minority students are now the majority in America’s public schools."

Well no kidding...just quickly thinking I can come up with TWO count'em TWO very good reasons for this.

#1. Any parent worth a damn with two extra cents to rub together will put their kids in a private school where the stupid unions don't have a strangle hold on the use of funds and agenda.

#2. Home schooling is also a viable option in the usa and most of those children tend to be white and or Christian .

As others have alluded to here...

The real question is: with respect to 'global competitiveness', how do U.S. (and Canadian) students rate in the Humanities?

I personally breath in 21% O2 and expel 18%O2 air
figuring I breath out the differance of 3%CO2 approximately , and will continue to do so for sometime I hope. therefore adding to the miniscule amount of yes harmless CO2 in the air. If you have ever stopped to look how big a surface area trees need to leach a living from the air you can see how little there is in the atmosphere. Look at carboniferous aged trees and see how small the surface area is then and you can see we are at a CO2 low. in the great scheme of plate tectonics we are a meer blip.

That's asking the wrong question!

If American kids were asked about "diversity", a.k.a. vanilla and kinky sex, they'd lead the world.

@ Alex, When you tell 'em that socialists and empire building bureaucrats are all wrong, and CO2 is harmless and necessary. There, fixed part of it for you.

Shawn, Kathryn and coach, exactly.

Education problems in our culture (I am assuming Canada is facing essentially the same problems) is not a governemnt or system problem, but a cultural one. The problem is the parenting these kids recieve.
I am a researcher by nature, so when I started impregnating my wife with daughters I also started reading a buttload of stuff on raising kids.
Intelligence is not a predictor for success, self discipline is. If you can teach you kids self discipline, they will work through what they aren't smart enough to grasp within 2.8967 seconds.
That's why there is a large difference between the races. White kids are brought up different than inner city black kids and hispanic kids and Asian kids. Not all cultures are equal. Two of the groups I just mentioned are more likely to have a father involved in their life, and it isn't the ones flunking out of school.
Poverty is another indicator, most poor people are poor for a reason. Lack of work ethic, life skills and a father/husband contributes to most North American poverty.
If our culture changes and more kids are raised better and raised by a father and a mother, test scores will go up, whatever the government does to address the problem (Probably despite what the government does). If our culture remains the same, or continues to degrade at the current rate, test scores will go down.

coach: "Allowing them to fall in step with hysterical, politically motivated movements won't help our children, either. Most of the people voicing opposition to AGW are doing it for practical reasons, not religious reasons."

Yyou can object to the political/alarmist nonsense without rejecting the science. Unfortunately, the vast majority of your cohorts have no interest in making such distinctions - they simply reject the whole package on ideological grounds.

I'm a current university student. Just for the heck of it, a few weeks ago I counted up the numbers of students taking the intro gender studies (by the way they renamed it from women's studies -> women's and gender studies -> gender studies) in comparison to some other intro courses - all first year, two semester foundation courses.

It was around 400 students, about the same amount that take accounting, more than architecture, around the same as economics - I forget the rest.

I should have kept the numbers.. and someone really ought to count this stuff up and put it online. Taxpayers may be interested in knowing how much of their money is spent on radical indoctrination in the peace and conflict studies, women's studies, regional studies, sociology, psychology depts.. etc. Taxpayers are essentially being forced to sponsor a movement designed to destroy western civilization.

Alex, stop being a troll.
There are so many directions in which to point indignant fingers- teachers, unions, curricula, parents, students.
The will must be there to succeed. Why is there no will? If union demands, apathy and ideology get in the way, it's no wonder other countries will eat us alive.

I read recently that immigrants and recent grads in science and engineering aren't loving the US. 70% leave the US. Maybe things aren't going to improve but you could axe nice.

But of course, how could they be proficient in anything???

Liability rules the world. Everything needs a waiver, safety device and approval from the government. Special interest groups march in the streets demanding more class time for sensitivity training. There is only 24 hours in a day, hello, is anybody home?

That's why I am spending thousands building a home lab for the kids. One day I will buy a farm with a couple barns and put a machine shop, chem lab and a gym in there - education system can't be trusted with washing a car, needless to say educating children. Everything reeks of laziness, cowardice and incompetence.

For a few seconds I thought that headline referred to University of Saskatchewan students. Made sense to me.

urmommieisacommie at 2:35 PM, I don't see why we can't target taxpayer funds to those colleges that actually produce graduates that find jobs in the useful fields that they have trained for soon after graduation. (Engineering, medicine, pharmacy, etc., etc.) It seems to me that funding put toward more spaces for those types of programs would more than be repaid to "society". We'd actually get some real, concrete benefit from the investment. We should also divert more of that money to the technical schools that produce the grunts that fix things and connect things and keep things running in tip top shape.

Alex "What do you expect? When you tell your kids that evolutionary biologists, geologists, and physicists are clueless, and the earth is only 6,000 years old. When you tell 'em that climatologists, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians are all wrong, and CO2 is completely harmless. When you tell them that doctors and biologists are all part of the eeevil Big Pharma plot to take their money and poison them through vaccines and drugs, instead of giving them "successful" treatments like homeopathy.

Given the general anti-science attitude amongst adults, how can you possibly expect the children to show any interest?"

So according to Alex, if you question the facts you are not behaving properly? Our knowledge in science is based upon questioning accepted "facts" and disproving or reinforcing theories. If you are not curious, and do not question you are not human, you are a lemming and you deserve to follow the pack over the cliff. Evolution tells us to believe that we were all dust and eventually transformed into humans. Tell me how is that done scientifically? I want facts and facts alone. If two geologists disagree, which one is wrong? If a physicist tells you about string "theory" and "the Big Bang theory" why do they bother calling it theory if it is already fact? Exactly how old is the earth give or take a thousand years? Without the actual passage of time as a measuring stick how can you quantitatively state without prejudice that our measurements are correct? Climatologists? Pseudo science at best and corrupt ponzi scheme at worst. We cannot predicate three days of weather but yet we can predict 50 - 100 years in advance? The previous predictions and models have already shown these people to be at best terrible scientists. Your list goes on and on as if there is no debate on any scientific matter and to oppose any advanced theory is heresy.

To conclude, money corrupts, Carbon Dioxide is plant food, No one know everything, and there is one born every minute. What time were you born?

Louise 3:18PM

I agree that there is a general lack of scientific literacy in the would but I have to ask you how exactly would utility be defined? There isn't much graduates in things like archeology, history, religious studies and so on can do to "repay society". In fact I'd imagine it would be damned near impossible to get a job like that and that's too bad. Nevertheless I think it is beneficial for society to have people who are concerned with, knowledgeable of and interested in such topics.

Not knowing the intricacies of university funding allocation I wouldn't know but I presume that soft studies are already not as generously funded as departments that can produce lots of juicy juicy patentable material.

re. Alex @1:07 - see Kate? It's all your fault.

"Yyou can object to the political/alarmist nonsense without rejecting the science."

Alex- For one thing, there's no distiction between the science and the politics. There are more true scientists raising doubt about the IPCC report, than actually signed on to it. If my kids DIDN'T see this as bad science, I'd feel I've done a poor job of parenting.

How many "progressive" eco-activists signed a petition to ban tap water? Did they question it? No. They gleefully signed the petition only to discover their error later.
If conservatives/Christians/flavour-of-the-month boogey-men are anti-science, can someone explain this anomaly?
Scientifically, of course.

Texas Canuck>

"You say "...compound in Idaho." like it's a bad thing."

No kidding! I'm suffering from compound envy.

Coach, I think you will find that in addition to the German scientists like Von Braun NASA took masses of Canadian aerospace scientists, machinists, engineers and others from the funding collapse of the AVRO Arrow. Whole departments moved to the US as I worked with some of the guys that stayed here in Toronto.

Don't let Pastor Alex turn another SDA blog into another Atheism sermon.

The best part of western societies collapse is that we can just blame it all on white heterosexual males and be done with it.

Everyone will soon be happily living in their ghetto’s, getting their equal justice with the full knowledge that white man put them there.

Well maybe if it was taught in Ubonics the marks would go up. The dumbing down to the lowest common denominator is not yet complete.

These problems won't improve without a solid foundation in history.

What does China the new leadership of the world, Obamba's new master's think about Black people –

Some benign everyday examples:

http://shanghaiist.com/2008/07/18/the_racist_games.php

http://dimewars.com/Video/Racism-Against-Black-People-In-China-Rears-Its-Ugly-Head---She-Is-Half-Chinese.aspx?bcmediaid=c2c882b1-67d6-4395-9d76-b73909c5ab08

Third world countries are poor because of the culture of the people who live there. When we become populated by third world people we will become a third world country.

Twenty years ago on my first day of collage, studying business, we were given our rota and my god they were going to spend a week re-teaching the youngens how to recite the Alphabet. No I'm not freaking kidding, I was none to pleased but on the upside they also gave the youngens a refresher course on how to count to 100. Two decades later they're even dumber thanks to our Nanny Nation and teachers marginally smarter than a house plant.

minuteman-I agree. Putting bad apples in with good ones does not turn them into good apples.

Since it's a Bloomberg article talking about US students:

Take education for example. It’s easy to declare the need for better education, but will throwing even more money at the issue really help? As the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner notes, “the federal government has increased education spending by 188 percent in real terms since 1970 without seeing any substantial improvement in test scores.” If you want “innovation” and “competition,” then support school choice initiatives and less federal control over our state and local districts.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/sarah-palin/obamas-message-to-america-the-era-of-big-government-is-back-now-help-me-pay-for-/494999858434

I haven't been posting here that long, so maybe someone else can tell me: Has Alex ever demonstrated the faculty of reason, or of good judgement in any of his posts? Occam's razor pulls one to at least one of 2 possible conclusions: the unfortunate Alex is willfully perverse and wishes to harm the public good in his behavior here, or he is a moron.

Just asking.

"Majority of U.S. Students Lack Proficiency in Science, National Test Shows"

That's because they are tested on what they should know and not on what they do know.

See the Onion "Are tests biased against students who don't give a shit"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RrreVthWRY

john @ 800

that's it john, the tests are all wrong

problem is when I had to hire people, "iodiot" stood out in too many cases, and a test had nothing to do with it, attitude did tho

let's hope the science they don't know is climate science.

M at 3:47 PM: ..."I have to ask you how exactly would utility be defined?"
=======================
Dollar for dollar. A pharmacy graduate dispensing prescriptions down at the local drug store is not only contributing to society, paying back, so to speak, but the money we spent educating her has given us exactly what we paid for - a person trained in knowing how to prescribe life-saving chemical compounds without poisoning us.

On the other hand, what does a Ph. D in sociology give back in terms of service with a value attached? And archeology? Sure, it's interesting, but what does digging up old settlements buried in sand over in Iraq, or wherever, do for your life?

I would say society's reward for the money spent is pretty thin, especially considering the number of archeology grads who don't ever land a job in the field the taxpayer spent money on providing him/her access to. You can make an argument that we do need taxi drivers, but do they have to have doctorates? That's money down the hole.

Personally, I'd rather use that money to train a few more medical doctors.

And "gender" studies? "Native" studies? Gimme a break. Those newer "disciplines" are nothing more than highly successful re-education camps, reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge. What skills does a graduate of such programs have to offer that has the potential to replenish the cash drawn from the public teat? To the extent that they do get jobs, it's more likely to be one funded by the taxpayer. Double dippers, those ones.

Louise 9:13

I never said we needed more sociology, gender or native studies and I specifically didn't mention them. I do think having people like historians or theologians and people like that are useful though. Just like when the US blew up the twin towers in controlled demolitions [just kidding]. After that we had very few people who understood the Middle East.

It's really a question of where you place your values in a way. We could have a society of "do-ers" as it were but I think the past is important and still has things to teach us, if only to ground our hubris. In a way I'm skeptical of science, not in some kind of populist anti-intellectual animus but rather because you can't really make any normative claims from science. I don't put my faith in it shall we say? So having deep thinkers even if they're poorly paid produces value to a society. Not that a lot of humanities isn't full of fluff but I think my point remains valid. ;)

small c conservative>

"..Alex is willfully perverse and wishes to harm the public good in his behavior here, or he is a moron"

A little of both.

Liberalism is a mental disorder. Do some light research on the subject and you will have Alex, his non-arguments, circle debating, errand fetching requests, and general disruptions nailed down pretty quick. His peculiar fetish though is as a practicing preacher of Atheism, the so called “non-religion” which he takes very personally. Just more hypocritical weirdness from another typical lefty lost in their own fantasy world.

From your link --
// The results were unveiled ahead of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address tonight, which is expected to focus on the theme of competitiveness and include concerns that the nation’s educational achievement lags behind students globally. U.S. 15-year-olds ranked 25th among peers from 34 countries on a math test and scored in the middle in science and reading, while China’s Shanghai topped the charts on an international assessment released Dec. 7. //

Indeed. Perhpas I should repost my comment on the SOTU speech, which was just what the hoped for "sputnik moment" referred to. Incidently, the sudy mentioned is
the 2009 PISA [Program for International Student Assessment]
This year it focussed on reading, along with math & science. Over all results included [among 34 OECD] Korea-1; Finland-2 ; Canada-3; USA-14; France-18; UK-20; Israel-29.
The test include schools of all types.

>>hu needz sience when you got XBOX n Halo to play all day?
>>Posted by: grok at January 27, 2011 12:57 PM

I think Halo is a pretty cool guy, eh kills aleins and doesnt afraid of anything!

I have no doubt that the study is probably fairly close to the real situation.

But I have to ask, what job are you going to get in the USA or Canada right now where a strong knowledge of maths and science is required? Even doctors never use calculus or physics once they get out of school, and how much chemistry does one need to know when asking "would you like fries with that?"