[Vision2020] Foreigners in Math, Science, and Engineering

[david sarff]

Hi Jerry,
It seems there is also a correlation here to anti risk and liability 
pressures.
As I understand it, even the once common after school box boy job has 
changed by pushing the age up for those who might have to handle actual box 
knives.
Children in schools must use wiffle balls. The reasoning makes sense to some 
degree, but life is inherently risky.
Its sort of nuts to hyper protect children until they are 18 and then let 
them lose to a full world of risks...and then they are lost, or rather, 
behind the rest of the world.  It seems that many hands on experiences 
society avoids are out of pure risk control. How much leverage do insurance 
groups have against the education system?
Can anyone expand on this?
Thanks
Dave


>
>Hi Nick,  Chinese engineers are not close to the quality of American 
>trained engineers as of yet.  However, China is short-circiuting the 
>process as Stanford U did when it started.  It is buying whole 
>universities/ setup's etc.  My oldest son is working on a $500,000,000 
>project that transfers a whole school to a country flush with dollars.
>
>In the meantime, our best colleges of engineering  are finding applicants 
>with great test scores who are floundering in engineering.  Folks from MIT, 
>even UI and WSU are seeking the answer to why this is occuring.  They have 
>collectively come to the conclusion and are recommending hands on-- 
>learning by doing  at K-12 as the answer.  At MIT I am told by one of the 
>folks who works in admisssions,  that they will take a farm boy with hands 
>on experience over a student that has no experience.
>
>So, Dewey was correct and the present k-12 is not working well.  It is not 
>a matter of the simple call for money.  With MSD at 168 days of 
>instruction, there is no time for a traditional university lab setting.  No 
>university would conduct chem lab the way MSD or most others do.  Ideally, 
>the school year would be 200-220 days.  That does not mean sitting in a 
>classroom.  Afternoons could be in lab, art, music, skills training, etc.  
>Classroom teachers would be well served since prep time would be greater. I 
>know of a college prep all girls school in Seattle that builds a complete 
>airplane each year and has outstanding SAT's with an average from 1410-1450 
>consistently.  In dental education, we are seeing great academic scores 
>with little correlation to clinical skill at graduation.  Manual dexterity 
>is the only positive correlation.  Dental Schools are now starting to 
>recommend industrial arts prerequisties in such activities as metal  
>working, machining, wood crafts, art, etc.  jerry
>
>
>At 10:20 PM 1/16/07, Nick Gier wrote:
>>Greetings:
>>
>>It is a song of praise that I note that Chinese, Indians, and Russians, 
>>mainly because of their solid credentials, are taking positions in our 
>>universities that could be occupied by Americans, if they received enough 
>>math and science in our schools and if they worked hard enough to earn 
>>PhDs in these fields.
>>
>>Correctly for population, the Chinese graduate ten times more engineers 
>>than we do.  We cannot compete unless we transform our educational systems 
>>and our increasingly anti-intellectual culture.
>>
>>Nick Gier
>>
>>"Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to human 
>>affairs."
>>--Ralph Waldo Emerson
>>
>>"Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings who 
>>represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."
>>  --Mohandas Gandhi
>>
>>"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be 
>>discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part 
>>by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the 
>>interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual 
>>life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and 
>>art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts." 
>>--Max Planck
>>
>>Nicholas F. Gier
>>Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
>>1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
>>http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm
>>208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950
>>President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
>>http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/ift.htm
>>
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>=======================================================
>  List services made available by First Step Internet,
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>                http://www.fsr.net
>           mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
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