This week we talk with Vivek
Wadhwa, columnist for Business Week, Wertheim Fellow at the Harvard Law
School and executive in residence at Duke University. Wadhwa will be discussing
his recent article (The
Science Education Myth) regarding science education in the United States.

Quotes from the show:

“It’s commonly accepted that the U.S. is falling behind other countries
because our children score badly on math and science test scores and so on.
The National Academies has sited this data; the President alluded to it in
his last State of the Union address in 2006, the U.S. Department of Education
talks about it. Everyone seems to accept the fact that the U.S. is falling
behind and there is something wrong with our education system...I had a suspicion
this was wrong.?
“We actually added up the numbers, and we found that the U.S. graduates
a comparable number [engineers] to India, and the Chinese numbers are bogus.
Basically they’re published from the Chinese government and you can’t challenge
it; the Chinese numbers are high, but there are huge quality issues in both
India and China.?
“The U.S is in pretty good shape. Maybe there are a few small nations,
like Latvia and Singapore that come in first place, but those are small countries
and you can’t compare a population of the size and the diversity of the U.S.A.
with countries like Singapore, which are small and have a different system
than we do.?
“Almost every indicator that they looked at showed the same trend – that
the U.S.A. was improving; it wasn’t getting worse. And that no other country
in the world was improving like the U.S.A. was.?
“If you look at what spurred the sciences, it was Sputnik. The Manhattan
project employed 100-200,000 engineers. Whenever there’s been a crisis, the
U.S. has responded to it by putting together national programs. The fact is
that global warming is a critical national program. The fact that we’re consuming
oil and burning up the world is a critical threat to the U.S.A. There are
so many diseases that need to be eradicated. Instead of spending another 100
billion dollars on Iraq, why don’t we take 100 billion dollars and spend it
on doing constructive research on eliminating diseases, of improving the world.?
“I think the U.S. really has to get its act together. We have to create
the demand for engineers and scientists, and create the excitement, and create
the motivation for our students to move into these fields. Just graduating
more doesn’t solve any it just creates unemployment. But create a demand,
create an excitement, is how you solve one of the problems.?

Links:


The Science Education Myth, by Vivek Wadhwa from Business Week

Assessing the Evidence on Science and Engineering Education, Quality, and
Workforce Demand, by
B. Lindsay Lowell,
Harold Salzman; report by the Urban Institute

Rising above the Gathering Storm; report from the National
Academies Press

State of the Union Address by the President; January 31, 2006

U.S. Must act to Close Dentist Gap from Pure Pedantry

A Silver Lining to Our Science Struggles by David Epstein, from SEED
Magazine (article
as podcast)

In Science Classrooms, A Blast of Fresh O2 by Natalie Angier
from the New York Times
Math and
Science Education from NPR's Science Friday; November 9th, 2007