What’s wrong with science and math education in America?
The 1960s: A nostalgic decade for America marked by memories of JFK, the Cold War, Martin Luther King, Woodstock, landing on the moon, Vietnam and more. It’s also a time when America’s education was the standard by which all other nations were measured. In short, it was the best in the world.
Now jump to modern day. According to Newsweek Magazine (Foroohar, 2010) America no longer leads the world in education. Finland leads with South Korea just behind.
But America is surely ranked third, right? Wrong, it’s Canada. In fact, America isn’t even ranked in the top 10 for education around the world. So how did America slip from valedictorian to close to the bottom of the class? It actually may not be as complicated of a question as it seems.
How to measure education
First, it’s important to understand how education is ranked globally. Measuring education transcends literacy rates; it encompasses high school graduation rates as well as high school test scores of reading comprehension, math and science. These three subjects are the basis for a nation’s educational ranking because they are the most decisive factors in a nation’s ability to compete in the global economy.
What’s wrong with America?
In the 60s, when the United States had the best education in the world, South Korea was recovering from the Korean War and had a national wealth on par with Afghanistan. In America, 17-year-olds have made almost no progress on math scores in the last 30 years (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2010). In other words, test scores and performance levels have flat lined in American schools while scores and performance in other countries have skyrocketed. So what’s wrong with the American educational system?
Perhaps this is the incorrect question to ask. Maybe it’s better to ask what countries like Finland and South Korea have done to improve their education so drastically in a relatively short amount of time.
To start, it should be noted that family circumstance plays a big part on an individual’s education. It seems the wealthier the family, the better educated its children are. This creates a gap in learning between different classes in society. By age 10, kids with professional parents are about three years ahead of their poorer counterparts (Mourshed and Whelan, 2010).
To fix this gap, Finland has ensured that every child completes basic education and meets a rigorous standard. In addition, if a student is struggling in Finland, he or she will receive one-on-one attention from his or her teacher while on average one in three Finnish students receives help from a tutor.
South Korea and Finland are both known for the quality of their schools, which largely depends on the quality of teachers. The United States could put more effort into training teachers. Studies have shown that kids with effective teachers learn three times as much as those with the least effective teachers (Mourshed and Whelan, 2010).
Lack of inspiration
Celebrated superstring theorist Brian Greene believes that the lagging science and math scores in the United States can be attributed to inspiration. He believes that, “to create more scientists, mathematicians and engineers, people first need to be inspired” (Marder, 2010). He cited an example of his father teaching him about atoms at a young age as inspiration for his scientific curiosity. His diagnosis included the fact that scientists have used the power of thought to figure out how stars shine, how black holes form and much more, but when it comes to science education, students are forced to learn the mundane equations without focusing on the wondrous ideas, which leaves science lifeless.
Although no clear answer to fixing low test scores of American high school students exists, top performing countries are implementing things that America could adopt including more individualized attention and bridging the education gap between the poor and the rich. Inspiration could also play a large part in boosting math and science scores amongst the youth. After all, it would be quite amazing to see the best scientists and engineers on the cover of magazines at supermarkets instead of celebrities.
References
Foroohar, R. (2010, August 23). The best countries in the world. Newsweek, 31.
Mourshed, M, & Whelan, F. (2010, August 23). How to close the achievement gap: The world's best schools offer important lessons about what works. Newsweek, 35.
National Assessment of Educational Progress. (2010, September 15). The nation’s report card.
