By susan

November 4, 2005 1:23 PM | Link to this

scott, this is a remarkable piece and much of it is on point. as a student in education we discuss the process alot, what works and doesn’t. i would factor in one other component … parents. having worked with educators in Oakwood (a well-respected system) in the area of career planning, i can vouch for the good faith struggle that teachers experience when they are confronted by parents who not only want the kids to get the preferred grade but also want them to ‘enjoy’ their teen years. the reality is that mastering the challenges of this material require a great deal of hard work or extraordinary intellectual gifts, maybe both. most teens aren’t in systems that require the time and commitment to master the material. the most recent report examining this, ‘Rising Above the Storm,’ suggests we need to do a better job educating in science and math. It doesn’t address the obvious issue that you can still hire 5 chemists in China or India for the same as one here. It doesn’t encourage kids to slog through the stuff with reduced expectations for their future. in the meantime, we are trying to figure out how to get philosophical perspectives, like intelligent design, into the science curriculum. (if it’s so intelligent, why cancer, why avian flu, why dennis miller?) one other thing, there are engineering programs that brag about their wash-out rate. i wonder what it would be like if they would work a little harder to get that kid that needs just a little support through the roughest spots. would that be so bad? i think waiting for k-12 to get its act together may lose a whole generation of potential engineers. we may wish to prepare for the day that we look out at the class of engineers and see massive pacific rim representation. certainly, we will have jobs for them when they graduate … either here or there.