SOTU and Education

Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They’re investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became the home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer….

And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school. The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations. America has fallen to ninth in the proportion of young people with a college degree.

As the nation deals with unemployment and the lingering recession, we are all straining to see our way out. Obama’s SOTU suggested that, to him, the way forward lay in a renewed national focus on education in technology, science, and math. He pointed to the rapidly increasing economies of China and India, and their intense focus on math and tech fields beginning very early in life. He indicates that our lethargic math/ science/ tech education is partially to blame for the loss of jobs to other countries.

I am asking myself- is this the best solution? Or simply the most immediate? Do we want our nation to look like China or India? Or do we want innovators, entrepreneurs, forward thinking citizens, etc? (This is not to say that these do not exist in China/ India, only that the impetus is on the advancement of the sciences and with it the nation/ governing body rather than the advancement of the citizenry.) Does a nationalistic focus on the sciences resemble a type of servitude to a government?

I do not mean to be political about this, because I do not “follow” any party with particular vehemence. It’s just that it seems to me that the solution to our current “pickle” is far more complicated. We need to teach our students to think, to explore, to create. Some will choose science, some will choose art, some will choose business, and all be be of great inherent value. Isn’t that what freedom is?

Obama goes on to say…

…our students don’t just memorize equations, but answer questions like “What do you think of that idea? What would you change about the world? What do you want to be when you grow up?”

But I make my own observations (and I am no great thinker myself) of some of America’s most educated. Even they seem unable to deconstruct assumptions and examine why they think what they do. Then I read articles like this one about Rhodes Scholars, some of our nation’s very brightest. I think my point is that the answering of questions like “what would you change about the world?” are not what our teachers should be focused on. Instead they should be teaching students to keep asking these questions and keep examining what answers they may find.

Pushing the sciences does not teach this sort of engaged living. But teaching this sort of engagement could lead students into the sciences because it is their strength or talent, just as it might lead them to arts, or homemaking.

I guess it depends on one’s priorities. If you want a strong “nation” built on people, then focusing on the sciences is one way to beef-up the labor force needed to advance such an ideal. If instead you want a nation full of strong people, then critical thinking is, in my mind, a better route.

I know, I know…“How?”

We should all think on that….critically.

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