TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=89TT2337> <link 93TG0023> <title> Sep. 11, 1989: A Crisis Looms In Science </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989 Sep. 11, 1989 The Lonely War:Drugs </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> EDUCATION, Page 68 THE FUTURE OF U.S. SCHOOLS A Crisis Looms In Science </hdr> <body> Without a drastic improvement in funding and teaching methods, the U.S. will soon fall behind By Susam Tifft Moon landings. The computer chip. Genetic engineering. The artificial heart. The achievements of American scientists are known and admired throughout the world. But whether American supremacy in research and technology will continue into the 21st century is far from certain. Thirty-two years after the Soviets launched Sputnik, setting off a frantic race to produce more and better U.S. physicists, chemists, mathematicians, aeronautical engineers and medical researchers, the scientific pipeline is drying up. The reason for this crisis: American science education is a shambles. Items: In an Educational Testing Service study of five countries and four Canadian provinces, American 13-year-olds ranked last in math and nearly last in science. In a survey of 17 countries published last year by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, U.S. ninth-graders tied with Singapore and Thailand for 14th place in science. In 1988 fewer than 1% of college freshmen said they intended to major in math, compared with 4% two decades ago. Physics and chemistry concentrators fell from 3% to 1.5%; 1 out of 3 Ph.D.s awarded in the natural sciences and engineering last year went to foreigners, compared with 1 in 4 a decade ago. Beyond these grim statistics lurks a web of equally disquieting trends: the imminent retirement of aging scientists, a shortage of new students because of the "baby bust," the homeward migration of many U.S.-educated foreigners and the burgeoning numbers of minorities and college-educated women--two groups that have generally shown less interest in science than white males. The result could be a critical shortfall of American scientists and mathematicians as the world becomes more reliant on technology. By the year 2000, the U.S. will need between 450,000 and 750,000 more chemists, biologists, physicists and engineers than it is expected to produce. The science deficit threatens America's prosperity and possibly even its national security. Economically, the nation will be unable to compete with rising technological giants like Japan, South Korea and West Germany. "After the war and Sputnik, we were the pre-eminent economic power in the world," says John Fowler, executive director of the Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education. "We aren't any longer." The U.S. may also be in grave danger if its scientists cannot match those of the Communist world in developing advanced weaponry and intelligence-gathering devices. How did America--birthplace of Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, Jonas Salk and Sally Ride--come to such a pass? One reason is lack of consistent financial support for science education. After Sputnik, funding for the National Science Foundation, the leading federal sponsor of scientific research, shot up from $18 million to $130 million in 1968. By 1982 financing for NSF's education division had plummeted to zero, and Congress had to fight to revive it over the protests of the Reagan Administration. Even now, federal support for the NSF has yet to match the level of the go-go '60s when measured in constant dollars. For fiscal 1990 the NSF is expected to get $210 million, of which $147 million will go for science and engineering education from kindergarten through high school. The amount does not begin to approach the magnitude of the problem. "We are devoting less than half the resources today to precollege educational support that we did at the post-Sputnik peak," says Bassam Shakhashiri, the NSF's assistant director for science education. "Yet the crisis is fully as great, if not greater." Some experts--though probably a minority--argue that funding is not the critical problem. "Much of the needed investment has already been made," says U.S. Secretary of Energy James D. Watkins, one of the most active education advocates in the Bush Administration. "We have the technology. We have the teachers, and we have the organizations that know what works." Fickle funding, to be sure, is only one reason why U.S. scientists are becoming a scarce commodity. Telegenic Carl Sagan aside, the image of scientists today is less lustrous than it was in the '50s and '60s, when men and women in lab coats were seen as national heroes helping the U.S. beat the Soviets to the moon. In the money-mad, me-first '80s, the country's best and brightest aspire to be bankers and lawyers, not chemists or rocket designers. Elementary and secondary schools reflect these trends. In inner cities and rural areas, dilapidated or out-of-date equipment is the norm. Last year, for example, chemistry students in Chicago's DuSable High School had to make do with a 1962 periodic table that contained only 103 elements, although six more had been discovered in the intervening 26 years. Capable science teachers are also difficult to find, in part because public school salaries are no match for the incomes to be made at Monsanto, Procter & Gamble, and Exxon. As a result, the men and women who do choose the classroom over the corporate lab are often poor role models for potential young scientists. According to the landmark 1983 study A Nation at Risk, half of the country's newly employed math and science teachers are not qualified to teach their subjects. Many worried educators and business executives have concluded that America's shrinking scientific capital is too important a problem to be left to state legislatures and local communities. "In most other countries, this is a national issue and dealt with at a national level," says Bryn Mawr physics professor Peter Beckmann. The American Association for the Advancement of Science agrees. In 1985 it launched Project 2061, named for the year that Halley's Comet will next come close to the earth, and assigned it the task of designing models for a national science curriculum. With the help of working scientists and 150 teachers, principals and curriculum specialists in six locations across the country, the A.A.A.S. and other scientific organizations hope to develop an approach that will blur the boundaries between traditional subjects such as geography and math. A basic premise of this campaign is that schools could teach science better if they emphasized concepts rather than rote memory. Today most children are subjected to unimaginative, mind-numbing approaches that cause them to decide by the fourth grade that science is not for them. "It's one of the earliest decisions they make in school," says Michael Minch, a chemistry professor at the University of the Pacific. In the absence of adequate federal funding or a national curriculum, private industry has been working with educators and scientists to boost the level of teaching. Companies have become increasingly alarmed at the number of workers, many of them high school graduates, who are unable even to add or subtract. "I have kids in ninth grade who can't read a ruler," says Rick Ivik, a middle and high school teacher in McFarland, Wis. Across the country, private businesses are involved in some 100 projects to improve the level of science and math instruction. In Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Renaissance in Science and Mathematics program, supported by firms such as ARCO Chemical Co. and SmithKline Beckman Corp., provides elementary school teachers with prepackaged science kits--small bags of familiar items, like a flashlight and a ball--to demonstrate heat, gravity and other concepts. Such hands-on experiences whet youngsters' appetites for learning. "Kids have a lot of natural curiosity," says Denis Doyle, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. "But somehow it gets squelched. That's a failure of instruction." For women and minorities, the failure has been acute. Although female science majors represent 15% of undergraduates on U.S. college campuses, women constitute only 11% of all employed scientists and engineers. Minorities, especially blacks and Hispanics, are less visible. In 1987 blacks earned only 2.6% of the bachelor of science degrees awarded in the U.S. and 1.8% of the science and engineering doctorates; Hispanics earned 2% and 1%, respectively. With white males expected to become a minority of the work force by the turn of the century, more women and minorities must be persuaded to enter these fields if the nation is to sharpen its competitive edge. Too often, however, women are discouraged from pursuing math and science before they even dissect their first frog. Many teachers and parents tell them, in ways subtle or direct, that they simply "can't do" physics or calculus. Women's colleges offer a striking exception to this trend. Nearly 27% of the undergraduates at Smith and 30% of those at Bryn Mawr major in science, compared with Dartmouth, where only 14.2% of the women elect to concentrate in the field. Some coed schools, however, are actively grooming female scientists. More than 35% of M.I.T.'s freshman class is now female; at Cal Tech the figure is 30%. Minorities, like women, are handicapped by low expectations. But they also suffer from declining federal student aid, a scarcity of minority faculty and inadequate academic preparation. In Houston, where 82% of the public-school students are black or Hispanic, Baylor College of Medicine has worked hard to bolster early science instruction. The school now offers 16 science programs for teachers and students. It also helps operate the country's first comprehensive high school for health professionals. Baylor's programs, and hundreds like them around the country, give some modicum of hope to those who fear for the nation's scientific competitiveness. But there are other reasons for cautious optimism. Since 1980, 42 states have toughened math requirements for high school graduation, and 36 states have raised science requirements. At least twelve states have established special science and math schools for gifted students. Washington too seems to be getting the message. Earlier this year lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced resolutions calling for a high priority to be placed on science and math education. Later this month President Bush will convene an "education summit," intended to open a national dialogue on ways to improve education. Science instruction is sure to be a major topic of discussion. However, such tokens of high-level concern will mean little unless they are backed up with concrete programs and hard cash. If decisions are not made soon to replenish the country's scientific stock, America may one day find that it is a caboose being pulled behind an international economy led by such countries as Japan and West Germany. "Science and math are the substance of this age, just as exploration and warfare were the substance of other ages," says William Baker, former chairman of AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories. "Science is the way to prepare Americans for the 21st century." -- Barbara Dolan/Chicago </body> </article> </text>