Reply #36: Which country are we behind in math and science as measured by ...

[ieoeja]

... real-world accomplishments (not grades)?

Richard Feynmann, head of the computer staff at Los Alamos during the creation of the Bomb, was invited to Brazil sometime thereafter. He was astonished to find high school students using the same Physics text books that US students did not use until college. And they were scoring just as well on the standard tests.

Why, Feynmann thought, were there few Brazilian physicists of note? So he devised new tests which he gave to a group of Brazilian high school and college students, and to a group of US college students.

The US college students scored pretty much the same on his tests as they had on the standardized tests. The Brazilian students, both high school and college, failed miserably. Many of the Brazilian students made it obvious why when they complained that they had not been taught any of those problems in their classes.

Neither had the US college students. But neither were they exposed to the standardized test problems before taking those tests. The colleges in the US were teaching their students physics. The high schools and colleges in Brazil were teaching their students the test. All they had to do was memorize the answers without ever having to know what those answers meant.

So show me some evidence of the US falling behind in math and scientific real-world accomplishments, and I might listen to you. Until then, maybe you should ask yourself why, if our education is so terrible, we are STILL dominating the fucking world?

The answer to that last is called "liberal education". Something the Rightists wish to destroy and have spent inordinate amount of time and money propagandizing against to the point where even all our liberal politicians don't even challenge it any more.