This is such an astonishingly bad article that I really don't even know where to start.
I saw this exact same type of drivel with the Japanese in the 80s and the Asian "Tigers" in the 90s. "Oh no! The Asians are growing at 10% a year - we're screwed!". Give me a break - it's like comparing a toddler to an adult - "Oh no! Little Timmy is growing at 10% per year - all of us fully grown adults don't stand a chance in hell against that kind of growth!"
> “between 2000 and 2008, China graduated 1.14 million people in the STEM, or Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, subjects; the United States graduated 496,000.”
> “by 2017, India will graduate 20 million people from high school — or five times as many as in the United States.”
Firstly - absolute numbers are pointless since both India and China are 3-4 times larger than America (~300 million to ~1+ billion each). Tell me per capita rates - then we're talking.
> We’re cutting back, while our children’s future competitors are plowing ahead.
What does that even mean?
India/China are third world nations - of course they are plowing ahead - they haven't even began to produce IP on the world stage yet. You're not comparing growth rates in ratio - you can't say a toddler is growing insanely fast - and then state that he is going to become a giant and "destroy us all".
> Enroll 40 million children in preschool, a 50 percent increase from today.
> More than double enrollment in higher education.
If I'm missing a leg - and I get a prosthetic - I do grow my ability to walk by 100% (as in I double it). But that doesn't mean anything - since everyone else already has two damn legs! My growth was just getting back to normal. China/India are like amputees who are slowly acquiring prosthetics. They are starting from an unfortunately low baseline and growing towards normal - they will not overtake us.
This is alarmist drivel written by the "won't you think about the children" crowd coupled with poor reasoning, improper understanding of the uncertainty present in future projections - 2030 for heaven's sake! - and a thorough misunderstanding of what growth really implies.
This faulty reasoning is also applied to "wunderkids", best exemplified by Peter Thiel's 20 under 20, and startup growth numbers: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104407
For whatever reason, there's nothing that gets Americans excited about doing better at something than framing it as beating the competition. So, if you want education to improve, the best way to do that is to say we need to do it better than country X. American education is, in my experience, pretty subpar, and it's good to try to improve it somehow. The article couldn't hold my attention long enough, though, for me to bother reading the exact how.
Rinse and repeat for military spending, exports, increasing energy production, decreasing energy consumption, etc.
It gets worse - there is context to the Chinese numbers he's conveniently neglected to mention. I'm not Indian, so I don't dare comment on the Indian side of things, perhaps someone can jump in.
China is currently undergoing tremendous backlash and loss of public faith in their postsecondary institutions. A glut of knowledge-based jobs, a remarkable increase in income over the past two decades, and the age-old Chinese affinity for academic achievement has meant the creation of countless "colleges" that barely deserve the name, existing only to bilk their students and hand out degrees of questionable legitimacy and worth.
Countless students are graduating now in China with "college degrees" and finding themselves woefully unemployable and a lot poorer to boot. Public sentiment is turning against these schools and demand is rising for government to step in and regulate quality.
To put it mildly, China's "200 million college grads" will be mostly way, way out to lunch. Let's compare the graduating rate of legitimate, quality institutions and we'll have a better idea of who's gonna kick whose ass.
Even with the quality problem aside, they still face the problem that other heavily industrialized Asian nations have faced already: the dramatic value loss in post secondary education when everyone holds a degree. Both Japan and Taiwan suffer extensively from this, as job requirements climb in response to universal and pervasive college education. Newspapers and websites are abound with horror stories of entry-level data entry positions requiring a masters for consideration.
No matter which way you cut it, using college graduation rates is a piss poor proxy for economic power or even employment.
I'm not Indian either, but I used to live there. Your description of China seems similar to the situation there. There are a plenty of terrible schools teaching "ethical haking" (i.e. windows firewall for dummies) or web design for a few thousand bucks.
Yeah, I'm surprised this article to the HN front page. I'm from India. After reading the first paragraph, I couldn't help think that the author was trying very hard to use some numbers to derive some concocted version of "The World is Still Flat". Yes, US has some problems, and they will still challenges going down the road. But India and China have a lot worse problems on gigantic scales. They can't really think of becoming world leaders until those problems are solved.
Most of this article seems to be directed at some proposal of Paul Ryan's that supposedly reduces food stamp funding by 17% over 10 years, and a weak attempt to link that to education with sketchy anecdotal evidence.
Lame class warfare article. The left is full of whining idiots like this.
Higher preschool enrollment will not help. Fewer split homes and dual-income families with kids is the only way to ensure kids get the nurturing they deserve.
I think Tyson is using hyperbole is what I think. National boundaries on science are completely arbitrary. He's also making the same damn mistakes that I listed in my above comment - growth measurement without understanding starting points and growth ratios will lead to faulty reasoning.
China/India are growing fast - but then again they are third world nations - they are starting from zero - grow 1 point and you've just doubled in a year - vs. mature America which is already running at 100% (how do you grow 100%? - you can't - you can only stabilise or fall).
I wasn't talking about Europe. But let's consider. What type of graph is it? Is it in ratio or is it absolute?
If it it is absolute - Europe has nearly double the population of America.
If it is in ratio - what were the comparative starting points?
Furthermore - how is he measuring the research growth? Just by the number of papers? What about the paper quality? What about impact? Are there duplications in translation? Are Europeans optimising for "publish" over Americans? What is really going on - nothing is explained about the statistics - and anytime that happens - I call bullshit - even on Tyson (no one is sacred).
Furthermore America has - and continues to be - the biggest spender on science the world has ever seen. Stating that they aren't "growing" as fast as everyone else is a false statement - they are already the largest by a wide margin (growth constrained by GDP).
It looks like Tyson is tweaking statistics to make a point - which feels very underhanded - but it's for a good cause at the very least.
> China could overtake the U.S. in the output of science publications as early as 2013 based on a simple linear extrapolation of current publication levels and rates of increase.
While this trend is noteworthy, the value of global science research relates more closely to the quality than the quantity of scientific publications. The quality of science research is challenging to measure and may only be known many years after research becomes available to the scientific community. One popular, albeit rough, measure of quality is the number of times one scientific research article is cited by other articles.
The research contributions of the U.S. and China are most affected by evaluating scientific publications by citations rather than article volume. During the period 2004-2008, U.S. science research accounted for 30 percent of global article citations, even though the U.S. only contributed 21 percent of article publications, as shown in the chart above. China accounted for just 4 percent of article citations, despite contributing 10 percent of article publications.
> Measuring growth only is what screwed up the world economy. I doubt that it’s very helpful in science.
Any country that had zero scientific research before 1990 and has a bit now, will score high on the growth map. Whereas a country already doing well research-wise will eventually hit the ceiling and won’t be able to grow anymore.
There are attributes of American society that enable the country to excel, and which have nothing to do with quality of public education. First, parents in general are less active in managing their kids' time than other countries. Kids have more leeway to determine what they do with their time. Many do slack off, or get into trouble, and sometimes it is serious. But many others find out what really interests them. They are not told they have to prepare to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer. They are more likely to be able to try everything and see where their mind returns to over and over. No cookie cutters or escalators.
Second, we have a different view of failure than many other nations. The relatively low social and legal consequence of failure allows Americans to stand back up, shake off the failure and try again. Think about how many restaurants there are and the number that will fail within a year or two. It is millions of failures annually. In Germany, for example, if a business does not notify its creditors 30 days before running out of cash, the president can go to prison. In the US, a business has no requirement to ever notify their creditors at all. We seem to see failure as a consequence of taking a risk, not as a scarlet letter. To never fail, is to never try.
If you combine the two, we have a society where people not only have a better opportunity to discover their passions, they feel much less encumbered by the prospect of failure than in other countries. Passion drives innovation, creativity, persistence and the competitive spirit. Can you imagine Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, Amazon, MacDonald's or any other 'huge success' without a passionate, risk-taking founder? Even Subway has such a story.
The product of our education system may not do as well on tests as their peers from other countries, but when they get into college and choose a major, they are more likely to be passionate and self-motivated and excel in their chosen curriculum.
Our educational system needs help, there is no doubt. Since my grade school days, funding for the arts has completely disappeared. Schools are run down to the point of being shameful. But the key ingredients that produce greatness are still there.
17 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 59.4 ms ] threadI saw this exact same type of drivel with the Japanese in the 80s and the Asian "Tigers" in the 90s. "Oh no! The Asians are growing at 10% a year - we're screwed!". Give me a break - it's like comparing a toddler to an adult - "Oh no! Little Timmy is growing at 10% per year - all of us fully grown adults don't stand a chance in hell against that kind of growth!"
> “between 2000 and 2008, China graduated 1.14 million people in the STEM, or Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, subjects; the United States graduated 496,000.”
> “by 2017, India will graduate 20 million people from high school — or five times as many as in the United States.”
Firstly - absolute numbers are pointless since both India and China are 3-4 times larger than America (~300 million to ~1+ billion each). Tell me per capita rates - then we're talking.
> We’re cutting back, while our children’s future competitors are plowing ahead.
What does that even mean?
India/China are third world nations - of course they are plowing ahead - they haven't even began to produce IP on the world stage yet. You're not comparing growth rates in ratio - you can't say a toddler is growing insanely fast - and then state that he is going to become a giant and "destroy us all".
> Enroll 40 million children in preschool, a 50 percent increase from today.
> More than double enrollment in higher education.
If I'm missing a leg - and I get a prosthetic - I do grow my ability to walk by 100% (as in I double it). But that doesn't mean anything - since everyone else already has two damn legs! My growth was just getting back to normal. China/India are like amputees who are slowly acquiring prosthetics. They are starting from an unfortunately low baseline and growing towards normal - they will not overtake us.
This is alarmist drivel written by the "won't you think about the children" crowd coupled with poor reasoning, improper understanding of the uncertainty present in future projections - 2030 for heaven's sake! - and a thorough misunderstanding of what growth really implies.
This faulty reasoning is also applied to "wunderkids", best exemplified by Peter Thiel's 20 under 20, and startup growth numbers: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104407
Rinse and repeat for military spending, exports, increasing energy production, decreasing energy consumption, etc.
China is currently undergoing tremendous backlash and loss of public faith in their postsecondary institutions. A glut of knowledge-based jobs, a remarkable increase in income over the past two decades, and the age-old Chinese affinity for academic achievement has meant the creation of countless "colleges" that barely deserve the name, existing only to bilk their students and hand out degrees of questionable legitimacy and worth.
Countless students are graduating now in China with "college degrees" and finding themselves woefully unemployable and a lot poorer to boot. Public sentiment is turning against these schools and demand is rising for government to step in and regulate quality.
To put it mildly, China's "200 million college grads" will be mostly way, way out to lunch. Let's compare the graduating rate of legitimate, quality institutions and we'll have a better idea of who's gonna kick whose ass.
Even with the quality problem aside, they still face the problem that other heavily industrialized Asian nations have faced already: the dramatic value loss in post secondary education when everyone holds a degree. Both Japan and Taiwan suffer extensively from this, as job requirements climb in response to universal and pervasive college education. Newspapers and websites are abound with horror stories of entry-level data entry positions requiring a masters for consideration.
No matter which way you cut it, using college graduation rates is a piss poor proxy for economic power or even employment.
Higher preschool enrollment will not help. Fewer split homes and dual-income families with kids is the only way to ensure kids get the nurturing they deserve.
Kicking in open doors and saying we should help poor people not go hungry and invest in education is what every politician does.
I wonder what you guys think about this?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=N...
China/India are growing fast - but then again they are third world nations - they are starting from zero - grow 1 point and you've just doubled in a year - vs. mature America which is already running at 100% (how do you grow 100%? - you can't - you can only stabilise or fall).
Unless you classify Europe as third world, the final map refutes you convincingly.
If it it is absolute - Europe has nearly double the population of America.
If it is in ratio - what were the comparative starting points?
Furthermore - how is he measuring the research growth? Just by the number of papers? What about the paper quality? What about impact? Are there duplications in translation? Are Europeans optimising for "publish" over Americans? What is really going on - nothing is explained about the statistics - and anytime that happens - I call bullshit - even on Tyson (no one is sacred).
Furthermore America has - and continues to be - the biggest spender on science the world has ever seen. Stating that they aren't "growing" as fast as everyone else is a false statement - they are already the largest by a wide margin (growth constrained by GDP).
It looks like Tyson is tweaking statistics to make a point - which feels very underhanded - but it's for a good cause at the very least.
More here: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/2012/08/22/...
> China could overtake the U.S. in the output of science publications as early as 2013 based on a simple linear extrapolation of current publication levels and rates of increase.
While this trend is noteworthy, the value of global science research relates more closely to the quality than the quantity of scientific publications. The quality of science research is challenging to measure and may only be known many years after research becomes available to the scientific community. One popular, albeit rough, measure of quality is the number of times one scientific research article is cited by other articles.
The research contributions of the U.S. and China are most affected by evaluating scientific publications by citations rather than article volume. During the period 2004-2008, U.S. science research accounted for 30 percent of global article citations, even though the U.S. only contributed 21 percent of article publications, as shown in the chart above. China accounted for just 4 percent of article citations, despite contributing 10 percent of article publications.
Source: http://www.globalsherpa.org/research-science-technology-inte...
> Global science publication authorship –
USA - 21%
China – 10%
Japan – 6%
Number of Patents per year -
USA – 121179
China – 3303
Japan – 46978
2011 Research and development spending in billions, US dollars
USA – 405
China - 153
Japan - 144
Sources:
Attribution: http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/282676/detail/
Number of patents year; 2010 USPTO: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/cst_all.htm
Royal Society Global Science authorship: http://www.globalsherpa.org/research-science-technology-inte...
Spending: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_a...
> Measuring growth only is what screwed up the world economy. I doubt that it’s very helpful in science. Any country that had zero scientific research before 1990 and has a bit now, will score high on the growth map. Whereas a country already doing well research-wise will eventually hit the ceiling and won’t be able to grow anymore.
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/neil_degrasse_tyson_on_th...
> many of our children are literally too hungry to learn
here http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html we learn that
> Approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2—19 years are obese.
So SNAP in its current incarnation is not as clear-cut of a panacea as Charles M Blow suggests. Even USDA happily reports http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/retailers/eligible.htm that
> Soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream are food items and are therefore eligible items
> Energy drinks that have a nutrition facts label are eligible foods
Second, we have a different view of failure than many other nations. The relatively low social and legal consequence of failure allows Americans to stand back up, shake off the failure and try again. Think about how many restaurants there are and the number that will fail within a year or two. It is millions of failures annually. In Germany, for example, if a business does not notify its creditors 30 days before running out of cash, the president can go to prison. In the US, a business has no requirement to ever notify their creditors at all. We seem to see failure as a consequence of taking a risk, not as a scarlet letter. To never fail, is to never try.
If you combine the two, we have a society where people not only have a better opportunity to discover their passions, they feel much less encumbered by the prospect of failure than in other countries. Passion drives innovation, creativity, persistence and the competitive spirit. Can you imagine Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, Amazon, MacDonald's or any other 'huge success' without a passionate, risk-taking founder? Even Subway has such a story.
The product of our education system may not do as well on tests as their peers from other countries, but when they get into college and choose a major, they are more likely to be passionate and self-motivated and excel in their chosen curriculum.
Our educational system needs help, there is no doubt. Since my grade school days, funding for the arts has completely disappeared. Schools are run down to the point of being shameful. But the key ingredients that produce greatness are still there.