This is a serious issue, and thanks for sharing the article. The president of the Mathematical Association of America, David Bressoud, was at the hearing mentioned in the submitted article calling for more programs to encourage women and ethnic minorities to participate in higher education in math. This is an ongoing concern of professional organizations of mathematicians in the United States.
But just as a possibly illuminating contrary view, the controversial article by Philip Greenspun
may be on point here. Maybe there are better opportunities for young people who are being recruited into math and science than the opportunities provided by math and science careers.
(Note on personal background: my oldest son, who is in the process of applying to colleges when he doesn't plan his start-up, intends to major in math and computer science, and has taken upper-division courses in each subject already. But he is not part of the population groups mentioned in the submitted article.)
>At a briefing session organized by Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, a Texas Democrat and chairman of the House education committee's higher-education subcommittee, three mathematics and science professors advocated institutional programs that had succeeded in attracting and retaining black, Hispanic, and American-Indian students.
What would happen if our government attempted to specifically attract and retain white Americans in math, physics, and engineering? Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea, since that is the group who historically excelled in those fields and probably have the most interest in that area, while affirmative action type programs seem to hinder the careers of minority students who end up not being able to handle the rigor of engineering, maths, law school, etc.
>UCLA professor Richard H. Sander published an article in the November 2004 issue of the Stanford Law Review that questioned the effectiveness of affirmative action in law schools. The article presents a study that, among other things, shows that half of all black law students rank near the bottom of their class after the first year of law school, and that black law students are more likely to drop out of law school and to fail the bar exam. The article offers a tentative estimate that the production of new black lawyers in the United States would grow by eight percent if affirmative action programs at all law schools were ended, as less qualified black students would instead attend less prestigious schools where they would be more closely matched with their classmates, and thus perform better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_Unite...
Those groups tend to score way below average on standardized math tests. So it doesn't seem like a stretch to suggest this project could end up just pumping up the number of "scientists and mathematicians" by watering down the talent level of the whole field (and doing nothing to increase the number of Ed Wittens, Andrew Wiles, Terry Taos, etc, whom I suspect are a lot more important than 1000 mediocre scientists who scraped by on affirmative action).
Quite right. Just because group X is underrepresented in Y does not imply that group X is a readily available source of Y's.
It's distinctly possible that the cheapest and most effective way to increase the number of scientists would be to recruit more white/asian american men. Without looking carefully at the numbers it is impossible to say.
Note that while the causes of lower intelligence of some groups are disputed (environmental vs genetic), the implications for recruiting scientists and engineers is the same regardless of the cause.
Thanks for the reply. Now what you haven't shown here is whether the actual persons who do score high enough to major in math (by the way, is there any evidence how high that is?) have been exhausted in current practice, or whether some (from whatever ethnic group) are turning to other careers. In other words, even if a decade from now there is still an ethnic score gap at high-school-graduating age, there may be some underutilized talented young people among the highest-scoring individuals in the lowest-scoring groups who could beneficially be encouraged to study math. Answering this question takes actual numbers rather than just mean scores--especially because the distribution of scores may not be the same in each ethnic group.
As the other participant who replied to your comment (the parent to this comment) mentioned, causation of the group score gap is still very unclear. This year, the gap is what it is, and it may not be the best use of societal resources to try to boost college-age participation in math classes among students who leave high school scoring near the median standard score level on the SAT. But it might be very worthwhile to systematically improve math instruction in the elementary grades
and that could have a lot to do with narrowing the group gap, that is raising the total number of students in various ethnic groups who learn enough math through high school to be ready to thrive in math courses in college.
From the link you kindly shared:
"Mr. Finn, a former education official in the Reagan administration, said he expected the results of the SAT and ACT -- another college entrance exam -- to add fuel to a movement among the nation's governors and school superintendents to come up with consistent national standards for high-school curricula."
And from further on in the same article:
"Noting the gap in achievement between lower-performing minority students and the general population, College Board officials said those who lagged tended to go to school in poorer districts with fewer resources. 'As a country, we must do better providing students of every background access to the best education,' Mr. Caperton said."
Yes, I think there are a currently a lot of laggard high schools--and I shouldn't have to tell any participant familiar with American society what kind of neighborhoods the worst high schools are concentrated in--that do a bad job of teaching math, so it's high time to improve math teaching throughout K-12 schooling in the United States.
At the risk of being downvoted, let me rant: We need to reinstate hard-assed, traditional, back to basics curriculum. Period. Get rid of teacher credentialing systems and touchy-feely bullshit, and have kids start memorizing formulas, diagramming sentences, and reading classics again. And have them do A LOT of homework. And quit telling them and their parents that the primary thing is to have fun and feel satisfied -- it isn't.
Then we won't have a goddam brain drain -- it is an embarrassment to the American people that we can't educate ourselves.
I have a somewhat different kind of suggestion for what would most improve math teaching in the United States. See some of my favorite articles on the subject by mathematicians
for the idea that proper mathematical education includes learning certain facts by heart through practice, but also includes a lot of flexibility of thinking and making deep connections between seemingly unrelated subjects.
My only concern is that we have to come up with a plan that can be explained to the 100,000 or primary school teachers in the USA. Rarefied curriculums are like rarefied programming languages -- they don't "take", or they just distract. We need a Python, not an ML to explain to folks, and, honestly, "drill the crap out of your students and test them regularly" is easy to explain in a staff meeting... and would be a vast improvement over the BS that passes for education these days.
I agree with you in principle but not in practice. Yes, feel-good bulshit is bad, yes, people should study more, etc. I just don't think you would really like to breed a country full of tied-down people trained to death to repeat and worship whatever it is they learned at school.
I tend to think of myself as intelligent enough, and I know for sure that I would never survive school with drilled exercises and a classical education (I find most of the classic authors dull and naive; latin is an overrated language; the greek philosophers, specially, only sound smart when read with tons of allowances like one reads the bible). Also, any sort of education focused on getting exercises and drills "right" without discussion will only breed conformists and people without creativity.
I don't know. The way it sounds to me is that there is a worship of some sorts of classical culture and discipline that I find deplorable. What I would change in american schooling would be: more geography, real history (without turning famous people such as the founding fathers or Ben Franklin or Abe Lincoln into mythological images and instead studying them in their socio-political context with all flaws included), less emphasis on pseudo-cultural non-academic activities (debating club, etc) in admissions office.
On July 26, 1948, President Truman issued Executive Order 9981. At which time he famously said that if anyone had a problem with it he'd '...see their resignation on his desk in the morning.'
EO 9981 was not simply a political move. Our military strategists saw during WWII that it would be decidedly foolish for us to continue fighting wars with one hand tied behind our backs.
Around this same time, a wave of statutes swept the nation that made it illegal for most Americans under the age of 16 to drop out of High School. Do not suppose that these things are coincidental. They are common sense steps that had to be taken to address the new realities that were rapidly developing in the post WWII world.
The world is today, again, undergoing a process of rapid geopolitical and social change. Strategists deep in the bowels of the American Government have looked into the future, and again, they find themselves wanting to change what they see looking back at them.
FACT: China has more high school honors students than the United States has high school students. That's right. If you take every high school student in the US, the poor students and the good students, China has more students than that in ONLY its high honors programs.
Look, the global economy will be the battlefield of choice in the future. We do not intend to charge onto that battlefield with one hand tied behind our backs.
The only thing wrong with this article, in my opinion, is that it excludes the recruitment of white Americans. We SHOULD be making sweeping policy changes to address these issues. Immigration is not going to get us out of it. I work half the time in Ningbo or Paris myself. How long before Indians and Indonesians figure out that the smart CVs are flowing to China not California? They are not blind.
I feel like Truman, if you have a problem with being more aggressive with American students with respect to instilling the disciplines of math and science, feel free to leave the country. It is past time that we dealt with this.
I agree that this should be inclusive of everybody, regardless of ethnicity or gender. The goal is to just have more stem majors. The more diverse the better.
First, this isn't about affirmative action--this isn't about establishing quotas. It's about funding programs that will help attract and retain minority students in stem majors. If you don't understand that key difference, let me know. And if you don't understand the value of such programs, then you fail to realize what it will take for any company or country to compete globally.
Second, there are too many factors at play to just dismiss a student's abilities to start the next google, for example, by just assessing standardized test scores--especially, to assess his/her potential by how well on average his group/ethnicity performs. parse_tree, go back to my first point.
Such programs, I don't think, are intended to have immediate results. The goal is to retain as many people who are interested in stem majors as possible. Yes, but I think the biggest impact will come as a result of their kids having much more exposure and such people understanding the value of such programs that they reach out to others.
Finally, I think a lot would be best spent at an early age--early in a child's development. If you think a person's abilities are tied solely to genetics, you're wrong. Nurture plays an important role, and I've seen enough evidence to support that. Funding programs that compensate for parents not having an adequate education (and thus have to work multiple jobs, don't read enough to kids, etc) to offer their kids a good start.
Quick poll: of all you hackers here, how many had parents in stem majors? How many had parents who went to secondary school? These are much better indicators as to how well a person will do in life than race or gender. Think about it. Many of you played with legos. Did you ask your parents to buy you legos? Or did they buy them for you?
That article has a point, but it doesn't serve any purpose other than highlighting a problem we already know about--let's leave the dead horses alone. As a minority (black female), it's nothing new.
> "Attracting students' interest to fields where they have been traditionally underrepresented is a challenge, Ms. Bozeman said."
It's a challenge for reasons the article doesn't even mention. A certain elementary school I volunteered at during college in DC brings to mind why it might be an issue with minorities. The school was predominantly minority--hispanics and blacks--and it seemed like the school system had forgotten about the kids. (Yes, we know many DC schools have serious problems.) Some of them didn't know their ABCs, had trouble with numbers, and couldn't even write their own names. Granted this was a kindergarten class, but it wasn't as if my friends and I showed up to volunteer on the first day of school for them either. We asked some of the kids if their parents helped them with their homework, etc. and most of them said no. The school itself lacked basic supplies (no pencils with erasers for kindergartners??). The problem starts wayyy before we've even gotten the kids to the college level and by then, I tend to think it's a little late to be thinking of how to deal with it.
Kids have to be set up earlier than high school and college for this stuff. And I don't mean pulling a few kids aside from each class for academically gifted enrichment activities. There definitely needs to be a wholesale overhaul of education in such a way that all kids think about those kinds of careers.
With that being said, I think the basic premise of the article is flawed, too. I think we're experiencing a brain-drain all across the board and it just happens to be the case where minorities stand out once again. I grew up in a pretty diverse environment (military brat) and I can't say all of my white, asian, and indian friends were flocking to AP Calculus either! lol. As a matter of fact, most of my non-minority friends from high school who were considered by teachers and students alike to be smart actually didn't even go into fields like math or science--they tended to prefer journalism or law--with the occasional biology major.
Or are you just telling us that we can never solve our problems, so we should just forget it?
No one here is suggesting that the solution rests with bettering the education of only minorities. Everyone who has made a suggestion, has put forth the idea that we need to better the education of EVERYONE. "Setting up kids early . . ." for this stuff is EXACTLY what everyone is suggesting.
On the contrary, my comment definitely didn't say anything about improving only the education of minorities and I definitely didn't say "just forget it." The article is about minorities, though, is it not? And I think, implicitly, the article points at the idea that we do have to address minority education (especially in the greater context of educating everybody) if we want more minority scientists and engineers. My own experience points in that direction and if we could talk to the folks in the article, I'm sure they'd say the same.
I mentioned how the article doesn't necessarily highlight anything new and that it's a problem everybody's facing. Sure, my comment mentioned minority education, but in no way was I insinuating that we only should care about just educating minorities now. That's a torrid oversimplification (and misrepresentation) of anything I said above.
Not trying to piss you off. I just think we have a lot of people in this country who point out all sorts of shortcomings, but do not offer potential solutions.
You've still not told us how you would address minority education. Most people seem to fall into the wsprague camp. You have not stated anything, other than the problem.
Nope, not pissed off at all. What can we do, though?
- Change attitudes of kids. We can't continue on this trend where being smart is considered "acting white." Surprisingly, I never got much of that back in grade school because for some reason or another being smart was respectable (and no, I've never been to a private school). That's always been weird in seeing it, though, because I've seen it in little kids. What the heck is a 7 year old supposed to know about "acting white"? In that same vein, we should talk about parents (that kind of thought process had to start somewhere).
- Change attitudes of parents. A lot of parents need to be more involved. I've seen parents who didn't do so much as to even make sure their kid did his/her homework because the parent didn't know how to do it (among other reasons that are less easy to alleviate such as work schedules). The kids at the elementary school that day confirmed it. There's a big difference between knowing how to do your kid's homework and making sure they at least attempt it. No, my parents had no clue how to do my calculus homework when I was in high school, but they made sure I was doing it, though.
- Make mincemeat of self-fulfilling prophecies. I think a lot of what happens with black kids and other minorities (some friends have been walking examples of this) is more of a cyclic self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing. Nobody around you is doing all that well, nobody around you is really perceived as being all that smart, and so hey, why try to prove anybody wrong? Yes, as crazy as that sounds, years ago I could have listed numerous people who had that exact self-defeating attitude. Obviously, that's not the case for everybody, but it's an attitude more common than a lot of people like to acknowledge. :(
In mentioning the self-fulfilling prophecy idea, that means you' d have to get parents more interested in what their kids were doing at school (and immediately afterschool in a lot of instances); teachers who don't give up easily on minority students (or any student for that matter); and finally, minority students who see education less as a burden of some sort and more of a ticket to a better standard of living.
- Flat out expect more. Indeed this does go the @wsprague route, but there's a ring of truth to what s/he is saying. I look at what Steve Perry up in Connecticut is doing. (http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/07/22/bia.education.success/i...) He expects more out of his students (and teachers) and they rise to the occasion. The school has a "near-zero dropout rate" and all the graduates go to college. I don't have any stats on what they end up majoring in, but at least they're set up to go to college.
- Show kids they have options, keep kids informed of them, and encourage them to pursue them. The article with Steve Perry mentions it and I saw it firsthand in high school--minority students getting shuffled into less demanding classes (no AP!) thanks to stereotypes and not having the wherewithal to set themselves up for a more demanding schedule. A lot of kids don't know about the kinds of classes that would set them up to go to college and pursue anything of rigor. Having a guidance counselor offer you a culinary arts course instead of an AP Biology course makes a big difference if you don't know what you could be missing by not taking that AP class.
- Educational parity. I witnessed my calculus teacher from high school leave my high school for a more affluent high school. Yes, she has more students at that high school, but if you've got a brain drain on a school level, you're going to have it at some point on a county then state then national level. If all the great teachers are clustered at certain schools (and school systems allow this), what happens to the other schools?
I seriously don't have all the answers, but changing the attitudes (about a lot of things) of parents, teachers, and students seems...
OK, those sound good, with the exception of 1 and 3. Higher expectations, ie wsprague doctrine. Educational parity. And holding parents more accountable for how their children are doing.
With respect to 1 and 3, changing kid's attitude is not what school is for. That's the parent's job. Further, and you are probably too young to realize this, but ALL teens have bad attitudes. White, black, or polka dot purple. I am at that unfortunate age where I am obliged to pay both elementary school and University tuition. I can tell you from experience that doing homework and getting good grades are about as important to your AVERAGE teen aged girl as Mom and Dad say they are. And certainly no MORE important.
So when you say that black teens have bad attitudes . . . to a parent this is not entirely surprising. ALL teens have bad attitudes. It is up to parents and teachers to put boots to butts and force education onto what in most cases will be unwilling students. Notice I didn't say that they needed to explain to the student why it is good to get an education. That doesn't work with white kids, and I have no reason to believe that it would work with black kids. Parents and teachers shouldn't negotiate with kids. We should direct them. As wsprague intimated, it is not about kids being satisfied or having fun, or even wanting an education.
Huh, they've got plenty of Asians and Jews already. What are they complaining about?
Looks at article
Oh, "underrepresented minority students." That's the code that colleges use to tell Chinese and Korean students that they don't get any affirmative action money. We didn't mean that kind of minority.
The sort of minority they want is the kind that is bad at math and science. After all, it'll be any day now that we figure out how to stop Blacks and Hispanics from under-performing in every intellectual field of endeavor. And then we'll have more of them than anyone else!
Mr. Castillo-Chavez, the texas congressman who is so concerned about math and science degrees, has a bachelor's and master's in business administration. I was a little surprised - usually the politicians fretting about the scarcity of Americans in science are lawyers.
A recent study by the RAND institute concluded that pay for science and engineering graduates has been lagging badly behind other professions, and that the low interest of Americans in these fields will change once pay catches up.
Like that Onion article: "study finds 98% of commuters favor public transportation for others." Seems the same for science and engineering careers.
Maybe we need a real role model. When Barak Obama speaks, people listen, and when our president emphasized the importance of science careers, I'm certain that he inspired hundreds of thousands of minority students in America to one day become lawyers who encourage engineering degrees for others.
27 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 76.8 ms ] threadBut just as a possibly illuminating contrary view, the controversial article by Philip Greenspun
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
may be on point here. Maybe there are better opportunities for young people who are being recruited into math and science than the opportunities provided by math and science careers.
(Note on personal background: my oldest son, who is in the process of applying to colleges when he doesn't plan his start-up, intends to major in math and computer science, and has taken upper-division courses in each subject already. But he is not part of the population groups mentioned in the submitted article.)
What would happen if our government attempted to specifically attract and retain white Americans in math, physics, and engineering? Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea, since that is the group who historically excelled in those fields and probably have the most interest in that area, while affirmative action type programs seem to hinder the careers of minority students who end up not being able to handle the rigor of engineering, maths, law school, etc.
>UCLA professor Richard H. Sander published an article in the November 2004 issue of the Stanford Law Review that questioned the effectiveness of affirmative action in law schools. The article presents a study that, among other things, shows that half of all black law students rank near the bottom of their class after the first year of law school, and that black law students are more likely to drop out of law school and to fail the bar exam. The article offers a tentative estimate that the production of new black lawyers in the United States would grow by eight percent if affirmative action programs at all law schools were ended, as less qualified black students would instead attend less prestigious schools where they would be more closely matched with their classmates, and thus perform better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_Unite...
>Does affirmative action hurt minorities? Racial preferences may be setting up many black and Latino law students for failure. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-sand...
It's distinctly possible that the cheapest and most effective way to increase the number of scientists would be to recruit more white/asian american men. Without looking carefully at the numbers it is impossible to say.
Asian: 587
White: 536
American Indian: 493
Hispanic: 461
Black: 426
Overall: 515
from here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125121641858657345.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
Note that while the causes of lower intelligence of some groups are disputed (environmental vs genetic), the implications for recruiting scientists and engineers is the same regardless of the cause.
As the other participant who replied to your comment (the parent to this comment) mentioned, causation of the group score gap is still very unclear. This year, the gap is what it is, and it may not be the best use of societal resources to try to boost college-age participation in math classes among students who leave high school scoring near the median standard score level on the SAT. But it might be very worthwhile to systematically improve math instruction in the elementary grades
http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/fall99/ame...
and that could have a lot to do with narrowing the group gap, that is raising the total number of students in various ethnic groups who learn enough math through high school to be ready to thrive in math courses in college.
From the link you kindly shared:
"Mr. Finn, a former education official in the Reagan administration, said he expected the results of the SAT and ACT -- another college entrance exam -- to add fuel to a movement among the nation's governors and school superintendents to come up with consistent national standards for high-school curricula."
And from further on in the same article:
"Noting the gap in achievement between lower-performing minority students and the general population, College Board officials said those who lagged tended to go to school in poorer districts with fewer resources. 'As a country, we must do better providing students of every background access to the best education,' Mr. Caperton said."
Yes, I think there are a currently a lot of laggard high schools--and I shouldn't have to tell any participant familiar with American society what kind of neighborhoods the worst high schools are concentrated in--that do a bad job of teaching math, so it's high time to improve math teaching throughout K-12 schooling in the United States.
Then we won't have a goddam brain drain -- it is an embarrassment to the American people that we can't educate ourselves.
Doesn't matter the color of the student, EVERYONE should be getting pushed right now.
Bravo wsprague
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/fall99/ame...
http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/fall99/ind...
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/math/pdf/0503/0503081v1.pdf
for the idea that proper mathematical education includes learning certain facts by heart through practice, but also includes a lot of flexibility of thinking and making deep connections between seemingly unrelated subjects.
I tend to think of myself as intelligent enough, and I know for sure that I would never survive school with drilled exercises and a classical education (I find most of the classic authors dull and naive; latin is an overrated language; the greek philosophers, specially, only sound smart when read with tons of allowances like one reads the bible). Also, any sort of education focused on getting exercises and drills "right" without discussion will only breed conformists and people without creativity.
I don't know. The way it sounds to me is that there is a worship of some sorts of classical culture and discipline that I find deplorable. What I would change in american schooling would be: more geography, real history (without turning famous people such as the founding fathers or Ben Franklin or Abe Lincoln into mythological images and instead studying them in their socio-political context with all flaws included), less emphasis on pseudo-cultural non-academic activities (debating club, etc) in admissions office.
EO 9981 was not simply a political move. Our military strategists saw during WWII that it would be decidedly foolish for us to continue fighting wars with one hand tied behind our backs.
Around this same time, a wave of statutes swept the nation that made it illegal for most Americans under the age of 16 to drop out of High School. Do not suppose that these things are coincidental. They are common sense steps that had to be taken to address the new realities that were rapidly developing in the post WWII world.
The world is today, again, undergoing a process of rapid geopolitical and social change. Strategists deep in the bowels of the American Government have looked into the future, and again, they find themselves wanting to change what they see looking back at them.
FACT: China has more high school honors students than the United States has high school students. That's right. If you take every high school student in the US, the poor students and the good students, China has more students than that in ONLY its high honors programs.
Look, the global economy will be the battlefield of choice in the future. We do not intend to charge onto that battlefield with one hand tied behind our backs.
The only thing wrong with this article, in my opinion, is that it excludes the recruitment of white Americans. We SHOULD be making sweeping policy changes to address these issues. Immigration is not going to get us out of it. I work half the time in Ningbo or Paris myself. How long before Indians and Indonesians figure out that the smart CVs are flowing to China not California? They are not blind.
I feel like Truman, if you have a problem with being more aggressive with American students with respect to instilling the disciplines of math and science, feel free to leave the country. It is past time that we dealt with this.
I won't get into the other topics.
Second, there are too many factors at play to just dismiss a student's abilities to start the next google, for example, by just assessing standardized test scores--especially, to assess his/her potential by how well on average his group/ethnicity performs. parse_tree, go back to my first point.
Such programs, I don't think, are intended to have immediate results. The goal is to retain as many people who are interested in stem majors as possible. Yes, but I think the biggest impact will come as a result of their kids having much more exposure and such people understanding the value of such programs that they reach out to others.
Finally, I think a lot would be best spent at an early age--early in a child's development. If you think a person's abilities are tied solely to genetics, you're wrong. Nurture plays an important role, and I've seen enough evidence to support that. Funding programs that compensate for parents not having an adequate education (and thus have to work multiple jobs, don't read enough to kids, etc) to offer their kids a good start.
Quick poll: of all you hackers here, how many had parents in stem majors? How many had parents who went to secondary school? These are much better indicators as to how well a person will do in life than race or gender. Think about it. Many of you played with legos. Did you ask your parents to buy you legos? Or did they buy them for you?
> "Attracting students' interest to fields where they have been traditionally underrepresented is a challenge, Ms. Bozeman said."
It's a challenge for reasons the article doesn't even mention. A certain elementary school I volunteered at during college in DC brings to mind why it might be an issue with minorities. The school was predominantly minority--hispanics and blacks--and it seemed like the school system had forgotten about the kids. (Yes, we know many DC schools have serious problems.) Some of them didn't know their ABCs, had trouble with numbers, and couldn't even write their own names. Granted this was a kindergarten class, but it wasn't as if my friends and I showed up to volunteer on the first day of school for them either. We asked some of the kids if their parents helped them with their homework, etc. and most of them said no. The school itself lacked basic supplies (no pencils with erasers for kindergartners??). The problem starts wayyy before we've even gotten the kids to the college level and by then, I tend to think it's a little late to be thinking of how to deal with it.
Kids have to be set up earlier than high school and college for this stuff. And I don't mean pulling a few kids aside from each class for academically gifted enrichment activities. There definitely needs to be a wholesale overhaul of education in such a way that all kids think about those kinds of careers.
With that being said, I think the basic premise of the article is flawed, too. I think we're experiencing a brain-drain all across the board and it just happens to be the case where minorities stand out once again. I grew up in a pretty diverse environment (military brat) and I can't say all of my white, asian, and indian friends were flocking to AP Calculus either! lol. As a matter of fact, most of my non-minority friends from high school who were considered by teachers and students alike to be smart actually didn't even go into fields like math or science--they tended to prefer journalism or law--with the occasional biology major.
This is an issue affecting everybody.
What is your suggested solution.
Or are you just telling us that we can never solve our problems, so we should just forget it?
No one here is suggesting that the solution rests with bettering the education of only minorities. Everyone who has made a suggestion, has put forth the idea that we need to better the education of EVERYONE. "Setting up kids early . . ." for this stuff is EXACTLY what everyone is suggesting.
I mentioned how the article doesn't necessarily highlight anything new and that it's a problem everybody's facing. Sure, my comment mentioned minority education, but in no way was I insinuating that we only should care about just educating minorities now. That's a torrid oversimplification (and misrepresentation) of anything I said above.
What is your suggested solution?
Not trying to piss you off. I just think we have a lot of people in this country who point out all sorts of shortcomings, but do not offer potential solutions.
You've still not told us how you would address minority education. Most people seem to fall into the wsprague camp. You have not stated anything, other than the problem.
- Change attitudes of kids. We can't continue on this trend where being smart is considered "acting white." Surprisingly, I never got much of that back in grade school because for some reason or another being smart was respectable (and no, I've never been to a private school). That's always been weird in seeing it, though, because I've seen it in little kids. What the heck is a 7 year old supposed to know about "acting white"? In that same vein, we should talk about parents (that kind of thought process had to start somewhere).
- Change attitudes of parents. A lot of parents need to be more involved. I've seen parents who didn't do so much as to even make sure their kid did his/her homework because the parent didn't know how to do it (among other reasons that are less easy to alleviate such as work schedules). The kids at the elementary school that day confirmed it. There's a big difference between knowing how to do your kid's homework and making sure they at least attempt it. No, my parents had no clue how to do my calculus homework when I was in high school, but they made sure I was doing it, though.
- Make mincemeat of self-fulfilling prophecies. I think a lot of what happens with black kids and other minorities (some friends have been walking examples of this) is more of a cyclic self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing. Nobody around you is doing all that well, nobody around you is really perceived as being all that smart, and so hey, why try to prove anybody wrong? Yes, as crazy as that sounds, years ago I could have listed numerous people who had that exact self-defeating attitude. Obviously, that's not the case for everybody, but it's an attitude more common than a lot of people like to acknowledge. :(
In mentioning the self-fulfilling prophecy idea, that means you' d have to get parents more interested in what their kids were doing at school (and immediately afterschool in a lot of instances); teachers who don't give up easily on minority students (or any student for that matter); and finally, minority students who see education less as a burden of some sort and more of a ticket to a better standard of living.
- Flat out expect more. Indeed this does go the @wsprague route, but there's a ring of truth to what s/he is saying. I look at what Steve Perry up in Connecticut is doing. (http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/07/22/bia.education.success/i...) He expects more out of his students (and teachers) and they rise to the occasion. The school has a "near-zero dropout rate" and all the graduates go to college. I don't have any stats on what they end up majoring in, but at least they're set up to go to college.
- Show kids they have options, keep kids informed of them, and encourage them to pursue them. The article with Steve Perry mentions it and I saw it firsthand in high school--minority students getting shuffled into less demanding classes (no AP!) thanks to stereotypes and not having the wherewithal to set themselves up for a more demanding schedule. A lot of kids don't know about the kinds of classes that would set them up to go to college and pursue anything of rigor. Having a guidance counselor offer you a culinary arts course instead of an AP Biology course makes a big difference if you don't know what you could be missing by not taking that AP class.
- Educational parity. I witnessed my calculus teacher from high school leave my high school for a more affluent high school. Yes, she has more students at that high school, but if you've got a brain drain on a school level, you're going to have it at some point on a county then state then national level. If all the great teachers are clustered at certain schools (and school systems allow this), what happens to the other schools?
I seriously don't have all the answers, but changing the attitudes (about a lot of things) of parents, teachers, and students seems...
With respect to 1 and 3, changing kid's attitude is not what school is for. That's the parent's job. Further, and you are probably too young to realize this, but ALL teens have bad attitudes. White, black, or polka dot purple. I am at that unfortunate age where I am obliged to pay both elementary school and University tuition. I can tell you from experience that doing homework and getting good grades are about as important to your AVERAGE teen aged girl as Mom and Dad say they are. And certainly no MORE important.
So when you say that black teens have bad attitudes . . . to a parent this is not entirely surprising. ALL teens have bad attitudes. It is up to parents and teachers to put boots to butts and force education onto what in most cases will be unwilling students. Notice I didn't say that they needed to explain to the student why it is good to get an education. That doesn't work with white kids, and I have no reason to believe that it would work with black kids. Parents and teachers shouldn't negotiate with kids. We should direct them. As wsprague intimated, it is not about kids being satisfied or having fun, or even wanting an education.
We always need to remember that there are subtle ways that students get sorted into "smart" and "not-smart", even when we are trying to be objective:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect
Looks at article
Oh, "underrepresented minority students." That's the code that colleges use to tell Chinese and Korean students that they don't get any affirmative action money. We didn't mean that kind of minority.
The sort of minority they want is the kind that is bad at math and science. After all, it'll be any day now that we figure out how to stop Blacks and Hispanics from under-performing in every intellectual field of endeavor. And then we'll have more of them than anyone else!
A recent study by the RAND institute concluded that pay for science and engineering graduates has been lagging badly behind other professions, and that the low interest of Americans in these fields will change once pay catches up.
Like that Onion article: "study finds 98% of commuters favor public transportation for others." Seems the same for science and engineering careers.
Maybe we need a real role model. When Barak Obama speaks, people listen, and when our president emphasized the importance of science careers, I'm certain that he inspired hundreds of thousands of minority students in America to one day become lawyers who encourage engineering degrees for others.