All of this concern about American students falling behind foreign students behind is overblown. Our politicians and intellectuals want us to blame our education system and not our nation's economic policies.
It's a red herring. It's a smokescreen. It's really a non-issue. Why is that?
(1.) Because heavy-duty science and technology research only accounts for a small percentage of actual economic activity, perhaps 1% or less. If an invention is discovered in another nation, that knowledge can be transported to the U.S. and used in the U.S. (Did someone invent a better computer chip? There's no metaphysical reason why we can't manufacture it here ourselves once the knowledge of how to make it is communicated.)
(2.) The U.S. doesn't have any shortage of scientists or engineers nor of smart, talented, hard-working, ambitious Americans who would or could train to be scientists and engineers. See:
The Real Science Gap: It's not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It's a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career.
(3.) Our economic well-being is ultimately based on our ability and willingness to produce goods and services for our own consumption. It doesn't matter if people in China and other nations are smarter as long as we can produce what we need and want to consume.
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First off, many of those studies of American education include the impoverished children in the inner cities. If you look at students in the suburbs we're doing much better.
Secondly,
only about 15% of all jobs require or make any real use of college education at all. Surprise! The vast majority of jobs are blue collar labor and retail service jobs. Right now the U.S. have a large excess of people who are going to college, many of whom are ending up unemployed or underemployed-and-involuntarily-out-of-field and with student loan debts that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.
As far as science and technology goes, just because 95% of Americans might not be good at science, engineering, and math doesn't mean that the 5% of Americans who need to be good at it are not good at it and are not learning it properly in our colleges and universities.
In fact, our nation actually has a huge oversupply of PhD scientists, a great many of whom end up unemployed, underemployed-out-of-field, or underemployed working low-wage gypsy scientist positions called postdoctorates.
In fact, because we import the best and brightest foreigners to compete domestically against Americans, the best and brightest American students no longer have a financial or vocational reason to major in science or engineering. Instead, it makes more sense to go to medical school or to major in finance and become a bankster.
So what if 90% of Americans don't know much about science or math? How many people actually need to use it at their jobs? Does it really matter if a truck driver doesn't understand basic principles of genetics? Does it matter if a waitress cannot solve differential equations? Does it matter if a janitor doesn't understand thermodynamics? Does it matter if a school administrator knows nothing about quantum mechanics? Does it matter if the cashier at Best Buy failed calculus? Does your average lawyer or MBA need to know anything about protein structure and function?
All of this hand-wringing about American education and how American students are falling behind is being used as a politically correct, convenient scapegoat for our nation's real economic problems.
It's easier to say that "Americans are not good enough" than it is to say that relatively impoverished foreign workers are willing to do American jobs for 1/10th of the wage and standard of living. It's easier to blame our problems on bad education than it is to blame it on foreign outsourcing, the displacement of Americans by foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas, and the displacement of Americans from lower class jobs by hordes of millions of impoverished immigrants.
If we want to solver our nation's economic problems:
(1.) End foreign outsourcing. Require that all physical goods and knowledge-based services that are to be consumed in the U.S. are produced in the U.S.
(2.) End the H-1B and L-1 visa programs. Give Americans a financial and vocational incentive to educate and train in STEM field areas.
(3.) End mass immigration. Stop depressing wages for the lower classes and reduce the amounts of unemployment for them.
If the best scientists and engineers end up living in China or India or Korea or wherever it's really a non-issue. For any inventions or new knowledge to be used in the U.S. the goods and services would have to be produced in the U.S. by American labor. (We can also steal ideas and use them for ourselves just like the Chinese have.)
Ultimately, all of the concerns people have about our nation's educational system and about American students supposedly falling behind and being outworked by foreign students is really about Global Labor Arbitrage. Our politicians and intellectuals are using this farce to fool the sheeple into believing that Americans are just not good enough when in reality our problem is awful American economic policies.