Alex and Brett Harris over at The Rebelution have an excellent series of posts that seem to have originated from Thomas Friedman’s best-selling book The World is Flat (an excellent read).
They provide a good synopsis of the book in their first post, and also do a nice job highlighting the problems regarding the (poor) math and science competency in the USA today, particularly at both the college and high school level. I happen to care deeply about this given my engineering background and involvement with prospective engineering students at a Christian college (each of whom will be required to read this chapter from Friedman’s book):
The National Science Board (NSB) reports that the number of American eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds who received science degrees has fallen to seventeenth in the world, even though we ranked third 30 years ago. Furthermore, the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) showed that American twelfth graders finished 15th out of sixteen countries in advanced mathematics and dead last out of sixteen countries in advanced science.
Don’t think for a moment that the up-and-coming world is sitting still. Of the 2.8 million bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering granted worldwide in 2003, 1.2 million were earned by Asian students in Asian universities. Only 400,000 were granted in the United States. Shirley Ann Jackson, the 2004 president of the American Association for Advancement of Science explains, “the proportional emphasis on science and engineering is greater in other nations.”
Check out the The Rebelution‘s series of posts here.