Engineering And Tech Companies Want More Kids Interested In Science -- So They Can Pay Them Less

[SpearthrowerOwl]

I wrote this article on the alleged "science crisis": that we don't have enough interest in science in the United States.

Specifically I debunk the claim that we have a "shortage" of science and engineering graduates.

I suggest that, instead of focusing on science, what we really should be focusing on are political problems such as solving the massive economic inequalities that plague us; that's what would *really* help.

I hope everyone enjoys the article. It's a topic that's very misunderstood by many, many people in the United States.

http://propagandacheck.com/?p=1071

[MisterP]

1. interestingly science education has this odd cyclic "crisis pattern" where regular panics

are used to win funding (so there's a sector interested in saying there's a crisis)

even before WWI HG Wells said that only science could win the next war and that Britain could fall because of its effete educational system (sorta accurate given that they just beat Greek and Latin into students as punishments): of course this was illustrated with 1,000-ton supertanks easily defeating the Boers because they were "more scientific"

today we may think the 50s were a "golden era of science," but when Sputnik went up they thought American science was falling badly behind--heck, by 50s rules whoever went to space first was the most moral political system! pants were loaded and funding came with loyalty oaths attached to not try and overthrow the government (but if the graduate students win, it'll be a moot point!); Loren Eiseley called it the "invisible pyramid," a pharaohnic white elephant to try and force some spinoffs out of it

by the mid-70s there was a backlash in science against the peaceniks, new types of science like ecology, and the historians who dared pay attention to things like culture and society; establishment (but also, increasingly, hippiesh) scientists feared that a new Dark Ages were upon us (why, some medieval historians weren't even calling it that any more! AND giving facts to back them up, the rogues! but what do they know? they're just historians!); we get CSICOP and a slew of mercenary whitecoats under the Powell Memo; the atmosphere of crisis and imminent Untergang des Westens was even harder than with Sputnik

in 1983 they said "the schools are failing" and the teachers were all to blame: arts and humanities were decimated in favor of more "competitive" and "marketable" "skills" (aerospace got more money than any other prez)

around 1987-94 we had the knives-bared "science wars" as Lockheed fired hundreds of thousands with the Cold War over--now we didn't need supercolliders (since the Russians weren't making one), long-range bombers (B-1 and -2), Mach 3 recon planes (SR-71 Blackbird), and of course ICBMs; the more reactionary said we were falling behind because Blacks and women had been allowed in--and this was the Old Left talking! the Bell Curvers were worse

now we have a "STEM shortage" pushed by Obama and Tyson, and the usual lachrymose breast-beating that we've lost our way and don't like science the way we used to dammit! the resonance of this crisis rhetoric comes from the long disinvestment in the schools that started under Reagan, and the rearrangement of the economy to benefit betting rather than products or services, damaging state and national funding of science and education (plus no more Cold War, which kept the economic bubbles inflated in the 80s, together with cheap oil): it's all buzzwords like Uber and H-1B (and white slaving of Indian IT people, actually)

[SpearthrowerOwl]

2. It is interesting how long the history of these "science crisis" moments stretches back.

It's true that so much of it was paved by Reagan-esque gutting of the economy and the public education system.

I enjoyed reading your post, especially the part about transforming schools to produce more "competitive" and "marketable" "skills." At a deep level, I feel that much of the "science crisis" is a half intentional, half unintentional attempt to strip schools of humanities and political efficacy in favor of narrow, technical science questions--engineers and scientists can be very "apolitical."

[MisterP]

3. oh yes, a big part of this is the absolutely total reconfiguration of the economy that Reagan sealed

now we're faced with H-1Bs, spiraling state disinvestment (among police, too, so they have to find new "revenue&quot , and of course the panacea of "more cuts for effete humanities"

now, politically most scientists are pink or Rockefeller Republicans (though for cultural reasons rather than scientific except for ecology and earth sciences)--but there's plenty of doorknobs, CS Lewis villains, and warmongers, especially the ones who say we don't need humanities because we have science ... (don't laugh, that includes Hawking); Tyson's producer told the Renaissance historians who'd hit the roof on that little Bruno sketch that he basically outranked them and that no (ideologically) fitting new history had been written after (get this) 1874