But in defense of the common man, I am here to tell you that math is simply misunderstood.  Worse yet, even the broader institution of K-12 Math Education (note the capital letters to indicate the authorities that comprise “Big Math”) as a whole fails rather drastically to understand what math is.  There are even a number of Universities that don’t really get it (see below). So it’s not really all that surprising that our schools and even our culture at large fail to grasp the significance, the beauty, the elegance, or the joy of practicing mathematics.

When you say “math” at a party, most people remember those painful moments in high school of rote formula memorization and the mechanical repetition of plugging in numbers, the otherwise meaningless manipulation of abstract symbols to achieve higher test scores.

And while yes, the manipulation of abstract symbols can be a useful tool in math, the mechanics and minutia of symbolic manipulation are all too often mistaken for what math really is.  Exercises in notation are the obvious and visible attendants when people are really doing math.  But to anyone unversed in the practice, it is not obvious at all that anything else is going on.  Is it any surprise that the medium is mistaken for the message? Math must be what most people can see, just as written paragraphs are what literature is all about.  So what is the message, you ask?  What is math?  What are all the assiduous formula manipulators missing?

There is logical structure to our universe.  How things are, and can be arranged, how they move, what colors and shapes they comprise, how things sound, how they feel, and what they will do in just a few moments; all of these things can be organized and understood by realizing underlying patterns and regularities.  Then we can use these patterns and concepts to understand and predict other things.  We have developed written languages and notation to illuminate these patterns, the symbols and operations of written mathematics, and better yet, we have developed the symbolic language in such a way that their very structure and regularity don’t just describe like verbal languages but also mimic the very structure and pattern of the reality that they describe.

So ultimately, math is about patterns, logical and inter-related processes, puzzles, models, consistencies, inconsistencies, causality, correlations, and all sorts of profoundly interesting ideas.  Practicing real math is nothing less than a creative exercise in discovery, realization, insight, and deduction.  But sadly, most school curricula mistake facility with the tools of notation to be the sole component of math, leaving out the heart and the joy of it all.  Justifiably bored and disinterested students flee as a result.  I take heart from the fact that what they are fleeing isn’t really math, but an empty simulacrum thereof. But someone needs to tell people that what they fear is not math itself, the wonders of which they might actually enjoy.  I hereby offer two points in particular that will help illuminate the difference between math itself, and its written expression most often practiced in schools.

The Real World and Mathematical Abstraction
The first issue is the prevalent confusion between the overall subject of math; the ideas, the patterns, the observation of the real world and physical objects, and the ‘mathematical’ abstractions thereof, as written in equations.  Both are important and fundamentally intertwined, but rarely clearly related in practice.  Most schools tend to focus on the mechanical practice of the latter, i.e. “…do every odd problem (for which the answers are in the appendix) in chapter 7.”  The operations on the symbols seem arbitrary things to memorize and repeat without any apparent connection to reality or future life other than through the example problem template at the start of the chapter.  Many curricula try to offer “real-world” type problems, but often fail to clearly link the real-world components and steps in solving life’s actual problems with the power of written abstraction that we can use to reason about the real world without having to actually touch it.

Other schools, such as those using Montessori programs, focus on the real world with physical manipulatives, beads, blocks and so on, but then fail to clearly relate what the kids can touch and arrange with their abstractions that can be manipulated mentally and with paper absent the blocks.  Students in these types of programs learn to manipulate and reason physically, but not how to reason abstractly without the manipulatives. Nor can either set in isolation appreciate the intimate relationship between the real and the abstract or the power of understanding various and complementary approaches and representations of fundamental truths.

Neither type of program successfully relates the abstract to the real in such a way that both are clear expressions of the other, and that math is at the same time both grounded in reality and still open to intellectual creativity and insight in the abstract.  This fundamental beauty of mathematics is that the language we have invented to talk about math has as its very essence, a logical structure and process which mimics the real world, but in its abstraction, distills a purified essence of the real world that can be approached intellectually without requiring a descent into the messy and noisy real world.  We can use the abstraction to think about and learn about the real.  We can use the real to refine the abstraction, which in turn further illuminates the real in a continuing cycle of learning.  The real world and its abstraction are simply two sides of the same coin, but it is a very rare program indeed that clearly articulates this realization, and an even rarer one that specifically trains students to use and relate both sides of the coin.

Interestingly enough, even university researchers often miss this point.  Not long ago, a friend pointed me to a New York Times article a few months ago about an Ohio State study claiming that manipulatives and real-life examples did not seem to help in learning math.  You can read the full research article here with a subscription to Science.  Let’s just say that the conclusion of the study surprised me enough to pony up a few dollars to read the full article on the Science site.  Much to my relief, I found the study deeply flawed in its very structure of asking whether students learned math better by studying the abstraction or observing the real world.  Just by asking the divisive question, they missed the fundamental truth of mathematics as an abstraction of the real world with a deep understanding of both and their interrelationship as necessary for true enlightenment.

Math, Art, and Music:  Which of these is least like the others?
This is a trick question, because to many people’s surprise, they are all very similar.  My second point is that Math, as most commonly practiced in repetitive school calculation exercises, bears little, if any, relation to the creative and intellectual exploration of math outside of school.

Real math is not about mindlessly copying example problem steps on homework to nail the SAT test. It is about wonder, and exploration, and discovery, the untangling of interesting puzzles, a creative exercise at every step. I could go on in this vein for a while, but someone has already done a better job of it than I could myself.  If you are even vaguely curious about what real math is like, or fear its evil twin that currently dominates our schools, or just worry about the technical and economic strength of our nation, you MUST read “A Mathematician’s Lament,” by Paul Lockhart. There are some truly sublime sections on musical and artistic analogies with mathematics, and the most on-point critique of K-12 math that I have ever seen.  As a friend of mine recently mentioned, “At first I thought I would get tired of it, but ultimately, I found it to be perfectly on target.”  Amen brother.  If there were anything I would add to the piece it would be about math’s fundamental utility as a tool in science and physics and how each field and approach further illuminates the others.  Here are a few of my favorite excerpts, but seriously, follow the above link to read the whole thing:

By concentrating on what, and leaving out why, mathematics is reduced to an empty shell.  The art is not in the “truth” but in the explanation, the argument. It is the argument itself which gives the truth its context, and determines what is really being said and meant. Mathematics is the art of explanation. If you deny students the opportunity to engage in this activity— to pose their own problems, make their own conjectures and discoveries, to be wrong, to be creatively frustrated, to have an inspiration, and to cobble together their own explanations and proofs— you deny them mathematics itself. So no, I’m not complaining about the presence of facts and formulas in our mathematics classes, I’m complaining about the lack of mathematics in our mathematics classes.
If your art teacher were to tell you that painting is all about filling in numbered regions, you would know that something was wrong. The culture informs you— there are museums and galleries, as well as the art in your own home. Painting is well understood by society as a medium of human expression. Likewise, if your science teacher tried to convince you that astronomy is about predicting a person’s future based on their date of birth, you would know she was crazy— science has seeped into the culture to such an extent that almost everyone knows about atoms and galaxies and laws of nature. But if your math teacher gives you the impression, either expressly or by default, that mathematics is about formulas and definitions and memorizing algorithms, who will set you straight?

………………………………….

The main problem with school mathematics is that there are no problems. Oh, I know what passes for problems in math classes, these insipid “exercises.” “Here is a type of problem. Here is how to solve it. Yes it will be on the test. Do exercises 1-35 odd for homework.” What a sad way to learn mathematics: to be a trained chimpanzee.

But a problem, a genuine honest-to-goodness natural human question— that’s another thing. How long is the diagonal of a cube? Do prime numbers keep going on forever? Is infinity a number? How many ways can I symmetrically tile a surface? The history of mathematics is the history of mankind’s engagement with questions like these, not the mindless regurgitation of formulas and algorithms (together with contrived exercises designed to make use of them). A good problem is something you don’t know how to solve. That’s what makes it a good puzzle, and a good opportunity. A good problem does not just sit there in isolation, but serves as a springboard to other interesting questions. A triangle takes up half its box. What about a pyramid inside its three-dimensional box? Can we handle this problem in a similar way?

……………………………………….

So how do we teach our students to do mathematics? By choosing engaging and natural problems suitable to their tastes, personalities, and level of experience. By giving them time
to make discoveries and formulate conjectures. By helping them to refine their arguments and creating an atmosphere of healthy and vibrant mathematical criticism. By being flexible and open to sudden changes in direction to which their curiosity may lead. In short, by having an honest intellectual relationship with our students and our subject.

The trouble is that math, like painting or poetry, is hard creative work. That makes it very difficult to teach. Mathematics is a slow, contemplative process. It takes time to produce a work of art, and it takes a skilled teacher to recognize one. Of course it’s easier to post a set of rules than to guide aspiring young artists, and it’s easier to write a VCR manual than to write an actual book with a point of view.

……………………………………….

There is such breathtaking depth and heartbreaking beauty in this ancient art form. How ironic that people dismiss mathematics as the antithesis of creativity. They are missing out on an art form older than any book, more profound than any poem, and more abstract than any abstract. And it is school that has done this! What a sad endless cycle of innocent teachers inflicting damage upon innocent students. We could all be having so much more fun.

About Paul Lockhart from the MMA web site:

Paul is a mathematics teacher at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York. His article has been circulating through parts of the mathematics and math ed communities ever since, but he never published it. I came across it by accident a few months ago, and decided at once I wanted to give it wider exposure. I contacted Paul, and he agreed to have me publish his “lament” on MAA Online. It is, quite frankly, one of the best critiques of current K-12 mathematics education I have ever seen. Written by a first-class research mathematician who elected to devote his teaching career to K-12 education.

Paul became interested in mathematics when he was about 14 (outside of the school math class, he points out) and read voraciously, becoming especially interested in analytic number theory. He dropped out of college after one semester to devote himself to math, supporting himself by working as a computer programmer and as an elementary school teacher. Eventually he started working with Ernst Strauss at UCLA, and the two published a few papers together. Strauss introduced him to Paul Erdos, and they somehow arranged it so that he became a graduate student there. He ended up getting a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1990, and went on to be a fellow at MSRI and an assistant professor at Brown. He also taught at UC Santa Cruz. His main research interests were, and are, automorphic forms and Diophantine geometry.

After several years teaching university mathematics, Paul eventually tired of it and decided he wanted to get back to teaching children. He secured a position at Saint Ann’s School, where he says “I have happily been subversively teaching mathematics (the real thing) since 2000.”

He teaches all grade levels at Saint Ann’s (K-12), and says he is especially interested in bringing a mathematician’s point of view to very young children. “I want them to understand that there is a playground in their minds and that that is where mathematics happens. So far I have met with tremendous enthusiasm among the parents and kids, less so among the mid-level administrators.”

So Where Can You Find REAL Math Materials?

The single program I have ever seen that best captures and relates the importance and interrelationship of the real world and abstract expression in math is Henri Piccioto’s Algebra Lab materials. They offer a fantastic combination of cleverly-designed manipulatives together with sets of problems using the symbolic abstractions, all supplemented with open-ended creative problems that really get you thinking and understanding the BIG PICTURE and how everything is related.  The system explicitly helps students develop facility with approaching problems from either physical or abstract directions, and how one approach can inform and illuminate the other.  Students can directly observe how different approaches can be used to best advantage for different types of problems. The crowning component of the system is the great set of open creative questions that get students exploring patterns and symbolic reasoning on their own using the physical and abstract tools they have developed.

The Lab Gear that comes with the program is comprised of a series of carefully-sized blocks that help articulate what algebra is really about, arrangements and grouping, and what things like factorization really mean.  You fiddle with the blocks, and get an intuitive feel for how things really are, and then learn about the abstractions, the principles and equations.  You expose fundamental truths of the world and learn how to discuss them!

Here are some animated graphics that were created by George Collison of INTEC
(International Netcourse Teacher Enhancement Coalition) to demonstrate the Lab Gear materials in use to help illuminate polynomials and factoring.

Anyone else want to get together and write some materials on Trig, Calc, or Pre-Calc?  At the very least, leave your comments below as to where you have found strong materials that make the real-to-abstract connection!

There was a great chapter in Rafe Esquith’s book “Teach Like Your Hair is On Fire” on how he uses a classroom funny-money currency throughout the school year to teach students about fundamental economics.  But this post by Dr. Stemwedel about a conversation with her kids on the very topic got me to wondering whether their economy really was open, whether the kids really experienced free trade.  I couldn’t stop chuckling about it all day yesterday.  These are my people.  I reproduce it here for your enjoyment, but do join in the commentary at Janet’s blog at the link above.

Friday Sprog Blogging: I owe my soul to the classsroom store.

Category: Kids and science
Posted on: September 5, 2008 12:00 PM, by Janet D. Stemwedel

In which we become acquainted with one aspect of the classroom culture in the younger Free-Ride offspring’s second grade.

Younger offspring: In my class, we earn ten play cents for coming to school on time, and I earned sixty play cents for bringing back those signed forms, and for bringing in my emergency card, and for bringing all my school supplies.

Dr. Free-Ride: You get paid a bonus just for being on time?

Younger offspring: It’s not real money.

Elder offspring: So what do you do with it? What can you use it for?

Younger offspring: Once a week, there’s a classroom store, and you can spend your play money to buy something from the store … a big eraser, a bouncy ball, cards, maybe even a book.

Dr. Free-Ride: In other words, they’re turning you into good little capitalists.

Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Actually, into good little consumers. To turn them into good little capitalists, there would need to be some mechanism for creating new classroom wealth.

Dr. Free-Ride: By exploiting the labors of one’s classmates, no doubt.

Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: They’re just making the system of rewards for good behavior more explicit. Last year, they had the marble jar … but I guess that was for the class collectively, rather than an individual reward.

Younger offspring: When the marble jar was full, the whole class got the reward, like a pizza party.

Dr. Free-Ride: Yeah, the classroom store seems more geared to buying something you want.

Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Can you buy something together with classmates?

Younger offspring: Huh?

Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: If three of you are interested in a book, but none of you has enough classroom money to buy it, could the three of you put your classroom money together to share it?

Younger offspring: I don’t know.

Dr. Free-Ride: That’s actually a good question. You know, back and college, LO and I were co-owners of a T-shirt.

Elder offspring: Was it big enough for both of you to wear it at the same time?

Dr. Free-Ride: No, we took turns with it. It was a $12 T-shirt, and we both like it, but neither of us had $12, so we each paid $6. I wonder if you’re allowed to do that with the big ticket items in the classroom store, or if joint ownership is forbidden.

Younger offspring: Also, if you do something bad, you lose some of the play money from your bank, and if there’s no money left in your bank, you have to stand on the red X.

Elder offspring: What about if you spend your money at the classroom store?

Dr. Free-Ride: That’s a good question. If you have an empty bank just from buying something at the classroom store, rather than from misbehaving, do you have to stand on the red X?

Younger offspring: I don’t know. I think I’ll ask about that tomorrow.

Dr. Free-Ride: That would be like a classroom rule against vagrancy. If we find you without any money in your pocket, you’ll be punished.

Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Hmm, does that make sense? If you lose your last classroom dime on misbehavior, you’re not just being charged a dime, but you’re also doing your time on the red X. So once your bank is empty, you couldn’t pay the fine as well as doing the time in the event of misbehavior. But maybe you weren’t going to misbehave …

Dr. Free-Ride: This may come down to whether the classroom is being run more like a government or a checking account.

Elder offspring: So it’s ten cents every time you misbehave?

Younger offspring: I think.

Dr. Free-Ride: Hmm. I wonder if any of your classmates would rather spend their classroom currency on misbehavior than on bouncy balls or books. I mean, if you have seventy classroom cents, you could buy six violations of the rules and still not drain your bank.

Younger offspring: I wouldn’t spend my money that way.

Dr. Free-Ride: I didn’t say you would, but it seems like you could if you were in a mood to be bad.

Younger offspring: But then I might not have any money left if I misbehaved in music class, and then I might have to stand on the red X.

Dr. Free-Ride: Why would you want to misbehave in music?

Younger offspring: I don’t want to misbehave in music, but what if it happened anyway?

Dr. Free-Ride: So your classroom bank is like an insurance policy.

Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: What is this classroom money like?

Younger offspring: It looks like dimes, only it’s plastic, so you can tell they’re not real dimes.

Dr. Free-Ride: Hmmm … presumably your teacher didn’t mint these plastic coins herself. If she bought them somewhere –

Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Someone might buy the same kind of play money and introduce counterfeit classroom money into the system.

Younger offspring: But she marked all the plastic coins with green to show that they’re classroom money from our class.

Dr. Free-Ride: A security device!

Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: That makes it harder for counterfeiters, but not impossible.

Dr. Free-Ride: Speaking of security, where are these banks kept?

Younger offspring: We each keep our bank way back in a corner of our desk so no one can see it.

Elder offspring: And your classmates are never alone in the classroom where they’d have the opportunity to steal someone else’s money?

Younger offspring: I don’t think so.

Dr. Free-Ride: Does your teacher maintain any kind of written records of who has earned how much money and who has been charged money at the store or for misbehaving?

Younger offspring: I don’t know.

Dr. Free-Ride: I wonder if there could be any kind of student-to-student commerce with this classroom money.

Elder offspring: I’ll give you ten cents for a pencil. Or forty cents to be my best friend.

Dr. Free-Ride: Or fifty cents to copy your homework.

Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: And suddenly the classroom workforce includes hired goons.

Dr. Free-Ride: In some classrooms, you might have to pay for your handouts or your turn at the board. That would be an excellent set up to study the history of unfair labor practices.

Younger offspring: I’m going to ask my teacher about whether you have to stand on the red X if you spend all your money at the classroom store, but not about this other stuff.

Dr. Free-Ride: That’s probably a good idea at this point in the school year. It’s a little early to have to explain that, for any given system, your parents will look for the ways it might break.

Elder offspring: Save that for back-to-school night.

Over forty teams of high school students were running robots that they built from nothing inside of 6 weeks to accomplish a VERY complicated challenge. They were so FANTASTIC that I am going to run out of superlatives before getting to the end of this post. The very idea that this organization has grown since 1992 to reach more than 13,000 schools across the US, and that there are 41 REGIONAL competitions before the upcoming late April finals in Atlanta is just incredible. Better yet, FIRST has clearly been very successful in perpetuating and growing a model that is self-sustaining, with many teams having competed for several years, with former FIRST team members returning to mentor their old team or going on to start new ones.

I managed to arrive just in time to watch the contest start up for the final day with a performance by the Blue Man Group, followed by the grand entrance of Woodie Flowers, the legendary MIT professor who founded FIRST, and before that was the originator of the famous MIT 2.70 and 6.270 robotics contests. Check out how these people LOVE him as he enters the arena using an interesting MIT spin-out technology called the Atlas Ascender (a self-contained box that allows rapid ascent as well descent.)

Woodie Rappelling – Boston Regional 2008.

The day began with the quarter-finals matches and I stayed through the final. The designs were quite varied, with the older more experienced teams (you could tell from the low team numbers below 100 that were granted years ago) clearly demonstrating that years of experience really helps in refining robust approaches to complicated problems. That said, even the rookie teams showed great creativity and incredible dedication and teamwork. Check out these photos of several of the robots.  

The matches were real nail-biters with cheering and chants that rivaled any football game I had ever attended (except maybe the Chelsea Tottenham match in London). To see this leve of excitement and adulation usually reserved for sports and entertainment celebrities unleashed on students for engineering and innovation just warmed my heart. Something has been made right in the world.

Everyone I spoke with loved the experience and couldn’t even imagine failing to participate next year. And as Steve Wozniak, one of the FIRST luminaries said, “There are lots of prizes and awards, and only one of them is for winning.” Their hearts and minds are certainly in the right place.

Find out about your local FIRST events and sign up however you can, as a participant. mentor, coach, parent, whatever. You won’t regret it.

Just last week, I had a chance to hear a presentation by Alfie Kohn, one of the more (in)famous progressive education proponents, on the perils of emphasizing achievement and performance over engagement in a subject. Besides being an enthusiastic and engaging speaker, Alfie made a number of great points that really resonated with me regarding the damage a national obsession with standardized testing and assessment has wreaked on the quality of education at large. (We coincidentally follow most of Kohn’s recommendations in how we operate the WISE labs and programs…)

His central point on this topic was that by focusing so much school and parental attention on HOW students are doing instead of on WHAT they are doing and WHY, the very effort assessment has a now reasonably well proven effect of focusing the student’s attention on external validation from teachers and grades instead of on the actual subjects under study. The result, according to the many cited research articles, is that students lose intrinsic motivation and interest in the very subjects around which we really hope to instill a lifelong love of learning. It didn’t take much effort to extend the notions not only to grades and class rank, but even further to parenting techniques and practices as well.

And of course, the “No Child Left Behind” legislation, already the whipping boy of education Illuminati nationwide, took a severe beating in the process. One of my favorite moments in his talk was when he impersonated our current President and Senator Ted Kennedy complete with accents in their “misguided support in passing the law.” It didn’t take much looking around online to find pretty strong independent evidence in support of what Mr Kohn has been saying for years on this topic. My favorite articles came from Rice University and the NY Times.

The Rice/UT study was particularly sobering, not just for its striking revelations surrounding the duplicity of the Texas public school system’s reporting, but because it was this very public school system’s approach that was used to promote and establish the model for the national NCLB legislation. In the study entitled “Avoidable Losses: High Stakes Accountability and the Dropout Crisis” McNeil, Coppola, and Radigan of Rice University basically stripped the clothes right off the emperor.

Until recently, the GOP held out the “Texas Miracle” program as a model for national education reform with improving scores and an astonishingly low dropout rate of less than 3%. According to this paper, however, when researchers actually investigated how many high school students actually graduated within 5 years (not even the hoped for four-year tenure) the answer was a horrifyingly low 33%. Yes, 33%. I’ll say it again, because I didn’t believe it the first two times I read it either. Fewer than 33% percent of entering public high school students in Texas graduate within 5 years.

Needless to say, this doesn’t quite match up with the public accounting of dropout rates the state has been touting for the last few years. When challenged, the state sheepishly admitted,

“A new study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas-Austin finds that Texas’ public school accountability system, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), directly contributes to lower graduation rates. Each year Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation — a disproportionate number of whom are African-American, Latino and English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students.

By analyzing data from more than 271,000 students, the study found that 60 percent of African-American students, 75 percent of Latino students and 80 percent of ESL students did not graduate within five years. The researchers found an overall graduation rate of only 33 percent.

“High-stakes, test-based accountability doesn’t lead to school improvement or equitable educational possibilities,” said Linda McSpadden McNeil, director of the Center for Education at Rice University. “It leads to avoidable losses of students. Inherently the system creates a dilemma for principals: comply or educate. Unfortunately we found that compliance means losing students.”

” alt=”Graduation Discrepancies ” />

Read my whole review of the field and the store complete with more images at the WISE student blog where we’re helping schools learn how to set up these incredible balanced micro-ecosystems.

Even halfway through the book, I found myself wishing I could get my daughters into a class like Room 56 at Hobart Elementary. Several chapters actually choked me up a little and seriously redoubled my motivations to make WISE a success. And the stories went on, and on, and on, and on to the point where it seemed almost impossible that so many incredibly cool things could be happening in one class under a single teacher. By the time I was finished with the quick read I realized that it is a passing rare teacher that can give so much of themselves to their students.

Esquith demonstrates an almost pathological level of commitment to his students. But a couple of other critical traits show through the anecdotes. Esquith has an innate sense of very high standards across a very broad range of disciplines, coupled with both humility and initiative that in combination are more rare than hen’s teeth. His humility reveals itself with a wry self-awareness and a willingness to critically evaluate where his skills and efforts fall short of his exceptional standards. The initiative comes into play when he realizes his failings and takes steps to find true experts and recruit them to support his cause. All of that combined with a work ethic most Protestants would find over-the-top makes for a magical classroom experience and students who regularly return after decades.

After succumbing to my recommendation, me wannabe-teacher wife’s major comment was, “I’m not sure I could give that much to my students. How would my own kids feel when so abandoned? That said, she read the book over a single night, and came away with the feeling “I would TOTALLY have LOVED that in 5th grade.” An excellent read indeed. I wonder if there is any way to get seats for the play.

From the book’s back cover:

“Rafe Esquith is my only hero.”
—Sir Ian McKellan

“Politicians, burbling over how to educate the underclass, would do well to stop by Rafe Esquith’s fifth grade class as it mounts its annual Shakespeare play. Sound like a grind? Listen to the peals of laughter bouncing off the classroom walls.”
—Time

“Esquith is a modern-day Thoreau, preaching the value of good work, honest self-reflection, and the courage to go one’s own way.”
—Newsday

Get it here on Amazon.

Flagging Economy Needs Science Investments

Craig Barrett

Sunday, January 20, 2008

“Two years ago, the National Academies published the seminal study on U.S. competitiveness entitled “Rising Above the Gathering Storm.” The study identified major shortcomings in U.S. investments in basic scientific research as well as in math and science education for our youngsters. The suggestions contained in this study were immediately picked up by the Democratic House Leadership as their competitiveness strategy and later by President Bush in his State of the Union message under his American Competitiveness Initiative. Legislation in the form of the America Competes Act was passed in the House and Senate in 2007, and it appeared the United States was finally going to move forward after years of neglect to increase investment in math, science and basic research. All parties agreed that our competitiveness in the 21st century was at stake and we needed to act.

So much for political will.

The recent budget deal between Republicans and Democrats effectively flat-funds or cuts funding for key science agencies. Excluding “earmarks,” the Department of Energy funding for fiscal year 2008 is up only 2.6 percent, thus losing ground to inflation. The National Science Foundation is up 2.5 percent, with the same result. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is up 11 percent, however the labs where research happens only get 2.3 percent, again losing ground to inflation. Key national laboratories, such as the Fermilab, which focuses on high-energy particle physics research, face the likelihood of hundreds of jobs being lost and the closing of some facilities, helping to shortchange defense research. Predicting the impact of such funding cuts in basic research on future job creation is difficult. Who could have predicted a $300 billion semiconductor industry from the invention of a transistor? But our kids who are heading to college are very smart. They will make their career decisions based on where they see the priorities of our government and economy.

The funding decisions on the America Competes Act took place a few days after Congress passed a $250 billion farm bill. In the eyes of our political leaders, apparently, corn subsidies to Iowa farmers are more important for our competitiveness in the next century than investing a few billion in our major research universities. The president expressed his happiness with the budget and Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, said, “The president didn’t get his priorities, we got ours.”

At a time when the rest of the world is increasing its emphasis on math and science education (the most recent international tests – NAEP and PISA – show U.S. kids to be below average) and increasing their budgets for basic engineering and physical science research, Congress is telling the world these areas are not important to our future. At a time when we are failing our next generation of students, politically charged topics such as steroids in Major League Baseball and the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes command instantaneous congressional hearings while the seed corn (no pun intended) of our future is ignored and placed lower in priority than billions of dollars of earmarks.

Perhaps this would all be a moot discussion if we could continue to import the best and brightest minds from around the world to start and staff our next generation of high tech startups. But Washington can’t even get that strategy straight, as legal immigration – the process by which bright, highly educated workers immigrate to the United States – is being choked by our inability to control illegal immigration. While the EU has proposed a simplified and expanded program for importing highly educated talent from the rest of the world, we continue to make if more difficult for the same talent to work in the United States, even when some of these knowledge workers have received their education in the United States at partial taxpayer expense.

Where are the voices in Washington to bring reasoned debate and action to these topics? Where are the voices among the presidential candidates to propose solutions to these challenges? What do we elect our political leaders for if not to protect our long-term future?

The United States stands at a pivotal point in our history. Competition is heating up around the world with millions of industrious, highly educated workers who are willing to compete at salaries far below those paid here. The only way we can hope to compete is with brains and ideas that set us above the competition – and that only comes from investments in education and R&D. Practically everyone who has traveled outside the United States in the last decade has seen this dynamic at work. The only place where it is apparently still a deep, dark secret is in Washington, D.C.

What are they thinking? When will they wake up? It may already be too late; but I genuinely think the citizenry of this country wants the United States to compete. If only our elected leaders weren’t holding us back.

Craig Barrett is the chairman of Intel.”