“We need to encourage children to take more math and science and to make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations,” said former President George W. Bush during a 2006 State of the Union address lauding the No Child Left Behind Act. Recently, this course has been built upon by the Obama administration for a more flexible approach to education, permitting educational focus on subject areas beyond math, science and reading.
With regards to education policy, the Obama administration should be praised for two choices. First: avoiding direct, partisan confrontation with the previous education laws established by former President Bush, namely No Child Left Behind. There were tenets of the No Child Left Behind law worth continuing, and advocating continuation of these positive aspects prevented further inflammation of partisanship on Capitol Hill.
Second: Obama’s proposed reforms remove the United States from an internationally confrontational education policy and moved the U.S. toward a flexible education system that facilitates an effective global balance of skill sets. Simply looking to out-compete the rest of the globe in math and science does not permit specialization at an international level, and does not permit students to strengthen their particular fortes while in school.
Exclusive focus on math and science appeared to be a sound policy after alarming reports comparing the performance of American students to their international peers in these subjects were proliferated in the media. American students were observed consistently lagging behind students in Asia, Europe and numerous other industrialized areas. American students ranked 16 out of 30 countries in the science portion of the Program for International Student Assessment in 2006 and ranked 23 out of 30 countries in math. In another examination of science and math competency, American students placed 25 out of 41, right after Latvia.
Shocking. But this did not necessitate a wholesale refocusing of American academics. We should remember the current strength of the United States in the global economic order is in the services sector. The U.S. does services and innovation best, not manufacturing, development, or even invention. Services and innovation are not areas dictating special or ubiquitous capacities in math or science, but rather require understanding of the humanities and general creativity to achieve success.
Pressuring students to perform well exclusively in math and science chokes this creativity by forcing schools to reduce material to mindless memorization and regurgitation of mathematical formulas, science facts and statistical figures. It also detracts from study in the equally important subjects of history, geography, international affairs, art and music.
For the U.S. to prosper economically, effective education in these subjects will need to be attained. Resisting the urge to incessantly pressure students to achieve in math and science by reducing content to memorization will need to be avoided. Policy makers must remember that while it took comprehension of math and science to produce the portable music player, it took ingenuity, creativity and social knowledge to market the iPod.
Thus, a balanced approach to education is needed. Exclusive focus on math and science is as much a hindrance to students’ eventual economic success as slacking in these subjects. Therefore, it is laudable that educational policy has worked to improve math and science, but it is more advantageous that policy has been adjusted to permit pragmatism in academic focus. Perhaps Obama has remembered it was a degree in law, not number theory or physics, which brought him to prominence.
