Why America’s obsession with STEM education is dangerous, by Fareed Zakaria

[jmyrlefuller]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-stem-wont-make-us-successful/2015/03/26/5f4604f2-d2a5-11e4-ab77-9646eea6a4c7_story.html?hpid=z2

March 26, 2015

In truth, though, the United States has never done well on international tests, and they are not good predictors of our national success. Since 1964, when the first such exam was administered to 13-year-olds in 12 countries, America has lagged behind its peers, rarely rising above the middle of the pack and doing particularly poorly in science and math. And yet over these past five decades, that same laggard country has dominated the world of science, technology, research and innovation.

Consider the same pattern in two other highly innovative countries, Sweden and Israel. Israel ranks first in the world in venture-capital investments as a percentage of GDP; the United States ranks second, and Sweden is sixth, ahead of Great Britain and Germany. These nations do well by most measures of innovation, such as research and development spending and the number of high-tech companies as a share of all public companies. Yet all three countries fare surprisingly poorly in the OECD test rankings. Sweden and Israel performed even worse than the United States on the 2012 assessment, landing overall at 28th and 29th, respectively, among the 34 most-developed economies.

(excerpt)

I never thought I'd agree with Fareed Zakaria, but he makes some excellent points about the state of the American education system today.

[massadvj]

Note to self: Write an article about why Fareed Zakaria is dangerous.

[Oceander]

Yeah.  Much better to emphasize Womynist Critical Gender Art Studies than, Gaia forbid, Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmetic.

[jmyrlefuller]

Yeah.  Much better to emphasize Womynist Critical Gender Art Studies than, Gaia forbid, Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmetic.

I think his point is that there needs to be a more rounded education system. The countries that tend to do the best on those international tests our country seems to be near the bottom every time tend to have very unbalanced education systems, and so their workforces aren't good for much. We're rapidly developing very similar problems: the education requirements for jobs are so narrow now that people can't change careers without getting another degree.

[massadvj]

I think his point is that there needs to be a more rounded education system. The countries that tend to do the best on those international tests our country seems to be near the bottom every time tend to have very unbalanced education systems, and so their workforces aren't good for much. We're rapidly developing very similar problems: the education requirements for jobs are so narrow now that people can't change careers without getting another degree.

Perhaps he should have compared the work performance of those Americans with "well-rounded" liberal arts degrees against those with STEM degrees.  There is a reason he didn't.  It would dramatically negate his case.  No one wants their taxes done by an English major, and accounting (and everything else in our society) is so complicated, it takes a full curriculum of study to master just that one thing.