Dr. Matt vs. The US Educational System Pt. 1- Michio Kaku’s take.
Hey, it’s Dr. Matt again, dissecting an education-related medium on the internet. This time around, I’m going to be looking at a short video where physicist Michio Kaku gives a comment where he says, “the US has the worst educational system known to science”. Yikes. Of course, if you want to watch the video yourself, visit the bottom of the post.
Now, let’s dissect.
Starting off, it should be noted that the whole video isn’t Mr. Kaku trashing the educational system. It seems like it was cut out of a larger piece where they were talking about world business. It takes about two and a half minutes before Michio starts talking. He starts by talking about how science is the engine of prosperity, and how it gave rise to numerous technological advances (to which his colleague tries to “correct” him, but screw that guy). Almost immediately after is when we get that quote from earlier. Then he says something almost as extreme: “Our graduates compete regularly at the level of third world countries”. Wow. He goes on to say that we’re, “producing a generation of dummies” and that “the stupid index…keeps rising”. Of course, I can’t disagree. From personal experience, I’ve seen many people do and say stupid things. Not only that, but given the PISA results from 2015, we’re not getting much better it seems.
The next (and pretty much final) thing of interest that he talks about is “America’s secret weapon”. Apparently, it’s called the H1B. What is the H1B? It’s the genius visa; where geniuses the globe over come to America, go to our schools, get their PhDs, and, hopefully, work here by the end of it. There’s two glaring flaws with the strategy, however, and he points both of them out in his own way. Firstly, as he says, “America is like a magnet, sucking up all the brains of the world, but, now the brains are going back.” Yes, some of the people who come here on a H1B visa are apparently going back to their home countries and starting up their own sorts of Silicon Valleys oversees. This, of course, wouldn’t be too big a deal if it wasn’t for the second problem, which is what the first problem is based off of. We wouldn’t need a H1B visa if the US was educating enough people to fill those spots to begin with.
Ok, so remember that guy I said to screw off? Well, we’re bringing him back. Michael Schrage comes back and offers one final comment on this subject. He condemns most colleges that seem to use introductory science and engineering courses as “flunk out operations”. Now, he never explains how this is done, but I personally don’t see what he means (then again, I’m not taking science yet, so maybe I’ll get back to you once I take my Calc-based Physics class).
So, diagnosis? Obviously, the US education system is far from perfect, but Michio Kaku highlights some ways that make it the worst. The fact that we have to outsource our high-level jobs is a very dire problem indeed. Prognosis? Well, if we continue down the course we’re going, obviously, we’re just going to keep falling behind; simple as that. Cure? Restructure the education system. How? Unfortunately, I don’t really know yet; but something has to be done.
-Dr. Matt
Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fphPeRvhjQ
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA-2015-United-States.pdf