The impact of scientific illiteracy in America

[Aver-aging]

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I honestly don't mind if people don't know jack about a particular subject..it's when they decide to form opinions concerning those subjects despite that fact..and when they make decisions based on those opinions..such as what should be taught in public schools..it is a danger to society

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I totally agree with you there.

I think the biggest change that can be made is to not allow people with un-comprehensive approaches to education, people who believe that a child should be taught only specific things and not exposed to the full spectrum of experience and knowledge, from gaining positions of influence. This would involve teaching people in an environment encompassing many viewpoints, from maintaining a critical viewpoint (probably the most important thing!), to exposure to religious (yes, even something as silly as creationism) and philosophical methodologies, exposure to scientific practices and ideas, exposure to different cultures, exposure to literature and art.... the list goes on and on. Anyone who speaks out against children learning about everything should be publicly shunned from having influence. Sadly, this is not an easy thing to do, because of that damn free speech thing (although, you could argue that people speaking out against teaching children comprehensive knowledge of the world are terrorists threatening the foundation of North American society).

If this culture believes in freedom, it should force as much dimensions of knowledge down the throats of its people. Then they can truly decide.

[Borodog]

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I think it's a little simplistic (to put it very mildly) to assume that if you get rid of public education, it will be replaced by private education at the same quality level as current public education.

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That's not what I assume at all. I assume that it will be replaced by a vastly superior product, as is true of every other case where the market is allowed to provide the product instead of a soviet-style centrally-planned bureaucratic monopoly.

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Wow. If public education is going to be replaced by an equal, vastly superior alternative that's not private, then what? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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Neuge,

Sorry, I misread your original post as bolded above; which might make my reply less non-sensical.

Again, my apologies. Mea culpa. [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

[Borodog]

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I think it's a little simplistic (to put it very mildly) to assume that if you get rid of public education, it will be replaced by private education at the same quality level as current private education.

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That's not what I assume at all. I assume that it will be replaced by a vastly superior product, as is true of every other case where the market is allowed to provide the product instead of a soviet-style centrally-planned bureaucratic monopoly.

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a) What Phil said.

b) The market does not produce superior products, it produces products which are more desirable to the person providing the money. McDonald's is not superior to similarly priced food by any criterion other than that people like to eat it. In the case of people paying for their child's education themseles, religious parents are unlikely to want their children to receive a broad-based science education. Also, in a fully private education market, I would expect some significant percentage of the dollars to be provided by eventual employers, similar to apprenticeships. In this case "more desirable" would be defined by the employer, and their definition is unlikely to include things not useful on the job. Certainly not things like whether the Earth revolves around the Sun or vice versa which is, when you think about it, a fairly practically useless thing for most people to know.

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So, why exactly should you get to force other people's children to learn what you like rather than what they like again? I missed that part.

Are you supposed to be making an argument for public education when you admit that it spends a dozen years and hundreds of thousands of dollars forcing students to learn fairly practically useless things?

Lastly, the vast majority of people want the best education possible for their kids, which is why there is so much frustration with public education.

[tolbiny]

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The best analysis suggests that there is little difference in the quality of education and outcomes between public and private schools; in fact, public schools come out slightly in front.

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If you are going to make this claim then you are going to want to link a different study:
Cautions of Interpretations
"The implication is that the estimated effects obtained should not be interpreted in terms of causal relationships."
"This self selection may introduce bias into the reported comparisons, and this bias would persist even after adjusting for observed student characteristics."

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Also please note, that wealthy and educated families (which is correlated with intelligence) send more of their kids to private schools; and on the other side, public schools act as a catch-all for the ungifted and the downright stupid.


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Did you read the study you linked?

Student and School variables:
"NAEP results typically show a higher average score for private school students than for public school students... How large is the average difference in achievement between the two types of schools, after adjusting for differences in student characteristics"
The student characteristics they used were
Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Students with disabilities, English Language Learners, Computer in the home, Eligibility for fre/reduced-price school lunch, Participation in Title 1, number of books in the home, number of absences.

When these are not taken into account the differences between private and public schools are signifigent.
Reading 4th grade: 14.7
Reading 8th grade: 18.1
Math 4th grade: 8.2
Math 8th grade: 12.3
It is not until student and school variables are adjusted for that the scores come a lot closer. However (and this is if I am interpreting correctly) adjusting for both the student and school level variables leads to a major underrepresentation of the worst schools in both school systems. Considering how much better private schools score before these variables what it appears is that instead of comparing public vs private schools what you end up with is the top level public schools vs private schools.

[ChrisV]

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The vast majority of people want the best education possible for their kids, which is why there is so much frustration with public education.

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But not everybody can afford the best education, nor does everyone agree that "best" includes science.

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So, why exactly should you get to force other people's children to learn what you like rather than what they like again? I missed that part.

Are you supposed to be making an argument for public education when you admit that it spends a dozen years and hundreds of thousands of dollars forcing students to learn fairly practically useless things?

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You're shifting the goalposts. My only claim was that shifting to a market-based education system would not solve the problem of scientific illiteracy. I did not say I should be able to force other people's children to learn what I like. I didn't make any arguments in favour of public education, nor did I disagree that a market-based system would be more efficient in terms of teaching people useful, practical information.

As it happens, I don't think people should be able to educate their children literally however they like. There's a point at which a bad education becomes child abuse; e.g., uncontroversially I hope, I don't think people should be allowed to not teach their kids to read and write. Exactly how much control people should have over their childrens' education is something I'm agnostic about.

Also, in a democracy, the broad-based education given by the public system is not useless. People have to be well-informed enough to make democratic decisions which will ultimately affect me. I know, I know, come the Glorious Anarchocapitalist Revolution, I won't have to care anymore. I think you'd agree though that the world would be a better place if everyone had an education in basic economics.

[Phil153]

Tolbiny,

The study quite clearly shows that public and private schools are about on par, when adjusted for factors that influence results (race, income, etc). Are you questioning the accuracy of the methodology? The model seems quite reasonable to me.

Also note that private schools benefit from a "cream of the crop" effect on the supply side. The wealthier private schools can hire the best teachers by offering either more money, or better conditions, prestige, etc. Both teachers and resources at the upper end of the spectrum tend to congregate in these places. But teacher IQ, ability to teach, and personalities are drawn from a finite pool. As are the resources that society as a whole can put into teaching. At present private schools skim the top of this pool, biasing the results on the supply side.

The bottom line is that the best analyses done suggest that there is little difference between public and private schools when adjusted for relevant factors. That's in spite of the fact that their SHOULD still be a reasonable difference due to the effect of the "cream of the crop" effect discussed above.

[tolbiny]

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Are you questioning the accuracy of the methodology? The model seems quite reasonable to me.


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I always question the methodology, not much reason to discuss results before its understood. I haven't throughly read the study but a major flaw is extremely evident to begin with.
For the study they choose reading and math as the skills to test. Acts like NCLB have tied federal funding to a district's performance in reading and math (specifically for NCLB science will be added in '08). Naturally this gives huge incentives for public schools to focus on reading and math at the expense of other areas of education. In other words the tests used to measure teaching efficiency are in the areas that public schools are most likely to do well in and ignores language, science, music and art programs, ect. Using math and reading alone (potentially) heavily biases the results in favor of public schools.

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Also note that private schools benefit from a "cream of the crop" effect on the supply side. The wealthier private schools can hire the best teachers by offering either more money, or better conditions, prestige, etc. Both teachers and resources at the upper end of the spectrum tend to congregate in these places

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I hope you have some hard numbers on that because that doesn't jive with what i recall off the top of my head. I've found a couple of links that support my recollection that public school teachers make more on average than private counterparts but i can't vouch for their accuracy or methodology right now (ie i'm not going to go through them right now).
Link 1
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On average, public school teachers earn between about 25 to 119 percent more than private school teachers earn, depending upon the private subsector.

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link 2
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Pay often varies according to degree obtained, grade level taught, subject matter taught, and whether the teacher works for a public or private institution (private school teachers generally make less than public school teachers)

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[tolbiny]

Phil,
Just to clarify my position since there isn't a lot of consistency between my posts. Their methodology doesn't appear overtly flawed for measuring the differences between math and reading scores and I am not at all able to comment intelligently on their attempts to normalize differing populations (despite my first post).
However this study does not show that Public and private education is close to equal, it simply shows that in two aspects they are close to equal. There are reasons, in my view, to believe that the tests they gave are specifically in areas that public education should do the best relative to private, and that this study also doesn't mention once about educational value per dollar spent which is another thread entirely I would guess.

[pokerbobo]

A few years back I came to the conclusion that most of America is just plain DUMB. 90 percent of America could tell you all the American Idol winners names, but if asked about the last five presidents, most would have no clue. History for most people begins as thier life begins., anything that happened prior to thier birth is irrelavent.

As far as science goes, it is partly just the laziness of a persons mind. I never will understand the lengths some people will go to avoid thinking. It really is depressing to me that there are people like that. It seems in some parts of our society, being dumb is almost a source of pride.

The impact on America could go two ways...first America has freedom and that is the source of all our innovation. Why do most inventions come from the USA? no not diversity as we are told...it is freedom. If you are free to create,and free to earn with the labor of your thoughts and creations you have incentive. Take that away and innovation will come to a screehing halt. the USA will always have a group of people moving society forward with innovation and invention.
The possible flipside would be the removal of these freedoms (both financial on personel freedom.) As America seems to inch ever closer to a more socialist mentality in it's unproductive class and in its government lefties. If we move too far in this direction the result may look like the plot of "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.

I think America will always have a portion of its population just "along for the ride" who really have no desire to improve or educate themselves. there is nothing that can really change this unless we strip away all the programs to help out these "unfortunate" or "underprivledged". These terms are in quotes because they are BS. i was not born into money, i quit college after one semester and yet have done very well for myself. No government program did anything for me. I learned things because I wanted to learn them. You can send an lazy idiot to college, after he's done you've got an lazy educated idiot.

i guess the bottom line is that as long as our govt usurps from the producers in this country and rewards laziness in the form of this program and that program, we will always have the problem of intellectual loafers. Some peoples attitude is "If I can get by not using my brain, then why put in the effort?" [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

[Mickey Brausch]

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A few years back I came to the conclusion that most of America is just plain DUMB. 90 percent of America could tell you all the American Idol winners names, but if asked about the last five presidents, most would have no clue.

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Why do most inventions come from the USA? no not diversity as we are told...it is freedom. The USA will always have a group of people moving society forward with innovation and invention.

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America seems to inch ever closer to a more socialist mentality in its unproductive class and in its government lefties. ... Our govt usurps from the producers in this country and rewards laziness in the form of this program and that program.

[/ QUOTE ]Your report on the symptoms of the disease I find to be in the right direction, as far as I'm concerned - but I have some problems with your diagnosis. Demonstrably, the United States is the richest country in the world, has a population that is educated at a lower level than a lot of western democracies', and its capitalist economy is by any standard more liberal and unrestrained than almost all others.

So how can there be so many Americans who are American-Idol-dumb and at the same time this be the fault of "creeping socialism", when, at least comparatively speaking, the U.S. is the very opposite of socialism ?

Mickey Brausch