Bookraft

Brent Staples has written a guest piece on Science education at the New York Times that deserves wider reading - here is the URL. This is a problem that the great Bill Gates has taken on ... and as Business Week in its June 26th 2006 issue point out - with mixed success. But it is an important problem because India and China among others are displacing the US as the leaders in Post Industrial Capitalism based on their ability to turn out quality engineers and scientists at double if not treble the US rate.

But having gutted the pay packets of operational then manufacturing and then design engineers - US corporates are not only reeping their own seeds of disadvantage but in the likes of IBM and GE are now investing powerfully overseas for the lowest cost IP designers, creators, and engineers. hence corporates are voting right now against Bill Gates and the US on its ability to produce consistently high quality education that can make up the cost of living pay gap - and which will likely persist for 10-20 more years.

Let me say from the Great White North - I have seen all the problems and solutions Brent is talking about on a smaller city school scale. These are tough problems and important reading for educators.

(c)JBSurveyer 2006