Scientific Literacy: More Necessary Today Than Ever

It is all to easy to complain, these days, about any number of things. And it seems that where politics are concerned, all anyone is based on is what they complain about the most. Pessimism is chíc these days; optimism is considered naíve. So what, then, do we make of something that is both optimistic and pessimistic?

First; the pessimism. Much ado has been made about the fact that the Northwest Passage has been freed "for the first time ever". This video is proof of it:

Now, nobody is suggesting that this isn't going to have implications on global warming & global climate change in general. But this is used, once again, as evidence of man's fault: when NASA itself says this isn't so. Their culprit? Shifting wind patterns.

And this gets let go, by the public -- because the general comprehension of the media's representation is that "well, they did the research, so I don't have to." And that, more than anything, is the greatest threat facing society. Why? Because it means that whoever does do that research, controls society's opinions on everything under the sun. Are you comfortable with this? I certainly am not.

So where does this come from?

From the National Education Association:

A historic turnover is taking place in the teaching profession. While student enrollments are rising rapidly, more than a million veteran teachers are nearing retirement. Experts predict that overall we will need more than 2 million new teachers in the next decade.

This teacher recruitment problem, which has reached crisis proportions in some areas, is most acute in urban and rural schools; for high-need subject areas such as special education, math and science, and for teachers of color.

[...]

The statistics for turnover among new teachers are startling. Some 20 percent of all new hires leave the classroom within three years. In urban districts, the numbers are worse—close to 50 percent of newcomers flee the profession during their first five years of teaching.

Why do new teachers leave? They say they feel overwhelmed by the expectations and scope of the job. Many say they feel isolated and unsupported in their classrooms, or that expectations are unclear.

Nothing is particularly new about this. In fact, it is used as the most powerful argument for increasing teacher pay, for increasing funding to the Department of Education, and in general all sorts of interesting/curious events. But let us take a somewhat deeper examination of this plight -- one that won't exactly raise us up from this pessimism, but perhaps allow us to understand it a step or two further:

It is not in the best interests of the education lobby for education to actually improve.

It's a statement that we don't often think about, but bear with me and I will explain my logic -- or at least what passes for it. It's actually fairly simple. We'll use Washington, DC as the example for this. From the Cato@Liberty blog:

Is the problem insufficient funding? As it happens, DCPS’s total gross budget for the last school year was upwards of one billion dollars according to its own website, and its enrollment was about 52,000 students. That means DCPS had total per pupil spending of nearly $20,000 last year, or half a million dollars per class of 25 students. You’d think that would cover books.

In a previous article on this blog, "It's For The Children! ... And Other Lies My Government Told Me", I documented the fact that the national average annual cost per student for public schools was $8,701; whereas the cost per student for private schools was $3,116/yr. Almost a third the cost. So, going back to Washington, DC. How could this be so bloated over both the national average for both public and private schools? Well, the answer to that question can also be found in the public record: From The Examiner, circa August 24, 2007: "D.C. Public Schools will pay nearly $5.4 million in full-time salaries to 68 teachers and staff who won’t work full-time jobs this year, schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee told The Examiner on Thursday."

From all of the above, we have learned thus far three things:

Scholastic Acheivement is sliding continuously

This isn't much of a shocker, really: search anywhere and you'll see that there are, annually, fewer and fewer American engineering & physics graduates every year. There really isn't anybody whom is impressed with NCLB -- and that's not even if you include the people who actually study the topic.

Public schools cost more per student than private

There's not much equivocating there: $8.7k for public as compared to $3.1k for private? And let us not forget here that private schools -- even the 'average' ones -- have their impression of prestige for a reason: traditionally, private schools achieve greater scholastic results than public schools.

Washington DC schools spend millions of dollars on faculty that, literally, does nothing.

That incident reported was by no means a singular incident. It has happened before, and in larger numbers. Even so, these were actual teachers being discussed: lets not forget that schools also have administrative staffing; there have been entire studies to compare the number of non-teaching faculty members to the numbers of pupils... which says that this is a problem as well; less, one can only assume, for private schools than for public ones.

Even so; is simply privatizing all the schools the solution to this problem? (If our military security is any lesson, the answer to that question is an emphatic "NO!") Still, creating competition between schools simply couldn't hurt. Perhaps, if schools themselves were held accountable for the allocation of their resources on their students, we might see some streamlining of costs and some improvement of scholastic acheivement. And time and time again, the records have shown: the only effective mechanism for accountability is to put the fiscal survival of an institution on the line. That's called "market competition." However, there's no sign that given today's political and social climates, that honest markets can be restored to so ubiquitous and socialized -- which is what our educational system is. Should things actually turn around, however, it is effectively already too late. The day of the Renaissance man has been dead and buried for centuries.

So where do we go from here? Well, our nation's resident mad military scientist organization -- DARPA -- has already begun to aid in this:

Famous for funding futuristic technology, DARPA is spending $24 million to launch the Brain-Machine Interface Program (BMI), with the five-year research monies divided among six laboratories. High on its development wish list are mind-controlled battle robots, as well as airplanes flown and weapons or equipment operated with nothing more than thought – even from a distance – all through wireless neural interfaces.

And mind you, DARPA is not alone on this. Should true data-in BMI be developed, the problem of education and scientific literacy in particular could be resolved absolutely. Howso? Because the possibility of having a microchip -- or ten -- implanted in your head, and thus allowing you a replete factual education -- with said procedure to cost in the same ballpark as a breast augmentation does today -- between $4,000 to $10,000, USD -- would allow for wholly 'humanities'-esque education; focusing on reasoning skills and the like.

Without such a development, we are likely to face a scenario where the amount of information necessary to make an informed opinion on any given subject continues to fall further and further from the grasp of even our communities of "experts" -- but thankfully, if DARPA, Cyberkinetics, and other such organizations/companies have anything to say, we won't have too much to worry about there: the money is being spent, the effort is being made. While a complicated task, so long as the funding doesn't dry up it's essentially inevitable. (I suppose that statement makes me a functionalist -- but gee, isn't that a shocker to anyone whom has read the title of this blog?)

(Yes, for you AGI enthusiasts; the same gains can be made by AGI as can be made by BMI -- if and only if we hand over control of society to our AGI's. Which, if they are "Seed" AGIs, is entirely likely. But that is too "post-singularity" a subject for this author to be fully comfortable attempting to discuss.)