[nostrademons]

Yeah U.S. has a really serious problem with the deprioritization of science education over the last 45 years. There are very few really skilled scientists and engineers in the U.S, they are concentrated in specific geographic metros, and many of them are immigrants or the children of immigrants.

If the U.S. got into a serious peer conflict, the relative lack of human capital is a huge problem. In WW2 we could get away with a few scientists and engineers designing military equipment that's produced in bulk and then lots of foot soldiers employing it. Today, with the increasing complexity of modern weaponry and the ability for the weaponry itself to be an incredibly lethal force, the bottleneck is in building out the supply chain. Each component requires a skilled engineering team optimizing it and ensuring it fits into the overall whole.

[nradov]

Our next "Sputnik Moment" is coming. At some point we're going to be forced to reorient our education system away from performative progressive ideology and towards achieving practical results.

https://www.space.com/10437-sputnik-moment.html

[yardie]

> reorient our education system away from performative progressive ideology and towards achieving practical results.

NCLB was cooked up by Republicans along with defunding schools, school choice, and the homeschooling. You are correct that it is performative but there is nothing progressive about the last 20 years of public education.

[rtkwe]

You're pointing the the wrong direction there, look at the groups actually attacking and refusing to fund public schools better in the US... The actual issue is the systematic dismantling of public education for religious and ideological reasons; evolution, climate change, vaccinations all ideologically convenient to the religious conservative right in the US.

[nradov]

We need adequate funding for public schools but there is no real correlation between funding levels and student outcomes. A lot of that money is simply being frittered away. One of the best ways to start would be to destroy teacher's unions because they usually act in ways contrary to students' best interests.

[rtkwe]

Going to need one hell of a citation on that first claim because there's a lot of evidence showing reality follows the opposite intuitive correlation, additional funding does provide better outcomes. [0]

> destroy teacher's unions

States have tried doing essentially that and it's not worked for decades. So I say we should actually fund schools, pay and support teachers like we actually want educated kids before we try yet again to blame underpaid, undersupplied teachers trying to wrangle ballooning class sizes of rowdy kids.

[0] https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/how-money-matter...

[esseph]

I would argue the educational teaching criterias from the states (and fed) are the problem with educational outcome, not the teachers unions.

[insane_dreamer]

It wasn't the progressives that just slashed the science research budgets in half :/