Teach For America has a very strong marketing presence at my school. I can't go a day without seeing their posters plastered somewhere or hearing about some event that they've gotten on. This evening, I was on Facebook when I saw the following ad promoting one of their events by someone who has got to be one of their most dedicated promoters:



I'd like to start a discussion on the significance of this. It got me thinking. I should preface the opinion I'm about to present with the following: I don't necessarily hold it to be my own and I do think we need better-quality education in America but I'm sick and tired of hearing Teach For America's "edgy" adverts.

As for the statement in the ad: this is an over-simplification. The key difference here is that China is industrializing; America is industrialized. The Chinese engineer must tackle the challenges of constructing infrastructure into a vast and impoverished interior -- in America, these bridges and roads already exist and the deficiencies lie in dwindling maintenance budgets. China has made impressive progress in the last half century, but has a great way yet to go; hence the need for scientists and engineers. (I would also be interested to know if this figure takes into account the social sciences.)

One of the founding fathers (and I was struggling to find this quotation earlier without luck) said something to the effect of:

"Let us be statesmen and politicians so that our children may be scientists and industrialists so that their children may be artists and poets."

What, if not science, are these American students pursuing? I am certainly more of a "thinking" person than a "feeling" one, but a world of only scientists and engineers would not be one in which I'd want to live (although it would admittedly be very nice). When I hear people suggest that the most gifted or eminent artist or poet is still a cut below a scientist or engineer if not in the caliber of intellectual expression then in the contribution that individual makes to the rest of mankind, I disagree.... but that comparison feels like it has smatterings of a faith/rationalist argument.

What do you think?

I feel that our educational system needs a boost; however, there seems to be a significant focus on math and science with a negligence of English and fine arts. While reading Barack Obama's "Audacity of Hope", I saw this.

There are some people who like to circle jerk with other engineers and talk about how great and superior to other fields of study, but it's not engineers that manage accounts; it's not engineers that write blockbuster movies; it's not engineers that occupy the majority of elected offices. There's a very good reason for this - a good engineer is good at engineering, but not necessarily at balancing a stock portfolio, projecting investments, or leading any large group of people beyond a small development or design team.

As for the situation of China producing more engineers, if your points are true (and I'm not saying they aren't - I just have no knowledge of the situation within China), then it nullifies a good part of their argument. However, even if we bump up the number of engineers we produce, let's be honest - we need to bump up the quality in a good number of cases before we bump up the quantity. Part of this, I believe, is to stress fields other than engineering - sciences, mathematics, business, fine arts, linguistics, law, etc. etc. - so that people, when entering college have a better idea of what kind of opportunities there are.

But is there "quality control" when comes to Chinese engineers? Call me ignorant but I never really hear any real developments in science that comes from China.

Well there's no need to portray all other fields in such a bad light. There are some very good ones as well.

I'd like to point out that China has over 4 times as many people as the United States does.

You missed the point of what I said. I was saying that engineers are good at engineering, but important fields such as accounting and storywriting are not generally staffed by engineers (and there's a very good reason for that).

If engineers were in the habit of doing all of our story writing, I would kill myself.

Indeed. China's population will be large enough to where the percentage of people that have IQ's over 135 or so will what...be more than the total population of the United States?

I'd like to point out this is a GROSS understatement. I'd like to see some percentages, as opposed to comparing numbers.

Aw, shucks.

I was hoping the Teach For America program wouldn't insult our intelligence by comparing the U.S. and China in absolute figures but instead use percentages. Looking at the ad again, though, it's not 100% clear.

Even if they are absolute figures, there's still a 2:1 discrepancy.

No, it's about a 4.28:1 ratio.

It doesn't help that the non-research university courses generally teach you why to do something without teaching you how to do it, so you end up with a lot of people who are nonfunctional in their discipline and essentially need to be trained in their job from scratch for the first 3-4 years.

It doesn't help that people with degrees that formerly implied a greater sense of understanding and ability (like a mechanical engineering degree) are now doing the same work that a technologist used to do (like a mechanical designer) and making relatively less money as a result. This is something that's pretty funny to watch up here in Alberta, actually: 20 years ago the big oil companies like Imperial Oil/Exxon had teams of designers who drafted plans based on specifications and leadership provided by an engineer. Nowadays everybody is an engineer with a copy of AutoCAD and get less work done because they aren't designers. Just like how computer scientists aren't programmers, mathematicians aren't calculators and paleontologists aren't backhoe operators.

I think a bigger problem in the industrialized world is the complete lack of skilled labor and the near-complete lack of jobs in those fields. But then again, people in modern society are almost completely useless when it comes to anything that's not in their immediate field of expertise or something they find personally interesting. How many people here know how to, for instance, reshingle a roof or install a water faucet? The modern homeowner outsources every-day essential home maintenance to specialists with as much furor as our society outsources jobs that we consider too expensive or menial to do ourselves. I think our society needs to seriously step back and re-evaluate our priorities, especially when it comes to specialized work.

Regardless, I don't think China measures engineers by the same standards that we do. Eastern countries view education as a whole a lot differently than civilized countries do. We regard education as a personal learning experience: we are able to absorb the information and can adapt it to new problems. China and India, in particular, view education as more the ability to find the correct answer - copying off of the guy next to you is alright, so is looking up the answer on Wikipedia and paying someone else to do the problem for you.
Which is probably why everything the Chinese have has been engineered and designed by a Russian or an American.

I read a series of articles in a few different publications (one being the New York Times, the others might be less credible) that state that America is experiencing a major brain drain, and that it's likely that people who want to get ahead in the fields of science and technology will end up moving to places like Finland and South Korea, where a lot of progress is occurring.

whoa hey

Jon'C said something about the world I agree with. o:

Balls. A disproportionately large number of the CEOS of the FTSE top 100 started out in engineering. Just because someone starts out in engineering doesn't mean they're stuck there forever. A lot of them go into business and accounting since their degree implies a good sense of numbers and some knowledge of running a business (We don't just study maths and the nature of spinning bits of metal all the time!).

We've definitely got evidence that we're losing engineers and scientists in the UK. Some unis are shutting down entire science departments due to the lack of interest. Science and engineering is steadily being considered too hard. Why bother doing an engineering degree if you can do a media studies degree or English? You barely ever have to go to lectures, you need to do some reading and then you write essays and take exams where you can get away with a surprising degree of waffle. I know some students who have 5 hours of lectures per week to attend. Mechanical engineering students in their first year have 30 hours by comparison. Medics often have more. I'm not trying to denigrate those subjects, it's got more to do with silly New Labour attempts to get 50% of 18-30 year olds uni-educated. We've got way too many people over-qualified for their jobs and frankly how many media studies and psychology graduates do we need?

More than you think, in the case of Psychology. There's actually a shortage of qualified Psychologists practising in England currently.

SO much to say. No time - have to go back to work.

Engineers in the UK are multi-disciplined bags of AWESOME.

That'll do for now.

Wow. The courses are always over-subscribed though! I guess most of them don't make a career out of it in the end.

China is using Islamic terrorism as a mask for the Maoist expansion! We need to act fast and get their public schools down to par with ours so that all of their students are as unmotivated as ours!

Better yet, let's make them think that they will be successful because they are special snowflakes who can do anything! I am going to play in the NBA because I can make shots on the high school basketball team!

**** THAT ****.

And I helped re shingle a roof once. And I put a faucet on a Zamboni last week! I am the salvation of our country Jon'C!

There's a huge difference between a person with a BA in Psychology and a practicing Psychologist.

In just a few years that answer will become abundantly clear. If it's easy, it ain't valuable.

With any luck, I'll have a Master's in Electrical Engineering in five years.

EDIT: Doh!

Obviously. But the first is (what should be) the most common stepping stone to the second. Like Recusant suggested, a lot of people who study Psychology at Uni don't use it in their chosen career path. My point was that while we don't need more Psychology graduates, we do need more qualified Psychologists.

And just to be a pain, the Psychology course offered by the University of Liverpool (at least) is a BSc, not BA.

salvation more like salivation am i right


[QUOTE=Obi Kwiet]There's a huge difference between a person with a BA in Psychology and a practicing Psychologist.[/QUOTE]That difference is, as well, often a MD and a rename to 'psychiatrist.'

"Practicing Psychology" is rather counter-intuitive since it is generally speaking the application of the scientific method to the study of and research into the psyche. I think what England might be looking for is a Psychological Engineer. Psycho Engineer? whatever.

Just to point out, we probably need more BSc psychology graduates because [no offense to livid or anyone that does psychology] a BA in psychology is what EVERYONE does when they just deceide they want to go to uni, but don't know what to do there. Then again most of those people go to it just as a giant social event.

Why would I take offense? I'm attending the University of Liverpool, which is a BSc Psychology course

I'd probably agree with you; I remember being asked by a girl in high school what I wanted to do for A Level. When I said "psychology", she said "ugh...everyone wants to do that." Little did I know, "everyone" wanted to do it for kicks and giggles, not because they wanted to pursue it.

I can kind of vouch for Jon`C's explanation that computer scientists are not programmers. I learned a bunch of theory with a whole lotta math. I come to the working world and we don't even touch a bit of that. It is required of our company to know data structures, algorthm analysis (big-oh), and OOP. But I've never had to write a formal proof to my lead engineer that my algorithm is indeed O(n).

One of the things I'm grateful I did pretty much since I was 12, was go on jobs with my dad. I learned a lot of electrical wiring stuff. A switch fails, I can replace it. A breaker fails, I can replace it. If I put my mind to it, I can rope a house (wire it up) if I'm given plans.

Psychiatrists don't practice psychology.

Are you thinking of PsyDs?

:psyd:

No. Psychologists practice Psychology.

Psychiatrists practice Psychiatry.