U.S. Leaders Fret Over Students’ Math and Science Weaknesses
Bill Gates, the chairman of the behemoth Microsoft Corp., says he’s a little “scared” by it. Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, R-Mich., declares it a steadily worsening crisis. And the Business Roundtable says the United States cannot wait for another challenge such as the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik satellite before the country starts working on it.
What they and other national business and political leaders are worried about is U.S. schools’ ability to stimulate students’ interest in math and science—an area of weakness that they say has led to the growing influence of Asian countries, most notably India and China, in the fields of engineering and technology.
Others, meanwhile, wonder if the fears are akin to those that arose in the early 1980s, when many prominent Americans were sounding the alarm over Japan’s ascendance in the world economy. The watershed 1983 report A Nation at Risk was in some ways a direct outgrowth of such worries. It warned of the “educational foundations of our society … being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people,” and raised the specter of other countries’ matching and...
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