Image Credit: Steve Woods

Yesterday, I saw a television ad for the Strong American Schools group, which was lamenting the fact that American students now rank 21st in Math and 25th in Science. The group itself is focused on advocacy efforts that are aimed at three areas of reform: (1) Agreeing on American education standards, (2) Providing effective teachers in every classroom, and (3) Providing more time and support for learning. That all sounds good, in a non-threatening, mom and apple pie kind of way. But the problem with this, and with most educational reform, is that it simply cannot solve the underlying cause of what’s wrong with our schools. And what’s wrong is simply this:

American culture does not value intellectual achievement as much as it values other pursuits.

That’s the long and short of it. We have no shortage of money going into our schools. We have no shortage of good teachers. What we do have is a culture whose popular culture, belittles science, math, and other forms of intellectual achievement. We have a culture that provides few economic, financial, or glory rewards for intellectual achievement.

Here’s an experiment for you. Walk into an average bar and grill anywhere in the country and ask aloud who were last year’s five finalists for the Heisman Trophy. Odds are, more than a few people there will be able to answer you right off the top of your heads. Now, ask that same crowd who won the Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine last year, and I’d wager that you’d get blank stares. (For the record, that’s Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg for Physics; Gerhard Ertl for Chemistry; and Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans, and Oliver Smithies for Medicine. Take that and win a bet with it.)

When you flip on the TV to CNN or MSNBC or FoxNews when they do a celebrity news segment, the celebrities in question are almost always actors, musicians, or athletes. They are almost never scientists, doctors, engineers, or inventors.

Apart from Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and (maybe) Carl Sagan, there are almost no scientists who are household names in the United States. By contrast, Babe Ruth, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, “Dr. J” Irving, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Larry Bird, Brett Favre, Joe Montana, and Deion Sanders are among a boatload of athletes who are famous–and that’s right off the top of my head.

The bread and butter of newspapers is not the science and technology section, the front page, or even the business section. It’s the Sports and Lifestyle pages. These pages have the biggest budgets, their reporters are most resistant to layoffs, and the reason for that is these sections make the most money out of all of them.

In America, people struggling to “make it big” don’t dream of being doctors, psychologists, engineers, or inventors. Hell, they don’t even dream of being painters, poets, cello players or novelists. They dream of being rock stars, pro quarterbacks, talk show hosts, or actors.

This is not to say that athletics, pop music, or acting are not worthy pursuits. In fact, I enjoy watching a game or two, listening to rock music and watching movies. But I don’t consider success in these fields to be the height of achievement. Ask me for a list of the ten people in history I most admire and there won’t be an actor in the bunch. But I’m an exception. Polls of the most admired people in America routinely consist almost entirely of politicians, actors, athletes, and TV personalities. Never scientists, inventors, or doctors.

This lack of respect for intellectual achievement has accompanied a diminishing respect for science as a whole, as evidenced by a number of anti-intellectual trends in our society.

One of these trends is the rapid growth of Fundamentalist Christianity in the United States over the past few decades. Fundamentalist Christian sects are the most hostile to the expansion of scientific knowledge and philosophies based on reason, due to their adherence to the strict, literalist interpretations of the Bible. This attitude leads these sects to oppose the teaching of evolution, among other things. Because their primary philosophic posture relies on the discovery of truth through faith and revelation, rather than discovery and reason, these sects by principle are forced to downgrade intellectual achievement.

Another trend is the growth in the belief of the paranormal. On a percentage basis, the fastest growing religion in the United States is Wicca. Which is the literal belief in witchcraft, spells, magic, the whole nine yards. Last year, one of the bestselling books in America was called The Secret, which advances, as a self-help philosophy, that wishing something to happen will make it come true. (Suffice to say, reality doesn’t work that way.)

A third anti-intellectual trend is the growth in pseudoscience, especially in the form of “alternative medicine.” The most dangerous way that this is manifesting itself is through the current panic of the vaccine-autism link. A growing number of people (including Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain) have endorsed the view that there is some link between childhood vaccinations and autism, despite the fact that there is no actual evidence to demonstrate such a link. As a consequence, childhood diseases which used to be virtually non-existent are now on the rise again.

Belief in alternative medicine which has no scientific basis isn’t limited to being anti-childhood vaccinations. Millions of people in the United States take herbal supplements, despite the fact that there are no guarantees of quality for such supplements and little, if any, evidence that they provide any benefit apart of a placebo effect. Millions of Americans also spend millions of dollars a year visiting their chiropractors, despite the fact that there is little evidence that spinal manipulation provides any health benefits (except possibly for some forms of lower back pain, although there’s some evidence to suggest that that is also a placebo effect).

Given the general American cultural attitudes towards intellectual pursuits, it is little wonder that are schools are consistently failing, no matter how wonderful our teachers are (and most of them are) and how much money we throw at the schools (which is a lot). Even market based reforms such as school voucher programs don’t show any significant improvements in educational achievement. And why should they? Children pick up their attitudes from the people around them. Football players are popular and liked. Chess masters aren’t. Magazines are devoted to the personal lives of pop stars and actors, not inventors. Everybody knows the names Babe Ruth and Tom Hanks. Nobody knows the names Norman Borlaug or Jack Kilby–even though they made the world we live in possible.

Given these facts, it’s a miracle that any kids at all desire intellectual pursuits. However, one thing that is clear is that educational reform is doomed to failure until American society itself changes. When the day comes that scientists have agents and up and coming postgrad students have Universities and private industry bidding on them, then schools will improve. When the Nobel Prize for Literature is valued more highly than an Oscar, then schools will improve. When the cool kids are in the honors program and the football team is the first thing cut when the budget’s tight, then schools will improve.

Until then, expect more and more attempts at “reform” and more and more money thrown at education. All with the same lack of results.