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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Daalbar" data-source="post: 2037572" data-attributes="member: 10746">I think that by any objective measure, the US lags behind most countries in the EU rather badly when it comes to overall science and math education at the primary and secondary school levels. Canada, where I was educated, may have been somewhat better, but not too much. I remember my father, who was educated in the former Yugoslavia in the early 50's being amazed that I was only starting to do Calculus in high school... he's had it in the equivalent of grades 6 and 7 and I wouldn't be surprised if many of you with immigrant parents knew of something similar (though to be fair, many of his peers at that time never went too far beyond that level of education).The average level of science literacy in North America is poor. Don't mistake the achievements of the top 10-15% of students for overall awareness/ability.The saving grace of the US is and has been not only the quality of the very best post-secondary institutions that can be found here, but also the quality and number of even what might be considered "average" post-secondary institutions. They take that top 10-15% and provide some of the best opportunities in the sciences -- enough so that many of the best and brightest are also drawn from oversees. Graduate students are frequently from foreign nations and many end up staying, starting technical businesses, becoming doctors, researchers or professors. Where would many of the computer-related startups in California be if not for motivated foreign students? Non-existent... But those foreign students got that initial science and math training in their home countries.I am a recent PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology and grew up in Toronto, Canada. I cringe every time I hear yet another case of a county somewhere in Georgia or West Virginia putting stickers on Biology textbooks or insisting on the teaching of "intelligent design" alongside evolution. This sort of thing won't overtly interfere with the learning of chemistry or mathematics but it seems to me that it undermines the understanding of what scientific principles are... the very process of what it means to "do" science and diminishes a respect for science as "just another version of reality" that is no more relevant than any other, rather than as the only objective method we have of measuring the physical universe.I've been a TA for labs in Introductory Biology on a couple of occasions and never fail to be surprised at the lack of scientific literacy among the students... subsequent  higher-level classes are always a vast improvement -- but only because those who pursue further studies in biology are the ones who are already knowlegable and eager (and are at least somewhat gifted and are probably the sort who already used to watch the Science Channel for fun on their own time when they were in high school).</blockquote>

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