American Students Lag Behind in Science

Only 21 percent of American high school seniors are performing at or above the proficient level in science, according to the “2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress,” which was released on Tuesday.

“The results released today show that our nation’s students aren’t learning at a rate that will maintain America’s role as an international leader in the sciences,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement made just after the report was issued.

A separate report, the “Program of International Student Assessment,” which evaluated different types of literacy, found that the United States ranked 13th out of 34 developed countries. China, Korea, Finland, Singapore and Canada topped this report’s listings.

In his State of the Union address this past Tuesday, American President Barack Obama made a perhaps veiled jab at the Chinese education system by saying, “[O]ur students don’t just memorize equations, but answer questions like ‘What do you think of that idea? What would you change about the world? What do you want to be when you grow up?’”

The problem, however, is that American students seem to be thinking so much about what they want changed in the world that they forget to memorize the equations. Then they can’t be what they want to be when they grow up, because they can’t compete with foreign technical know-how.

In the book of Isaiah, God prophesied that He would take away the “cunning artificer,” or educated engineer, from among His people. “For, behold, the Lord doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water, the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, the prudent, and the ancient, the captain of fifty, and the honorable man, the counselor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator” (Isaiah 3:1-3).

For more information on the causes of America’s failing education system, reference our article “The American University.”