BOY, IS THIS RIGHT ON djf -- U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

From: Ross Finlayson <finlayson () live com>
Subject: Re: U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences
X-Sender: rsf@localhost (Unverified)
To: dave () farber net

Dave,

I think IP readers will be interested in this message that someone (an 
immigrant from India) posted to Slashdot recently:

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=106189&threshold=5&commentsort=0&tid=103&tid=134&tid=99&mode=nested&cid=9041608

or

http://tinyurl.com/262ya

It's 'preaching to the choir', but it needs to be said.

        Ross.


Re:Blame Public Education (not funding) (Score:5, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 03, @12:37PM 
(<http://science.slashdot.org///science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=106189&cid=9041608>#9041608) 

I did my highschool and undergrad in India. Back there, the people who were 
respected were not the jocks or the cool guys, but the smart ones and the 
toppers.

People looked upto the guy who went to science fairs and won prizes, and 
the guy who could solve differential equations by graphs.

Coolness was not a factor - how geniune a person you were and how smart a 
person you were was what mattered. Social life was not a function of how 
well you pretended or how well you could throw a ball - it was a function 
of who you were as a person.

Geek and nerd were used as complimentary terms - the smart ones were called 
"genes" or "genies", a friendly term respecting their intelligence and skills.

I come here and notice that being smart or good is being made fun of - 
this, despite the fact that I'm in one of the US's top engineering schools. 
The ones with the social life are the ones who show off or the ones who 
throw ball. Even here, being really smart or nerdy is looked down. People 
do not respect the need for some of us to be introverted and reclusive, and 
people are branded as obnoxious or stereotyped as nerds or geeks, most 
often in a derogatory manner.

Am I bitter? Absolutely.

I come from an environment where both my parents went to grad school, half 
the people in my family are PhDs and my uncle is a quantum physicist at 
CERN. When I was in middle and high school, I wanted to be a physicist or a 
mathematician. Social life was not an issue, it was always a given.

I thought that the US would be a haven for scientists and engineers, but I 
come here and see that except for some people in the academia, people do 
not really respect science. People like to use the work that scientists do, 
but do not like them - the populace is either scared or jealous of really 
smart people.

The haven that is equal for all that America once was is gone - today, all 
that I see is people who are scared of most foreigners, and people who 
discrimate against the very smart ones in your own country.

People like Jack Valenti are willing to sacrifice the rights of the 
smartest of America for the profits of a few. People want to justify that 
not going to school and getting experience is somehow better than people 
who work their asses through grad school. Money is your new God and 
Television is all that America seeks.

The guy who used to sit next to me in class and had won International Math 
and Physics Olympiad championships got a fellowship at CMU, but dropped out 
because his research needed defence approval. He is now in Tel Aviv working 
on the same stuff, with no hassles whatsoever.

As I write this, I see an ad on TV advertising for ITT Technical Institute 
saying how they will change your life, and saying how a career in IT will 
get you the hot babes and the cool cars. Is that why you want to do 
science? I wanted to do science because I loved science. I wanted to do 
science because since childhood, I enjoyed doing it. I did not do it 
because I wanted the cool cars or the hot babes (although, I did know that 
I will have a better salary than most and that did help a little).

If you want to set your system straight, look at the problems. Make sure 
the next generation knows that science and engineering saves lives and 
improves our quality of living. Throwing a ball does not matter, its not 
going to pay your bills when you are 40 and has no more entertainment value 
than a clown. Actors and entertainment artists are given importance. I do 
not see people going to Orchestras, I see people flocking to Britney Spears.

I grew up in an environment where USSR was India's friend, and had Russian 
comics. Misha was a popular one, and all the kids in my generation wanted 
to be like Yuri Gargarin. We all wanted to be as smart as Einstein. Kids 
wrote essays about winning the Nobel Prize. We grew up in an environment 
where our parents and teachers helped us make Tesla coils in our middle 
school, so that they can demonstrate the effects of electricity.

My school library was full of books written by Asimov and Clarke, and we 
grew up aspiring to be pioneers in science and technology.

I thought the US would be like this, but after coming here, its been a 
disappointment. I'm just very sad, because given your resources and your 
intelligentsia, you could be so much more.

You have some of the world's brightest, and smartest. You have resources 
which the rest of the world would die for. You have the means, but you are 
simply not using them.

Do not let your leaders bring down the innovators in your country, please. 
The fact that I feel so much for this nation is why I'm typing such a long 
rant, depite everything you have the power to move people. But if you do 
not act in time, it will be your downfall.

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