Guest Blogger: Becca Rose

After reading "The World is Flat" and discussing in a Socratic seminar in class, I was reminded of the common belief that Americans are, well, stupid and falling behind in the global race to be the best. I understand why the majority believes this because there are so many statistics that "prove" these rumors. But, if I've learned anything in AP Stats it's that most statistics and wrong, twisted, and bias. Friedman discusses the fall in the percentage of women entering the science and mathematic subjects as if it's a bad choice on their part that will result in a lacking United States. What Friedman doesn't discuss is what those women went into instead. I highly doubt they became waitresses and housemoms just because they didn't go into math or science. There's a nationwide panic about the United States rankings in math and science compared to other countries. First of all we know that the United States does not have as many people as many of these countries and second of all we know that most of those countries that are "beating" us only use the test scores of their test scores, leaving a majority of their people more uneducated than some of our worst students. If these tests were taken by everyone in every country I believe there would be a difference in results. But even if there wasn't, I ask when did math and science become the only professions in the world and why are they the only important subjects? I understand that they're the only subjects that the world can compare on since they're the only subjects that are the same everywhere, but those subjects have somehow managed to control the academic world and the way that we view the intelligence of anyone. Mr. Thompson and Mr. Decker may not be exceptionally good at science or math, but aren't they still intelligent? Don't they still have a good education and the knowledge to teach others? So what if the majority of our people aren't math and science geniuses. That shows me that we realize there's more to education than two subjects and that not every person is good at the same things. To me, our variety of focuses and our freedom to choose our futures based on what we're passionate about is more valuable that a million math and science geniuses. Countries don't run off of math and science alone, I wish everyone would stop acting that way.