Missing From Science Class
12th December 2013
The New York Times suddenly detects that the sky is falling, and wants to round up the usual suspects.
A big reason America is falling behind other countries in science and math is that we have effectively written off a huge chunk of our population as uninterested in those fields or incapable of succeeding in them.
Well, my first question is: Who is this ‘we’? Does it include editorial writers for the New York Times? If so, why don’t they change their behavior? If not, what is with this ‘we’ business?
And I don’t see anybody standing at the door of classrooms barring anybody except white males from entering. Perhaps the Times still think this is 1954.
Women make up nearly half the work force but have just 26 percent of science, technology, engineering or math jobs, according to the Census Bureau. Blacks make up 11 percent of the workforce but just 6 percent of such jobs and Hispanics make up nearly 15 percent of the work force but hold 7 percent of those positions. There is no question that women and minorities have made progress in science and math in the last several decades, but their gains have been slow and halting. And in the fast-growing field of computer science, women’s representation has actually declined in the last 20 years, while minorities have made relatively small gains.
Ah, that old ‘progressive’ bugaboo, ‘underrepresentation’. First, I want to see some evidence that the fact women make up half of the workforce has some inevitable relationship to how many jobs they hold in any particular field. Next thing you know, they’ll be complaining that men are underrepresented among the number of people who bear children.