In this week’s class assignment, we were asked to read and discuss an article from the New York Times by op-ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman (2010). In this article, Friedman contends that the US spends far more time and money on the ‘war on terrorism’ and giving foreign aid than on becoming better educated, more productive, more technologically advanced and more innovative as a nation. He refers to the Sputnik era, which was initiated when Russia sent up the first artificial satellite in 1957. This set up sort of a battle between the United States and Russia. While the US was creating their own first satellite and dragging their heels, the Russians had sent up Sputnik 1, which was bigger and better than the US’s Vanguard. The US public speculated that if the Russians could beat us with something as technological as creating an artificial satellite, then they may also have had the capability of using this in nuclear warfare from space. The Department of Defense heard the American people and responded by approving funding for the Explorer – all the while the Russians were working on Sputnik Two, which included sending a dog into space. One thing lead to another and a critical US response to the Sputnik creation was the development of the institution of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 (Garber, 2007).
In 2009, the US Department of Defense budget was 683.7 billion dollars (DOD, 2009). The Education budget for 2008 was 596.6 billion dollars (NCES, 2011). This is not as huge a difference in funding as Mr. Friedman is implying, although 87 billion dollars is still a substantial amount of money.
Here’s my take: we need to change the way we teach in our schools if we want our students to be able to work in a competitive market worldwide. President Obama has created the Race to the Top Program so that schools can create an academic environment that will reform education so that all children can succeed, recruit and retain outstanding educators and administrators, aid administrators and educators in assessment, and enable our students to be prepared to compete in the world market. As a teacher in Seminole County Florida, I have not been aware of any change whatsoever in how we approach the STEM subjects (except for a handful of teachers that are up to date on best practices and have taken the initiative on their own to change the way they teach). I was surprised to discover that my own school board had voted against applying for the Race to the Top grant last year due to the fact that it was ‘not specific enough in nature’. Somehow the same school board changed its mind this year and they are searching for someone to write the grant proposal and maintain the grant.
I think that most often, schools can be their own worst enemies as administration and teachers cling to the teaching the same old subjects the same old ways. Although we don’t have a Sputnik to encourage Americans to want to be genuinely aware of our world competition, we as teachers can personally be responsible to create and maintain change in our classrooms and in how we influence administration to want to change.
References:
Department of Defense. (2009). Budget . Retrieved from: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy09/pdf/budget/defense.pdf.
Garber, S.(2007). Sputnik and the dawn of the space age, Retrieved from: http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/.
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (2011). Fast facts. Retrieved from: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66,
