Online only: Dear professor Spechler

I noticed that at the end of your letter published last week, you asked if someone could counter your doubts about the quality of today’s students throughout the country “with hard and convincing evidence.” I think I can do so.

To begin with, you stated that students today “have less general cultural and historical knowledge” than previous generations. Assuming your statement is correct, can the students of today really be to blame for this?

The basic institutional role of the social sciences in our elementary and secondary schools has essentially been, it would seem, to indoctrinate young, impressionable students with certain values, specifically patriotism and American exceptionalism with the goal of turning them into obedient, passive citizens. 

Textbooks and educators emphasize again and again how America differs from the rest of the world in economic and social mobility, excesses of individual freedoms and a foreign policy founded on defending human rights and democracy.

Of course, here is where the system runs into conflict.

Evidence for American exceptionalism is not very substantial. American concentration camps in the Philippine-American War, Woodrow Wilson’s invasion of Haiti to protect the interests of American corporations, the 1014 plane raid on civilian targets in Japan as the “finale” to World War II, support of the brutal, mass-murdering dictator Suharto in Indonesia, sending in the Coast Guard after the massive earthquake in Haiti to prevent Haitians from attempting to the flee to the United States and the list of examples that run counterintuitive to the desired narrative goes on and on.

Therefore, this history cannot properly be taught since there are actually few instances where it is appropriate for the United States, particularly that of the state and its foreign policy, to be self-congratulating. The people, specifically certain social and civil movements, have accomplished extraordinary ends, although they are most often not discussed or read about. 

The unjust wars and interventions of the past and present, the illegal renditions that still occur today and the extraordinarily severe social stratification of economic classes here in the United States must be left out of the classrooms and erased from the public’s memory. By blaming the students for their lack of knowledge in regard to history, it would appear you are only blaming the victims of a corrupt institution.

Plenty of scholarly literature has been published concerning the redesign of history in the interests of power structures. I find it almost unimaginable that you, a university professor for more than 26 years, are unaware of the causes of this serious problem.
So would it not be smarter and more relevant to address the much more crucial, underlying causes of the issue instead of directing your attacks toward college students?  

In the third paragraph of your article, you criticized students for majoring in “innovative” subjects, such as “cultural studies” and “sports marketing” rather than “mathematics, physical sciences and other demanding fields.” An interesting claim. No doubt one that we should look at further.

A study released in 2005 by Duke University’s School of Engineering stated that the United States “is currently producing a competitive number of engineers, CS (computer science) and IT (informational technology) professionals.” According to the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering and the Computing Research Association, students seeking an engineering degree have steadily increased since the Duke study, and students seeking a computer science degree have increased during the last two years.  

A common misconception is that these numbers are skewed since they do not take into account the foreign students majoring in these particular fields. However, as NACME’s most recent survey shows, about 6 percent of all undergraduates majoring in engineering are foreign students, totaling only 4,485 of the current 74,387 undergraduate students.

Perhaps your concern about students not majoring in “demanding fields” is a proportional one. After all, corporate CEOs and politicians have during the last few years talked about the growing concern that the United States might lose its dominance in the fields of science and technology, particularly to India and China. 
 
Again referring to the Duke study, the number of degrees rewarded in 2004 for engineering, computer science and information technology degrees shows that per million citizens, the United States rewarded almost 760 students with degrees, India rewarded almost 200, and China rewarded almost 496. The study also highlights that these numbers might be skewed, however, due to China’s very liberal definition of what constitutes an engineer. (Some suggest the Chinese government, in order to further boost the numbers, included motor mechanics and industrial technicians in its report.)

As the study points out, “In all likelihood, this 644,106 number may not be comparable to the engineering production of the United States and India,” since the Ministry of Education in China informed the Duke researchers that “their aggregated numbers were obtained by adding the number of ‘engineering’ graduates as reported by different provinces ... these provinces were not required to report these degrees by major, and further, there was no standard definition of engineering between provinces.” 

As for students specifically majoring in mathematics, I cannot comment since I could not find any particular study that focused on the issue. This may be a sign that it lacks the need for any serious concern. My best speculation, and this argument might have no validity, is that due to the large number of business and education schools in universities across the country, some students interested in mathematics, perhaps even a majority, get degrees in finance and accounting or math education instead of a pure liberal arts degree in mathematics.

Even if your assessment about fewer and fewer college students majoring in the physical sciences was correct, which I suspect it is not, I once again see little significance in targeting the students. 

After all, we were not responsible for overcrowding our high school chemistry laboratories with 20 to 30 teenagers.

And we were not responsible for spending more money on football fields and Olympic-sized swimming pools than on new textbooks and field trips to museums.
And we were not responsible for treating our teachers like second-class citizens, criticizing their performances on the fact that they belong to a union and giving them meager salaries that force some to get second jobs. 

Of course, all that you wrote does give service to power.

Corporations regularly claim that the American population is undereducated and that there is a shortage of engineers and computer scientists in order to justify outsourcing high-tech jobs to countries where they are able to pay employees substantially less and provide little to no benefits. In turn, it would not be at all surprising to see a drastic decline in students majoring in certain degree programs, although current data suggests otherwise.

“The sky is falling” rhetoric is no doubt beneficial for private power, but if we are to be rational, we should know what to think of it.

Although your intentions when you wrote your letter were perhaps well-meant, despite its seemingly discreet arrogance and condescending word choices throughout, your premises and conclusions lack any serious instances of scientific evidence and make extraordinary and irrational leaps of logic.

I hope my response has tempered your concerns about the future of our country. If not, I, of course, encourage you to write a reply.

Read professor Martin Spechler’s original letter to the editor at idsnews.com.

E-mail: mardunba@indiana.edu