Is our children learning?

The New York Times is that high school students in the US are ranked in the bottom half of developed nations for mathematical ability. Now, regardless of whether this figure is actually significant, and there reasons to believe it isn't, it does back up my oft-repeated complaint that students in this country can't do science. Now, while the cynic inside me would love to say this is because we're a country of idiots, there's gotta be a better reason.

There's a definite imbalance in our education system with respect to the sciences. The whole culture values them much less than, say, History or English classes. The sciences (I'm including math in this group, to be clear), tend to be viewed solely as a chore, as something that must be done, but that isn't really relevant, but which you just have to eke a pass out of before you can get onto the real classes. Someone please correct me if your experience has been different elsewhere, but this is what I've observed.

If this country is going to improve its science education, it needs an entire attitude shift concerning them. Students love to ask why we're taking math, but comparatively few seem to question why reading King Lear is worthwhile. Somehow the attitude needs to change, students need to appreciate learning math, or at least accept it as worthwhile. The question, of course, is how to best encourage such a change in attitude. First, we need to figure out exactly why we're teaching math and science, and change the curriculum appropriately. The canonical justification for English classes is to learn to write, and many classes are even structured towards that goal. We need to learn to think of the sciences with a similar goal, rather than as something we teach just because you ought know them.

Most importantly, I think, we need to somehow get students interested in science. Maybe it's just because I'm a geek, but the idea of science is really cool. It lets you explain how and why the world works. Children are invariably born with an incredible curiosity, offering remarkably insightful questions, but as soon as they hit school, they seem to stop caring. Clearly there's something wrong, and it needs to be addressed. (I can't resist a cynical note: Maybe that's why people like religion - it conveniently explains everything without entailing real thought (I don't completely mean that, but I think it's worth thinking about)). And even without that aspect, the scientific method as we understand it is really the core of how we think as a culture. It needs to be taught, not via rote memorization of stages or steps, but in an understandable way. A way that conveys the simplicity and essential brilliance of the ideas of falsifiablility, repeatability, and the other core ideas of how we formulate hypotheses that should apply to any form of logical argument, whenever at all possible.