[citation][nom]Bolbi[/nom]I'm glad President Obama recognized that our education system is largely failing, but I wish he hadn't emphasized the math and science so much. How many times did he repeat the "math and science" line? Too many for me. I know they're important, but the educational system has been failing on history and English for a long time as well. We need writers just as much as IT pros.[/citation]
In general the education system as a whole is failing. This mostly has to do with holding students that excel back and students who fail pushing them forward when they should be held back. While History and English could be improved upon, that isn't the major problem in US schools.
The US is now embarrassingly far behind in Math and Sciences. These are easily the most important part of education today.
In 2006, in the US, less than 12% of bachelor graduates are engineers. Compare this to the rest of the world. Germany, Sweden, and Finland are over 25%. Korea is over 37% engineer graduates. Japan over 24%.
By comparison, in the US, over 25% of graduates are that of the Social Sciences! Over 16% PSYCHOLOGY!!!
No sir, you are wrong. I would say that if anything, we focus too much on Social Sciences in K-12. We do not focus on the Math and Sciences enough, this is what is hurting the US. This is why we are no longer the innovators in the world. This is why we produce less scientific papers.
Math and Science SHOULD be his focus, not History and English.