The core focus of the school system is certainly to teach the basics, but in a world with myriad career opportunities it is also essential to expose students to as many options as possible in a way that piques their interest. Budding engineers used to tear apart the family radio and discover the electronics themselves. Our technology has gone too far for that -- a kid can't learn the technology by tearing apart an iPod.
The earlier we get electronics into the curriculum, the more students will be curious enough to go beyond the front interfaces of all their handheld tech and want to see how the gadgets actually work.
Don't underestimate the Egyptians.
Even today, moving lots of rocks without prime movers like engines is an enormous technological feat even assuming it is all slave labor.
In ~2000BC without modern science it was a mind boggling.
And of course there were spin offs then too, they could not have done it without a lot of scientific thought, though some may have been more empirical, e.g. iron mettalurgy.
Spending a lot of effort moving rocks: agreed. Developing technology that expanded to other uses: very different. The space program gave us specific goals to aim at, whether people knew they needed the long-term end products or not, and pushed development beyond the immediate market vision. A lot of the money *did* wind up in education, even more if you count technological development, along with the portion that employed people all over the country. Finally, I don't believe pyramid building encouraged people to dream bigger and expand their ideas; the space program did.
Which is what Europe did long ago and emulated by the US later.
That is why at the beginning of the 20th century while the US was overtaking the world in industrial production and innovation in production, most science Nobel winners were Europeans.
Also note quite a few initial computer related discoveries/ concepts and inventions happened in Europe.
I could not disagree more. Individuals are responsible for their own actions, education and skills. Perhaps it would be nice of companies to provide training assistance but it should not be a mandate. Also, just because companies cannot find "non-citizens" for a job does not mean we should bend immigration laws. Truth is, there are PLENTY of qualified citizens for the jobs. The real issue is that there are not enough skilled workers willing to take the low pay that companies want to offer. I personally have seen H1B's take good engineering jobs from qualified Americans just because the non-citizen was willing to work for less.
Not cynical, history bears me out.
Incessant pyramid building destroyed Eygpt.
From being leaders of ancient world in maths and grammer, long before Islamic invasion, temple building destroyed the kingdoms of Indian subcontinent.
Same with the Mayans.
If we look at the countries in Asia which built up strong electronics industries, they had at least one thing in common: they started with very heavily investing in their education and they did so when they could apparently least afford it, when there were so many other areas crying out for funds. Except, they understood that if they invest in education, you invest in the future and all those other important things will come, in time. Not only that, but when the benefits arrive, they will be more sustainable. What is the point of building a modern hospital if you can't staff it and keep it going? Although the world may be getting better at it, that mistake was and still is made time and time again when aid is frittered away with no appreciable sustained benefit.
Going back to my point, education should not be seen as a cost but as investment. The problem is that both the political and the economic world is mainly driven by short term incentives and there is no real motivation to invest long term. Politicians and CEOs are taken to task over what happens now and not what will happen in 10 years time.
So, are there good schools and universities? Of course there are but that only truely matters if anybody has access to them regardless of their background. I suspect, there are a lot of kids who never get a chance to develop to enywhere near their full potential, if they are born on the wrong side of the tracks.
In case of the US, it's still a very good place to be if you have a bright mind and have some great ideas. Unfortunately, it is often easier and definitely cheaper to suck away talent from other countries (who are more than willing) than develop them locally. This causes problems for both countries. The clearest example is doctors, where medical students from developing countries (often after studying overseas), leave their country and enter medical practice in developed countries with much better income and carrier prospects.
That's a pretty cynical view, but I am reminded of George Bernard Shaw's definition: "The power of accurate observation is often defined as cynicism by those who don't have it".
I don't think the space program was that much of a waste, but the real problem lies with a government that has constanty sold America and American jobs in the name of "free trade". Nothing is free, and you have paid a huge price for it.
The seeds of destruction were laid long ago. With the moon shot "dream".
America wasted a whole generation of brilliant and passionate men and women on satisfying some politicians' ego.
With it were wasted a few billion dollars of tax payers money, which could have gone into better education and research in the universities.
And don't talk about spin offs from the space program. Those same driven folks would have invented the "spin off" technology anyway.
The moon shot was the pyramids of USA.
Hate to be blatantly blunt, But until the powers that be and the market figures out the "Get laid or get paid" (GLGP) problem facing many STEMs professions, most smart students are going to shriek and flee towards careers in fields like finance, medical, legal, and business that have successfully solved the GLGP problem. You do not hear them continually sniveling for students.
Replay available now: A handful of emerging network technologies are competing to be the preferred wide-area connection for the Internet of Things. All claim lower costs and power use than cellular but none have wide deployment yet. Listen in as proponents of leading contenders make their case to be the metro or national IoT network of the future. Rick Merritt, EE Times Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, moderators this discussion. Join in and ask his guests questions.