Math, Science Message Is Road Tested by Bush

Since unveiling proposals for math and science education Tuesday night in his State of the Union address, President Bush has been on the road each day, talking about the role that a tech-savvy workforce can play in keeping the U.S. economically competitive.

Presenting successful math and science students as the future of the nation, Bush said on Friday that it was time to drop an old notion: Science whizzes, he said, should not be looked on as “the nerd patrol.”

Speaking here Friday inside an Intel Corp. computer chip plant, Bush did not try to wow his audience with his scientific knowledge.

“Awesome,” he said, when 18-year-old Nicole Lopez, a high school senior, told of how, with the help of a mentor, she had transformed herself from a freshman flirting with gang life into someone who could tell the president of the United States: “I have found that math and science have become my niche, and it’s my passion, and I want to continue it.”

“You know,” Bush said, “a lot of people probably think ‘Math and science isn’t meant for me -- it kind of seems a little hard, algebra.’ I can understand that, frankly.” Even now, Bush said, he too could use some expert guidance. “I’m looking for a mentor, by the way,” he said to laughter, “both in math and English.”

Behind the president’s self-teasing was a message at the heart of his campaign to boost science studies and to double the nation’s basic research programs in physical sciences over the next decade: “This competitive world is going to demand a job skill set that emphasizes math and science.... And if our kids don’t have the talents necessary to compete, those jobs won’t go away -- they’ll just go to another country.”

In Washington, Democrats criticized Bush and other Republicans for budget cuts that they said would trim funding for schools and students.

Referring to a budget-cutting measure approved this week by the House, Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), the senior Democrat on the Education and the Workforce Committee, said in a prepared statement that the “misguided” legislation, which Bush has said he would sign, “cuts $12 billion out of the federal student aid programs and puts college even farther out of reach for millions of Americans.”

“The president is saying one thing and doing another,” Miller said. “If we want to stay number one, and we can, then we have to make college affordable for every qualified student.”

Separately, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said in a conference call with reporters, “We’ve all heard the slogan ‘a day late and a dollar short.’ Well, for this administration, on education they’re five years late and billions of dollars short.”

On his way from New Mexico to his ranch outside Crawford, Texas, Bush visited an Advanced Placement biology class at a Dallas high school where 83% of the students are black or Latino and 20% passed at least one Advanced Placement exam, the White House reported.

Bush has been promoting Advanced Placement courses that provide college-level work to high school students, and has proposed that the government train 70,000 people to teach such classes.

A senior, Michael Harrell, demonstrated a project involving DNA and insulin.

According to a pool report of the visit, the president said, “I got it,” but with some reporters having blank looks, he added, “I’m not sure if the press got it.”