U.S. Science, Math Education

“In High-Tech Age, U.S. Science and Math Education Falters” (editorial, June 20) contains many valid points. But it fails to bring attention to the effects that the public’s lack of participation in schools and in communicating with their legislators have on schools.

I have been teaching science in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 10 years. The California State Framework on Science wants us to teach a hands-on science course at all levels, yet I was given $150 to purchase all the laboratory supplies I would need, which included having to buy my own paper for 170 students for a full year. Even more appalling was that I only had 20 biology books to use for five classes of 30-36 students. During the school year there were at least four opportunities for parents to come visit their teachers, yet only three parents bothered to visit me. Attendance was abysmal, with many students absent from 10-15 days on average per semester, up to several with 20-30 absences per semester.

We purchased 20 Macintosh computers in September. We didn’t get the keyboards until May. We were to have a room to put the computers in to start a math/science computer lab. The room has not materialized, nor has money for tables, chairs, electrical hookups or security equipment. So the computers and software are still sitting in a closet gathering dust.

California will continue to lag behind every major industrialized country and every other state in the United States until parents and legislators realize that schools are in serious trouble. Strange as it may seem, the state gives a freeway contractor a $15-million bonus for finishing a road early. What good is a road that leads to nowhere?

MICHAEL J. VELEZ

Huntington Beach

* Your editorial omitted one important consideration. The potential teachers of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, etc., must have a particular intellectual capacity for dealing with these difficult topics. Having obtained academic credentials in these abstract disciplines, the potential teachers must consider career alternates. Teaching will pay them roughly $30,000 per year at the journeyman level; industry will pay $50,000 for the same talent. Over a 30-year career the teacher will forgo over a half-million dollars of income, enough to send two children to Harvard for bachelor’s and medical doctor’s degrees.

Without real incentives to enter teaching and stay in teaching we will continue to fail in attracting potential teachers for science courses. I am not advocating simply raising the salaries of present teachers, although that may be justified on other grounds. We need a fundamental change in our society’s attitude toward public education. ALAN J. NESTLINGER

Santa Ana

* Re “Vital New Partnership Needed for Science Education,” editorial, June 27:

Whenever I hear a call to improve science education in our schools, I cringe with confusion. If we turn out more scientists and engineers, will they find work? I don’t think so, judging from the colossal numbers of engineers who are currently unemployed in California, and the incredibly small number of employment ads for engineers in the classified ads. OK, so there will be a new boom in telecommunications, resulting in improved employment prospects in the field. There will be no chance, however, of a new explosion in technology growth to rival the one that occurred in the early ‘60s with the race to put a man on the moon. The business of technology has been “re-engineered” and “restructured.” Manufacturing has moved to sweatshops in Mexico and Singapore. Computer-aided design means that fewer engineers are needed to build a new product or communications network.

I’m well aware of the necessity of a broad-based education. (At Cal State L.A., many of my classmates are having a hard time in their business classes because they are poor at arithmetic and algebra. Apparently the schools did a poor job of teaching them algebra, or they thought they would never use it for anything.) But before we blindly demand better music or science teaching in our schools, we should be very specific about what the purpose and objectives are.

MATTHEW OKADA

Pasadena