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Apropos my article about the Church’s indifference to science, it turns out Peter Wood has noticed the U.S. on the whole isn’t exactly encouraging its children in that direction either.

Success in the sciences unquestionably takes a lot of hard work, sustained over many years. Students usually have to catch the science bug in grade school and stick with it to develop the competencies in math and the mastery of complex theories they need to progress up the ladder. Those who succeed at the level where they can eventually pursue graduate degrees must have not only abundant intellectual talent but also a powerful interest in sticking to a long course of cumulative study. A century ago, Max Weber wrote of “Science as a Vocation,” and, indeed, students need to feel something like a calling for science to surmount the numerous obstacles on the way to an advanced degree.

At least on the emotional level, contemporary American education sides with the obstacles. It begins by treating children as psychologically fragile beings who will fail to learn — and worse, fail to develop as “whole persons” — if not constantly praised. The self-esteem movement may have its merits, but preparing students for arduous intellectual ascents aren’t among them. What the movement most commonly yields is a surfeit of college freshmen who “feel good” about themselves for no discernible reason and who grossly overrate their meager attainments.

The intellectual lassitude we breed in students, their unearned and inflated self-confidence, undercuts both the self-discipline and the intellectual modesty that is needed for the apprentice years in the sciences. Modesty? Yes, for while talented scientists are often proud of their talent and accomplishments, they universally subscribe to the humbling need to prove themselves against the most-unyielding standards of inquiry. That willingness to play by nature’s rules runs in contrast to the make-it-up-as-you-go-along insouciance that characterizes so many variants of postmodernism and that flatters itself as being a higher form of pragmatism.

2 thoughts on “

  1. It would help if public school teachers told students how lucrative industrial science and engineering jobs are. So many teachers dismiss money as a motivator because they are not motivated by it – if they were motivated by money, they would have done something other than teaching.

    I’ll be working with a local public school as part of a cooperative education project and I intend to let the students know about the money to be made. Kids understand money, and they want it, as much as adults.

  2. I wonder if technical/engineering companies also sponsored programs that exposed teachers to applications etc during the summers, that would help inspire teachers to bring that back with them to the classroom.

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