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Six national science and technology organizations, including the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies, the National Council of Natural Science University Deans and the National Council of Engineering University Deans, issued a statement on Wednesday saying the quality of high school math and science classes should not be left to further deteriorate. These organizations represent science and engineering education and research in Korea. They warned that fewer and fewer high school students are choosing math and science classes as electives, leading to a crisis situation. They said science should not be taught as an elective course, but as a mandatory one, while the curriculum should be revised so that science and engineering majors can take more math and science classes.
This warning should not be taken lightly. Since the industrial revolution, competitiveness in math and science was the decisive factor in separating the winners from the losers in global economics. Germany, which got off to a relatively late start in the industrial revolution, was able to outpace England by revolutionizing its math and science education. After being shocked by the former Soviet UnionĄŻs lead in putting the first artificial satellite into orbit, what the United States did first was to overhaul its math and science education system. Through these changes, the United States was able to beat the former Soviet Union in the space race.
For Japan, which is leading the world in the commercialization of technology, the core of its strategy to stay as the leader is to strengthen its math and science education. After winning the Fields Medal several times, which is called the Nobel Prize for mathematics, Japan is now competing head to head with western countries. India, with a relatively low per capita GDP level, has been showing surprising growth in the IT industry, especially in its software sector. And the secret behind the success of Indian scientists and technicians in Silicon Valley is its strong emphasis on math and science education. A best-selling book in Japan pointed out that the worldĄŻs leading countries or those about to become global leaders are nations that are leading in the fields of science, including math and physics.
The reality facing our math and science education is appalling. In the curriculum that has been implemented since 2002, science classes for sophomores have fallen to three hours a week from four. In a probe by the Board of Audit and Inspection, 29 percent of all engineering freshmen at four-year universities chose social science classes rather than science, while 55 percent were found to have not taken classes in principles of mathematics, which includes calculus and statistics.
That is why students majoring in math, computer science and economics cannot answer an elementary-school-level question to convert 75.3 percent into a decimal number. The answer is 0.753. These days, talented students donĄŻt want to study engineering or science. Among the students who won early admission to the prestigious Seoul National University Engineering Department, 60 out of 546 did not enroll. In the Natural Science Department, 20 out of 168 did not bother to register. We can presume these students opted to go to medical, dentistry or Oriental medicine schools.
In his State of the Union address last year, the U.S. president proposed reforms in math and science education as national objectives, while putting forth a policy of retraining 70,000 math and science teachers and hiring 30,000 math and science experts as teachers. Will we ever get a chance to hear the president of Korea talk about his convictions regarding far-sighted reforms in math and science education, instead of talking about unexpected constitutional amendments?
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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