At 21:49 28/05/2012, Pete Vincent wrote:
snip>>>> I don't have a reference in front of me, but I think it should be possible to find, but I recall a discussion from some decades ago (1970s or 80s ?) about the quality of US education, where the Nobel Prize count as proof of the quality of the education system was refuted by figures showing that most - I think almost all - of the US Nobel winners had had their pre-graduate-level education in europe. I don't know how it stands now, but I would guess the balance is still toward foreign educated winners.
You are almost certainly right. Although I haven't found primary data, there's obviously a big discrepancy involved when considering the number of American prizewinners (246) with UK (85) and German (92) winners. To be equally productive on a population basis, then Americans should have won about 350 prizes. If we apply this 100-discrepancy in reverse then, without the immigration of UK and German scientists in the course of the last century, then today's totals would have been something like 150 prizewinners each -- Americans at the very most, and UK and Germans at the very least. Without immigration at all and on a population basis alone the present-day figures might well have been: America 50, and the UK and Germany 200 each.
Concerning ourselves, what I find particularly intriguing is that, by about 1820, UK inventions and technologies were being copied on a massive scale by America, Germany and France (when needs must, patents don't really count for much!). By 1900, the UK was profiting so greatly from finance alone (lending to North America mainly but also South America and Japan) that it badly neglected investing in science and industry (indeed, it would be more accurate to say that the UK's political and intellectual "establishment" began to despise science), allowing other countries to overtake. Yet in a curious way, despite the snub, we continued to remain well to the forefront all through the last century in several major research areas -- such as photography, wireless telegraphy, nuclear fission, radar, television, computing, radio astronomy and genetics -- even though we were slow in developing them. And here I must declare my prejudice as an Englishman. This is that we are also well to the forefront in feeling our way towards a post-industrial world. We have the richest, most cosmopolitan, most educated, most socially interconnected, most non-political (in the usual sense of "political"), most manipulative population in the world. By this I mean approximately two million people (now more recently reconciled to science) who work and live (among other places) in the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle who, together with a supportive million or two of necessary technical skills, make up what I'm calling our 20-class. While our 80-class (and also that of Europe, America and Japan) continues to breed itself out of existence in the coming century or two, what is already becoming a universal 20-class will become the normal pattern for tomorrow's human world. As an ex-socialist I feel deeply sorry about the demise of the "caring" nation-state, but as a believer in evolution I have to accept that this sort of event has happened many times before in man's pre-history.
Keith
-Pete > > In the UK, about half of our tenured research scientists were born > into the 20-class (those educated in private schools), the remainder > from the 80-class (those educated in state schools). Well . . . all > one can say is that, compared with the rest of the world, we're still > not doing too badly on the innovation front, whether of new ideas or > products. We could do better and, of course, in this increasingly > specialized scientific age, we'll need to do better in order to hang > onto some income from trading with others. Our politicians (as in the > US) are constantly calling for higher educational standards and, > indeed, in recent years, they are even allowing some experiments -- > Academies and Free Schools -- outside the state system run from the > Department of Education in London. It will only need a modest > proportion of these experiments to do as well as the existing private > schools (only 7% of the whole) before we'll be swimming in bright > creative minds. > > A preponderance of Academies and Free Schools (particularly the > latter) -- both in existence and being proposed -- lie in and around > London because that's where most of the parents who are deeply > concerned about poor quality state education live and work. They've > been attracted there in the last 50 years or so because they were > already among the more talented of the 80-class of the economically > declining provinces who migrated to London find better jobs. For > vote-catching reasons the government will hope to scatter a reasonable > number of Academies around the country in the coming years, but in the > case of Free Schools, which are entirely dependent on the initiative > and organizing abilities of concerned parents, a large majority are, > and will be, in and around London. > > My money is on the Free Schools rather than Academies but the evidence > as to whether they will succeed or not is beyond my allotted span. > My point in writing today's piece is simply to record for my own > benefit that I've turned my previous life-long ideas about education > on their head. Considering that education is a byproduct of an > existing inherited culture rather than its primary cause, now seems to > me to be a better way of looking at things than that which still > mostly occupies the minds of governments today. It's a change from > Keynesian precepts (shovel more and more money into state education of > declining quality) to Say's Law (the demand of concerned parents in a > more demanding age will create its own supply of high quality > schools). > > Keith > > > Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com > _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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