The Two Million Minutes Blog

Why Indian scientists might return to home: Imaginative, Inspiring Scientific Goals

Bangalore, Oct 29 (IANS) The successful launch of India's first lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 has inspired many Indian space scientists working abroad to return home for a promising career in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), a top official said.

"Our moon mission has aroused tremendous interest in the scientific community the world over. The launch has made many overseas Indian space scientists think of returning and working in our organisation to further their career prospects," the official told IANS.

Though the state-run ISRO's human resource department is yet to receive applications from abroad, the official who didn't want to be named confirmed that enquiries for job prospects in the space agency started since the Oct 22 launch of Chandrayaan from Sriharikota spaceport, about 80 km north of Chennai.

"There have been some enquiries though at a personal level. For instance, Chandrayaan director M. Annadurai got e-mail from scientists, mostly of Indian origin, congratulating him for the lunar mission and offering to join the space agency," the official pointed out.

Many persons of Indian origin (PIOs) currently working in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the US and the European Space Agency (ESA) in Europe or at Kourou in French Guiana, South America, began their career as scientists in ISRO or in Indian academic/research institutes before migrating in search of greener pastures.

"Some Indian space scientists working in NASA may be mulling to come back to work on our projects. They might be keen on applying for a suitable post in commensurate with their experience and expectations. We welcome them on merit," the official noted.

But the official added that as a policy the Indian space agency did not recruit foreign nationals.

"Indian born scientists and PIOs are, however, eligible to apply in ISRO. To our knowledge, barring a few, not many Indian scientists are working in ESA. If any, they may be second or third generation Indians with European nationality," the official hinted.

Annadurai has said scientists from NASA and ESA, including PIOs have sent feelers expressing interest to work for ISRO, even at lower salaries. Annadurai could not be reached for his comments.

ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair had told reporters at Sriharikota that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had put in place packages for scientists working in the space organisation and the atomic energy agency on the basis of the Sixth Pay Commission.

"We are in the process of getting these things (revised packages) cleared at the final approval stage. But I don't think we can give the phenomenal salary offered by the IT firms. We will give respectable living conditions in line with society," Nair affirmed.

In accordance with the Sixth Pay Commission's recommendations, the government has revised pay scales of space scientists and engineers to Rs.31,000 from Rs.18,000 at entry-level posts; to Rs.60,000 from Rs.43,000 at middle-level posts and to Rs.70,000 from Rs.45,000 for the top posts - director and above.

The 36-year-old ISRO, headquartered in Bangalore, with multiple locations across the country, has a total workforce of 16,500, including about 10,000 scientists and engineers. About 6,500 are employed in administrative and auxiliary services.

"Our attrition rate is less than the best of IT companies. Though there is a dearth of outstanding science or engineering graduates opting for a career in space science/technology, we are able to manage the demand-supply gap fairly well," the official observed.

To ensure a steady stream of supply to its various departments, ISRO has commenced a space university at Thiruvananthapuram this academic year where about 150 students with science background are offered a five-year course in space technology and applications.

"The graduating students will have a five year bond to serve with the organisation. They get oriented to work on space application and programmes, with opportunity to do projects at our various facilities," the official added.

About 90 percent of ISRO scientists/engineers are home-grown, having graduated from Indian Institutes of Technology, National Institutes of Technology, Bits Pilani or other top engineering universities/colleges.

Jim Fallows on Bringing the Internet to Rural China

Atlantic Monthly journalist James Fallows is perhaps the most insightful reporter on the dramatic changes taking place in China.

In this video, he describes how China's Wild West (rural, diverse and poor) is leaping into the 21st century.

Most poignant in this report is the absolute dedication of Chinese families to educating their children to the highest standard possible.

The New York Times Increasingly Sees What Two Million Minutes Portrays

October 14, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

Amusing, but Not Funny

 

By BOB HERBERT

     

Sara Rimer of The Times wrote an article last week that gave us a startling glimpse of just how mindless and self-destructive the U.S. is becoming.

Consider the lead paragraph:

“The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels, a new study asserts, and girls who do succeed in the field are almost all immigrants or the daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued.”

The idea that the U.S. won’t even properly develop the skills of young people who could perform at the highest intellectual levels is breathtaking — breathtakingly stupid, that is.

The authors of the study, published in Notices of the American Mathematical Society, concluded that American culture does not value talent in math very highly. I suppose we’re busy with other things, like text-messaging while jay-walking. The math thing is seen as something for Asians and nerds.

Meanwhile, the country is going down the tubes. Read more

Two Million Minutes to Highlight Mole Day in Boise

This warms my heart!!

Edition Date: 10/14/08

The Treasure Valley Math and Science Center invites the public to Crazy Chemistry Night at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23, at Riverglen Junior High School cafeteria, 6801 Gary Lane, Boise.

The event celebrates Mole Day, an annual commemoration of Avogardro’s Number (6.02 x 10^23) -- a basic measuring unit in chemistry, and will feature professor Henry Charlier from Boise State University.

The evening schedule is:

• 5:30-6:30 p.m.: Networking and viewing of “Two-million Minutes,” a documentary of global education.

• 6:30-7:30 p.m.: Chemistry experiments.

The cost is $10 per family.

A Two Million Minutes Viewer in Richmond Makes a Change for Her Son's Future

Thank you for coming to Richmond this week. I am only sorry more of people did not come to see you! Maybe they were at a swim meet :)

Over the past few years I have noticed the lack of ambition coupled with a false sense of reality in the high school graduating students I know.  Thank you for sounding the alarm. Whether folks hear it before it's too late I can't be sure.

But I heard it and my 2 sons are being redirected. Instead of hiring a soccer coach to work with my son I am hiring a math tutor!

A Two Million Minutes Viewer Writes From India

Dear Bob, 

I was in India a few months ago visiting family and I thought of you. While there I was volunteering and teaching English at a government school and it gave me an entirely different perspective of your documentary.

The children there are pretty much at the bottom of the social ladder, many of them living in the slums. While their knowledge of English was non-existent, I happen to catch a bit of a math class one day where they were learning exponents. These so called underprivileged children were learning math concepts a good two years ahead of when I learned them in the US.

It was a real eye opener and I thought I would share it with you.

As it so happens, I was offered a job in India and decided to take. I recently started working for Tata Realty in Mumbai, lets see how I do when put side by side with my Indian educated counterparts.

Farah

Why Does This Article Sound So Familiar To Me?

New York Times - October 10, 2008
Math Skills Suffer in U.S., Study Finds
By SARA RIMER

The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels, a new study asserts, and girls who do succeed in the field are almost all immigrants or the daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued.

The study suggests that while many girls have exceptional talent in math — the talent to become top math researchers, scientists and engineers — they are rarely identified in the United States. A major reason, according to the study, is that American culture does not highly value talent in math, and so discourages girls — and boys, for that matter — from excelling in the field. The study will be published Friday in Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

“We’re living in a culture that is telling girls you can’t do math — that’s telling everybody that only Asians and nerds do math,” said the study’s lead author, Janet E. Mertz, an oncology professor at the University of Wisconsin, whose son is a winner of what is viewed as the world’s most-demanding math competitions. “Kids in high school, where social interactions are really important, think, ‘If I’m not an Asian or a nerd, I’d better not be on the math team.’ Kids are self selecting. For social reasons they’re not even trying.”

Many studies have examined and debated gender differences and math, but most rely on the results of the SAT and other standardized tests, Dr. Mertz and many mathematicians say. But those tests were never intended to measure the dazzling creativity, insight and reasoning skills required to solve math problems at the highest levels, Dr. Mertz and others say.

Dr. Mertz asserts that the new study is the first to examine data from the most difficult math competitions for young people, including the USA and International Mathematical Olympiads for high school students, and the Putnam Mathematical Competition for college undergraduates. For winners of these competitions, the Michael Phelpses and Kobe Bryants of math, getting an 800 on the math SAT is routine. The study found that many students from the United States in these competitions are immigrants or children of immigrants from countries where education in mathematics is prized and mathematical talent is thought to be widely distributed and able to be cultivated through hard work and persistence.

The International Olympiad, which began in Romania in 1959, is considered to be the world’s toughest math competition for high school students. About 500 students from as many as 95 countries compete each year, with contestants solving six problems in nine hours. (Question 5 from the 1996 test was famously difficult, with only six students out of several hundred able to solve it fully.)

The United States has competed in the Olympiad since 1974. Its six-member teams are selected over years of high-level contests, and trained during intensive summer math camps.

One two-time Olympiad gold medalist, 22-year-old Daniel M. Kane, now a graduate student at Harvard, is the son of Dr. Mertz and her husband, Jonathan M. Kane, a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Wisconsin, and a co-author of the study. The other two co-authors are Joseph A. Gallian, a math professor at the University of Minnesota and president of the Mathematical Association of America, and Titu Andreescu, a professor of math education at the University of Texas at Dallas and a former leader of the United States Olympiad team.

All members of the United States team were boys until 1998, when 16-year-old Melanie Wood, a cheerleader, student newspaper editor and math whiz from a public high school in Indianapolis, made the team. She won a silver medal, missing the gold by a single point. Since then, two female high school students, Alison Miller, from upstate New York, and Sherry Gong, whose parents emigrated to the United States from China, have made the United States team (they both won gold).

By comparison, relatively small Bulgaria has sent 21 girls to the competition since 1959 (six since 1988), according to the study, and since 1974 the highly ranked Bulgarian, East German/German and Soviet Union/Russian IMO teams have included 9, 10 and 13 girls respectively. “What most of these countries have in common,” the study says, “are rigorous national mathematics curricula along with cultures and educational systems that value, encourage and support students who excel in mathematics.”

Ms. Wood is now 27 and completing her doctorate in math at Princeton University. “There’s just a stigma in this country about math being really hard and feared, and people who do it being strange,” she said in a telephone interview. “It’s particularly hard for girls, especially at the ages when people start doing competitions. If you look at schools, there is often a social group of nerdy boys. There’s that image of what it is to be a nerdy boy in mathematics. It’s still in some way socially unacceptable for boys, but at least it’s a position and it’s clearly defined.”

Ms. Miller, who is 22 and recently graduated from Harvard, and Ms. Gong, 19 and a Harvard sophomore, both cite Ms. Wood as their role model. Ms. Wood and Ms. Miller helped coach the United States girls’ team that began competing in the Girls’ Math Olympiad in China two years ago. Thirteen girls from the United States have competed in the last two years, according to the study, and all are of Asian descent except one, Jennifer Iglesias.

The leader of those two teams, and of the United States Olympiad team is Zuming Feng, who grew up in China and teaches math at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.

Dr. Feng says that in China math is regarded as an essential skill that everyone should try to develop at some level. Parents in China, he said, view math as parents in the United States do baseball, hockey and soccer.

“Here everybody plays baseball,” Dr. Feng said. “Everybody throws a few balls, regardless of whether you’re good at it, or not. If you don’t play well, it’s O.K. Everybody gives you a few claps. But people don’t treat math that way.”

A big part of the problem, Dr. Mertz and others say, is that while the young math Olympians are wooed by elite colleges like Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as the country’s leading hedge fund firms, they are mostly invisible to the public.

“There is something about the culture in American society today which doesn’t really seem to encourage men or women in mathematics,” said Michael Sipser, the head of M.I.T.’s math department. “Sports achievement gets lots of coverage in the media. Academic achievement gets almost none.”

Ana Caraiani, 23 and a graduate student in math at Harvard, is a two-time Romanian International Olympiad gold medalist. “In Romania, math is not considered as something you need to be a nerd to do,” Ms. Caraiani said. “Math is about being smart. It’s about having intuition. It’s about being creative.”

Still, she says, it was not easy excelling in mathematics as a girl in Romania. In 2001, in fact, she was the first girl to make the country’s Olympiad team in 25 years.

The Race Between Education and Technology

October 5, 2008

– New York Times

Off the Shelf

Minding the Inequality Gap

By STEPHEN KOTKIN

DURING the first 70 years of the 20th century, inequality declined and Americans prospered together. Over the last 30 years, by contrast, the United States developed the most unequal distribution of income and wages of any high-income country.

Some analysts see the gulf between the rich and the rest as an incentive for strivers, or as just the way things are. Others see it as having a corrosive effect on people’s faith in the markets and democracy. Still others contend that economic polarization is a root cause of  America’s political polarization. Could, and should, something be done?

Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, two Harvard economists, think yes. Their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology”, contains many tables, a few equations and a powerfully told story about how and why the United States became the world’s richest nation — namely, thanks to its schools.

The authors skillfully demonstrate that for more than a century, and at a steady rate, technological breakthroughs — the mass production system, electricity, computers — have been increasing the demand for ever more educated workers. And, they show, America’s school system met this demand, not with a national policy, but in grassroots fashion, as communities taxed themselves and built schools and colleges.

Beginning in the 1970s, however, the education system failed to keep pace, resulting, Ms. Goldin and Mr. Katz contend, in a sharply unequal nation. The authors allow that a decline in union membership and in the inflation-adjusted minimum wage also contributed to the shift in who partook of a growing pie. But they rule out the usual suspects — globalization (trade) and high immigration as significant causes of rising inequality. Amid the current calls to restrict executive compensation, their policy prescription is to have more Americans graduate from college.

If only it were that easy.

The authors’ argument is really two books in one. One offers an incisive history of American education, especially the spread of the public high school and the state university system. It proves to be an uplifting tale of public commitment and open access. The authors remind us that the United States long remained “the best poor man’s country.” A place where talent could rise.

The other story rigorously measures the impact of education on income. The authors’ compilation of hard data on educational attainment according to when people were born is an awesome achievement, though not always a gripping read.

They show that by the 1850s, America’s school enrollment rate already “exceeded that of any other nation.” And this lead held for a long time. By 1960, some 70 percent of Americans graduated from high school — far above the rate in any other country. College graduation rates also rose appreciably.

In the marketplace, such educational attainment was extremely valuable, but it didn’t produce wide economic disparity so long as more people were coming to the job market with education. The wage premium — or differential paid to people with a high school or a college education — fell between 1915 and 1950.

But more recently, high school graduation rates flatlined at around 70 percent. American college attendance rose, though college graduation rates languished. The upshot is that while the average college graduate in 1970 earned 45 percent more than high school graduates, the differential three decades later exceeds 80 percent.

“In the first half of the century,” the authors summarize, “education raced ahead of technology, but later in the century technology raced ahead of educational gains.”

Proving that the demand for and supply of educated workers began not in the time of Bill Gates but in the era of Thomas Edison is virtuoso social science. But wasn’t a slowdown in rising educational attainment unavoidable? After all, it’s one thing to increase the average years of schooling by leaps and bounds when most people start near zero, but quite another when the national average is already high.

The authors reject the idea that the United States has reached some natural limit in educational advances. Other countries are now at higher levels.

What, then, is holding American youth back?

The authors give a two-part answer. For one thing, the financial aid system is a maze. More important, many people with high school diplomas are not ready for college.

The second problem, the authors write, is concentrated mostly in inner-city schools. Because the poor cannot easily move to better school districts, the authors allow that charter schools as well as vouchers, including those for private schools, could be helpful, but more evaluation is necessary.

Data on the effects of preschool are plentiful, and point to large returns on investment, so the authors join the chorus in extolling Head Start, the federal government’s largest preschool program.

Providing more children with a crucial start, along with easier ways to find financial aid, are laudable national objectives. One suspects, though, that the obstacles to getting more young people into and through college have to do with knotty social and cultural issues.

BUT assume that the authors’ policies would raise the national college graduation rate. Would that deeply reduce inequality?

Averages can be deceptive. Most of the gains of the recent flush decades have not gone to the college-educated as a whole. The top 10 or 20 percent by income have education levels roughly equivalent to those in the top 1 percent, but the latter account for much of the boom in inequality. This appears to be related to the way taxes have been cut, and to the ballooning of the financial industry’s share of corporate profits.

It remains to be seen how a reconfigured financial industry and possible new tax policies might affect the 30-year trend toward greater inequality.

In the meantime, it is nice to be reminded, in a data-rich book, that greater investments in human capital once put Americans collectively on top of the world.

Comments From An Indian With Experience

The text below was posted by an Indian who commented on one of my posts. It is so insightful and based on experience in both the U.S. and Indian education system, that I wanted to post it directly so more people might read it.

It has been quiet some time since I graduated from high school, now I have 2 little girls going to primary school.

I'm an Indian with a graduate level of schooling in India before we started living in US for 14 years. Once my older daughter was ready to enter primary schooling, we decided to relocate back to our country. One of the main factors in this decision is education.

I won't say Indian education system is all hunky dory and best , it has its share of challenges of the same concern as the American counterparts.

Having lived in both parts of the world and understanding enough of both the systems I can say couple of things.

1) Primary education system is excellent in USA those values are now being offered in new urban schools in India.

2) Middle and high school is definitely better in India. Better as in what, one may ask. I would say the curriculum is so much that the child doesn't get chance to distract from the parent's guidance.
I don't think any school plays the pivotal role in ensuring that the child sticks to the books -- its done more by parents and community.

3) One thing that is going for Indian kids is the extreme amount of competition they face at every stage. Imagine this .... once you step out if high school to get into the best of any college in any stream, you face a competition in the ratio of 1:10 IE for every vacancy or seat you have at minimum of 10 folks competing for exactly the same thing. This continues to the rest of next 6 years even into job markets.

I think this probably is the driving force for most Indians. The philosophy is simple if you study hard and put in the grind these 4 (high school years) the world will be on your plate, and thats the key to successful life.

Every parent right from lower income households to the elites live by this mantra.

4) Does that mean all Indians excel. NO definitely not. Not all excel and maybe not all have the ability to afford higher education. But the awareness is there. My maid who probably works cleaning dishes in 10 households earns a monthly income of $100 and has 6 mouths to feed yet she tightens her belt to ensure that they all go to school for basic education. "Public School system is not necessarily good in India, mostly its all private schools and that means shelling out money" and yet they do that.

5) What appalls me in the U.S. is despite the best of lifestyles and decent affordability of education, or even the free and much better public school system than India, the children have this lax attitude and the "its okay not to know all subjects" attitude, especially among high school students.

One thing I noticed and is purely my perception is that once a child gets into college there is this burden of schooling and also earning to repay debt. I firmly believe that once you taste money its difficult to get back to studies. A couple of my cousins who lived that lifestyle in US (born and brought up there) have learned it the hard way.

The entire high school was free why can't the parents take some extra interest and bend their backs to provide that support, why is it the child's burden? What motivation will be left among average students?

Is it really necessary that they have to leave the nest and learn all those life skills while being a student. Indian children finish their undergrad before leaving home, only at graduate level do many parents leave the responsibility of learning the life skills.

It may sound like cocooned lifestyle for the Indian kids but has it done any good for the American counterparts?

6) While living in the U.S. when I questioned other parents with children of similar age group to my kids they were constantly wowed at the fact that my 4-year old could recognize all her letters and even begun to write some. They called her intelligent but I don't necessarily call that being intelligent. She was ready to learn it. I see many 3-4 year children ready for that, then why don't American kids do the same at that age? Does that mean their genetic wiring is different? Definitely NO; it's that their parents did not bother. PERIOD.

Most American parents, in my observation, kind of let loose of the child once they reach the high school. I have seen many parents and children getting bothered about the fact that they don't have a high school date to go for the dance!!! Is it really that important?

It's time that the parents and community woke up to the real requirements in schooling and prepare their child. Don't give them a choice for getting educated or not, there should be no choice.

Apologize for such lengthy stuff and any incorrect English.

Chinese VP pledges support for overseas Chinese entrepreneurs

BEIJING, Sept.27, 2008 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping on Saturday asked government departments to protect legitimate interests of overseas Chinese entrepreneurs and create favorable conditions for their investment.

    Xi made the remarks here when meeting with representatives of the China Federation of Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurs.

    He said overseas Chinese have made great contributions to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and Paralympics.

    As China continues economic reform, more overseas Chinese entrepreneurs are coming back to the country with increased investment, he said, adding that investment has become an important part of China's economy.

QUESTION: Is there a U.S. Federation of Overseas American Entrepreneurs?