RENO " The outgoing chairman of the world's largest computer chip maker says the United States needs to rethink its approach to public education and raise the bar for academic achievement in mathematics and science if it hopes to be competitive in a 21st century world.
"We haven't even chosen to compete in this area yet," Craig Barrett, retiring chairman of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel Corp., said Monday. "We're still operating as though we're the only game in town."
Barrett was in Reno to attend the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair that runs through Saturday. Intel has sponsored the event organized by the Society for Science & the Public for 13 years, and just pledged its support through 2019.
This year, the event's 60th, features projects by more than 1,500 high school students from around the world. Each are finalists and are competing for nearly $4 million in scholarships and awards. The top three winners each receive a $50,000 scholarship from the Intel Foundation.
Barrett, 70 said while the higher education system in the U.S. is being modeled by other countries, elementary and high school instruction is lacking.
"I think, as a general rule, we focus on the lowest common denominator," he said. "What you really need is more emphasis on the advanced placement courses in science, math and English."
"Those are the way you really allow the bright kids to have greater access to learning opportunities," Barrett said.
A report released last month by the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that 17-year-olds did no better at reading and math in 2008 than they did in the early 1970s, though it cited improvement in younger students.
"We're mediocre compared to the rest of the world," Barrett said. "We're not serious about it."
The son of a chemist who acknowledges a childhood fascination with a chemistry kit and explosions, Barrett aspired to be a forest ranger.
Instead, he received a scholarship to Stanford, which doesn't have a forestry department, and he majored in mechanical engineering. The former Fulbright Fellow has written 40 technical papers dealing with the influence of microstructure on the properties of materials, and a textbook on materials science, according to his company biography. Barrett, who previously served as Intel's president and CEO, is credited with leading Intel through the bursting of the "dot-com bubble."
He said a shift is needed in how teachers are trained and selected.
"If you want to do something, do away with schools of education," he quipped.
There are many great teachers, he said, but there are many teaching subjects in which they lack expertise or enthusiasm.
"Historically, teaching is not what I'd call an honored profession in the United States," Barrett said. "We don't recruit math majors to teach math, or chemistry majors to teach science. We recruit teachers from schools of education."
In contrast, other countries like Finland take the "cream of the crop" of college graduates in various majors to become teachers.
"How do you get a kid interested in math and science if you don't know the subject material and you don't know what it can do and what the impact of it is in society?" he said.
"You have to have passion and love and understanding of what you teach if you want to be successful."
Barrett, who with his wife sponsors four charter schools in Arizona, said the lack of interest in math and science by U.S. students is evidenced by the numbers who compete to advance to the finals of the international science fair.
In China, he said, local science fairs attract up to 10 million kids from which 15-20 are chosen for the final international competition. In the U.S., preliminary participants are in the 100,000 range.
"You get a measure how very seriously other countries are taking this," he said. "We have to raise the level of the national debate on this."
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On the Net:
Intel Corp.: www.intel.com
International Science and Engineering Fair: www.societyforscience.org/intelisef09
Society for Science & the Public: www.societyforscience.org