Rethinking Comparisons

2011-02-15

There's no shortage of comparisons between education, science and technology, human rights, and economy in the United States and other countries. These comparisons talk about progress, superiority, inferiority, and development. But they also distract from the real issues at hand and inhibit our ability to reflect and improve.

Often statistics are used to make overly simplistic or bogus comparisons between countries. For example, for the past 30 years, there has been constant talk about how how the United States isn't producing enough capable scientists and is falling behind in science education and science research compared to other countries. Statistics are frequently used to "prove" this "alarming fact". The truth is that there actually has always been an overall surplus of capable people with scientific training in the United States and not enough domestic demand for their talents. I have many underemployed but friends in the U.S. who have advanced degrees in physics. These are smart and hard working people.

Comparisons about who is better or more successful at something tend to grossly oversimplify the situations at home and abroad. These comparisons rely on uninformed and unjustified assumptions about the domestic situation in the United States and about the institution and people in other countries. With these comparisons, the propaganda creates "competitors" or "enemies". It jumps to the conclusion that we must fight our "enemies" by blindly emulating what is perceived to be their way of doing things. Unfortunately, many of the people who spread this opinion have never been to these "enemy countries" or spent enough time immerse in their cultures to learn anything about them.

Other countries such as China or India or European nations have vastly different economies, workforces, natural resources, landscapes, cultures, attitudes towards business, and social and economic systems with specific problems and needs. The United States has it's own cultures, natural resources, workforces, social and economic systems, needs, and challenges. In many ways it doesn't make any sense to say that, for example, the education system in China is better or worse than that of the United States because the purpose and situation of each education system is certainly quite different. The central question we should be asking is not if, how, or why other countries are more successful than the United States, but how well our own internal cultures and institutions and our global relationships match our own needs and solve the problems that we face at home. It doesn't matter whether our education or economy is "better or worse" than those of other countries. The most control we have is over ourselves. The best use of our efforts is to improve ourselves for ourselves.

Going back to the example of science and science education, I can qualitatively say that many people in the United States do have an incredibly poor understanding of science and math. I've had plenty of college students who don't really understand what the "=" sign means or how to do algebra. This is something to be alarmed about!

But Americans shouldn't learn more about science and math so that they can become scientists and compete with the Chinese. They should learn more about science and math because in contemporary American society we are surrounded by numbers (and often very misleading ones). We need to be able to think critically about these and be able to figure out when they are relevant to the decisions we need to make in our lives and when they are not.

Uninformed and polarizing comparisons keep us from really understanding and learning from the people and institutions of foreign countries. Comparisons of a different kind can be very enlightening and useful. First, we must go experience and learn about foreign peoples, places, institutions, technologies, and ways way of doing things. Only then can we ask which of their techniques can be borrowed or adapted to address the problem and needs in our own country and what kinds of healthy and beneficial relationships we can build with foreign people. Such comparisons will also help us better understand ourselves.