Editorial
Now there's science: Hawai'i students lag

Disappointing is hardly the word for the dismal showing of Hawai'i fourth- and eighth-graders on a national test of basic proficiency in science.

Nearly two-thirds of eighth-graders and nearly half of fourth-graders scored below basic levels.

These scores should "sound an alert in Hawai'i, like Sputnik did in the U.S. in the 1950s," said interim schools chief Pat Hamamoto. If that alert had sounded in Hawai'i in the 1950s as it did on the Mainland, perhaps we wouldn't be in this fix.

Still, we might have expected the public school system to respond to widespread expressions of hope in recent years for attracting high-tech and other science-based enterprises to Hawai'i. We thought it was common knowledge that such companies are attracted to places that offer qualified work- forces.

We're disappointed to learn of a 1996 survey that showed only about 30 percent of Hawai'i middle-school students were taking science, compared with about 90 percent nationally.

Why so few young budding scientists in Hawai'i middle schools? Because if they were required to take science, they'd have to choose between fewer electives such as art or band.

With that level of seriousness, it's a wonder we don't let middle-school students choose between math and surfing.

The test scores nationally were disappointing, suggesting that the nation's schools are failing to prepare students for the modern international workplace. That's why the United States has had to import hundreds of thousands of high-tech workers from India, even as American workers bitterly cling to old-fashioned production jobs that can be done cheaper in the Third World.

When it comes to science, India's public education system evidently is outshining the American system, while the Hawai'i system is among the more backward in America.

For Hawai'i to correct this obvious curriculum deficiency, we're told, requires approval by the Board of Education and a lengthy public hearing process.

If there were the least sense of urgency about this problem, we suppose it would have been solved back in the 1950s, when the Russians launched Sputnik.