Letter: Faith keeps us from focusing on education

Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2005 | 8:25 a.m.

Thomas Friedman's Oct. 16 column detailing the lack of a coherent education policy, particularly in the math and sciences, is well taken. However, the fact is that the majority of Americans do not associate their personal well-being with the education of our children.

In fact, for most of our history, populist thought has always sided with the fundamental goodness of the manual laborer endowed with "common horse sense" as opposed to the educated "elitists" of higher education.

In business and economics, success is rewarded through wealth and acquisition of goods. The industrialists of the 18th and 19th centuries used the creativity of those skilled in the arts of science, engineering and math but rarely acknowledged it.

Until the advent of Sputnik, America continued to downplay educated scientific practitioners. In fact, it was Cold War fear and political embarrassment that suddenly made it imperative to pour resources into engineering and science education, not good public policy.

Additionally, I believe there is another critical factor that prevents us from focusing on education as a national priority, specifically ultraconservative religion. We have a government supported by a cadre of citizens that believes a higher being will solve all problems and keep us globally competitive.

We are being pushed to substitute "intelligent design" and other supernatural forces for legitimate study of how things work and behave. Thus unsupported faith replaces rational teaching of science and math fundamentals. Why pay for the means to global pre-eminence when we can will it to happen through devotion?

I suspect that when the rest of the world surpasses us and controls the means to a better life, these Luddites will retire to their houses of worship, bemoan their fate and question what sinful acts they did to justify such misery. Frankly, we would do a whole lot better if we used Mr. Friedman's list as an agenda for our future generations' security and comfort.

Sidney H. Goodman

Las Vegas