Cultural models

There was this posting on X that revealed “only 31 percent of American 8th graders are proficient in reading… 30 percent are below basic readers or functionally illiterate. And only 27 percent of 8th graders are proficient in math. Hiring American workers is more difficult because our education system is failing.”

For the Americans as it is for us, correcting this problem will take a few generations. In the meantime, the current generations have been condemned to live a life that’s less satisfying economically and the political system will be plagued by unwise choices. The educated and the barely educated suffer the consequences.

Vivek Ramaswamy, who was chosen by Trump together with Elon Musk to organize a Department of Government Efficiency, recently posted on X that “top tech companies often hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans… comes down to the c-word: culture… American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long. That doesn’t start in college, it starts young.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers…

(Fact: I know ‘multiple’ sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch some TV shows precisely because these shows promoted mediocrity… and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates) …

“Most normal American parents look skeptically at ‘those kinds of parents.’ More normal American kids view such ‘those kinds of kids’ with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve…

“’Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hypercompetitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.

“This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awakened from slumber before and we can do it again… A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.”

All that sounds familiar. Our young students rank at the bottom among 79 countries in an international reading, mathematics and science exam given to 15-year-olds. We were 79th in reading and 78th in mathematics and sciences.

We can see how damaged cultures, American or Filipino, impact greatly on the quality of people’s lives. We ape American culture so much that we share with them even the social dysfunctions that threaten future generations.

While the dismal state of our students in basic skills can be traced to bureaucratic incompetence and corruption, our society, like the Americans, celebrates beauty queens and celebrities rather than those who excel in science and engineering. The role models of our young people are entertainment personalities and corrupt politicians.

For instance, how many of us knew that there were three Filipinos who performed vital roles in ensuring the success of NASA’s exploration mission to the planet Mars?

Gregorio Go Villar III, Genevie Yang and Edward Gonzales were among the scientists and technicians involved in the historic mission to explore the Jezero Crater of Mars through the Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity Helicopter.

Villar, an engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was also the head verification and validation engineer for the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) Phase. He attended the Saint Louis University High School in Baguio City and obtained a bachelor’s degree in physics from the California State Polytechnic University and a doctoral degree in astronautical engineering from the University of Southern California.

Yang, a flight system engineer at NASA JPL was born in Biñan, Laguna whose family migrated to the US when she was five years old. She is a member of the team that tested the flight software of the Perseverance Rover and worked with the Uplink Team that ensured the efficiency of the spacecraft while on launch cruise.

Gonzales, whose parents hail from Quezon City and Cavite was the lead engineer of the Electromagnetic Compatibility team that launch-tested and ascertained that all the individual subsystems and instruments of the Perseverance Rover would perfectly perform in the electromagnetic environment, and successfully collected and transmitted data from the Perseverance to the NASA base on Earth.

Of course there is Diosdado Banatao credited with having developed the first 10-Mbit Ethernet CMOS with silicon coupler data-link control and transceiver chip, the first system logic chipset for IBM’s PC-XT and the PC-AT, and one of the first graphical user interface (GUI) accelerators for personal computers.

He walked barefoot on a dirt road just to reach Malabbac Elementary School, pursued his secondary education at the Ateneo de Tuguegarao and graduated cum laude for his bachelor of science in electrical engineering from the Mapúa Institute of Technology. He then took his master of science in electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University and finished in 1972. He was involved in several successful Silicon Valley start-ups.

For a while Banatao was interested in promoting science and technology education in the Philippines and through his Dado Banatao Educational Foundation, annually awards five educational scholarships to intelligent Filipino students in the field of engineering and technology. He also built a computer center at his grade school in his childhood town of Iguig in Cagayan Valley, making it the only public school with the most modern computer network in the Philippines.

We haven’t heard much about him lately and that’s probably because his enthusiasm to promote science and technology education here didn’t get much support.

These are the sort of people who should be looked up to as role models for our youth. That’s how we can be competitive in today’s world. Budgets should be poured on more science high school campuses all over the country under the DOST to ensure the quality of teaching and selection of scholars are not sacrificed.

If BBM wants to leave a legacy that inspires future generations, this is the way to go. Not AKAP.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco