science vs sports

science in, sports out

Our aging capitalistic society, in the civilian manufacturing arena, is still dependent upon private resources to finance the R&D needed to stay abreast of world-wide competition in consumer products. Thirty years ago I might have said that American engineering was superior, but the marketplace soon thereafter put my company into jeopardy when we had to abandon our profitable lines of industrial closed circuit TV and Hi-Fi amplifiers. You don't have to possess an MBA to make the decision to drop a product when the cost of an American-made vidicon is $175 and the complete industrial TV camera arrives from a foreign source with more features at a price of $187.50, and is negotiable downwards in quantity. The surviving electronics manufacturers of today are playing catchup or offering custom items that have not caught the eye of the importer. The same dilemma is probably facing the US manufacturer in other markets besides electronics.

My analysis of our loss of competitiveness (probably too simplistic for the professional economists) is, lazy schools filled with lazy students, NO funds for civilian R&D, government restrictions, and prejudice against the manufacturer (juicy subject for a future paper), unobtainable or expensive venture capital, and undercompensation for the inventor. Immediate corrective action on all items is unthinkable, but good things could happen if two actions were to be implemented, 1. impose a 3% charge on the gross income of all entities benefiting from an FCC license, to be spent on R&D., 2. eliminate intercollegiate sports and devote the freed space and funds to science education.

Without a line item veto power for our president, the pork barrels roll on and on. The imminent threat of runaway inflation, as our deficit balloons daily, has forced the administration to forego funds for technology driven fields such as HDTV. What is even more disastrous for our financial health is the unstoppable, unreasoning, unintelligent outcries for social programs like housing, homeless, and drug addiction. No one in Congress or the executive branch seems able to stand up to the caterwauling from the dogooders. Added to the crowd of freespenders are the environmentalists whose recent restrictions on automobile emissions are expensive enough to return us to the horse and buggy era.

Since there is no likelihood that public funds will come to the aid of scientific education or private industry, fundamental changes have to be insinuated into the US body politic, therefore the necessary funds must come from within the economy. As I have previously proposed in a paper last November, a 3% tax on FCC matters will generate about 2 billion dollars, enough when aided by import duties, to revive the consumer electronics industry. This money will pass directly into R&D, untouched by political mischiefmakers and safe from social sinkholes.

Everyone agrees that our educational megastructure is malfunctioning at every level. The news medium reports without end the inferior status of US schools and students to our foreign competitors in science and manufacturing. I intend to pass over the secondary school morass and concentrate on the college level where I believe one executive decision will have an immediate and positive effect on the quality of science education and the science content of a college diploma.

In brief, what I recommend is the total elimination of inter-collegiate sports, principally football, basketball, and baseball. The space vacated by sports, and whatever funds may be saved from the college budget, would be dedicated to science laboratories and instructors. All seekers after a diploma would be required to pursue a varied diet of science courses to attest to their ability to cope with the intricacies of our modern society. Previously, one was not considered educated unless he studied Latin, French, Shakespeare, and the Kings of Europe. Scientific literacy should be mandatory for today's college graduate.

I searched the library in vain for the vital statistics on college sports. How and why did our august institutions of higher education become the minor leagues of organized sports? In my college days there was an incessant flow of propaganda from the bowels of the coaching staff - you will learn through sports how to be a gentlemen, smile at a loss, be generous to your fallen foe, and never quit. Sadly, even in those days before WW11, athletes took special courses only open to team players, scholarships were awarded first to the athletes, the leftovers to scientists. Busboy jobs were always held by the athletes (can't let the muscle men starve like the rest of the depression babies), and at every school function the athletes occupied the head table in the limelight. Take a clear-eyed view of today's colleges. Athletes are recruited and paid vast sums to engage in a full time sport activity, study time is meager or absent, but an unearned diploma is awarded to the athlete by an administration who knows they have committed a fraudulent, perhaps even a criminal act.

So, I am hoping against hope, that the college presidents will repent their school's evil ways and abandon the worship of that evil temptress - Sports - and return the school to its rightful goal, instilling a scientifically based education in its graduates that will preserve our country's living standards and its survival.