RIO RANCHO, New Mexico — President Bush yesterday said America is doing a “lousy” job of educating junior high school students, whom he urged to pursue math and science, saying that will not make them the “nerd patrol.”
“We’re doing fine in the fourth grade; we’re doing lousy in junior high,” Mr. Bush said during a panel discussion at Intel headquarters, outside Albuquerque.
“Something happens between elementary school, where our teachers are able to get the kids interested in math and they test well, to junior high,” he said. “And that’s where we ought to emphasize focus.”
The president pointed out that the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act provides funding to help younger students who are struggling with math and science.
“We’re now going to ask Congress to apply that same supplemental service to junior high kids in math,” he said. “If the kids aren’t testing well in math in junior high — in other words, if they’re part of the falloff — let’s intervene.
“Let’s make sure there’s tutorials available, after-school mathematics available for these children, so that they can remain competitive,” he added.
But Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, said the president’s proposal, part of a broader American competitiveness initiative, is grossly inadequate.
“We’ve all heard the slogan ’a day late and a dollar short,’ ” Mr. Kennedy told reporters in a conference call. “Well, for this administration, on education, they’re five years late and billions of dollars short.”
He accused the president of giving “short shrift” to math and science education.
“We’ve seen the significant cut in funding to train the math and science teachers in New Mexico,” he said. “We all understand the challenges of China, India, world competition, but this administration has been absent in the battle of research and the battle of science,” he added.
Mr. Bush strongly disagreed. “Yes, we’ve got a lot of competition, and people begin to see an emerging China and India, and that makes people uncertain,” he said. “Here’s my attitude: With the right policy we can compete with anybody, any time, anywhere.”
To that end, the president assured students they will not become the “nerd patrol” if they pursue math and science. “It’s the future,” Mr. Bush added. “The future is engineering and physics and chemistry and math.”
First lady Laura Bush, who also participated in the panel discussion, said pursuit of these studies will help cure heart disease and other medical conditions.
“If our children have the chance to study more math and science … we can produce even more doctors and many, many more medical breakthroughs,” she said.
The couple later traveled to a predominately minority magnet school in Dallas that places a special emphasis on math and science.
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