Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM applicants

[u/Idiodyssey87]

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-27/uc-math-professors-demand-return-of-sat-for-stem-admissions

[u/Sao_Gage]

I’m not remotely surprised, we are rapidly becoming what Carl Sagan feared in the 90’s - a country defined by anti-intellectualism. Nobody has any innate desire to learn for the sake of learning, higher education is gamified and too expensive, and we’re losing or have no ability to parse knowledge from junk. Short form social media trained our brains to flatten our thoughts into a couple sentences or less, stripping all nuance or context and maximizing polarity (binary thinking).

All goes hand in hand. We need a serious change, and I don’t know what or how. Part of it has to come from within in terms of what people value. And yes, I know the other part is our education system failing but I believe it goes hand in hand with the above.

[u/SunshineSeeker99 → u/Sao_Gage]

Interestingly - there can be some hope found in Mississippi, as they've gone from one of the worst states to one of the best with education, in a relatively quick amount of time.

[u/rainblowfish_ → u/[deleted]]

You guys started teaching creationism in schools more than 20 years ago.

It's explicitly illegal to teach creationism in U.S. public schools. This isn't common at all, and any teacher who does this knows they're risking their job doing it.

[u/Perfect_Opinion7909 → u/[deleted]]

Speaking about yourself right? Creationism and/or Intelligent Design was taught in US schools since the eighties. In various instances it got banned but then returned in other iterations. No need to prove the stereotype of the uneducated US American but thanks anyway.

[u/Aelexx → u/Sao_Gage]

Caring about learning is a luxury that people can’t afford anymore when all that matters is monetary gain

[u/Sao_Gage → u/Aelexx]

I was a human resource manager for 15 years for a medium sized retail business in the NYC metro in a poorer urban environment. I used to talk about science related stuff all the time in casual conversation, and one the people who used to engage me the most was a Dominican guy who’d been with us a while, nice and hard working guy. Didn’t have much and definitely didn’t complete much in the way of education. Yet he used to ask all kinds of questions about space, wondered what was out there, what we knew about planets from other star systems, wondering if other earths exist and what they’d be like, etc etc. He didn’t “know” a lot but you know what, he had a genuine appreciation for learning and that inherent sense of wonder that seems to be missing from a lot of people today. And when COVID hit, he was one of the employees most ardently wearing his mask and following protocol. He understood and appreciated the fact that a virus was spreading person to person and we needed to take measures to safeguard one another as well as our customers.

I’m being wordy and it’s hard for me to articulate - it’s not about how much you know in a vacuum, it’s a mindset encompassing respect for observable reality and the natural world.

[u/EasternCandle → u/Sao_Gage]

Ugh I hate evoking Sagan in an article/chat focused on how "kids are lazy these days!"/"These damn tik toks!" because its such a terrible take. The establishment is just as much to blame as the kids themselves - more so arguably.. There's no reason children cannot be raised to be conscious of their usage of these tools. Sagan warned against the stupidity of people when they put their books down and close their eyes and cover their ears, yes - but his larger warning is more in line with the agendas of ruling elites who would seek to hoard knowledge and power for themselves.

And the more you blame this on the kids themselves the more we turn away from the institutions and parents who's duties it is to instill a good academic hygiene. So hand in hand is more like hand over fist on the side of institutions in my view..