The More Things Change, Dept: H1-B Visas

When I was working in Sen. Wyden's office (D-OR), he wanted to increase the number of home-grown engineers in Oregon to bolster the tech industry. Intel was headquartered in Portland OR, and was hiring a lot of people from China with H1-b visas. He wanted to get info on how science and math could be "enriched" to achieve this which is when I got involved and did research on math education. (I wrote about all this in an article published in Education Next. )

For those unfamiliar with that sad story, Lynne Cheney at the time (2002) was criticizing how math was being taught in the US and the staffers in Sen. Wyden’s office didn't want my research reaching him lest he come off looking like Lynne Cheney.

Now we are seeing the same political arguments resurfacing except now it has an added “nuance”: I.e., "If you're against immigration you should be against H1-b visas." Stay tuned for a repeat of the "It's the culture, stupid", and "You can't import culture" arguments. While there is some truth about culture not being importable, it is worthwhile to examine the reasons why the techniques in Singapore, China and other Asian countries are used . The techniques employed to educate those cultures that value math are those which have been shown to be effective, including mastery of math facts and procedures. Also, "conceptual understanding" is not stressed over to the same degree as in the US by the reform-minded edu-establishment.

In fact, the time-honored techniques are pretty much followed in the tutoring/learning centers such as Kumon, Mathnasium, Huntington, and others.

Maybe the journos writing about the H1-b developments will catch on this time around.