Crappy GA schools

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San Ramon Valley High School's robotics class article is located here:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/12/04/BAGI0A6B5C1.DTL&type=science

Many of the kids I went to junior high with decided to attend the newly built high school south of our town. I saw this article about San Ramon Valley High in the San Francisco Chronicle online, and it really struck a cord.

Apparently San Ramon offers a robotics course for its students, and they have been competing in a regional and state competition called FIRST - (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, which the Chronicle hails as the "Super Bowl of robotics competitions for geeks". This year they have created some dune-buggy esque robot called "Seabiscuit".

I have been commenting for years that California schools are ridiculously better than any school in Georgia. Unless you attend some magnet school, I have never heard of a robotics course being offered in a GA high school. (CAUTION: Every new Georgia install complains about how their home state is better than Georgia, whether it is the traffic, the cities, the weather, or etc. Do not see me as some typical transplant who simply misses their home state. I believe I have valid logical conclusions that address my problems with GA.)

NPR did a recent series about a high school in San Jose, CA, that is having issues because of the high attendance on behalf of extremely wealthy asian students. Local white residents complain that they cannot afford to live in this town and send their kids to this school. I remember a lot of this in my own town in the East Bay. Approx. 1/3 of the student body was asian, and these kids were the most intelligent and committed students I have ever known. There is no doubt that these first generation students are pushed way more than lazy Americans, and that they end up attending better universities and getting better jobs than us. However, the racial divide in these schools are pushing the envelope with middle and lower class Californian students, who are forced to work harder and smarter in order to earn success in their public school educations. This is a good thing.

The simple fact is that California educators approach finance better than Georgia educators do. I remember having less resources in CA - most books were old, falling apart and hard to come by. Paper was also a high commodity, and you had less teacher provided handouts. Computers were fewer - I think that there were computers in the lab and in the library. However, the teachers were incredibly intelligent, and most had Doctorates or Masters degrees in Education. The teachers I had were better paid and generally had better morale. Most were prime examples of complete sources for inspiration. They taught subjects within their classes that were more difficult, more comprehensive, and better organized. I don't remember a single teacher, whether it was in the wealthy community of Northern CA that I lived, or the largely-hispanic community in Southern CA, that was not completely entrenched in a desire to teach these kids to be the leaders of our country. These teachers were not in their profession because an education degree was easier, or because of the job perks of having summers and holidays off work. A prime example of the huge divide in learning between CA and GA was my first experience in Georgia - the 8th grade English class was reading a "Diary of Anne Frank", which we had read a full 4 years earlier, in 4th grade, in California.

The truth is that science and technology are underfunded and not well taught across the country. Americans are in no way near leading the pack when it comes to tech and science jobs, and we are beginning to fail in this new age of the global economy based in technology.

Why shouldn't high school students be taking courses in robotics or biochemistry, as many of the kids I left in CA went on to do in their high schools? How will Americans capitalize on the cure for AIDS, Diabetes, cancer, or cardiac diseases if we don't prepare our future generations for the higher evolution that has evolved in biochemistry? How can we fight the wave of IT outsourcing that has occurred, if we cannot produce these workers, such as that in India, that are smarter, more tech-savvy, and are willing to work for cheaper pay?