Bill Nye: When Sputnik went off, October 4, 1957—this was after World War II which had been resolved but there were still some issues about who was going to run the world, especially Eastern Europe—people in the United States, I won’t say went crazy, but focused on developing science and engineering curricula for schools. It became a big deal. I’m there at my elementary school when a guy from NASA comes—NASA was a new thing developed shortly after that in 1958—the guy dips a cigar—back when it was politically okay to carry cigars—dips it in liquid oxygen and lights it. It burns like a road flare. It’s the coolest think I’d ever seen. I want to be an engineer! I want to work in space!
And so, we can do that kind of thing again, but it takes resources. You’ve got to decide it’s worth doing. So there are people that would, that believe when you need to make budget cuts the first thing you do is cut education. Just increase class sizes, have fewer teachers. But you can argue—I mean I’ll just point out, the heck with argue—that’s wrong. No, instead you should invest more in schools and teachers, especially science and math education. Teaching math is not expensive, it’s a value.
Directed / Produced by
Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd
Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science[…]
▸
1 min
—
with
Related
Research suggests that experience may matter more than innate ability when it comes to a sense of direction.
NASA’s minivan-sized drone is scheduled to search for signs of life on Titan in 2034.
The “Shopping Cart Litmus Test” is a popular meme about morality. What does it really reveal about one’s character?
Nobody likes the uneasy feeling of being watched — so can there be any workplace benefit to the all-seeing eye?
There are many theories of gravity out there, and many interpretations of wide binary star data. What have we really learned from it all?