Virginia Postrel Quotes

That science has long been neglected and declining in England, is not an opinion originating with me, but is shared by many, and has been expressed by higher authority than mine.

Sputnik quickly became one of the three great shocks to hit America - historians say the equal of Pearl Harbor or 9/11.

In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science - really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.

When I went to my local grammar school, Lurgan College, girls were not encouraged to study science. My parents hit the roof and, along with other parents, demanded a curriculum change.

There is not enough funding for basic sciences in India. We have to invest in a big way, and I am pushing that idea.

One of the reasons I like working with schools is to try to convince women that they can be scientists and that science can be fun.

American greatness was elevated significantly after Sputnik.

We didn't go to the moon to explore or because it was in our DNA or because we're Americans. We went because we were at war and we felt a threat.

In 1962, President Kennedy succeeded in captivating Americans by explaining the advantages of being the first country to reach the moon and the dangers of allowing another nation to beat us there.

There's no doubt who was a leader in space after the Apollo Program. Nobody came close to us. And our education system, in science, technology, engineering and math, was at the top of the world. It's no longer there. We're descending rather rapidly.

Agency by agency, we frequently have lost a bit of ground, at least to inflation-but had it not been for the efforts we've made to educate people about the importance of science, technology and advanced education, those predictions very well might have come true.

I don't know whether it is important to study science at a young age, though current thinking emphasises the need.

If we’re going to be the world’s leader, we have to pick up the pace of American education, especially in math and science.

I think parents want their kids to have a strong, competitive education. The message [of my victory] was that includes a full set of science standards and that includes evolution.

Nearly 90 percent of high school graduates say they’re not interested in a career or a college major involving science, technology, engineering or math…

We have a problem in Africa with our education system. It is a relic from the past. The education system was meant to create clerks to help the administrative role of the colonial power. So the emphasis was on neat handwriting and how to write good reports and things like that, and if you move further, then you study Shakespeare and Molière. But we don’t have enough engineers and scientists. Two percent of African university graduates study agriculture, when 70 percent of our people are living off the land. Obviously, we have a problem.

The laissez-faire attitude to science education has resulted in a disaster exemplified by the fact that more young people are opting for media studies than physics.

We are really battling, today in the U.S., keeping science education in the forefront at the elementary level, and that's where the research shows that kids get interested.

I think if you were between maybe 6 and 16, there was nothing like Apollo, and I wonder if there can be something like that again. We'll just have to see.

I'm a biologist, so... Which I think should be mandatory. Biology should be mandatory. Mathematics? They say we don't know enough about math and science. Well we don't know enough about science and particularly biology, which is such a huge field.

Too many people view on [space exploration] as a luxury rather than as a fundamental driver to stimulate interest in science to everyone in the educational pipeline. It's vital to our prosperity and security.

The Sputnik is just to me like a firework, a rocket, a new invention.

A new study shows that American students are becoming less proficient in science, and if the trend continues, we will become a nation that's science and chemistry illiterate. And you thought a lot of meth labs are blowing up now?

The education of young people in science is at least as important, maybe more so, than the research itself.

If you look, like, in 1960, there was no such thing as an astronaut. It was a totally fanciful concept, but nine years later or whatever, we were landing on the moon, which is just astonishing.