Fear of Hard Work Steers Students Away From Science & Tech

"But it's hard"......have fun working those cash registers and drive through windows then. Meanwhile children in Germany, China, Japan, and India are beaming with pride at succeding at these "Hard" subjects.

Whatever the root cause, I can tell you that high schools are producing graduates who have never had to work and study, and who are highly deficient in math and science [English, too]. I am a university professor.

I am not sure it is really the hard work that is the problem with that age group. I think that we as Americans promote a "nerd" stereotype that disuade children from following their inate curiosity in math and science. Our popular TV shows &movies reinforce this. My children both scored in the top 5% of the nation in math and science. My daughter has a very strong personality and was able to ignore the nerd syndrome and has gone into a science field and done very well for herself. My son on the other hand didn't want to be considered a brain or a nerd and so went in the opposite direction and has not moved into those fields. America needs to come to terms with the fact that Hollywood is causing much of the problems within our society with its self serving pablum. According to Hollywood every business person, scientist, politician or other authority figure is just the next villain waiting in the wings.

It steers them away from any work. You can't find a kid willing to even do yard work for money.

This is the result of a least one generation of failed parents.

hey, some people have to be the janitors, right?

Are we sure it's not fear of CRIPPLING STUDENT DEBT? Seeing as how universities with the most sought after credentials all love to jack up tuition on a monthly basis.

well, you can work for the weekend or you can do something you love and actually get paid for it. Somehow the things you love doing don't seem so hard, even if they are. That has been my experience, but maybe I am unusual, I dunno.

" many teenagers are unwilling to pursue a long-term career in these fields" - and they are correct. Because there is no long term career in these fields.

The work visa programs the corporations have bought in Washington import such extreme numbers of people that finding a job over 35 gets progressively more difficult in tech. Brain-draining the world is a privilege, but the numbers are way over that and import large numbers of average workers. At any one time there are estimated to be 600,000-650,000 H1-B workers and a large number of L-1's. Increasingly corporations rotate them through and back home to the company's R&D lab there.

The more visa workers the companies get, the more US students bail and the more visas companies ask for. It's a downward spiral that is undeveloping the USA. The US students aren't too dumb for tech as Gates says. They are too smart. In states without an "underclass" US students score as well internationally as ever.

it's not like more people back in the day were saying they wanted these jobs either. most american's just want something mindless and repetive that gives them enough to buy iPad's and new cars. in the past, 40% of american's worked on farms, but efficiency gains led to only 2% of americans working farms these days. those people went to manfucturing. now manufacturing is more efficient in the same way as agriculture, so unskilled americans will have to find a new industry again. the days of unskilled laborers are gone now in the era of automation and computers so a traditional "hard days work" is now nearly worthless. go to a trade school learn a little and you'll still be fine.

I think saying you are an 'Entrepreneur' is just the new 'starving artist' of a few decades ago.

Thinking has become too laborious a task for most. Thinking itself has to be seen as a worthwhile task again before bringing up science and technology.

Why put your own effort in... It should be given to me ... I am the 99

The funny thing is, getting top grades in school is not required to do well in engineering. I was not a great student in many ways, but I learned how to learn, and I learned to make things work (lab courses and work-study in a lab saved me). If your kid likes to put things together, tear them apart, and find out what's inside, then get them some tools, teach them basic safety, and have some band-aids available.

how do you convince a generation of young people what hard work really is when they have so much easy electronic gadgetry to play with and think along with? we're going thru a social transformation because of rapid tech advance(some of our people are doing that kind of hard work). this transformation began after WW2 and has literally changed our industrial and business landscape. the tech advances faster than a single generation can reach puberty, it's a world of the short-lived and temporary, of rapid replacement, frequent transition. young people know no other world, only their parents and grandparents do. if the next generations don't evolve psychologically to adapt, it will reach a saturation point, imbalance or some sort of social rejection, eventually.

Purely, it is that American kids are too lazy. Any degree will put them into debt, but afraid of the "hardwork" is just so..........American. We then wonder why the US is going down the drain.

Two words: Trade School

More jobs for me!

Thanks lazy teenagers.

I love hard work,it's just mommy and daddy can't pay for me to go to a big wig university.

Teens want jobs Beta-Testing video games, with a salary of at least $100,000 after taxes, no dress code, no office hours, and no commute. After all, there life has been a game up to now.