Educators Not Amused by Bush Jest on Science Ability

WASHINGTON —  President Bush unknowingly hit a raw nerve Wednesday when he jokingly told a group of math teachers that he was a “computer illiterate” and did not “know anything about physics.”

Clearly, Bush had chosen the wrong time--Math Awareness Week--and the wrong place for those particular confessions. Educators like those at Wednesday’s National Summit on Mathematics are struggling against the widespread public aversion to math and science--an aversion seen by many as threatening America’s competitiveness. Many believe that the underlying attitudes that make educated people comfortable with their ignorance about those subjects must be changed.

Educators at the summit responded politely to Bush’s jokes, and some guffawed with gusto. Others clearly were not amused.

“It made me cringe inside, that he felt free to say that he didn’t know anything about physics,” said Doris Gluck, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “That’s what we’re trying to work against, that feeling that it’s all right to know nothing about science.”’

Deborah Tepper Haimo, president of the Mathematics Assn. of America, also expressed dismay that “people feel comfortable boasting that they can’t add 2 and 2, but they wouldn’t feel comfortable saying they couldn’t read L-O-O-K.”

Responding to Bush’s address, she said: “It’s that sense that ‘math is not important . .it’s OK not to be good in math’ that we’re trying to work against.”

Bush joked during his speech: “When I learned I was invited to a math summit, I had visions of me and Gorby going head to head in long division.”

In his speech, the President told participants about meeting elementary school children being tutored in science by Navy midshipmen in Annapolis, Md. “I didn’t understand anything the kids said, because I don’t know anything about physics,” Bush joked.

“I am computer illiterate . . . but I would like to report to you . . . that today I learned to turn one on,” he said. “I pushed the button down here, and one up here with a green thing on it and out came a command to somebody. It was fun and I intend to keep it up.”

Not everyone was offended, and in fact some educators at the summit took Bush’s jokes as a sign of great modesty.

“I appreciate that level of humility in a person, to be able to admit in public that he doesn’t know about things that are so important,” said Mark Spikell, a professor of mathematics education at George Mason University.

Some participants also noted that Bush’s heart is in the right place. One of his six national education goals decrees that “U.S. students will be first in the world in science and mathematics achievement by the year 2000.”