双语新闻：美国人糟糕的数学技能令人担忧

Many Americans joke about how bad they are at math. But, labor experts and others in the United States are not laughing. They say the nation's ever-decreasing math skill threatens U.S. economic competitiveness and national security.

许多美国人开玩笑说他们的数学有多差。但是，美国的劳工专家和其他人并没有笑。他们说，美国不断下降的数学技能威胁着美国的经济竞争力和国家安全。

Jim Stigler is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He studies the process of teaching and learning subjects, including math. He said, "The advances in technology that are going to drive where the world goes in the next 50 years are going to come from other countries, because they have the intellectual capital and we don't."

吉姆·斯蒂格勒是洛杉矶加州大学的教授。他研究教学和学习科目的过程，包括数学。他说:“在未来50年里，推动世界发展的技术进步将来自其他国家，因为他们拥有智力资本，而我们没有。”

The Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight news agencies, is documenting the math crisis facing schools. Members of the Collaborative are AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times.

由八家新闻机构组成的教育报道合作组织正在记录学校面临的数学危机。该联盟的成员包括AL.com、美联社、基督教科学箴言报、达拉斯晨报、赫辛格报道、爱达荷教育新闻、南卡罗来纳邮报和信使以及西雅图时报。

The U.S. military has called for a major program to support education in science, technology, education, and math (STEM). It argues that the U.S. is dangerously behind other nations. The Defense Department says China produces eight times as many college graduates in these study fields as the United States. It says Russia produces four times as many engineers as the U.S.

美国军方呼吁实施一项重大计划，以支持科学、技术、教育和数学(STEM)教育。它认为美国落后于其他国家是危险的。美国国防部表示，中国在这些研究领域培养的大学毕业生是美国的8倍。报告说，俄罗斯培养的工程师数量是美国的四倍。

Government labor experts say the number of jobs in areas requiring math skill will increase by more than 30,000 each year through the end of 2030. That is much faster than most other kinds of jobs.

政府劳工专家表示，到2030年底，需要数学技能的领域的工作岗位每年将增加3万多个。这比大多数其他类型的工作要快得多。

"Mathematics is becoming more and more a part of almost every career," said Michael Allen. He chairs the math department at Tennessee Technological University.

“数学正越来越多地成为几乎每个职业的一部分，”迈克尔·艾伦说。他是田纳西理工大学数学系的主任。

But most American students are not prepared for those jobs. In the most recent Program for International Student Assessment tests in math (PISA), U.S. students tested lower than students from 36 other education systems around the world. Students in China tested the highest.

但大多数美国学生并没有为这些工作做好准备。在最近的国际学生数学评估项目(PISA)中，美国学生的测试成绩低于世界上其他36个教育体系的学生。中国学生的得分最高。

Only one in five American high school students planning to attend college is prepared for college-level study in STEM, say experts at the National Science and Technology Council, a government group.

政府组织国家科学技术委员会(National Science and Technology Council)的专家表示，只有五分之一计划上大学的美国高中生准备好了大学水平的STEM学习。

However, students from other countries are preparing to lead in these areas, reports the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-profit organization. It says only one in five graduate students in math-heavy fields at U.S. universities are American. The rest come from other countries. Most will leave the U.S. when they finish their programs.

然而，据非营利组织美国国家政策基金会报道，来自其他国家的学生正准备在这些领域发挥领导作用。它说，在美国大学数学密集型领域，只有五分之一的研究生是美国人。其余的来自其他国家。大多数人在完成学业后将离开美国。

In Massachusetts, employers are expecting a shortage over the next five years of 11,000 workers in the life sciences alone.

在马萨诸塞州，雇主预计未来5年仅生命科学领域就将出现1.1万名员工的短缺。

"It's not a small problem," said Edward Lambert Jr. He is director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. "We're just not starting students, particularly students of color and from lower-resourced families, on career paths related to math and computer science and those things in which we need to stay competitive, or starting them early enough," he said.

“这不是一个小问题，”马萨诸塞州教育商业联盟(Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education)负责人小爱德华·兰伯特(Edward Lambert Jr.)说。他说:“我们只是没有让学生，特别是有色人种和来自贫困家庭的学生走上与数学和计算机科学相关的职业道路，以及那些我们需要保持竞争力的领域，或者让他们足够早。”

"This is not an educational question alone," said Josh Wyner, a vice president of the Aspen Institute, a think tank. In July, it warned that other nations are gaining near to America's technological power.

“这不仅仅是一个教育问题，”智库阿斯彭研究所(Aspen Institute)副所长乔希·怀纳(Josh Wyner)说。今年7月，该机构警告称，其他国家正在接近美国的技术实力。

It urged decision makers to make education an important national security goal. "We are no longer keeping pace with other countries, particularly China," the Aspen report says, calling this a "dangerous" failure.

它敦促决策者将教育作为重要的国家安全目标。“我们已经跟不上其他国家，尤其是中国，”阿斯彭的报告称，这是一个“危险的”失败。