In reporting on the shortage of science teachers on Feb. 20 you noted that "In the past four years, [UNC system President Erskine] Bowles said, the UNC system has turned out only three physics teachers."

"'Some of that is because of the profession's low pay and working conditions,' Bowles said. 'And some of it is because, you know, we haven't really done our job....We can do better.'"

Nonsense. The shortage of physics teachers is a bell curve phenomenon: There are few people with the aptitude to master physics.

Combined Graduate Record Examination scores of applicants for graduate study in physics and astronomy -- 1272 -- were the highest of all 51 areas of graduate study (tested between July 1, 2001 and June 30, 2004). The mean GRE score of all 1.2 million applicants was 1066; the mean for all education majors, 984. Education majors, with the exception of secondary education (1063) in the middle, are bunched on the left side of the curve; physics majors are on the right tip.

It's not because of the "profession's low pay." It's because the great leveling monopoly we know as public education will not countenance differential pay for rare talent.

One reason may be that the people in charge of these politically controlled monopolies, education administrators, are on the far left side of the bell curve themselves, with a mean GRE of 950.

Tom Shuford

Lenoir