If the United States is to be competitive in the international marketplace, it will not be as a result of the nation’s check-cashing companies, its nail salons, its coffee shops, its tax services or its second-hand shops. All of those businesses serve important markets and contribute to the nation’s economy, but they are not the industries that will put America back on top of the global marketplace.

What it will take to restore the United States to its formerly preeminent status among the world’s economies is a firm grasp of emerging technologies, both as a means to an end through advanced manufacturing processes and as the end itself in the form of marketable consumer technologies.

With China and other nations now either surpassing the United States or nipping at its heels in that global marketplace, never has it been more important for our nation to redouble its efforts to improve productivity, develop talent and foster innovation.

One major factor in being able to achieve those goals is improving the state of science, technology, math and engineering education. And those improvements must begin at the most basic educational levels.

At Suffolk’s Mack Benn Jr. Elementary School, a group of teachers is helping to show the rest of the nation just how to do science education right. Catherine Pichon, Liz Petry and Megan Farabaugh teach various gifted classes at the school, which has been selected as one of just 14 NASA Explorer Schools nationwide — and the only one in Virginia — to receive the 2011 School Recognition Award, given “for demonstrating exemplary classroom practices and finding innovative uses of (NASA Explorer Schools) resources to engage a broad school population,” according to a press release from the city’s school system.

The teachers have been using experiment kits, posters and guest speakers from NASA to help get children interested in science as early as the second grade. As part of the honor received through the School Recognition Award, they will travel to Johnson Space Center in Houston in February to take part in a variety of microgravity experiments, which they will share with their students via videoconference.

It’s quite an honor for a Suffolk school to have been chosen as one of the top 14 among 1,300 schools across the nation participating in the NASA program. The Mack Benn community and the city at large should be proud of these teachers, who give reason to hope that America can one day regain its international standing in science.