Education, education, education. Science is taught as a collection of facts, and you don’t have to look at many years’ worth of textbooks to see that the collection changes. It makes it pretty easy for people to see science as just another way of guessing about how things work. And, of course, since most of those facts have very little if any bearing on most peoples’ lives (when was the last time it mattered to you that rocks can be igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic?), people quickly dismiss science as “a bunch of crap that doesn’t really matter.”
I don’t blame the teachers. I’m currently working with a group of elementary school teachers who really want to teach science in a way that will be engaging and will matter to their students, but they don’t know how. They look to the textbook publishers to tell them how (and a modern elementary science book is actually surprisingly good at covering observation, questioning, hypothesizing, predicting, testing, evaluating, and reporting), but then the publishers produce media to accompany their textbooks that emphasizes the facts that students have to know to pass standardized tests over the process by which those facts and explanations were discovered. If I had a kid who came out of 3rd or 4th grade with an understanding of how to make and test predictions, I’d be ecstatic, but instead the focus is on knowing the collection of facts mysteriously obtained by a bunch of old white guys.
Actually, this points out one of the (predicted, but ignored) unintended consequences for the whole “standardized test” wagon that has contributed to a deterioration in education over the last 10 - 15 years. Teachers need to “teach to the test” to keep government funds flowing into the schools (so that they can keep their jobs), so education on many topics has been sacrificed so that the kids can rotely recite some list of factoids compiled by well-meaning but clueless bureaucrats in each of the state capitals. Science is not the only topic that has suffered, but it is clearly one area of education that is not enhanced by state tests and the Needy Children Left Behind Act.
The standardized tests were a response to an education system that had already declined so far as to make such an attempt valid. They may have since contributed to it, but I don’t think so. I’m all for a better idea if you have one. It was/is clear, something had/has to be done.
Education was generally in decline in neighborhoods where education was (for a variety of factors) not well supported. Standardized tests have not really improved those schools, while they have impaired education for schools in which the neighborhoods have traditionally supported education.
I have no quick fix, but I suspect that quick fixes (whether it be standardized tests, throwing money at the problem, “education president/governor” slogans, or other bumper sticker approaches) will continue to contribute to the problems.
If we wish to improve education, perhaps we should begin by studying where it is failing and looking for ways to change those situations. Of course, this could not be completed by a focus group of otherwise-distracted dignitaries in a few months to be available for the next election(s), so I doubt that it will be carried out.
Right you are. And the problem does correlate with our poorer neighborhoods. If you, or anyone, is interested in this subject I would recommend No Excuses. Closing the racial gap in learning by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom.
You want a good education solution? Start with a Small Classes Act, capping classroom sizes at 15 kids/class. Follow up with a Teacher Pay Improvement Act, bringing teacher salaries in-line with the salaries of other similarly-educated professions. Make these funded mandates.
Unfortunately, I lack any good education solutions that don’t cost a buttload of money.
How about encouraging scientists to become school teachers? The money in science is terrible. With all due respect to teachers, scientists are WAY more underpaid. Salaries for a new PhD (which requires an average of 8.5 years now to complete, after undergrad) are in the low 30K, so it wouldn’t be too difficult to offer the incentive of a decent salary to newly minted PhDs (after perhaps some teaching training).
What branch of science are we talking about here? I know that the best science teacher I ever had (probably the best teacher I ever had) was a former microbiologist who took a huge pay cut to teach public highschool biology. He was in the classroom for (I think) less than five years before getting thoroughly disgusted with it and going back to the private sector.
My understanding was that plenty of scientists pull in beaucoup bucks.
Daniel
I’ve posted on this topic before, but if your former teacher may have been one of the very, very few to actually get a tenure track position. And if it was some more than ten years ago, things have gotten much worse. The situation of PhDs in the biomedical sciences: Undergrad for 4 years, generally an additional 1-2 years as a technician to get experience after that, 8.5 years to get the PhD in graduate school (paid 15-23K per year), postdoc for 2-4 years (paid about 30K per year), second postdoc for 2-4 years (paid about 35-40K per year). Only then will you be considered for a tenure track position, though a third postdoc is not at all uncommon. Most postdocs do not ever get tenure track positions, and hence my original suggestion (more below). And even then, you’re an associate professor (and 40 years old) and not making a whole lot of money (80ish? Maybe less at a lower institution, maybe more at a better one).
The postdoc has become a holding pattern to employ (at very low wages) PhDs for awhile as there are not enough scientist positions available. There are alternatives now, such as industry (which is where I ended up), but you have to be very, very lucky to get your foot in that door.
So, we have a situation where we have an oversupply of scientists, making very low wages. Offer postdocs 60K per year starting salary to become elementary or high school teachers, and you will see the quality of science education rise dramatically. I would have taken it, and I would have been a fabulous teacher (not to toot my own horn).
Wait–by “scientist,” are you actually saying, “science professor”? I’m talking about scientists in private industry, not scientists employed by universities; certainly the latter group is also underpaid.
Scientists in companies certainly do a lot better, though not as well as you might expect. I’ll tell you that I make under 50 base salary (no bonus), though I’m in the early stages of my career and can expect a jump in a few years if I’m successful in the next three years. If not, I’m cast aside like all the others.
And industry scientists are not really a very significant percentage of the PhD pool. For every industry scientist making money, there are probably 1000 academic postdoctoral scientists who would go to the inner city and teach if given a living wage.
Under 50 sounds pretty good to this nonprofit worker/teacher-to-be! Granted, I’ll be going into teaching with just two bachelor’s degrees, but starting wages for teachers in my area are in the under-30K range.
Are you sure about that? I thought just the opposite was true, that private industry employed far more scientists than academia. I could easily be wrong on this, though.
But, trust me, my 50K position is absolutely the envy of everyone I went to graduate school with. That’s the absolute top of the line, and I feel very fortunate to have this position. My job is one of a very few positions like it.
Remember also where the majority of good universities and all of the biotech companies are. Boston, San Francisco, New York, San Diego. Let me tell you what it is like to live in one of these cities making 50K! You need a spouse making much more than you. Trust me.
thanks for the information! Perhaps it’s pertinent that I went to high school in Chapel Hill, not half an hour from Research Triangle Park; I suppose there’s the slightest possibility that that influenced my perception.
Wow, that’s the wisest bit of geekery I’ve seen in many a day. I’d love to see high-school science courses coming after a solid course in critical thinking (how to recognize bullshit) and the scientific method (establish a hypothesis, test, accept/reject). That would’ve been way better than some biology course where the students are required to memorize the names of the five stages of cell division solely to write them on a final exam and subsequently forget.
I think I still have the textbook from a college-level course on critical thinking lying around. I hope to sometime spend a weekend with it and my nephew and bring him up to speed.
Terrific observation and a great idea! But I fear the teacher’s unions would stand in the way. I forget the year, but Edward Teller, the physicist from Los Alamos known as the “Father of the Atomic Bomb”, had retired to the SF bay area where he wanted to teach. Specifically, in a public school. But no, the teacher’s union pointed out that he wasn’t certified as a teacher. Finally, unable to convince the powers that be, he accepted a teaching job at a private school.
How bad is the state of understanding? Well there is this Gallup Poll
I can’t say if this is any worse than before or merely that they have found more of a voice in today’s political world while science has no effective voices. This is possible.
It also may be that the distrust of science is just part of increasing overall cynicism. Why should the magician-scientist be held with much more respect than the politician or lawyer or CEO? If you can’t trust priests to be alone with your kids, why think that you can trust science?
And then we have Lekatt to illustrate the public’s lack of understanding of what science is and isn’t.
Lekatt, science makes testable predictions of future observations. “The soul” as a concept is not a subject of scientific study because it does not make for testable predictions. It does not guide further study and knowledge production. It is a religious concept. OTOH the view that consciousness stems from brain processes, at least in this material world, is one that does make for testable predictions and one that is consistent with current observations. It has guided further study that has resulted in both additional evidence for its accuracy and given rise to techniques to treat a wide variety of neurologic conditions, such as strokes and seizures. With continued effort more conditions will be more treatable. Science can help us see the gears and thus learn how to fix them. Belief in the everlasting soul does not.
Does this mean that there is no possibility of an everlasting soul? No, it does not. It merely states that science can provide no evidence to support such a claim and that science does not require that there be one. Cognitive psychology and neurobiology can show how things work in this material world but it cannot disprove a world beyond our means of study. And this is key: there is much that is now and will always be beyond our study using the tools of science. Such is where religion can help us explore. But when religion tries to provide answers about the material workings of the world by way of revealed truth only two results are possible. It can ultimately fail, or it can succeed by supression of other knowledge, by fostering ignorance of other methods of knowing.
I gotta agree with Tom that standardized testing has worsened matters, since it foments the list learning approach. Science is not just learning a list of facts, it is learning a thought process.
Well I think it has a lot to do with the ego of people who claim to think “Scientifically” who oftentimes spout crazy BS that isn’t logical in any way shape or form. Also, I disagree with your assessment that people are less scientifically minded. Also, trying to compete with God is always a losing proposition. Religious explanations are not always wrong.
It’s more of a matter of who is enfranchized at the moment. Personally I think that there are ignorant hicks screaming for religion and ignorant hicks clamouring for “SCIENCE!!!” and I wish that neither of them could vote so they wouldn’t be able to make decisions that govern what I can and cannot do. I’d say that scientific awareness is at an all time high, due to the extreme access to information. History and Discovery Channels do really good business with documentaries that people watch, they are being introduced to concepts they never were before.
The information age has empowered more people to be able to speak their mind and have it be heard, I seriously doubt that there is really much of a shift in the status quo on this one, only that you are suddenly more aware of other types of thought because your own awareness of what people think has been expanded.
Remember the average populace knows what a genome is, they know what a comet is, they know what a microprocessor is, that’s greater education. If schools were better at teaching critical thinking skills it would be wonderful.
I pointed out in my other post that technically science is neutral to God. Just takes away life after death which is not neutral to religion. Take away life after death and God is meaningless. That is fact. The religious people understand it fine. I think it is easy to understand.
Granted, I’ll be going into teaching with just two bachelor’s degrees, but starting wages for teachers in my area are in the under-30K range.