What’s Wrong with U.S. Science Education?
We all know there are problems, yet we struggle to put a finger on the ultimate cause. I have a candidate.
SOURCE: AP/Karen Tam
U.S. science education occurs in the context of an American culture that has very deep problems with science—problems that are manifested in many spheres other than the educational system, but are certainly reflected there, too.
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Science, Cultured
Science Progress contributing editor Chris Mooney surveys the interactions between science, politics, and culture. He is the author of several books, including The Republican War on Science and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. He and Kirshenbaum blog at “The Intersection.” (Photo: flickr.com/sarahfelicity)
We’ve all heard the statistics. In a prominent international comparison released in 2007-to name just one example-fourth graders and eighth graders in the United States lagged considerably behind students in many Asian and European nations in science and math. Indeed, whenever there’s a discussion about the place of science in our society, it isn’t long before such educational “failings” come up.
Consider an episode last month on “The Brian Lehrer Show” on WNYC. The president of Caltech, Jean-Lou Chameau, went on the air to offer his provocative theory about why the United States fares so poorly in science and math education. Our science teachers don’t tend to have science backgrounds, Chameau argued, but instead tend to be trained in general education. That’s the problem-they don’t know their subjects intimately, and so can’t excel at teaching them.
Lehrer’s callers, though—all of whom had been screened to privilege those with science education backgrounds—quickly related their own experiences and complicated this narrative. Few disagreed directly with Chameau’s point, but they added in quite a number of complicating factors.
For instance, some callers pointed out that the necessity of “teaching to the test” often constrains the ability of science teachers to more creatively engage students. Similarly, others observed that many students are afraid of science and math, fearing it’s too hard, and simply not for them. It’s something I’ve heard as well from science teachers: That many of their students insist they’re not a “science person” or a “math person.”
And that’s just the beginning. Another Brian Lehrer caller sadly remarked that we don’t pay our teachers well, whatever their training. Another noted that we live in a culture that values celebrity and money, not intellect. And Lehrer himself pointed out the religiosity of the United States, and how that can impair science education, which of course is particularly notorious on the topic of evolution.
Is it possible that all of these things are true, and all of them are the problem? I would argue that is precisely the case—and indeed, how could it be otherwise? U.S. science education occurs in the context of an American culture that has very deep problems with science—problems that are manifested in many spheres other than the educational system, but are certainly reflected there, too.
What this inevitably means is that even as we fight off the creationists, and (hopefully) invest more in paying teachers and training them, we have to push for cultural change with regard to how we think about science. And at the core of that change must be the recognition that science doesn’t have to be something weird, different, and alienating. It isn’t just brainless memorization, and it isn’t useless stuff that you’ll never need. Rather, it’s fun, and it’s relevant—or at least it can be in the hands of a good teacher. At the middle-school or high-school level, any teacher who can convey this ought to be celebrated, whether or not he or she has a science background.
Since I am a person who was actually turned on to science at a particular point during my educational trajectory, perhaps my personal history is instructive here. Nothing against my high school teachers, but while I got A’s in science, I didn’t learn much of anything in a way that made it deeply resonate for me. That’s because I viewed the whole thing as a kind of game: memorization, which I was good at. The trick works especially well in biology, where knowing all the parts of the cell, or the stages of the Krebs Cycle, are the kinds of things you’re tested on.
It was only in college, when I started reading books by people such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson that science actually took on some meaning for me. In the hands of these literary scientists, science was no longer a body of facts. Rather, it unlocked who we were, where we were going, and why it all mattered. I’m too young to have been a watcher of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” series, but this is a core reason why it, too, inspired so many people to get interested in science.
There’s almost a kind of trap when it comes to teaching an intricate topic such as science. If you lose non-scientists in the weeds of the information, they’ll never see why it matters. But scientists thrive in the weeds-that’s their job. Our science teachers, then, are a critical conduit between the two groups. They may or may not have scientific backgrounds, but if they can’t trim the garden, they are bound to fail.
Chris Mooney is contributing editor to Science Progress and author of several books, including The Republican War on Science and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. He and Kirshenbaum blog at “The Intersection.”
Comments on this article
Let me take exception with your statement – “What’s Wrong with U.S. Science Education?”
Yes some of our students are performing poorly but then you failed to noted racial, ethnic impacts. (OOOPS can’t do that NOT PC)
You might wish to read.
The Stupid American? Look again.
Psssst: Have you heard? We’ve lost our competitive edge.
http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/051222_nd.htm
and as your science education, I’d point a finger at the media for it failure to properly cover science, technology and Engineering stories.
Have you heard of the Draper Prize???
If not then there’s the problem!
Let me direct you to
THE NOBEL PROFESSION
We Get No Recognition (paraphrase the late Rodney Dangerfield)
http://www.eiass.com/BobNobel.asp
August 10th, 2009 at 9:24 pmAs a Ph.D. scientist, I agree with the concluding parts of Chris’s essay. However, I have big problems with where Chris starts from. The problem is that the “prominent international comparison” that Chris referenced was not a scientific comparison. It was agenda (rather than evidence) based. Foreign data was “cherry picked” to make them look better, while U.S. data came primarily from resource-starved inner-city schools. Google on the phrase “The First in the World Consortium” and “TIMSS” to learn more. Note particularly the criticisms of Gerald Bracey. The agenda was to continue the ongoing false claims by the economic and political elite that there is some kind of “looming shortage” of scientists and engineers in the U.S. Thus, the nation could continue to import large numbers of “techies.”
The reality is that there is a profound talent glut which is exacerbated by immigration policies that import young technical professionals to permanently displace experienced (aka over-35) American citizen technical professionals. I recommend the PDF version of my 2007 investigative journalism article, “The Greedy Gates Immigration Gambit.” This article includes a table showing over 25 million visa admissions between FY 1975 and FY 2005 in just 5 high skill work visa programs.
Annual domestic Bachelor of Science production during the past 3 decades in S&E fields has been between 300,000 to 400,000 per year according to the NSF. Douglas Braddock authored a February, 1992 paper in Monthly Labor Review that projected with a low real GDP model that net replacement and business growth requirements in S&E fields would be around 65,000/year between 1995 and 2005 (page 35). The supply – demand equation is far too tilted towards the supply side.
Authors like Caltech Vice-Provost David Goodstein and Maryland Science investigative reporter Daniel S. Greenberg have also written extensively regarding the glut of scientists and engineers.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:49 pmDr Nelson writes: “The reality is that there is a profound talent glut which is exacerbated by immigration policies that import young technical professionals to permanently displace experienced (aka over-35) American citizen technical professionals. I recommend the PDF version of my 2007 investigative journalism article, “The Greedy Gates Immigration Gambit.” This article includes a table showing over 25 million visa admissions between FY 1975 and FY 2005 in just 5 high skill work visa programs.”
This has been a problem not only in S&E. Humanities and Arts studies have been doing the same thing, filling jobs that US-born citizens should have by importing work visa people from abroad, often to satisfy minority hiring quotas, or because they are erroneously perceived as more able or trendy than their US counterparts.
August 12th, 2009 at 11:43 pmI have another culprit: school budgets. Many localities simply do not provide adequate funding for quality scientific education.
August 12th, 2009 at 11:52 pmChris, I don’t know what part of the U.S. you’re talking about, but science content mastery is certainly part of the teacher certification process in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Although I’m not teaching any longer, my two degrees (in geology) and required concentration in education courses were prerequisites for certification here. Your fundamental points, however, are sound.
August 14th, 2009 at 11:46 amI like what Chris has to say here. Many of those commenting have focused on issues that are certainly important, but the central issue that Chris points toward is really the place of science in modern American culture. Science is not in a good place. Furthermore, it is making slow progress in overcoming the many cultural forces with which it contests in its attempts to exercise authority, by which I mean the capacity to exercise influence in society’s affairs. As just one example of the slow progress being made, consider a recent paper by Louise Mead and Anton Makes (http://www.springerlink.com/content/9u0610162rn51432/fulltext.html), which deals with state standards for coverage of evolution in the schools. While there is weak evidence of progress, creationism seems to be making headway in many quarters as well. The report grades states on their coverage. Florida went from a previous grade of F to an A; presumably they came up from abysmal, but the report doesn’t say just why. But to cite another example, Arizona gets a B for guidelines that delay discussion of evolution until high school, and that don’t cover human evolution at all! This is typical of many states.
August 20th, 2009 at 1:40 pmThe forces that operate to limit science’s place in society are many, and the teaching of science in the schools, while very important, is just one peice of a complex topic. I’ve addressed these matters in a book newly out, Imperfect Oracle: The Epistemic and Moral Authority of Science.