Scientific Elites vs. Illiterates

Rackemup writes "An article at Technology Review examines how it's possible for the same education system to produce both scientific elites and illiterates. While the article is kind of hard on current Elementary school teachers (whom the author says are hostile towards the scientific studies because becoming an Elementary teacher is the only way to graduate from college without needing to take a single science course), he does raise the issue that if we gave these teaching positions the pay-level and respect they deserve it would be much easier to attract Doctoral-level people to fill them."

Comments

Why don't we fund schools better??

[sterno]

I just don't get how our system is supposed to work. We are cutting funding to education (or at least not expanding it to meet demand), we are cutting back on wellfare, and we are doing everything we can to automate low skill tasks.

So basically you have to have a job to live. But the low skill jobs are being automated because it's cheaper than paying you. So you can either go on wellfare or you can try to get an education to get a better job up the food chain. In order to get the eduation, you apparently have to have money (or at the least live in an area where there is money so that the schools have decent funding). And I'm guessing that if this is a situation you find yourself in you probably don't live in a rich suburb.

I'm sorry that all the rich people aren't filthy rich enough yet, but for god's sake, why don't we fund a decent education system. I think it's reasonable to set standards that insure the school system doesn't waste its time on people who don't care. But at the same time, people who want to learn should not have to pay a dime for it.

Schools--why?

[Hacker Cracker]

He does raise the issue that if we gave these teaching positions the pay-level and respect they deserve it would be much easier to attract Doctoral-level people to fill them.

This seems more than a little ridiculous to me--the school system is doing exactly what it was designed to do which is to stifle curiosity, critical thinking, and any joy of learning and prepare children for their lives as adults in low paying, dead-end jobs. Probably one of the best essays on schools that I've ever read (by Daniel Quinn) can be found here, if you'd like to know why...

-- Shamus

"Bleah!" -- overheard at a press conference

We're science dummies

[rho]

because science is boring to non-scientists. Most of us couldn't give a ripe shit about science.

Honestly, it's a little disingenuous to whine about the state of science education in America -- the same complaint can be made about literature.

Quoth the article
"But the rest of the population, by any rational standard, is abysmally ignorant of literature, poetry and all things literary. That is the paradox of literary elites and real illiterates: how can the same system of education that produced all those talented writers also have produced all that abominable Slashdot grammar?

Get over it -- science nerds are just like any other type of nerd. Nerds live in a Nerd Ghetto, surrounded by AOL Barbarians. Quit your whining, pick up a stick and make a few rounds around the walls unhooking grappling hooks and pushing seige ladders away from the wall and into the moat.

Superstition is as rife as it ever was

[Mandelbrute]

In western society, scientific issues appear to be perceived as being too difficult to even attempt to understand. There is also a perception that you can't believe technical explanations when there is a simpler, emotive argument. I think this has created a situation where recently invented superstitions are more widely believed than carefully researched and established facts.

One simple example; in this city as part of the treatment process the tap water passes through six feet of sand. Many people won't drink this water until they've passed it through a filter of a couple of inches of small stones, then somehow it is safer. For some reason "they" (technical or qualifed medical people of any type) can't be trusted to provide safe water (or medicine or whatever) "for the children". A survey of bottled water in Australia a few years ago found surprising amounts of biological material, far more than you would find in any town with an adequate water supply.

A more divisive example; the debate over genetic modification of crops - it is assumed by many that they can be geneticly modified by eating these crops. Any technical argument for or against is ignored in favour of the emotive argument, fed by moralistic disater movies that tell us "Don't mess with mother nature." The ironic thing is that the people who will rush out to trample a crop that may be a secretly modified test crop eat "natural" vegetables, grown indoors to keep the insects off, and grown hydroponically in a cocktail of chemical fertilizers, because somehow that is trendier than growing them in the ground and using less fertilizer. This perception has scuttled projects like one to produce vaccines from geneticly engineered bananas. Somehow, growing your medicine is less desirable than the enormous number of pharmacuetical plants that would be required to match what you do with such a crop. Being able to breed food crops have a high yeild and require less nutrients is also a good thing. Many will argue that these crops will never get to the nations that need them, but that's a way to feel better about opposing something that could help millions.

A lot of the "folklore" that people believe is of very recent origin. My grandmother was in her thirties before the term "Ley Line" was thought of, and that was used to describe the sites of old road. The zinc=virility thing comes from the story of Cassanova (not the most reliable of info!) eating lots of oysters. Oysters are filter feeders and pick up a lot of heavy metals such as zinc in areas where mining and industry puts it in the water. Therfore, with a dab of fiction and a stroke of sympathetic magic, zinc=virility. Zinc is important for other reasons, but it comes in every green plant.

Herbs: Many are useful and have been known about for some time, but a lot of people believe (by the magical law of sympathy perhaps?) that all herbs are good, and many are superior to medical technology. I suppose that I'm lucky that I know that there is a lot of flora that will kill things that try to eat it, or sting and scratch things that get close to it. Natural != good. Strychnine is natural.

Re:Umm... how much shakespeare does this guy know?

[gilroy]

I will state the following general rule, confirmed by all observations I have done:

On average, a science/engineering major will be better read, more broadly educated, and more receptive to out-of-field learning than a liberal arts major

This is only a general rule and of course varies tremendously in individuals, but I have seen it borne out well during the fifteen years I've been thinking about it. Science and engineering types are well aware of literature, art, music. Many work consciously to improve their appreciation of same. But very few of my English Lit friends read Scientific American, much less Q.E.D.. Their eyes glaze over at even the most elementary science or technical discussion.

Look at it this way: When I was in college, as a physics major, I had to take

• 14 physics and science courses
  
• 10 math courses
  
• 2 computer science courses
  
• 2 literature courses
  
• 4 philsophy courses
  
• 4 religion courses
  
• 4 social science courses (econ, soc, history)
  

Note that the school differentiate among philosophy, social science, and humanities. But for non-tech majors, all of physics, chemistry, biology, mech engineering, chem engineering, civil engineering, computer engineering, computer science, continuous mathematics, and discrete mathematics were lumped together as the undifferentiated blob "math/sci". And fuzzies only had to take a total of two math/sci courses.

Techies are more well-rounded because the current system forces them to be. And I like it. Don't compromise the techies; force the fuzzies to the same depth and breadth in the sciences as we were expected to have in the humanities.