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College Students Lack Scientific Literacy
An anonymous reader writes with news of research into the scientific literacy of college biology students. Earlier studies found that students tended to "rely on mainly informal reasoning derived from their personal experiences," so the researchers derived a new instructional framework that explicitly taught principle-based reasoning. While the number of students who used this method did increase, more than half continued to use informal reasoning, which the researchers say points to a flaw in the way biology is taught (PDF). "Most college-level instruction presents students with complicated narratives about the details of key processes (e.g., cellular respiration), but does not explicitly reinforce the use of key principles to connect those processes. Therefore, students are understandably occupied with memorizing details of processes without focusing on the principles that govern and connect the processes. ... As a result, students may leave an introductory biology course with the ability to recite the reactions in the Calvin cycle but still believing that plants obtain most of their mass from the soil rather than from the atmosphere, that plants photosynthesize but do not respire, or that the mass of a decomposing organism will primarily return to the soil."
Kids get discouraged way too early in their school lives. From their peers, their teachers and their parents, they get the message that science and math is boring and hard, and they take that to college. That's why in math classes, you might find a person that can perfectly integrate a function, but be utterly unable to describe what integration actually does. Science and math has become just an algorithm to them: If you follow X steps, then you will get the answer, then you will path the class.
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[They still believe that...] plants obtain most of their mass from the soil rather than from the atmosphere
How could this possibly work? Farmers ship millions of tons of foodstuffs every year, unless they're spreading an equal volume of human excrement on their fields they'd be farming in pit mines after a few decades. That doesn't even begin to address that the soil that plants actually grow in is only a matter of inches deep in many locations, or the fact that you can grow plants in water more efficiently than in soil. So yeah, I'd say we're missing some basic logic tools if biology majors can't think that one through.
Science illiteracy is strongly rooted in math illiteracy. Cliff Mass, a Seattle area Professor of Meteorology, gives his incoming freshman students a math test. This is a test of basic math skills that should be mastered before high school. Yet the average score for college freshman science students is only 58%.
You can find the answers to the above test in his blog article.
I would speculate that at a logical philosophical level, a large number of students are ignorant of what science actually is. Science is often taught as a series of completed results, as a series of facts to be memorized. While to some extent this is difficult to avoid when teaching base knowledge, I suspect many students concentrate on what "gets them the grade", which is demonstrated knowledge of specific material, often memorized. In most high school programs, students are not adequately taught the reasons for knowledge (the International Baccalaureate program is often an exception to this). They are not explicitly taught logic and reason. And since the root of science is logic and reason, I would argue that most students are hobbled in their studies.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
It's not just scientific literacy, it's mathematical and grammatical as well. It's not that American kids are getting dumber, it's that American colleges are accepting anyone to a four year program if they sign up for one. The downside of that is that the average ability of incoming students trends downward.
The problem is that we've created a system that values a piece of paper that says you were in college for four years, even if those four years have absolutely nothing to do with the job position. There's nothing wrong with going to trade school, and in more than just a few trades you'll end up laughing all the way to the bank, making more money with your two year degree than a lot of people with a four year degree, all while paying a lot less for it.
Even many four year programs could be significantly shortened. A cousin of mine received a business degree from a program that crammed it all into one year. His job was school, his off-time was school, and they expected him to be there everyday in appropriate dress. They didn't fuck around and neither did he, and know he's out and being productive while a bunch of other kids are pissing away four years on classes they don't care about and keg parties.