Classroom Clashes Over Science Education

cheezitmike writes "In a two-part series, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science examines two hot-button topics that create clashes in the classroom between science teachers and conservative-leaning students, parents, school boards, and state legislatures. Part 1 looks at the struggle of teachers to cover evolution in the face of religious push-back from students and legislatures. Part 2 deals with teaching climate change, and how teachers increasingly have to deal with political pressure from those who insist that there must be two sides to the discussion."

Comments

Shouldn't be so difficult

[evil_aaronm]

Just have the Conservatives provide the peer-reviewed science behind their assertions. If it's actually science, there should be something testable to support it. If it isn't science, it doesn't belong in science class.

Re:Bigger Problem

[siddesu]

It is the same everywhere. I grew up in a rabidly atheist country, where rejecting religion was the norm, science was lauded at every opportunity and scientific education was (and still is, nominally) the norm in school. Guess what, you can observe the same lack of interest and ignorance.

When it comes to attitude towards modern science, three types of people develop:

• - people who don't care (oh, I learned in school and I forgot about it)
• - people who turn passively or rabidly superstitious (range is from "you must drink iodine in Europe to prevent radiation poisoning from Fukushima" to "GE should be banned forever")
• - people who think they know all about "science" ("yes, I've studied 5 years of physics and I can tell you that HAARP concentrates solar energy by opening a hole in the atmosphere and causing changes in the Young modulus of the crust, which triggers earthquakes")

Sadly, most of the science teachers in schools gravitate towards the third group.

I guess there are two trends that collide to this sad outcome. One is, as I said above, the complexity and hardness of it all. The other is that politicians in modern democracies dislike educated population. Add to this the lack of motivation from a powerful adversary in the past 20 years or so, and the picture is really bad.

Re:Bigger Problem

[Immerman]

Realistically, you can't. Science is hard and learning about it doesn't pay off in the obvious or self-gratuitous ways that matter to most people. So, the motivation will always be low, lower still if you have to work a job that does not require you to know any science, as most jobs today are.

It is a lost fight, especially in a world in which the future looks increasingly likely to be much bleaker than the past, for everybody.

Actually no, science is easy, we start using it long before we learn to talk as we build up a mental model of the rules governing our universe. Several studies have shown that infants and children attempting to understand a new phenomena generally experiment in a fashion very near the statistically optimal pattern for exploring a new problem-space, it's only later in life that we start expecting things to behave in neat, well behaved patterns and get stymied by counter-intuitive behaviors.

The problem is science classes generally make no attempt to teach science, just scientific knowledge, and much of that *is* complicated. And without an understanding of science itself, the knowledge is just so much trivia that you're being asked to take on faith. Teach real science, do experiments where the answer *isn't* completely known beforehand, and ideally where the answer actually matters, or at least is interesting, and you can start getting students to appreciate that unlike almost every other subject (except math) science is a living, breathing, cutthroat combative subject where theories don't get widespread acceptance without considerable evidence. Once they *really* understand the rules of the game then it becomes clear that science, while still flawed, is far more authoritative than any other field on the planet.

Heck, ideally I'd say hold a class-wide experiment once a month or so to figure something out - students work in small "research groups" attacking the problem from different angles, but by the end of the "research window" (days?, weeks?) everyone needs to reach a consensus on what the "real" answer is, with some sort of prize (pizza party? movie break?) if they're correct within a certain margin of error so that they actually care. Then, once everyone has agreed, bring in a professional who can provide a conclusive answer in an understandable manner to verify the results. Not only would that provide a taste of real science, but it would also provide a periodic reminder of the fact that in the face of an implacable universe the best speakers and most inspiring/popular/attractive students generally aren't the ones you want to be listening to if you want to get it right.

Because, at the end of the day, all you really care about in most pre-university science classes is
(A) giving everyone a general background knowledge of how the world works (they'll soon forget most the details anyway, so the big picture is the important part)
(B) inspiring those so inclined to pursue careers in research or technology (and nothing like an occasional project were you're one of the respected "inner circle" to inspire a lonely nerd)
(C) instill a certain level of respect for scientists in the form of an understanding that, unlike in virtually all other fields of life, when it comes to questions of how the world works within their area of expertise, their opinion really is worth a heck of a lot more than yours.

Re:Why 2 sides

[coastwalker]

If you check out analysis of why the Republicans cosy up to religious nutters, its because there are a lot of them and they vote. Broadly speaking they are a reasonable fit to - Small government, rampant capitalism, strongly enforced arbitrary laws and illegal overseas crusades.

Certainly a better fit than to Democratic - Education and health for all, heavily regulated capitalism, updating law in line with societal change, illegal overseas wars just for economic interests.

Certainly that's how it seems from Europe. The religious have been bought by one political party. Basically man its the money, they bought the religious for the votes.

They come with a whole lot of baggage unfortunately, being bat shit crazy that is.