Teaching Science in the Schools

Once it was assumed that teaching science primarily involved helping students to know a lot of scientific facts and understand how things work. The last century has made clear that a lot of the scientific facts we thought we knew were only partially true, and of course there is a huge amount of knowledge still to be gained by science -- such as how genetics really works, how the brain works, what the universe is really composed of and how it came into existence, how many species inhabit the earth, how ecologies work, and whether there is life elsewhere in the universe.

A few decades ago scientist-educators introduced discovery methods into the curriculum, helping students to learn how to discover scientific facts for themselves, and building an understanding in those students of the discovery process.

It seems to me that schools should also teach how science really works. The idea of experimentally verifiable hypotheses, of replication of experiments, of peer review, of the growth of theory -- indeed the idea of science as a collaborative enterprise of civilization.

Schools should also teach information literacy. Not all sources of scientific information are equally valid. (Sarah Palin's statements on science are less credible than those of the IPCC.) Indeed, not all statements of scientific belief by scientists are equally credible. Schools should help kids to understand how to attach credibility to sources of scientific information welll.

The teaching of science should also be concerned with affect -- helping kids to like learning about science and enthusing them about what it would be like to be a grown-up scientist. Since the vast majority of kids who study science in primary and secondary school will not become scientists themselves, schools should teach those kids how to appreciate what science can bring to their future lives.

It is increasingly clear that schools should also help kids to understand that they have future responsibilities to understand science. There are a lot of people out there who deny that man is responsible for global warming, and if pressed blame scientists for not making the public understand why the scientific community is so convinced of that scientific fact. The truth is that citizens have the responsibility to understand that science if they are to elect representatives to legislate on greenhouse gas emissions. That is but one example of many cases in which citizens have a responsibility to understand information that should influence their votes, consumers the responsibility to understand information that should influence their consumption, members of society should understand information that should influence their decisions on socio-economic institutions, etc.