Sep 29 2010
Surprise – Science Education Stinks!
Thankfully, NeuroLogica is working again, our bandwidth has been widened, WordPress has been tweaked, and I’m looking forward to getting back to my regular schedule of blogging (Thanks to Mike Lacelle for his hard work getting everything online again.)
I thought I would start with this item regarding science education in the US – Report: Poor science education impairs U.S. economy. It’s yet another depressing report about the sad state of science education. The US is also not alone – the UK is considering gutting support for science, and other countries are lagging as well.
The generally accepted version of history is that in the 1950s, following Sputnik, nationalism and fear of competition from the USSR spawned an era of heavy investment in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). This ultimately resulted in the science and technology boom in the US in the following decades.
But in the last couple of decades support for STEM has lagged, and so has the quality of science education. This latest report concludes:
•U.S. mathematics and science K-12 education ranks 48th worldwide.
•49% of U.S. adults don’t know how long it takes for the Earth to circle the sun.
•China has replaced the United States as the world’s top high-technology exporter.
Nationalistic impulses aside – this is not good for the future. Almost half of Americans do not know the Earth takes a year to circle the sun. In my opinion this is not a random bit of science trivia. This indicates a rather profound lack of understanding of the basic structure of the universe, which in turn (in my opinion) indicates a severe lack of curiosity or a contentment with being mystified by the basic realities of nature.
I am also not convinced the problem is merely a lack of funding. My daughters go to a well-funded public school in a relatively affluent part of the country. So far, I have not been impressed with their science education. I think the entire approach (at least in grade school) is lacking. Mostly science has been taught by teachers with a general background, and with a highly variable (and inadequate, in my opinion) personal knowledge and enthusiasm toward science.
My daughter in second grade will get 1 hour of science every other week or so, and it is not even clear to me what the goals of this year are. My older daughter has been subjected to worthless exercises meant to teach experimental method, and other projects of dubious value.
It seems that the emphasis has shifted to “exploring” science – but as a result important meat is being left out. Further, I have noticed that information is taught largely in isolation, and students are not given an understanding of how to apply their knowledge. I do not get the sense they are building a body of knowledge and cognitive skills.
I have largely taken responsibility for my own daughters’ science education, so I am not concerned for them. When I teach them about science, it also gives me a window into what they are learning (and not learning) at school. I don’t get the sense that they are being made to think about science is a practical and insightful way – learning basic principles and the facts that establish those principles. When I ask them questions like, “how do we know” – I get the sense no one else has ever asked them that question.
If the US is serious about improving science education we need to do more than just increase funding. It seems to me we need to review the entire system of science education. Further we need to get away from the education culture that seems to have eroded the quality of science education over the last few decades. We should enlist the aid of actual working scientists who have demonstrated a talent and passion for education, to design science curricula that will meet our goals.
25 Responses to “Surprise – Science Education Stinks!”
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We’ve been lucky that in the elementary years the school district got an NSF grant, and help from science departments from the local university to design and implement a set of science curriculum. Unfortunately they do require lots of help with the supplies (they need more than paper and pencil), and parents are often asked to help set up projects. (my youngest is a high school junior, so it has been a while).
Presently in the high school some parents (many who teach science/math at the local university) set up a group to support the science program. If there are Band Boosters and Drama Boosters, why not Science Boosters? Some of the things that work is using the email notices to get chaparones for field trips, lab equipment (a parent working a pharma company donated microscopes that were being replaced) and finding a monthly evening speaker to talk about challenging subjects. They include climate change from a climatologist, genetically altered plants from a botanist and others.
You included:
One of the reasons is the large population, and their investment in their educational system. According to the CIA World Factbook the literacy rate averages 91.6%. What makes me unhappy is when India is touted as a big technology/science example when their literacy rate is only 61%. Thank you for not doing that.
Oh, I forgot something that you might be interested in… one of the speakers we had was the creator of Neuroscience for Kids web page. My oldest son attended the Brain Week Open House as a 7th grade field trip, and in my daughter’s 2nd grade class a pair of parents (both university scientists) demonstrated some brain function experiments from that site.
I don’t buy the supposed boom in STEM in the 50s and 60s if 50% of Americans don’t know that we go around the sun every year. Weren’t a lot of those Americans educated in the 50s and 60s?
I suspect if anything the US is standing still while the probably-going-to-be-superpowers of the 21st century like China continue to make progress (or, as ChrisH points out, maybe only half of China does, but thats enough to worry). “Stagnant” is what the USA Today article starts with, that sounds about right.
My 90s elementary science education was pretty boring (outside of when in 5th grade when we took apart owl pellets
). And I really liked science in general, but it wasn’t until a great 10th grade biology teacher that I had fun with it in class.
When people who share a common interest form an organization, a seemingly inevitable dynamic ensues. The organization is joined by people who are interested in the original topic, yes, but it is also joined by people interested in the organization itself. And because the “organization-focused” people spend more time on the organization than do the “interest-focused” people, the organization-focused people eventually take over.
Nowhere has this been more evident than in teaching, where the educational process discussions and the educational organizational issues have completely overwhelmed any focus on the actual topics being taught. I’ve come to the conclusion that for teaching kids without special needs, the last thing you want is teachers whose degrees are in education.
I think part of the problem is thinking. In other words, if you ask the question differently most people know the answer. They have never been taught to apply that knowledge to a different context. That also backs into critical thinking.
When I was in elementary school we did the usual block on Dinosaurs. But it was part of every section she taught. We wrote sentences about Dinosaurs. Our reading stories were about Dinosaurs, Our art projects, our spelling, she even made math about figuring out time lines of different dinosaurs. When we were done, we knew facts and we had experienced them in different contexts. I think we need more of that type of teaching.
Chris H – I think the Science Boosters is an AWESOME idea.
SARA, it requires parent power, and that is a terribly difficult commodity to get in high school. We are usually burned out after middle school.
RickK — I get what you’re saying; a lot of people learning how to educate today are being taught by people who know nothing else — that is, they’re learning educational methods but not the substance which they are expected to teach. That’s almost seen as secondary. But that’s not the only kind of education degree you can get. You can get a degree in a subject which is a teaching degree — basically, you do the regular coursework for the degree but add on courses in teaching. My mom is a teacher, but her degree is in foreign language with a teaching concentration.
There’s also a resource allocation problem. I don’t know the reasons behind it, and in fact I suspect there are many, but a lot of teachers seem to be teaching the wrong subject. Ideally, an English major will not be teaching math, but will instead be teaching literature. A social studies major won’t be teaching chemistry. A history major won’t be teaching phy ed. Yet that happens. One of my big pet peeves is the way coaching works out. In my state at least, coaches are obliged to also be teachers. The theory is to prevent wasteful expenditures on sports and ensure that teaching is first. In practice, it means coaches are hired for their coaching ability and then some classroom is made to suffer for their lack of teaching ability and/or depth in the subject. My 8th grade science teacher was like this. She was the volleyball coach. My 9th grade science teacher was also a coach (the girls’ swim coach), and he was actually awesome at both. A major nerd. Being on the girls’ swim team, I ended up learning a lot from him in both areas. But that seems to be the exception, not the norm. Usually, the coaches seem to get wedged wherever there’s an empty spot.
Best thing I saw in the article:
I cannot agree with this more. So many people blame it on people being stupid, but people aren’t generally stupid or even undereducated necessarily. They’re incurious. They’d get it right if they asked the right questions, but they don’t ask.
What if you happen to be Sherlock Holmes?
“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say
that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a
pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
@tudza,
Since most of Homes’ cases centered on figuring out the intent, motive and method of the criminal mind, it probably would not matter if the Earth were just a moon orbiting the planet Luna. But, since details of light, weather, and thinks that did or did not happen in the night could be critical to unlocking that puzzle, I suspect there would have been a case or two where that distinction might have made a difference.
Given a few other foolish inconsistencies that are mixed into the Holmes lexicon, I think we may forgive Arthur Conan Doyle that one.
However, I think a comment that Holmes makes at the beginning of A Scandal in Bohemia would be a good start for any serious discussion of the scientific method because it is where so much pseudoscience goes astray.
I am unsure about science education in the US but in my opinion the problem with science education in Australia is part time science teachers. In Australia many science teachers in primary schools are trained in a different discipline first and then science. For example my science teacher at school was trained as a PE teacher and the school asked her to teach science with minimal training. This results in what Dr Novella alludes to in the post, science teachers who do not care about science. This then transfers to the students.
When I look at the issue of education in America, I become very discouraged. I’m not discouraged simply because of the education issue, but the problems are much greater. We have a government-run educational system – a government who can’t seem to organize their finances and whose system is based on the lowest bid mentality. You can’t get away with paying a teacher 30k/yr if they have a profound understanding of the subject they teach. I say up the salary and up the standards. We currently have to rely on the books to do the teaching and a book can’t teach you critical thinking.
Even if a teacher is well educated in science and is passionate about it, there is still a very large hurdle in the way of proper education. To me, it seems like that hurdle is that educators usually have to be very careful about what they say. In a time and culture where teaching facts will almost inevitably offend a student (or in the case of young students, their parents), teachers usually don’t have the freedom to teach facts without considering the broad range of opposing opinions by students and/or their parents. Anything that is likely to offend, rather it is fact or not and regardless of its importance to shaping a healthy and formal way to view the world, has to be handled with kid gloves. It seems to me that the field of education has far more applicants than there are jobs. If a passionate science teacher (in most teaching environments involving young kids) does the right thing and teaches the facts, then they and the school are likely to get calls from angry parents. We all know how these parents can rally together, overtake PTA groups and pretty much any school would opt to bring in another teacher, rather than deal with that parental outrage. I fear that until schools can foster an atmosphere that encourages nothing but the best and thorough teaching of science, these alarming statistics will be difficult to change. For these reasons, I feel as bad for the passionate teachers as I do for the kids that miss out on real value-added education. I’m sure that most will agree with me when I say that I think Science is, hands down, the most important subject in education. Science is not just science and mundane facts that most will never need to know. Science gives structure to the critical thinking skills that are in us all. Without that structure a full development of critical thinking skills are not possible. Without adding structure to our critical thinking, we continue the cycle of producing a society that are mostly intelligent and rational about some things, but toss logical and reason out the window when it comes to their sacred cows. The fact that educators are usually forced to treat these same sacred cows with kid gloves, only serves to re-enforce the notion of logic and reason are selective and not applicable to all things. I think I have rambled enough here so I will wrap it up…all I can do is hope that this all changes significantly before I have kids that are old enough to go to school.
tl;dr: A lot of the problem with UK science education lies in the fact that it’s far too hard to teach and encourage a functioning heuristic for honest scientific inquiry in the average inner-city state school, a disadvantage compounded by the stats-chasing nature of school assessment bodies and shoddy scientific syllabi testing for regurgitation of learned material without explanation or justification for believing the material to be factual. All my comments below are explicitly in relation to state inner-city comprehensive schools in London since I have no experience of any other secondary schooling system. The class divide between those setting the policy and those whom it affects is also too wide to be practical. Everything posted here is based upon personal experience and heavily subject to sample bias.
I’m from the UK and I am currently heading into medicine so whilst I have no experience of US deficiencies in science education I can certainly confirm that we’re having troubles over our side of the ocean too. Ignoring the pretty obvious points (e.g. science should be taught by people who have, at bare minimum, a high grade A-Level (just below a degree in UK educational hierarchy) in the science they’re teaching), the largest issue I’ve had with the way science is taught throughout my education is just how thoroughly the UK awarding and assessment bodies try to stamp out any kind of scientific curiosity from students. At every stage of my science education, from SAT to GCSE to A-Level (I’ll see about degree since I’m heading onto biomedical science soon and then MBBS) the overwhelming emphasis has been on teaching the facts as the awarding body wants to hear them. If the GCSE awarding body wants to hear that an electron is simply a particle and that the octet rule is always followed then that’s what the student is taught and to hell with the truth. Sadly this gets no better at A-Level, the student is merely told ‘forget what you learned at GCSE: most of it was wrong’.
I wouldn’t even really have much of a problem with this approach, since pragmatism dictates that this is really the only way to teach science due to its increasing complexity and the need to have strict objective criteria for the actual examinations themselves, if students were encouraged to question the material being taught (after all, demanding clear supporting experimental data for a claim is what separates science from dogma) and if teachers honestly answered the questions that students ask. As it stands, the class sizes in inner-city London comprehensives, like the one I attended throughout secondary school (‘high school’), very, very rarely fall below thirty students to a single teacher (regardless of the claims of a study this week claiming it to be closer to 25 per teacher; heck knows which schools they were assessing). The simple fact of the matter is that, for whatever reason, the majority of students at state schools do not want to be there and do not want to learn and will spend most their time being as disruptive as possible (this is a massive problem and I sincerely commend inner-city London comprehensive teachers for their bravery; more than once a teacher was threatened and/or physically harmed at my school by the underclass demographic students). This puts an onus on the teacher to spend most his/her time playing a role two parts warden one part teacher. This simply isn’t an atmosphere conducive to scientific inquiry. It simply isn’t possible to teach students in any other way than rote learning a specific (largely incorrect and oversimplified without any justification for any of the ‘facts’) syllabus when at least one third of a thirty-something student class is deliberately and consistently misbehaving. This is the top ‘set’ of students I’m talking about here, the highest quintile of intelligence in the year group.
Another spanner is thrown into the works when we look at the means the government uses to assess schools. Since an average is taken for a school’s published statistics at GCSE (e.g. ’86% 5 A*-C grades per student’), seemingly successful schools with troublesome populations (read: inner-city comprehensives (or ‘academies’ as they’re now euphemising them since the word comprehensive has become so synonymous with the mass failure of students)) separate years into quintiles of intelligence by conducting an IQ test upon entry and seem to appear very egalitarian by taking one fifth of each intelligence bracket. In reality, the top quintile are forced to take a minimum of thirteen and a half GCSEs (private schools usually take somewhere between seven and thirteen) with the most able students taking up to eighteen. So what’s the problem? The most able students should do more work, right? Right, except this doesn’t benefit the student at all since state colleges worth attending want a minimum number of A/A* GCSE grades (usually no more than seven). The most able students in the top IQ quintile end up getting largely B grades due to the sheer number of simultaneous GCSEs they’re being forced to study, but a ludicrous number of B grades which is of no use to the student: if an applicant doesn’t have those seven A grades then all of their GCSEs are worthless. Yet the stats for the school end up looking amazing because the top quintile are earning two to three times the number of GCSEs needed to get the ’5 A*-C grades per pupil’ and essentially allowing the stats to hide the fact that 20-40% of the school can afford to achieve no GCSE passes at all, masked by skewed average provided by the top quintile. Indeed, this is seen most clearly when looking at a school’s KS3 SAT scores in which individual pass rates are published rather than an average (the comprehensive I attended achieved almost 90% 5 A*-C at GCSE but less than 50% level 2 pass rate at KS3 SAT (the average KS3 SAT score in the UK is a level 6 and a level 3 at primary school level)). How is this all relevant? Because shoddy schools LOVE the sciences at GCSE. If they can force everyone in the top quintile to take a triple award and rote learn enough to pass it then an entire quintile of the school only needs to achieve two passes at GCSE to make the statistics look clean because nowhere in the statistics does it say where the actual GCSEs factored into the average came from: a student achieving 18 GCSEs, one achieving 2 and two more achieving none averages out to the national mandate of an average of 5 A*-C GCSEs per pupil. This is not an atmosphere where any kind of learning other than basic rote learning of a syllabus can ever take place and certainly can’t accommodate intriguing science questions since most the school is too unruly or uneducated to ask the questions and those who aren’t are too inundated with unnecessary work to make the stats look like the other section of the school doesn’t exist.
This problem is further compounded by the various wildly ineffective strategies successive governments have thrown into the mix to try and make science ‘accessible’ and address ‘inequalities’. Schemes like taking a student from the lowest intelligence set and putting them in the highest tier to ‘address’ perceived inequalities utterly destroy the educational success of the entire class as the student, usually from a very disadvantaged and more often than not criminal background, cannot (and nor do they want to) cope with the class and just becomes another chore for the teacher-come-warden. Schemes like getting students to do physical activities like running around outside and measuring resting and active mean arterial pressure or thinking about atomic bonding via football analogies are just utterly worthless and not only teach the student nothing about science but always result in frenzied, distracted students becoming too boisterous to manage and kill any semblance of order for the remainder of the entire lesson. Essentially, a lot of the problem with teaching science in the UK comes from the fact that the class divide between those running the country (who almost always come from a very privileged background and usually private schooling or, if state schooled, almost always come from an excellent unrepresentative school) and those attending the state schools over which governments have authority means that policies set by the government unequivocally fail to take into account the calibre of student and their socioeconomic background. I’m not trying to stereotype or be pretentious, but having now attended both a state inner-city comprehensive secondary school and the highest achieving private college in the UK and having seen the two vastly different populations, I honestly don’t know how anyone solely from either could appreciate the giant differences in the other, let alone think to govern them. But this is a problem endemic to UK schooling in general.
I’ve cogitated long enough now. I always mean to write small posts on every forum I visit and end up typing essays. Thank the gods of the internet for tl;dr.
Every child should have access to a sailing center well stocked with small boats like the Open Bic.
Sailing is an opportunity to learn a lot about the world and the way it works in an interactive way. When you’re right, the boat goes faster. When you’re wrong, the boat gets weather helm or lee helm or the tell tales stall.
And sailing is flight –something so profoundly fascinating it can inspire a lifetime of curiosity.
Unpleasant things happen occasionally in a boat requiring a quick solution. Finding that solution builds independence and self confidence.
tl;dr: MOAR SAILING!
For a different look at the problems in American schools, I noticed this review of a new movie Waiting For Superman.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100929/REVIEWS/100929981/1001
To quote Roger Ebert from the review,
@tudza
Tangential to Holmes and this topic, Richard Dawkins’ telling of Wittgenstein (from The God Delusion)…
“Tell me,” the great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend, “why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?”
His friend replied, “Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth.”
Wittgenstein responded, “Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?”
A bit dated but maybe of interest here…
“Judging Books by Their Covers” by Richard Feynman
http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
I think this point at the end of the article linked is interesting
“In 2007, however, an analysis led by B. Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University found U.S. science education worries overstated. It saw three times more science and engineering college graduates than job openings each year. Other reports have found top science and engineering students migrating to better-paying jobs in finance, law and medicine, since the 1990s.”
I wonder how a lack of science education is hampering the economy when the economy is not offering jobs to those with a science education?
I am not a scientist, I have an arts background, but it seems to me that we often respond to education in an unscientific way. We make judgments on a teacher’s approach based on anecdotal evidence. We also make decisions based on teacher education requirements and curriculum based on assumptions and anecdotal evidence often with vague goals such as “better science education”. I wonder, if everyone wrote out what “better science education” looks like, would we have a cohesive picture?
If we looked at this same blog article but replaced science education with the nations health, teachers with doctors and curriculum with standard of care would we look at the topic any differently?
Perhaps a decline in U.S. sciences and technology performance is not due to poor science education caused by teachers’ lack of education or interest, or a poor curriculum. Perhaps science education today is only a reflection of our countries lack of interest in science that also shows up in a lack of investment dollars in american science innovation.
I don’t know, Just some ideas.
For those of you interested in improving science time in your schools, here’s an idea to steal from another discipline. (Sorry it requires group organization.) I volunteer once a month in a program through the local cultural center called “Art Parents”. The cultural center has put together portfolios of art subjects that the parents can take to the classroom and present along with projects that the parents puts together. I think the projects are important, maybe because I’ve always been a hands on learner. The kids love it. I think a similar program could be developed for science. I wouldn’t want this to be a child’s sole exposure to science, but I think it could be good as support.
Oh, I also meant to say, interesting blog Steven Novella. This is only the second time I visited, but I had to come over and check it out since commenters on SBM seemed to be jonezing for it’s repair.
After listening to the podcast Steve, I must say you need to invite Patrick Gonzales to talk to you about clearing up myths about what Americans know and don’t know. I was surprised to hear you repeat some questionable things.
You are close enough to Massachusetts to know they (and MN) are closing on Singapore, Hong Kong, and other systems. Here is a link to a presentation he gave back in Feb. : http://goo.gl/G5IV
There are scholars that have plenty of knowledge on the things you are guessing about. How about talking to Leon Ledermann? He will tell you that we have known about the education deficits in elementary school teachers for nearly twenty years but haven’t done anything about it. In the US, less than 60% of middle school science teachers don’t have a degree in science. While in some countries, you need a major in science first, then an education degree to teach science.
Instead, we have the right leaning school reformers shoveling FUD about unions and how independent schools like charters will save education. The truth is more complicated. As usual.
Good comments all- It’s a complicated issue.
After years of teaching 8th grade science in a public school, chaos4zap’s comments struck a nerve- I have a strongly BAC Administrator, have run into problems teaching the state and federal standards when it comes to things like evolution, origin of the universe, etc… and I don’t even live anywhere near Texas.
As far as quality science education is concerned, even if an elementary district treats science as a “special” only offering it to students on a rotating basis, if the science teacher is really good, the kids will look forward to it, and want to take more in high school and college. I think enthusiasm for one’s subject matter is the most important thing when it comes to reaching kids- If you love what you teach, you’ll stop at nothing to get them to love it, too. You’ll construct an environment focused on HOW we know what we know, and WHY its important for them to know it, not just memorizing facts or doing projects for the sake of doing projects.
[...] recent news that US science education is lagging sparked an interesting discussion on the SGU, which in turn inspired a great deal of feedback from [...]
“Further we need to get away from the education culture that seems to have eroded the quality of science education over the last few decades.”
Not a very scientific statement. Can you elaborate?
I agree.