.
Physicist and author Brian Green had an interesting opinion piece in yesterday's NY Times, arguing that we need to care about more than just science literacy - we have to promote excitement about science:More Adaptive Complexity articles
All
Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.
Green argues that it doesn't matter whether you are a scientist - science should provide you with rich, transforming experiments like art, literature, or music.
So how do we get this to happen in school? The problem, according to Greene, is that we bore kids to tears by focusing on old science before we bring them up to date on the latest scientific happenings. This is actually the same problem that inspired the magnificent Feynman Lectures on Physics - a revamping of the 1960's Caltech physics curriculum to get around the boredom
Greene says is we focus on the excitement, the technical details will follow:
But science is so much more than its technical details. And with careful attention to presentation, cutting-edge insights and discoveries can be clearly and faithfully communicated to students independent of those details; in fact, those insights and discoveries are precisely the ones that can drive a young student to want to learn the details. We rob science education of life when we focus solely on results and seek to train students to solve problems and recite facts without a commensurate emphasis on transporting them out beyond the stars.
In a number of countries that are our competitors, science and engineering make the difference between a truly awful and a good way of life. They have a motivation we do not.
Instead of worrying about making more Americans into scientists, we should be making more scientists into Americans. The idiotic visa policy started by a Democrat president and perpetuated by a Republican one was the dumbest kind of protectionist scheme. Our science problem evaporates if we get 500,000 scientists waiting for green cards and work visas off a stupid list.