The Problem with Science Education
High school science education in America has significant room for improvement. Science and Engineering Indicators, a comprehensive national survey published by the National Science Board, has found gaping holes in Americans’ basic scientific knowledge.1 As Dr. Jon D. Miller, director of the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago observed in the survey, “American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth.” In the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment, out of 30 industrialized nations, American students ranked 25th in math and 21st in science, below the U.S. averages on the 2003 test.2
At the June 2008 World Science Festival in New York, leading scientists sharply criticized the diminished role of science in the United States even as science becomes increasingly important to combating problems such as climate change and the global food shortage. Dr. Nina Fedoroff, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s science advisor, has warned that the United States’ Global leadership in science is being challenged by others, specifically China: “They’re educating 10 times as many students as we are. The next generation of scientists in other countries might not speak English.”3
Several years ago, Congress authorized a study of science literacy in the United States. That study culminated in 2005 with a report entitled Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.4 The report concluded that “the scientific and technological building blocks critical to our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength.” It warned that U.S. students’ apathy toward math and science, as well as the nation’s lack of Federal investment in cutting-edge scientific research, posed a serious economic and national security risk.
The failure of science education is borne heavily in the inner city. Joel I. Klein, chancellor of the New York City Schools, points to test data showing black high school students lagging in average of 4 years behind in their white peers in reading and math scores as, “shocking in its dimensions…. to me this is not just an issue of school reform. It is a civil rights issue, the civil rights issue of our time.”5
In a 2007 national study by University of Virginia scholar Robert C. Pianta of 2500 classrooms in 400 school districts across the United States, entitled Opportunities to Learn in America’s Elementary Classrooms, the typical child in these classrooms had a 1-in-14 chance of learning in a rich, supportive environment.6 Fifth graders spent 91 percent of their time listening to the teacher or working alone, usually on low-level worksheets. Three out of four classrooms were “dull, bleak” places, devoid of any emphasis on critical reasoning or problem-solving skills.
In their 2003 Education Working Paper, Dr. Jay P. Greene and Dr. Greg Forster of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, using data from the U.S. Department of Education, report staggering figures for public high school education.7 Only 32% of all students graduate qualified to attend a four-year college, and only 20% of black students and 16% of Hispanic students graduate high school ready for college. Over two-thirds of our students leave high school ill-prepared to take advantage of our country’s economic, political, and social opportunities. Greene and Forster attribute this dismal academic record to the failure of the K-12 educational system. “Reform of the K-12 education system is the key to improving college access for these groups.”
According to the 2007 National Summit on America’s Silent Epidemic, more than 1 million American high school students drop out every year.8 Nearly one-third of all public high school students and nearly half of all African-American, Hispanic and Native American students fail to graduate from public high school with their class. Moreover, the dropout problem is likely to increase substantially through 2020 unless significant improvements are made. It was estimated that the government could reap $45 billion in extra tax revenues and reduced costs in public health, crime, and welfare payments if the 700,000 20-year-old high school dropouts in the United States today were cut in half.
The irony is that we don’t need to get children interested in science. Middle school children — boys and girls — are fascinated by science. What’s needed is a way to sustain that interest into high school, which means identifying the reasons students lose interest in science, and then correcting the problem. Alvin Thornton, a Howard University administrator, labels it “the fourth grade syndrome,” when students become lost and alienated.9 As described by Prince George’s County District Judge Herman Dawson, who regularly deals with high school dropouts, students “are not getting the basics in elementary school, so by the time they get to high school, they have lost interest” (Ibid.)
Teacher turnover is a related problem of staggering dimensions. According to the Washington-based National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future and Alliance for Excellent Education, teacher turnover is costing the nation between $4.9 and $7 billion a year.10 Tom Carroll, president of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, notes that, “Often it is the high-risk schools that are recruiting and replacing teachers all the time,” which deprives students at those schools of the benefit of a stable, experienced teacher workforce. Teacher turnover may stem in part from the National Math & Science Initiative estimate that, “…two-thirds of those (high school students) enrolled in physical science have teachers who did not major in the subject in college – or are not certified to teach it.” (Ibid.)
Three contributing factors to America’s problems with science education stand out as amenable to improvement: inadequate textbooks, inadequate teacher preparation, and lack of student motivation to learn science.
Textbooks
Textbooks cater to left-hemispheric text-based learners and tend to ignore students who rely on images to learn. Moreover, by relying so heavily on reading, textbooks fail to take full advantage of right hemispheric learning, even in children who do read well. For complex sciences like chemistry and biology, images are essential, and in many ways, more efficient. A clear, concise picture is worth a thousand words.
Science textbooks tend to be boring, long-winded, distracting, and difficult to comprehend. They present too much material too fast, fail to relate the material to students’ everyday lives, and fail to tell a story the students can follow so that what they’re learning makes sense to them.
Textbooks need to encourage students how to look at everyday things and ask why things are the way they are. What current textbooks offer are facts, when what students really need is a reason to learn those facts. After reviewing math and science textbooks around the country, George Nelson, Director of Project 2061 for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, stated that “we didn’t find any good middle-school science books or good high-school biology books…these books offer very little potential for having students learn….” Texts contribute to the low performance, and more generally, to the waning interest in science afflicting students. Project 2061 found that middle-school tests do not foster reflective contemplation. Rather, the texts “present statements… and legions of facts…The education community’s understanding of science is that it’s a heap of facts and vocabulary words,” not realizing according to Nelson, that “encyclopedias aren’t good textbooks.” (Ibid.)
Dr. Margulies maintains that textbooks slow the learning process by requiring students to decipher into their own words what the author is trying to say, then conjure up an image of what is being explained, figure out the meaning of what they have just read and visualized, and finally insert the new material into their own body of knowledge. While there is much to be said for this lengthy process, the fact is, that unless a child is highly motivated, it is simply too much of a burden for many, if not most, of today’s students. An insightful teacher can shorten this process by explaining chemistry and biology in plain English without excessive terms of art, by preparing images for the students beforehand, and by showing how the new material fits into their existing knowledge base.
Teacher Preparation
Teacher preparation requires not only mastery of chemistry and biology, but also the ability to explain these complex subjects on a middle and high school level and the ability to make chemistry and biology relevant to students’ lives. For teachers who did not major in chemistry or biology in college, these tasks are particularly onerous.
Student Motivation
A sizeable proportion, perhaps even a majority, of America’s youth have little interest in learning science. The reasons range include economic poverty, lack of parental support, family upheaval, misdirected cultural values, poor reading skills, and lack of self-confidence, but regardless of the reasons, unless students want to learn science, science education is bound to fail. It doesn’t have to be this way, however. Young adults want to understand why things happen and understand how to solve interesting problems. They want to know why their hair curls and how to make it straight (or vice-versa), why skin wrinkles and how to prevent it, how to prepare appetizing food, how to dissect a crime scene and find incriminating clues, and how the body works and how diseases attack the body.
All this requires a basic understanding of chemistry and biology. The current process of science education is, at best, inefficient and for many students, a serious barrier to meaningful careers. Explaining the basic principles of chemistry and biology has to be made more efficient so that students can begin to use chemistry and biology before being turned off by long drawn-out presentations and recitations of facts. Imagine taking an entire year to learn how every component of a computer works without understanding what computers can actually do.
Most students are not going to be chemists or biologists, but all students will use chemistry and biology throughout their lives in one form or another. It is essential, therefore, to present the basic principles of chemistry and biology with dispatch so that students can quickly start using their newfound skills in areas they find stimulating. Showing them how to use chemistry and biology in their own lives is what keeps them excited about science.
[1] Dean, C. (2005, August 30), Scientific savvy? In U.S., not much, The New York Times
[2] PISA (2006), IES National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education NCES 2008-016.
[3] Richburg, K.B. (2008, May 29), US Experts Bemoan Nation’s Loss of Stature in the World of Science, Washington Post
[4] Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Future (2005), The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.
[5] Turque. B. (2008, June 12), Standing Up for the Children, Washington Post
[6] Pianta, R.C., et al (2007), Opportunities to Learn in America’s Elementary Classrooms, Science, March 30, pp. 1795-1796
[7] Greene, J.P., Forster G. (2003, No. 3, September). Public High School Graduation and College Readiness Rates in the United States, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
[8] Silent Epidemic (2007). Retrieved from www.silentepidemic.org/summit/index.htm
[9] Thomas-Lester, A. (2007, June 17), The Regrets of a School Dropout, Washington Post
[10] The Cost of Teacher Turnover Study and Cost Calculator (2007), National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future
