Sciencemadness Discussion Board - School is not where most Americans learn most of their science

School is not where most Americans learn most of their science

The WiZard is In - 22-10-2010 at 08:25

The 95 Percent Solution
School is not where most Americans learn most of their science
John H. Falk, Lynn D. Dierking
American Scientist
November-December 2010
Volume 98, Number 6
Page: 486
DOI: 10.1511/2010.87.486

The scientific research and education communities have long had a goal of advancing the public’s understanding of science. The vast majority of the rhetoric and research on this issue revolves around the failure of school-aged children in the United States to excel at mathematics and science when compared with children in other countries. Most policy solutions for this problem involve improving classroom practices and escalating the investment in schooling, particularly during the precollege years. The assumption has been that children do most of their learning in school and that the best route to long-term public understanding of science is successful formal schooling. The “school-first” paradigm is so pervasive that few scientists, educators or policy makers question it. This despite two important facts: Average Americans spend less than 5 percent of their life in classrooms, and an ever-growing body of evidence demonstrates that most science is learned outside of school.

We contend that a major educational advantage enjoyed by the U.S. relative to the rest of the world is its vibrant free-choice science learning landscape—a landscape filled with a vast array of digital resources, educational television and radio, science museums, zoos, aquariums, national parks, community activities such as 4-H and scouting and many other scientifically enriching enterprises. The sheer quantity and importance of this science learning landscape lies in plain sight but mostly out of mind. We believe that nonschool resources—used by learners across their lifetimes from childhood onward—actually account for the vast majority of Americans’ science learning. If this premise is correct, then increased investment in free-choice (also known as informal) learning resources might be a very cost-effective way to significantly improve public understanding of science. Taking this view, though, requires dismantling a widespread misconception that out-of-school educational experiences only support superficial science learning and the recreational interests of a limited percentage of the curious public, rather than the learning of real science by all citizens.

Traditional assumptions about the source of science knowledge are deeply held. Historian of science Steven Turner locates the beginning of today’s Public Understanding of Science movement in the 1980s. Its hallmarks were “new, vigorous efforts to promote public knowledge of science and to instill confidence and support for the scientific enterprise.” The major focus of this effort was a widespread reassessment of the content and goals of school science teaching and a shift of curricular reform efforts toward the needs of the substantial majority of students who would not pursue scientific and technological careers or postsecondary training in technical subjects. This reform movement went forward under the catchy slogan “scientific literacy,” but its other motto, “science for all,” better expresses its true political and pedagogical objectives.

The unquestioned focus was to increase the quantity of qualified science teachers and by doing so, the quality of teaching. This assumption shaped years of research on the public understanding of science, summarized biannually by the National Science Board in their Science and Engineering Indicators series. National organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academies of Sciences commissioned white papers focusing on the issue, and science-education reform efforts were funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Education.

Over the ensuing years, the content and approach to teaching science in schools has varied from year to year and from district to district. However, the general commitment to science for all has remained a basic tenet of school-based science education. Also fundamentally unchanged over the past 25 years is the assumption by virtually all within the science education community—scientists, science educators, science learning researchers, education policy makers and the public—that if science for all is the goal, then schools are the most effective conduit.

However, a range of data are emerging that suggest other interpretations that at the very least raise important questions about the prevailing paradigm that schooling is the primary mechanism for public science learning. For example, for more than a decade, performance by U.S. school-aged children on international tests such as the quadrennial Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has followed a consistent pattern. Elementary-school-aged U.S. children perform as well as or better than most children in the world, but the performance of older U.S. children has been mediocre at best. Interestingly, however, for more than 20 years, U.S. adults have consistently outperformed their international counterparts on science literacy measures, including adults from South Korea and Japan, as well as Western European countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom. If schooling is the primary causative factor affecting how well the public understands science, how do we explain these findings?

For starters, most in the U.S. science learning community agree that the quality of school science education is better at the secondary level than at the preschool and elementary levels. Recent statistics show that only about 4 percent of U.S. school teachers of kindergarten through second grade (K–2) majored in science or science education as undergraduates, and many took no college-level science courses at all. However, the quality of science instruction at that level is almost a moot point because science instruction itself so rarely occurs. Indicative of the situation nationwide, a 2007 study of San Francisco Bay–area elementary schools found that 80 percent of K–5 multiple-subject teachers who are responsible for teaching science in their classrooms reported spending 60 minutes or less per week on science; 16 percent of teachers reported spending no time at all on science. Consistent science instruction in U.S. schools only begins at the middle-school level, when every student takes at least one or two science courses, usually taught by individuals with some science background. Interestingly, it is just at the point when school-based science instruction begins in earnest that American children start falling behind their international peers. Meanwhile, what accounts for the high performance of American adults?

Although data show that taking college-level science courses dramatically improves public science literacy, only about 30 percent of U.S. adults have ever taken even one college-level science course. Thus, the superior science literacy of the U.S. general public relative to other countries cannot be easily explained by schooling either at the precollege or college levels. Developers of the large-scale national science literacy tests, the results of which are compared internationally, claim that these measures reliably measure the knowledge of representative samples of target populations, so it follows that other factors beyond schooling must explain or at least significantly contribute to the U-shaped pattern of Americans’ comparative performance on science literacy measures.
Science in the Wild

A growing body of evidence supports the contention that the public learns science in settings and situations outside of school. A 2009 report by the National Research Council, Learning Science in Informal Environments: Places, People and Pursuits, describes a range of evidence demonstrating that even everyday experiences such as a walk in the park contribute to people’s knowledge and interest in science and the environment. Adults visit settings such as national parks, science centers and botanical gardens not only to relax and enjoy themselves, but equally to satisfy their intellectual curiosity and enhance their understanding of the natural and human-made world. Even more common is the science people learn while engaged in efforts to satisfy their personal need to know. Sometimes the need is fleeting. For example, individuals may choose to watch a nature show on television, or invest time, energy and money in supporting their children’s science learning by taking them to national parks, science centers and zoos, or encourage their children to participate in a wide variety of extracurricular experiences such as scouting and summer nature camps.

One specific example of the role that out-of-school institutions play in the support of the public’s science learning comes from more than a decade of research at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Findings from one part of this series of studies—large-scale, random telephone surveys—found that more than 60 percent of Los Angeles residents had visited the Science Center since it was renovated in 1998, including residents of all races/ethnicities, neighborhoods, incomes and education levels. Findings also showed that a majority of former visitors (95 percent) self-reported that the experience increased their understanding of science and technology as well as piqued their interest in science and prompted further inquiries after the visit.

These data were validated by a “conceptual marker” in the form of a specific scientific concept—homeostasis. Prior to the opening of the new science center, only 7 percent of the Los Angeles public could define this term (including first-time visitors to the California Science Center). However, because of a popular exhibition experience designed to teach this concept—a 50-foot animatronic woman—a majority of Science Center visitors could define the term upon exiting the museum. The ability to correctly explain this one scientific concept has increased nearly threefold in Los Angeles over the decade following the reopening of the Science Center. By tracking this conceptual marker, we can directly attribute the increase in understanding to visits to the Science Center. These data, along with data from other science centers and comparable free-choice science learning settings, have shown that the majority of visitors significantly increase their conceptual understanding of science on a variety of levels—basic information, breadth and depth of understanding—immediately following a visit, and for most of these individuals this understanding persists and grows for two or more years after the experience. Similar science learning outcomes have been found for youth and after-school program experiences, and both print and broadcast media sources have long since been shown to be vital to both children’s and adults’ understanding of health, science and environmental issues.

Historically, the majority of attention paid to out-of-school science learning, including most academic research, has been directed to experiences like visiting a museum, science center, zoo or aquarium, or watching broadcast media such as NOVA shows and the like. Although, as suggested above, these free-choice science learning experiences are undoubtedly important contributors to the public’s science literacy, they represent only the most conspicuous part of the free-choice science learning landscape. Equally important but much less discussed and studied are education situations that support long-term, more in-depth opportunities for science learning. A wide range of adolescents and adults are engaged in hobbies that involve science, including model rocketry, raising ornamental fish, gardening, rock collecting and star gazing. Hobbyists such as these often possess deep specialized knowledge of science and invest considerable amounts of money in equipment, travel, education and training to refine their craft. Equally important are the many events in life, often highly personal, which demand increased understanding of science “right now.” For example, when individuals are diagnosed with leukemia or heart disease, they and their loved ones invest large amounts of time researching websites and medical reports in order to learn as much as possible about the particular disease. Similar behaviors arise when an environmental crisis occurs such as a toxic spill or the discovery of radon gas seeping from the rock on which one’s home is built. With an increasingly accessible Internet, becoming informed about such issues is easy, even routine.

A small but compelling set of data is beginning to emerge showing that the nonstudent public also gathers in-depth science knowledge outside of school. Our research shows that free-choice learning experiences represent the single greatest contributors to adult science knowledge; childhood free-choice learning experiences also significantly contributed to adult science knowledge. Schooling ranks at the bottom of significant sources of adult science knowledge. Specifically, our research shows that science information sources such as books, magazines, discussions with experts, and the Internet represented the primary mechanisms the public uses to delve more deeply into a topic. During the recent dramas surrounding the deep-water oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, news websites such as CNN and CNBC, information websites such as www.theoildrum.com and even the government’s own NOAA website were humming with activity as the public tried to get below the superficial headlines of the six o’clock news. These and other data suggest that the importance of school as a source of science learning is actually declining among the public as citizens utilize an ever-broadening range of information resources, including most dramatically the Internet, which now represents the major source of science information for all citizens, including young children. According to research conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2006 was the tipping point when the Internet exceeded even broadcast media as a source of public science information. The medical profession has come to appreciate that the public today is far more likely to seek medical information online than from a “live” healthcare professional; as stated earlier, individuals with serious ailments use the Internet for continued, deep learning about their illnesses.
Science on the Side

Image Another emerging area of research investigates science-related hobbies. Research conducted by Marni Berendsen, education researcher and project director of the NASA Night Sky Network, showed that amateur astronomy club members lacking college-level astronomy training often knew more general astronomy than did undergraduate astronomy majors. Research by others has also shown hobbyists, many with little formal training, exhibiting high levels of knowledge and depth of understanding. Such hobbyists often have collegial relationships with experts in the field and some, having put themselves in the right place at the right time, have contributed scientific discoveries. For example, on March 18–19, 2010, amateur astronomer Nick Howes was working from his desktop computer in Great Britain using a remotely controlled 2-meter telescope located in Hawaii and operated by the Faulkes Telescope Project. He dialed up the coordinates of a comet he had been observing, calibrated his camera and snared a set of six photos showing an object moving away from the icy nucleus of the comet. What he captured was the breakup of comet C2007 C3, an observation hailed by the International Astronomical Union as a “major astronomical discovery.”

Investigations of everyday science literacy have yielded other interesting data. For example, a series of studies by Canadian science-education researcher Wolff-Michael Roth and colleagues found that members of an environmental activist group working on the revitalization of a local creek and its watershed acted and learned using knowledge derived from a wide variety of resources, virtually none of which required or drew from school-based sources. Similar research by others reinforces that much of what is learned in school actually relates more to learning for school, as opposed to learning for life. One study found that the number or level of mathematics courses taken in school correlated poorly, if at all, with mathematical performance in out-of-school, everyday-life situations. In another study of mathematics learning, even individuals who did not do well or were not formally trained in school mathematics demonstrated the ability to use math successfully in everyday life—for example, sellers of candy in street markets and shoppers selecting good deals. Success in technical and scientific training courses for ship officers was shown to be unrelated to the relevant knowledge required onboard. As observed by Roth and his colleagues in their investigation of adults working on a local environmental issue, “There was little that looked like school science, and there was little done in school science that prepared these adults for this or any other similar kinds of problematic situations in life.”

Although the role of free-choice learning experiences remains contested, few would argue that out-of-school experiences support the public’s science interest and attitudes. However, recent research by Robert H. Tai and associates, utilizing data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS), pushes the potential importance of this role far beyond what most have assumed. Tai’s research group found that attitudes toward science careers, formed primarily during out-of-school time in early adolescence, appeared to be the single most important factor in determining children’s future career choices in science. Among a random sample of 3,359 NELS participants who finished college, those who expected at age 13 to have a science career, compared to those with other career expectations, were two times more likely to have graduated with a degree in the life sciences and three times more likely to have a degree in the physical sciences or engineering. Interestingly, achievement in school mathematics, considered a critical filter and a major focus of today’s high-stakes testing, was not as important a predictor as was interest in the topic.

Despite alternative interpretations for U.S. adults’ higher science literacy scores internationally and the growing body of evidence supporting the critical role of free-choice learning experiences, most still consider such experiences a nicety rather than a necessity, an adjunct to the serious business of learning that takes place in classrooms. Most policy and funding initiatives continue to be directed towards improving in-school performance based on the rarely questioned assumption that classroom-based education is the exclusive route to achieving desired educational outcomes.

A major justification for these arguments is the issue of equity. After all, schooling is the “great leveler,” the mechanism for eliminating socioeconomic disparities. If only, the argument goes, schools could all be brought up to comparable levels of quality, historic inequalities could be overcome. A recent study on the “performance gap” in reading between advantaged and disadvantaged children in Baltimore was designed to highlight just this issue; however, the results ran counter to expectations. Data from this major longitudinal study showed that over the first five years of schooling, the in-school performance gains in reading of low-income, inner-city Baltimore children was completely equivalent to that of affluent, suburban Baltimore children; in fact in some cases the inner-city children’s gains were greater than those shown by their more economically and socially advantaged suburban counterparts. However, each and every summer of the study, the inner-city children fell woefully behind; the suburban children continued to gain in performance while the inner-city children stagnated or even declined in performance.

The authors concluded that much of the “gap” in performance between disadvantaged and advantaged children appeared to be the consequence of what happened outside of school. Interestingly, these authors, and many others who have read this research, interpret the findings as evidence that disadvantaged children need to spend more time in school! Of course, an alternative interpretation could be that what happens in school is not sufficient to ensure equity among all children and adults. If, as we’ve argued all along, school is not where Americans learn much of what they know, including science, then it follows that what happens outside of school profoundly influences learning. Rather than increasing school time, perhaps we should be investing in expanding quality, out-of-school experiences for disadvantaged children.

Nonacademic Academics Supporting evidence for the important role that out-of-school experiences have on children’s learning is emerging from a variety of fronts. For example, a recent meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation findings for after-school programs showed that such programs need not be academically focused in order to have academic impact. In fact, because the authors were interested in programs with a socio-emotional learning focus, academic-only after-school programs were not included in the study, and investigators still observed gains overall in the grades children earned. Similarly, a recent evaluation of Chicago’s After-School Matters found that programs without an explicit academic focus (they focused instead on career awareness and development) had a positive effect on several school-related outcomes, including graduation rates and attendance. On a completely different front, data from the Programme for International Student Assessment showed that a major predictor of high achievement on the test was participation in out-of-school, free-choice learning experiences such as visits to science museums.

As the Baltimore study and other research cited above make clear, not just summer experiences but all kinds of free-choice childhood experiences significantly contribute to a person’s science literacy; early childhood experiences form a particularly critical foundation for all future science learning. The 2009 report on learning science in informal environments from the National Research Council, cited earlier, found that not only do free-choice science learning experiences jump-start a child’s long-term interest in science topics, they also can significantly improve science understanding among populations typically underrepresented in science. The report recommended that to make informal science relevant to children and youth within a community, the development of programming and experiences should be a collaborative effort between the informal science organization, local education institutions, and other entities within the community such as science-related industries and businesses.

Similar ideas have recently been voiced by a range of organizations, such as the National 4-H Council and the American Youth Policy Forum. None has stated it so clearly and forcefully as the Harvard Family Research Project, which stated:

The dominant assumption behind much current educational policy and practice is that school is the only place where and when children learn. This assumption is wrong. Forty years of steadily accumulating research shows that out-of-school, or “complementary learning” opportunities are major predictors of children’s development, learning, and educational achievement. The research also indicates that economically and otherwise disadvantaged children are less likely than their more-advantaged peers to have access to these opportunities. This inequity substantially undermines their learning and chances for school success.

Fortunately, there are increasing opportunities for youth and families from poor and underserved communities to engage in out-of-school-time (OST) science experiences, driven by such efforts as the NSF Informal Science Education program, which invests in community-based science education efforts. According to the Harvard Family Research Project’s 2007 Study of Predictors of Participation in Out-of-School-Time Activities, participation rates in before- and after-school programs have increased at all levels of family income, with the greatest increase among the lowest-income youth. They attribute this trend to an increasing policy focus on the benefits of OST, along with extensive funding for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers, a program of the U.S. Department of Education. They suggest that policymakers and the public need to continue to focus on equity to ensure that this trend continues.
Serious Fun

However, as the potential beneficial relationship between science learning and OST becomes better understood, there is a temptation to hand these programs over to schools. This would be a huge mistake. It is exactly because free-choice learning is not like school that it has such value. What is important is that children and youth perceive the free-choice learning experiences that often occur in typical OST programs as personally meaningful, engaging and, dare we say, fun—what educator David Alexander calls, “the learning that lies between play and academics.” The inclusion of free-choice science learning experiences in the lives of children is essential because young children in particular learn through play. The prevalence of a play-oriented medium for educational delivery, which is very common in the free-choice parts of the science education landscape, has been shown to encourage children to interact with each other, adults and the objects surrounding them in ways that significantly support the development of science inquiry skills.

If OST programs are merely devices to extend the school day with more hours of the same pedagogical experiences, they are unlikely to be successful, particularly in the long term. In fact, it’s quite likely that they will do more harm than good by reinforcing stereotypes of science and science professionals as dry and boring and schoollike. Our skepticism and concerns revolve around the fact that current discussions about increasing the scope and quality of OST programs, though well-intentioned, almost always focus on how such programs can support children and youth’s achievement in school, rather than how such programs should support children and youth in life.

It seems reasonable to assume that out-of-school science-learning experiences are fundamental to supporting and facilitating lifelong science learning. We would argue that the current state of science literacy in America cannot be explained otherwise. One of the major ways that U.S. adults and children under the age of 12 differ from their counterparts in other countries is their access to and use of free-choice science learning opportunities. Compared with other countries, the U.S. has a luxurious endowment of such destinations. In the same studies that demonstrated high correlations between adult science literacy and levels of schooling, utilization of the free-choice science learning landscape was a strong correlate, as was shown in the Los Angeles findings discussed earlier in this article. In other words, utilization of these resources could be a primary or at least a highly important causal factor in U.S. adults’ relatively high performance on international measures of science literacy and interest.

Similarly, the simplest explanation for why American 8-year-olds do so well compared with their counterparts in other countries on the TIMSS and PISA tests is that young American children have greater exposure to free-choice science learning opportunities than do children in any other country. Unfortunately, utilization of these learning opportunities declines precipitously after age 12 in the U.S. As has been shown repeatedly, the best predictor of student success in school is family life. The quality of parenting is more important than socioeconomic factors, race/ethnicity or quality of school. Children with parents who support their learning at home do better than children with parents who do not. A logical and perhaps more effective way for parents to support their children’s learning beyond providing homework help is through free-choice learning experiences. However, as the Baltimore research cited above so clearly highlights, the availability and opportunities for accessing free-choice science learning experiences are not independent of income and geography.

By challenging the assumption that school is the primary place where Americans learn science, our goal is not to diminish the importance and value of schooling, but rather to suggest that what goes on in the other 95 percent of a citizen’s life may be equally important, and possibly more important to increasing science literacy among the public. Although we are not advocating any diminishment in the efforts to improve and expand school-based science education, we do strongly propose that it is time to seriously question whether, in the 21st century, schooling should continue to be viewed as the most important and effective mechanism for advancing the public’s scientific interest and understanding.

Insufficient data exist to conclusively demonstrate that free-choice science learning experiences currently contribute more to public understanding of science than in-school experiences, but a growing body of evidence points in this direction. There certainly are insufficient data to refute the claim that free-choice learning is vitally important. Surely the best informed and most science-literate citizens are those who enjoy maximal benefits from both in- and out-of-school science learning opportunities. Thus, we would argue for increased efforts to measure the cumulative and complementary influences of both in- and out-of-school science learning. However, given that at present school-based science education efforts receive an order of magnitude more resources than free-choice learning options, even a modest change in this ratio could make a huge difference. The data suggest it would be a wise investment.
Bibliography

* Bell, P., B. Lewenstein, A. W. Shouse, and M. A. Feder, eds. 2009. Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits. The National Academies Press, Washington. D.C.
* Bowles, A., and B. Brand. 2009. Learning Around the Clock: Benefits of Expanded Learning Opportunities for Older Youth. Washington, D.C.: American Youth Policy Forum.
* Dierking. L. D. 2007. Linking after-school programs and STEM learning: A view from another window. Commissioned position paper for the Coalition for After-School Science. New York, NY.
* Dorph, R., et al. 2007. The Status of Science Education in the Bay Area: Research Brief. Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley.
* Ferreira, M. 2002. Ameliorating equity in science, mathematics, and engineering: A case study of an after-school science program. Equity and Excellence in Education 35(1):43–49.
* Fox, S. 2008. The engaged E-patient population. Washington, D.C.: Pew Internet & American Life Project.
* Harvard Family Research Project. 2007. Findings from HFRP’s study of predictors of participation in out-of-school time activities: Fact sheet. http://www.hfrp.org/content/download/1072/48575/file/finding...
* Horrigan, J. 2006. The Internet as a resource for news and information about science. Washington, D.C.: Pew Internet & American Life Project.
* Rahm, J., J. C. Moore and M.-P. Martel-Reny. 2005. The role of afterschool and community science programs in the lives of urban youth. School Science and Mathematics 105(6):283–291.
* Taylor, S. 2008. School science and its controversies; or, whatever happened to scientific literacy? Public Understanding of Science 17:55–72.

You can find this online at
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/num2/2010/6/the-95-p...

Mr. Wizard - 23-10-2010 at 08:03

MEDGO
My Eyes Doth Glaze Over. That was a long dry read, which I only scanned. I do agree with the idea though. I would also theorize if you don't have an interest in what you learn, it will soon be gone from your memory, if it ever made it there. You can't push a rope.

My experience with science has been I learned the basics at school and followed up with my own interests and reading after getting the basics. My schooling wasn't the norm though, attending Catholic parochial schools, and otherwise schools run by the US military for dependents in the 50s and 60s. All were very motivated excellent teachers, most with over 30 children in the class.

aonomus - 28-10-2010 at 13:10

tl;dr.

I have one point: school is where Americans learn standardized testing, instead of learning how to learn.

peach - 29-10-2010 at 01:56

Quote: Originally posted by aonomus

tl;dr.

I have one point: school is where Americans learn standardized testing, instead of learning how to learn.

Could not agree any more!

I have been told off more than once when trying to teach myself.

In secondary school (early teens to 18), I LOVED physics and would read A-Level (18 year old) books on it when I was 14. I absolutely destroyed all the tests without having to revise for them.

At one point, I tried being smart and showing some initiative and used the pi symbol to describe the phase difference between two waves. They didn't like that, probably because a secondary school teacher doesn't know what it means.

In chemistry, we did about Electro Motive Forces for cells. I tried applying that in physics when we were looking at something similar. They assumed I meant Electro Magnetic Field and marked it wrong, when it was right.

At university, I got quite a few more. I borrowed a high voltage supply from the research department to look at distortion in thermionic valves. Not allowed to do that. I asked about using a spectrometer to check a display diode I'd bought that usually goes in a scanner for night clubs. Not allowed to do that.

I had a chat with the molecular beam guy and was telling him about using lattice strain to raise superconduction temperatures. Shortly after I got an email telling me to shut up and get on with my normal studies.

I have a friend who, from about 14, wanted to be a surgeon. He is only just finishing his training now, well over a decade later. He is perhaps one of the very rare examples of a student who knows what they want to do and sink all his effort into it.

At one point, we were doing something to do with pH in chemistry. I said...

"I don't get this homework" <--- since I don't like doing things without knowing why it works

His reply was

"Don't bother thinking about it too much, just revise the formula then forget it"

We'd end up spending months doing past papers rather than learning anything new, in the hopes that the same question would appear.

My mum was a primary teacher up until not long ago, and yes, same thing. Every year OFSTED want the marks to go up, something that is next to being technically impossible.

The idea is good hearted, but the realization is entirely out of line. What it comes down to is sacrificing important things to teach them memory games for the exams.

The same occurs throughout lots of other public services. The police, for example, will massively change the way they work, who they arrest, what they charge for and so on just to meet some new dumb, fad, as opposed to dealing with what they KNOW is the problem and the real problem causers.

The NHS is another. To get higher numbers of successes out of the clinics, they shorten the diagnosis time to an arbitrary 10 minutes and then prescribe whatever they can without causing too much potential harm so it can be written off as done.

The dentists.... now have flat rate charges imposed on them and specific numbers of treatments per month to meet. Naturally, that'll encourage them to do lots of superficial repairs or things that don't actually NEED doing, to meet that target.

All because some tart with not much experience is sat at the top saying, "GIVE ME MOAR FOR MY PUBLISHER PRESENTATION!".

The Labour government set an arbitary figure of 50% of students going on to uni. 50% of students aren't uni capable, as evidenced by their marks and their attitude whilst there. They also put lots of funding into making that possible.

Now, the reverse is happening. They want the 50% there, whilst putting down vocational skills, but can't supply the funding. Result, 18 year olds can now expect a £20-30k bill just for tuition fees, forgetting somewhere to live, food, heat and the others. Add to that, they can expect to be paying £150-£250k for a house now and that a large number of them are ending up packing envelopes with neuroscience degrees because there aren't any jobs at the end of it.

Solution, FUCK the 50% figure. Keep the funding, STOP letting people who have no interest in learning into uni. I have seen these people first hand, recently. There are LOTS of them getting in there.

There are TONS of degrees that DO NOT need a university to study them in. Sports 'sciences', nutrition, psychology, politics, philosophy and so on. These are all things that can be taught from books, the TV, online etc. They do not need a billion pounds worth of laboratories to study. They're Open University subjects, that could be taught by proxy and then tested in public halls or buildings.

[Edited on 29-10-2010 by peach]

psychokinetic - 29-10-2010 at 17:38

"I had a chat with the molecular beam guy and was telling him about using lattice strain to raise superconduction temperatures. Shortly after I got an email telling me to shut up and get on with my normal studies."

o.o'

What you do in your own time has nothing to do with your normal studies. That's just rude.

aonomus - 29-10-2010 at 18:19

One problem is the 'no child left behind' policy holds students with potential behind due to weak links in the system. People aren't being taught how to learn, experiment, and explore. There are students that get into grad school unprepared while students with weaker grades due to theory courses are held back from grad school.

The grant agencies want high numbers to show off, but undergrad rewards primarily memorization and regurgitation; only tangentally emphasizing critical thinking skills in the last 1-2 years of a 4 year program. I've found that undergrad doesn't attempt to nurture critical thinking skills until far too late in the game.

peach - 30-10-2010 at 03:22

Indeed.

After spending almost a decade in science lessons being taught to check measurements, I stood in a university lab and watched 60+ student immediately trust the dispensing volumes on the pipettes, when there was distilled water and a mg balance on the same desk they could check it against.

An example of what I think is really bad, the teachers in the UK now use a program called Report Assist to write the kids reports. The head teachers want them all done on that and for them to look computerized.

To use the program, you insert their grades and it automatically writes something like "Needs to do better at..."

Blanket statements.

Being around the kids sometimes on days out, I'd discover kids that were written off as trouble causers or thick would often have something they were very good at, but not covered on the normal marking scheme.

There was a girl who was considered particularly thick, but she absolutely blew away all the other kids when they got to have a go on photoshop, manipulating photos from microscopes. She immediately picked up how to use the program, loved it and was going around helping the others.

That kind of thing WON'T end up on her marks. But it is very clear to me that she is a prime candidate for being extremely good, and potentially making a good amount of money, if someone said "Oh by the way .... is far better than the others in terms of graphical work on computers".

There is a complete lack of any flexibility in the scoring or marking of the kids. I find this somewhat ironic when coupled with the no child left behind and equality ideas.

Being around lots of kids, you quickly appreciate that they learn in quite different ways to each other. Some of them, will not understand something, until you word it in a different way, relate it to something else or show it in a different fashion.

An example is Heinsenberg. He was pretty terrible at maths. Under the standard marking method, he'd have been written off a bit of an idiot. He also came up with an amazingly simple and elegant bit of theory that a lot of people now know the name of.

Another thing I think is lacking from 16y/o and on physics, is tying the sciences, maths and computers together. There needs to be more cross over, e.g. "You just looked at .... in biology, now we'll do the same thing, manipulate it, improve the apparatus or process the results with chemistry / physics, and vice versa".

Sandmeyer - 30-10-2010 at 04:23

I don't remember anything useful from school, I just remember that I really wanted to sleep in the morning instead of going there. In fact in school there is this instructor and during lectures he tells you how to behave and what to think, you are then supposed to write it down so that you can repeat it during the examination, then if you can politely repeat what he told you you are an excellent student. But if you would say: Why do I have read economics, I think it's nonsense you would get in trouble and not get anywhere. At the university it became more interesting, there was a lot of nonsense there too that one just had to suffer through, but there was more possibility of doing what one really wants to do and of course you could access extremely useful things that you've never seen before like NMRs.

[Edited on 30-10-2010 by Sandmeyer]

Magpie - 30-10-2010 at 08:32

I owe a huge debt to my formal education, warts and all. I do recognize some faults, however. My favorite is the example of asking a few Harvard graduates on the day of their graduation the following:

The interviewer holds a tree log weighing about 10 lbs. He asks the graduates where the constituents of the log came from. They all said "...from water and nutrients in the ground." Not one of them mentioned the air, or the CO2 in it.

After years of pounding in the concept of plants making sugar, or "energy," using photosynthesis, using sunlight, water, CO2, and of course the catalyst chlorophyll, from about the 2nd or 3rd grade on, it seems that none of them related this to the building of cellulose and the cellular material of wood. This seems like a gross lack of teaching a little sugar chemistry at the right moment.

psychokinetic - 30-10-2010 at 12:39

Quote: Originally posted by peach

Indeed.

After spending almost a decade in science lessons being taught to check measurements, I stood in a university lab and watched 60+ student immediately trust the dispensing volumes on the pipettes, when there was distilled water and a mg balance on the same desk they could check it against.

An example of what I think is really bad, the teachers in the UK now use a program called Report Assist to write the kids reports. The head teachers want them all done on that and for them to look computerized.

To use the program, you insert their grades and it automatically writes something like "Needs to do better at..."

Blanket statements.

Being around the kids sometimes on days out, I'd discover kids that were written off as trouble causers or thick would often have something they were very good at, but not covered on the normal marking scheme.

There was a girl who was considered particularly thick, but she absolutely blew away all the other kids when they got to have a go on photoshop, manipulating photos from microscopes. She immediately picked up how to use the program, loved it and was going around helping the others.

That kind of thing WON'T end up on her marks. But it is very clear to me that she is a prime candidate for being extremely good, and potentially making a good amount of money, if someone said "Oh by the way .... is far better than the others in terms of graphical work on computers".

There is a complete lack of any flexibility in the scoring or marking of the kids. I find this somewhat ironic when coupled with the no child left behind and equality ideas.

Being around lots of kids, you quickly appreciate that they learn in quite different ways to each other. Some of them, will not understand something, until you word it in a different way, relate it to something else or show it in a different fashion.

An example is Heinsenberg. He was pretty terrible at maths. Under the standard marking method, he'd have been written off a bit of an idiot. He also came up with an amazingly simple and elegant bit of theory that a lot of people now know the name of.

Another thing I think is lacking from 16y/o and on physics, is tying the sciences, maths and computers together. There needs to be more cross over, e.g. "You just looked at .... in biology, now we'll do the same thing, manipulate it, improve the apparatus or process the results with chemistry / physics, and vice versa".

It sounds like Report Assist would be really awesome for what its name says - Assisting the writing of Reports. But anyway, I was going to refer to the girl with the photoshop skillz0rz.

Here in NZ, they tried a new system called NCEA, where instead of just cramming and pulling an essay out of your arse at the end of the year you did unit standards - tests and assignments throughout the year.[EDIT: still do a test at the end of the year, exam style] These all show on your record of learning.

Of course people bitched and moaned: "I don't get it, therefore it is stupid"

And of course people screwed it up: "I don't get it, therefore I'm not able to grade my students properly"

The general idea is great. Photoshop girl would likely have a nice big fat EXCELLENCE next to her photoshopping skills, with a spattering of Not Achieveds, achieveds, and merits across her board.

I didn't do too well in senior high school. I was constantly sick, and I got pretty useless. But, I still had a record of not only the subjects I could and couldn't do, but I had a record of what bits I showed I was good at and what bits needed looking at. Due to my illness and laziness, it wasn't exactly representative of me, but the idea was nice. (When I applied to go to nursing school, they looked at my record and told me I had to do a science paper to prove I was smart enough. Now I'm doing biochemistry and chemistry while my English/classics major wife tutors all the thickheads who are trying to fudge their way through a science paper. Oh the hilarity).

As my bracketed bit shows, it's still not perfect by any means. Most of the nursing students my wife encounters have all the required credits in the required places.... but they still don't know what they are doing.

Best quote: "Mrs. Kinetic, but.... but we don't eat plants do we?"

[Edited on 30-10-2010 by psychokinetic]

entropy51 - 30-10-2010 at 13:33

Quote: Originally posted by peach

An example is Heinsenberg. He was pretty terrible at maths. Under the standard marking method, he'd have been written off a bit of an idiot. He also came up with an amazingly simple and elegant bit of theory that a lot of people now know the name of.

Where do you get this stuff? It didn't pass the laugh test.

Quote:

In 1914 World War I began and the Gymnasium was occupied by troops. Lessons were arranged in different buildings and as a result of the disruption Heisenberg undertook much independent study which probably had a beneficial effect on his education. His best subjects were mathematics, physics and religion but his record throughout his school career was excellent all round. In fact his mathematical abilities were such that in 1917 he tutored a family friend who was at university in calculus. During this period he belonged to a paramilitary organisation which operated in the Gymnasium with the intention of preparing the young men for later military service.

peach - 31-10-2010 at 04:48

Compared to the other physicists working on the nuclear project, he was an idiot with regards to pure maths.

He calculated the critical mass needed to sustain a chain reaction and came out with something entirely wrong, wrong by a lot. He later claimed this was him trying to prevent the project advancing. In reality, he probably just couldn't work it out, as he wasn't as good at the maths and number based physics as the others.

Calculus is not on a par with building nuclear reactors and bombs. Yet his uncertainty principle, not requiring advanced mathematics to realize, was important. Uncertainty is a tangible property that can be observed without microscopes or maths.

I wrote large percentages of a final paper for a guy who is now working in one of the big London banks, who may actually be handling your money in some fashion or another, and edited a final paper on crystallography for someone looking at growth on silicon, but I couldn't step into either of those jobs. I also scored an A* in English in my GCSEs, without revising. Yet routinely have my lack of knowledge regarding the subject mocked - like, which character belongs to which play by Shakespeare, famous poets, writers and so on.

Back to my surgeon example, he scored straight A's for the sciences. Yet, if you asked him about them, he wouldn't remember most of it, or be interested.

[Edited on 31-10-2010 by peach]

entropy51 - 31-10-2010 at 12:07

Quote: Originally posted by peach

Compared to the other physicists working on the nuclear project, he was an idiot with regards to pure maths.

He calculated the critical mass needed to sustain a chain reaction and came out with something entirely wrong, wrong by a lot. He later claimed this was him trying to prevent the project advancing. In reality, he probably just couldn't work it out, as he wasn't as good at the maths and number based physics as the others.

Sigh. It wasn't as simple as not being good at looking up square roots. There were issues of unknown nuclear properties (cross sections) and critical mass not being a single value, but dependent on things like the presence or absence of low Z nuclei to elastically scatter neutrons. Sigh.

m1tanker78 - 25-3-2011 at 10:06

Virtually all public schools in the U.S. are political playgrounds. Without getting into politics, I'll just say that it's up to the parents to moderate and educate their children. I got into plenty of trouble in school for asking, "why?"

Magpie - 25-3-2011 at 11:37

What exactly do we mean here by "learning science." I watch Nova and other science shows on TV. They are entertaining and I can keep up with the latest findings. I can learn about findings on the human brain by watching Charlie Rose's panel on that subject. But there is no way that this kind of TV is going to replace the science and math courses I took in college or even in high school.

Do the tests given to evaluate science literacy just deal with concepts, or do they require the kind of depth that only school, home study, or work experience, can provide?

I don't place a TV show, where physicists are interviewed for general public consumption, in the same league, as say, taking a rigorous calculus or thermodynamics course at college level.

Fleaker - 27-3-2011 at 10:50

Quote: Originally posted by m1tanker78

Virtually all public schools in the U.S. are political playgrounds. Without getting into politics, I'll just say that it's up to the parents to moderate and educate their children. I got into plenty of trouble in school for asking, "why?"

To this day I remember by second grade teacher screaming at me to "stop asking why! It's always "why" with you!" Humm, having kids do it to me now, I can see the nerve-wracking part to it!

I thought my secondary school experience was great! Perform above average in the AP or IB classes and get a 'B' or an 'A'. As they were weighted grades, B's were A's. I could get a 4.0 doing the bare minimum (just writing papers and doing projects, no homework). I had only one great science teacher, the rest were even less interested in their subject than their students. Years later, I still keep in touch with him (retired now) and he often laments the state of scientific education. When I had him as a teacher, he was still allowed to show sodium, potassium, and lithium's reaction with water; we were allowed to conduct interesting experiments and dilute our own acids from concentrate. Suffice it to say, that's no longer the case.

In the USA, now it seems like there is too much focus on making everyone advance as a coherent front, rather than allowing for the natural distribution with its stragglers and leaders. I wonder which is better, have a homogeneous population of reasonably proficient persons, or hold out for true innovators while dealing with the dregs?

The WiZard is In - 27-3-2011 at 13:02

Quote: Originally posted by Fleaker

In the USA, now it seems like there is too much focus on making everyone advance as a coherent front, rather than allowing for the natural distribution with its stragglers and leaders. I wonder which is better, have a homogeneous population of reasonably proficient persons, or hold out for true innovators while dealing with the dregs?

There is one college in the US South were 60% of your final
grade is based on effort. Fail every quiz-midterm-final-&c.,
and you can still graduate....

New York State unemployment dept was testing people before they
sent them out on job interviews. Employers were complaining that
some with good test scores were dumber then bump on a log. NYS
policy was to race norm test results. If the questions was
what is 3 and 10 equal? For someone from the generally
complained about for being from the Superior (Oppressor) Class
the only correct answer was 10.000000000 if you had an epicantic
fold the correct answer was 10.00000000, depending on the
spelling of you surname 9.9999999 to 10.000001. For the low
albedo people any answer between 4 and 27 was scored correctly.

NYC school made certain standard test more difficult so - obviously
they had toooooo - lower the passing scores to 55-60 if not lower.

Back when the usual people complained the NY PD's Sargent's
written test was racist. To support their argument they argued that requiring a
NY PD Sargent to be able to write and speak literal English and reason logically was racist.

My personel fav. was the women in Massachusetts who complained
in court that adding 5 or 10pts to civil service test scores for
veterans was discriminatory, the fact that anyone of them could
have at any time joined the military for 3-4 years did bother them.

They claimed it was discriminatory because they didn't
serve their county! Wonder if their argument would work for the
lottery — I could have won - only I didn't buy a ticket.....

Under court order they NYC Dept of Sanitation has developed a
written test that is certified non-discriminatory... 99% of the
test takers get a 100!

I come from the Closet Calvinist school on this ... you don't help
people by making it easy .... you help them by making it possible.

djh
-----
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man
stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and
sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again;
because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually
strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who
spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of
high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring
greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know
neither victory nor defeat.

TR

[Edited on 27-3-2011 by The WiZard is In]

Polverone - 28-3-2011 at 11:46

Quote: Originally posted by Fleaker

I thought my secondary school experience was great! Perform above average in the AP or IB classes and get a 'B' or an 'A'. As they were weighted grades, B's were A's. I could get a 4.0 doing the bare minimum (just writing papers and doing projects, no homework). I had only one great science teacher, the rest were even less interested in their subject than their students. Years later, I still keep in touch with him (retired now) and he often laments the state of scientific education. When I had him as a teacher, he was still allowed to show sodium, potassium, and lithium's reaction with water; we were allowed to conduct interesting experiments and dilute our own acids from concentrate. Suffice it to say, that's no longer the case.

In the USA, now it seems like there is too much focus on making everyone advance as a coherent front, rather than allowing for the natural distribution with its stragglers and leaders. I wonder which is better, have a homogeneous population of reasonably proficient persons, or hold out for true innovators while dealing with the dregs?

I used to agree almost exactly with you, but now I agree only half-way. I've grown up in life circumstances that meant I fell into the "leaders" group rather than stragglers. I did very well academically, because I liked to win and doing poorly would be losing, but I hated school up until I entered college. I was always at the 99th percentile in standardized tests, asked lots of questions, read an enormous amount outside of assigned schoolwork, and typically did the lion's share of both coordination and implementation on any group projects. I still think it's great to provide students with resources to go beyond what everyone's expected to master, if they have the motivation. Unfortunately school itself is a great motivation-killer for learning.

What I'm less sanguine about now is the idea of relegating some kids to "straggler" status, or even setting the bar low for the median student. Lowered expectations beget lower results. I have also come to realize with time that my heuristics for gaging someone else's intelligence or learning capacity are quite fallible. It now seems better to me to push everyone to at least try difficult things, and deal with stumbling and disappointment as necessary, than to judge early on that some people would be better served by lower standards.

Or, to put it another way: if your own child appeared to have learning difficulties, how easily would you let him or her be relegated to the "future fast food worker" standard of academic sub-competency now offered in many schools? I can't blame the schools alone, of course; anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that schools erode standards to placate parents who want their children to pass or to get high grades. Some parents value the credentials that come from school more than learning outcomes, as do many employers, and schools themselves are evaluated partially by graduation rates, so there are many incentives to inflate grades and remove challenges. On the third hand, pre-secondary schooling is so often regimented, arbitrary, and education-impairing that I'm not sure that making it "tougher" would necessarily be better.

497 - 29-3-2011 at 14:30

I can say confidently that I learned 10 times more from this forum alone than any of my science classes.
I want to thank Polverone and everyone else who made that possible. I am so grateful.

Fleaker - 5-4-2011 at 13:23

Quote: Originally posted by Polverone

Please don't misunderstand me. I don't think the bar should be set low--better to have it unrealistically high so that at least people strive. Without getting into an involved discussion on people, suffice it to say that people are individuals: some are less, some are more. Most may think and act the same, but not all. A truly homogeneous and equal society is an impossibility. We might be equal in rights, but not everyone is equal in talents, drive, or even born status. This shines through in education. My parents told me an education is what you make of it. Some people will make more of it and some will make less of it. For those that will use the tools they're given, there should never be any lack to it. It's not all about raw talent.

There needs to be proper incentives to do well in school. For me, my parents knew I was smart and they demanded high marks. There was no punishment for failure and they didn't insist on them--instead they told me that success is my responsibility. That was my incentive, knowing that it was up to me to figure out college/career/life. I'll admit, like you Polverone, I enjoyed getting the highest marks on exams, "getting" concepts that my classmates didn't "get", and being known for it. Like you, I blew away the ACT and SAT. Did I keep up the steam in college? No! Reason? I didn't feel it was benefiting me as it should. I still did well, but I wasn't summa cum laude! I was more interested in the practice and less in the theory. I did what it took to get the grades to do graduate study.

What I'm afraid of is that most students in the USA don't get to see the applications of science. Well, they should realize the power of science just holding their smart phones, or watching their LCD television, but they don't. I feel like there's a great disconnect between "this phone is really cool" and "it'd be really cool for me to help design a phone like this!". Instead, they get a watered down curriculum.

I know some of the older members here (don't make me call you out, fellows!) would remember the scientific push we had in the US following Sputnik. That is, back when the government had fears that we were being over taken in technological clout. That was the golden age of scientific literacy.