Barbara,
Thanks for writing to me on list - others on the list who
know me will know of my passion for transparency.
First off, hooray for psci-com! We have all seen some
first rate postings in this thread in the last week. I
knew you could do it.
Ben
> I must confess to being too dispirited to not comment but also to not look
> up the proposals. However a country gets the scientists it deserves ..yes
> the quote is for free ...so conscience made me look it up. First impressions
> are this dumbing down is getting dumber.
I'm afraid dispirited is flavour of the month around here,
but we should not be down hearted. I will not do a sort of
MK line by line analysis of your last, since I am
sympathetic to much of what you say; but, I cannot ignore
"a country get the scientists it deserves". People (who
are real) do not get what they deserve, they get what they
allow others to give them. Whatever they allow others to
give them, they deserve better. Countries (which are not
real) get what their leaders/histories drop on them.
Nobody deserves that (even in Iraq).
I have a deep rooted suspicion of the term "dumbing down".
Too often it is used to dismiss any kind of work which
attempts to deal with people as they really are. I have
recently been involved in a project which ran across
fifteen European countries simultaneously. Naturally, we
worked in local languages, and tried to identify science
issues which were of local concern. When you do this kind
of thing across national boundaries, you are praised for
your sensitivity to national/cultural imperatives. Too
often, when you do exactly the same thing with different
groups within a single nation you are accused of dumbing
down. You can't have it both ways - if everybody is an
Oxbridge don there is no problem, and if they are not, then
we need to address them according to their particular needs
and circumstances. This is the case regardless of the
messages we wish to convey.
An example: I recently bought a microwave oven. Nowhere
in the manual does it explain to me how EM radiation causes
any substance to get hot. On the other hand, it tells me
all I need to know to bake a potato.
Back to the curriculum -
I share your dismay with the demise of separately labelled
sciences in school. One of the key lessons for future
citizens about science must be that all sciences are not
the same: nature of evidence, criteria for proof,
institutional background, career structures etc. Almost
everything is different. And I am old fashioned enough to
hope that people can tell an ecologist from a nuclear
physicist.
However, it seems to me that if we are teaching science to
everybody under the age of 16, we should not be preparing
them all for a place at the high table. Rather, we should
prepare them to be end users or citizens or consumers of
the outputs of science. To that end (and without a
detailed understanding of the pilot project in question) I
would suggest that an exploration of the science behind
contemporary issues (AND its social implications) would be
a good place to start. Not least because, if a pupil is
invited to consider the rival claims made by competing
groups within society based on scientific arguments, they
should know when a chemist is straying into sociology, or a
politician into physics.
pip pip
ben
On Fri, 14 Feb 2003 15:07:08 -0000 Barbara Wood-Kaczmar
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> After 7 years going into schools with trained engineers to give
> presentations i found
> 1 schools teaching 3 separate science subjects yielded best student response
> in terms of them wishing to embrace a science career, visit a science
> establishment or opt for science work experience.
> 2 schools offering only combined science had students uninterested in
> science and unused to the idea of there being 3 sciences. one teacher asked
> us not to use the word physics as they never mentioned which areas were
> which so it was pointless to advise taking a level physics if you wish to do
> a career in engineering.
>
> these schools also had science teachers with eg a degree in chemistry now
> teaching biology and freely admitting they knew nothing about it
> So will these proposals improve science education/
> not in my experience. I imply no criticism of new young teachers formed
> under the current system but i would advise smarten up rather than further
> dumbing down.
> Barbara
> Barbara Wood-Kaczmar
> [log in to unmask]
> tel/fax 01279 724371
----------------------------------------
Ben Johnson
Graphic Science
Faculty of Applied Sciences
University of the West of England
Coldharbour Lane
Bristol
BS16 1QY
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Phone +44 (0)117 344 3756
Mobile 07813 580 397
http://www.uwe.ac.uk/fas/graphicscience
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