I meant to follow up on some of the comments to my post calling for more science majors last week, but we had some Issues Thursday night, and I didn’t get to it on Friday. There were a number of people making negative comments about things that weren’t quite what I was saying, though, and I do still want to respond.
Happily, Johan Larson gets it:
[I]t seems to me that for a large portion of undergrads what they study doesn’t seem very important, for several reasons: they don’t know what they want to do with their lives, their preferred employers require a college degree but don’t much care what was studied, or their relevant professional credentials aren’t earned until grad school (law, medicine, etc.) I suspect it’s these people you have a chance of attracting into science majors, if they aren’t already in them.
That’s exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about. I’m not saying that people who know exactly what they want to do with their lives should change their plans to major in science, rather than getting the relevant credentials to pursue their goals. I’m talking about students who are headed into fields and careers where there are no firm prerequisites– I used the example of law school for a reason. Law school, unlike medical school, does not require specific prerequisites that would push students toward majoring in particular fields. A biology major is perfectly good preparation for law school, and there’s no reason why future law students shouldn’t be majoring in biology.
A number of people commented to the effect that I would somehow be forcing students from disadvantaged backgrounds to pay for more time in school to do hard majors that would ruin their careers, which is baffling to me. I’m not talking about mandatory science majors, or pulling people out of definite career tracks. I’m talking about students headed into careers that don’t have specific major requirements.
And, in many cases, a science major would expand the available options for these students. There’s obviously a trade-off involved, but spending you could make an argument that spending five years in college and leaving with a chemistry major is a better investment than spending four years and majoring in political science.
Johan also asks an excellent question:
Why do you think they are studying something else right now?
Because they have been convinced through a combination of societal pressure and bad teaching that science is beyond their abilities.
Don’t get me wrong– majoring in science is not easy. But it’s not a totally alien activity, either. Science, broadly defined, is every bit as fundamental a human activity as anything in the arts and humanities.
There are two problems, here. One is just that we, as a society, do a miserable job of teaching science in the public schools. Students come into college with a bad impression of science as a boring and confusing subject based on the memorization of arcane facts and disconnected ideas.
The bigger problem, though, is that our whole society teaches them that this is all right. I’ve ranted at length about this recently, but it’s a major peeve of mine. The popular media, celebrities, commentators, politicians, parents, and teachers are constantly sending messages to kids that science is a pursuit for poorly socialized nerds, and that normal people aren’t able to follow it, and don’t care about it.
When students aren’t good at or interested in reading, it’s a major crisis– parents hire tutors, push books on their kids, wring their hands in online forums. When students aren’t good at or interested in science, it’s greeted with a shrug– “Oh, well. I guess he’s just not a Science Person.” (Math is an in-between case– most people care about their children’s math abilities only to the point required by standardized testing…)
These two factors are why the default majors at most colleges are things that require as little exposure to math and science as possible. Students are taught, both directly and indirectly, that science is difficult and something to be avoided, and as a result, they give it a wide berth. Which feeds into a vicious circle, as they go on to have children who have no interest in science, and teach them that science is to be avoided, and so on.
This is a complicated problem, and not something that can be fixed easily or quickly. A real solution will demand changes both from within the scientific community, and also in the larger society.
Within science, particularly academic science, we need to recognize that teaching and communicating to a broader audience is an important activity. We need to support and encourage those professional scientists who have the talent and inclination to do science outreach, and we need to stop looking at students who pursue careers outside academic science as if they’re losers accepting some sort of consolation prize.
In the larger society, we need to recognize that we’re doing a lousy job teaching science, and take steps to improve the situation. This will require money– the problems with pre-college science education stem mostly from the fact that the salaries simply aren’t worth the hassle for people with the skills needed to be good science teachers. We need to pay teachers better, and work to improve their working conditions to the point where it becomes an acceptable career option for science majors.
I firmly believe that everyone can learn science– not everyone can be a scientist, but everyone can learn at least the basics of science. The fact that there are people who don’t learn science, and that this is regarded as no big deal is one of the biggest failures of our society, and lies at the root of a number of other problems.
Saved for future reference. That is an excellent piece of writing, with some incredibly relevant points. I am adding it to my “giant folder of good writing about science and education” if that is all right with you.
-leaving bench science to become a science teacher Spikey
To educate students from disadvantaged backgrounds outside than their other-ablement is to destroy their culture (as cochlear implants destroy deaf culture). The US pauses at the brink of $800+ billion affirmation of cultural heteronormatism,
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/09/20/treasurys-financial-bailout-proposal-to-congress/
“Decisions by the Secretary [of the Treasury] pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
“Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $11,315,000,000,000.” [US GDP 2007 = $13.84 trillion]
everyone can learn science That is hate language. Every opinion is true. Empirically false opinions deserve unlimited subsidy to maintain their self-esteem. Diversity is achieved by empowerment not by education.
Years ago, Auburn University had a General Science major. If your ultimate goal was a Ph.D. in science, you would work for a bachelor’s degree in, say, Physics or Chemistry. But you could instead earn a “General Science” degree, with a major in physics, chemistry, geology, etc. The General Science diploma in your chosen major would include all of the really important 200- and 300-level courses, but it didn’t require as many of the really tough and time-consuming 400-level courses devoted to highly specialized topics. That left some room to explore broader survey classes in several other sciences, or to take some business or education courses, etc.
So, General Science with a physics major was a somewhat easier and faster degree to earn than Physics, but still more challenging than the typical liberal-arts, education, or business degree. This was an excellent option for somebody planning to later earn a masters in science education or an MBA, or for somebody just wanting a broad education in science for a solid Bachelor’s.
Perfect for future secondary-school science teachers. Also, a degree with _broader_ exposure to _several_ sciences instead of extreme specialization in one science makes a lot more sense for anyone not headed for a Ph.D. and a research career.
Such a degree is a great match for what you’re advocating. And administratively it’s easy to implement since it’s just a different collection of existing courses.
So why isn’t it a lot more common?
Uncle Al –
You’re batshit. I won’t dignify your comment with more than this response.
Students come into college with a bad impression of science as a boring and confusing subject based on the memorization of arcane facts and disconnected ideas.
I think part of the problem here is that the world “science” is used ambiguously. It can mean the body of knowledge we have about the natural world. But it can also mean the techniques used to gain such knowledge (by generating hypotheses, testing them by experiment, and subjecting them to criticism).
This becomes a problem because when we teach science, we generally focus on the body of existing knowledge, to the detriment of the discovery techniques. There’s just so much we already know. And feeding students knowledge that’s been old hat for a hundred years or more just isn’t all that interesting, which is why students get the idea science is just about memorizing arcana.
Might it be useful to separate out the discovery bits into a separate course? Call it “Tools of Scientific Discovery”. It could cover experiment design, statistical analysis of results, survey design (for social science), avoidance of self-delusion by blind and double-blind experiments, the basics of result reporting, and such.
That should read: I think part of the problem here is that the WORD “science” is used ambiguously.
Grrr.
Hey Katharine,
http://admission.stanford.edu/student/diversity/index.html
http://admissions.msu.edu/campusLife/studentLife_diversityClubs.asp
http://diversityresources.tufts.edu/
http://admissions.boisestate.edu/cultural/index.shtml
http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/diversity/
Social advocacy so obscenely financed, legislated, and imposed since 1970 has arrived. If stupidity got us into this mess then why can’t it get us out? Intelligent people keep score when the outcome is important.
I have, obviousy, freed Uncle Al’s last comment from the moderation queue.
I will warn you, though, that this is not a topic that will go anywhere good. If you insist on continuing this conversation, tread very lightly, because I have my finger on the disemvoweller button.
Mondays at Nia Educational Charter School have shorter classes and early dismissal.
We had just enough time in 9th Grade Chemistry, 10th Grade Biology, and 11th Grade Physiology today to review the fact that roughly 1/4 of my students on the homework assigned Thursday, collected Friday, and graded over the weekend, classified 18 substances as Element, Mixture, or Compound, and declared that Pizza was a compound. Most of those classified Taco Salad as a Mixture. So, is my wife right that they assumed that the melted cheese bound Pizza into a single large molecule, or what?
Before I gave the list, I gave definitions, and examples. I told them that salt, sugar, and water were compounds. Then, when I asked, many insisted that water was an element. As was air. As was salt. And that sugar was a mixture.
So they remember Earth, Air, Fire, and Water from the first lecture that I gave 2 weeks ago, but stopped following the updates to that list…
I will be meeting with individual parents 2nd week of October, and showing these homeworks to the parents.
Forgive me, Chad, but these posts seems to boil down to: “More college students should major in a ‘science’ field, or at least arrive at college able to take & interested in taking several genuine ‘science’ classes on their way to getting a non-science degree.”
OK, I agree with that 100%, and I’m sure everyone who reads this post has observed the phenomena you mention dozens of times or more. But I wonder whether you have a proposal, or if you’re just pointing out the problem. With no snarkiness intended, to change this we need something a bit more concrete than “it’s the fault of the kids/parents/media/poverty,” or “someone needs to spend more money” to fix it.
Really, I’m curious. I don’t want to clutter up your blog with my own theories; but this is your blog and your selected topic, so perhaps you could spend some time outlining your policy suggestions.