{"id":2961,"date":"2008-09-22T10:37:33","date_gmt":"2008-09-22T10:37:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/09\/22\/science-majors-followup\/"},"modified":"2008-09-22T10:37:33","modified_gmt":"2008-09-22T10:37:33","slug":"science-majors-followup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/09\/22\/science-majors-followup\/","title":{"rendered":"Science Majors Follow-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

I meant to follow up on some of the comments to my post calling for more science majors<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Happily, Johan Larson gets it<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

[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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Johan also asks an excellent question:<\/p>\n

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Why do you think they are studying something else right now?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Because they have been convinced through a combination of societal pressure and bad teaching that science is beyond their abilities.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The bigger problem, though, is that our whole society teaches them that this is all right. I’ve ranted at length about this<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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…)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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… Continue reading Science Majors Follow-Up<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}