How can we raise science literacy in the United States?

Question

It's purely antecdotal but it feels like the amount of science literacy has gotten worse in recent years. What can we do to reverse that trend? Should we throw money at it? Give incentives to schools that do well in science? Make the standardized tests harder? More scholarships for science majors? Start a new PR campaign that makes science cool? Have the government appoint someone as a Science Ambassador? What do you think would work best?

Answer 1

Are there things such as Maths Olympics, Chem Olympics and such in the US? They're competitions among students. The first round can be done in the classroom in lieu of a normal test.

I am under the impression that schools in the US are a competitive environment so kids might be tempted to try hard just for once and find out they like it. I remember having done the Maths Olympics and gotten a surprisingly good grade, because re the usual tests it mattered less 'how' you got there, just as long as your answer was correct. And no, I didn't copy.

And since the higher levels are held in the capital, the best students get a free holiday.

But the mantra is always the same, for every subject: motivated teachers. Motivated teachers. It's not the low wages so much as the lack of respect, of career prospects, of satisfaction.

When I was in high school the teacher was always right - 'cept in some cases which were downright psychos that the principal couldn't get rid of. Now the precious little snowflakes can do no wrong. Last year father and son waited outside the fence and beat the teacher - and then the principal who had intervened.

Answer 2

We should stop trying to make every school child into a scientist or mathematician and bolster those who really have both the talent and interest.  What's the saying about teaching a pig to sing?  "You'll get bad music and annoy the pig."  

This country became great because it valued individual strengths.  Now, thanks to the excessive influence of corporate America, we're diverting all of our educational resources into preparing homogenized drones for the high tech factories of tomorrow.  It's time to get our local boards of education out of the pockets of the business community and back under the control of the taxpayers.

Standardized education is the stuff of socialism.  Wake up, people.

Answer 3

Science, below the college level at least, is usually taught as a series of facts instead of a process, and kids don't get much, if any, exposure to how to DO science.  That needs to change, but it won't as long as the schools have to prepare for standardized tests that test your memorization of facts, not your actual understanding.

Answer 4

Lack of funding has definitely hurt science in the United States.  So I think there is merit to increasing funding for science education programs.

But also, change the way high school science is taught in most public schools.  I think there is too much emphasis on follow-the-instructions "experiments" that don't really teach anything.  We can save money and stimulate minds by using thought experiments, thinking through how the scientific community found out the mechanism of Drosophila development, for example.

I had a course like this in college and it was the first time someone actually taught me how to think like a scientist.  We had class discussions on what our first question should be, how we would design an experiment to answer it, and what experiment was actually done, and what they found.

Answer 5

We lose our budding scientists somewhere in 5-9 grades.  Their natural curiosity and play instincts get squashed by parents that are too busy and teachers that are too overloaded.

Not to mention TV and games.

Kids need swamps, trees, nature and sufficient boredom to force their natural curiosity to investigate it.  Nothing like hands-on experience.

Then they need adults that take time for them.  Also need adults that refuse to give the answer - forcing the kid to investigate, think, try on their own.

Read "Dr Feynman, Surely you are joking"  - playful curiosity with thinking.  Just like kids, if we just guide them.

Answer 6

As a middle school math teacher, one frustration science teachers have is they have little or no equipment.  Students are not able to experiment or learn science by experiencing it.  Science has become mostly an oral instruction.  Science teachers are totally frustrated.  Kids get bored easily, because as an oral instruction, science can be quite boring.  But as a lesson where students can interact as they "experiment" and learn from experimenting, it can be quite fascinating!

Answer 7

Get the government (and therefore the unions) out of education.  Eliminate 'recreational' drugs.  Eliminate entitlements, so the rewards people receive are again connected to their contribution to society.  Soon, people will figure out that science contributes more to the quality of life than government programs, and they will redirect their efforts.  The solutions are simple when you think about them honestly.

Answer 8

As long as big business sees lower wages overseas as a positive, science and engineering jobs will continue to flow away from the US.  College students ain't stupid... they'll study that which can help them establish a career that won't evaporate.  

BTW, I work for a medium-sized corporation bent on offshoring, and it seems to me that the bean counters entirely miss that an employee that demands 1/3 the salary of a US worker on average yields 1/3 the productivity... go figure... (sorry... looks like I got up on a soap box completely irrelevant to the question.)