In all countries boys scored higher than girls at all levels, with the difference particularly wide from the 10-year-old to the 14-year-old level. Girls in the final year of secondary school, however, scored higher than boys in biology in Sweden and Hong Kong.
Results of the Second International Mathematics Study, a similar survey that tested knowledge of mathematics of 8th-grade students and 12th-grade students in a college-preparatory track, showed the same distressing pattern. The performance of American students on the mathematics test was at or below the international average for 8th graders and was very low for 12th graders taking college-preparatory mathematics. In some cases, the 12th graders placed among the lowest quarter of the 20 nations studied. Japanese 8th graders had the highest scores in the study. Among 12th graders, Hong Kong achieved the highest score, with Japan a close second.
The study concluded that the mathematics curricu-lum in the United States, with its emphasis on computational skills rather than the real problem-solving and concepts they need for success in later life, ”is helping to create a nation of underachievers.”
”It`s pretty horrendous,” says George Tressel, director of the division of materials development at the National Science Foundation. ”We have some real serious problems. There`s no question about it.
”After Sputnik, the foundation poured millions of dollars into developing the best curricula for teaching science in the world. We had the best way to teach physics for little physicists, the best way to teach chemistry for little chemists and the best way to teach biology for little biologists, and they set the standard for how these subjects should be taught. However, they were models of how to do it, and the best materials are demanding. They assumed that you would have the best of classrooms with laboratories and the best of teachers to go along with them. That`s not typical of schools.
”Not surprisingly, these models were used-and are used still-in the best schools by the best students. However, we`ve got a different problem today: We are not drawing enough students into science. For all practical purposes, in elementary school we don`t teach much science.This is one of our great mistakes.
”We wait until a kid gets into high school, and then we ask a 14-year-old who has no preparation, `Do you want to take physics, chemistry, botany and zoology?` Roughly 23 percent of the population takes three years of math and science. That`s typically a year of math, some algebra, advanced algebra and a couple of courses maybe in general science and biology and maybe some chemistry.
”All right, so 23 percent of the population then is the total pool from which we can expect to draw (scientists), but in fact we know that four out of five of those only took it to get into college and are really not interested in it. So what we`re doing with these high school courses is mixing up students who are interested in it as a career pursuit with students who are interested in it as an overview of+science+because they want to get into college.
”We are not fulfilling either one very well. We are teaching a general student as though a course in chemistry and a course in physics was the way to get an overview of+science,+and for the little chemist or little physicist, we are watering down the courses and not making them demanding enough.
”Then this is compounded by the fact that not teaching science in elementary school means we`re running a filter, that kids who are saying yes to science are kids like my kid, kids with socially affluent parents who take them to science museums and buy them books and a microscope and a camera, that sort of stuff. You worry about the kids who traditionally don`t go into science-namely, blacks and Hispanics. If they do go into it, they have terribly high attrition rates.
”So we have got to do something about teaching+science+in the earliest grades, and that`s what I`m doing for a living here: trying to plot a strategy providing a consistent pattern of educating all students to give them a background so that `Do you want to take chemistry and physics?` is a reasonable question to ask.”
If children are turned off even when they have some+science+instruction in the elementary grades, it is because the teaching doesn`t capitalize on their natural curiosity, says Norman Metzger, deputy executive officer of the National Research Council, the operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences. ”They`re all curious about the world and how it functions, but they`re not getting the idea of+science+as simply a way of exploring the unknown, of shining a light on the darkness, and that it is, in fact, great fun.”
Even in elementary schools that offer+science,+it generally is not regarded as an important basic subject, and the teachers generally are not prepared to teach science, says Bill Aldridge, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. ”As a result, they don`t understand the difference between teaching science and having children read about science and memorize facts. So they tend to focus on the reading part without demonstrating the phenomenon. They use the term `reading readiness` for every other kind of reading, and they don`t realize you have the same thing in science-you need that experience before the words have any meaning.
”They should be focusing on `How do you know?` and `What is the evidence?` and `Why do you believe?` because the students know the facts but they don`t know why. They will learn something about the phases of the Moon, for example, but if you ask them what causes it, half of them will say it`s the shadow of the Earth. There`s no understanding.”
At the high school level, Aldridge says, there`s a shortage of teachers who are qualified to teach science and math. ”The data we have show that about 30 percent of the classes in science and math at the secondary level are staffed by teachers not qualified in that subject. They`re qualified in another area of science, so that you have a perfectly qualified biology teacher trying to teach physics, that sort of thing. So it isn`t quite as bad as it looks, but it`s still bad because they still don`t know anything about the subject they`re teaching.”
In addition to high dropout rates among black and Hispanic students at the high school level, there also is a gender gap. Although female students are more likely to complete high school than are males, they are less likely to take science courses other than biology. To try to solve the puzzle of why girls pass up science, Jon D. Miller of Northern Illinois University`s Public Opinion Laboratory is conducting a national longitudinal study that follows a national sample of 7,000 students for four years, testing their science and mathematics skills, recording their attitudes and gathering data from their teachers and parents.
”We`re trying to figure whether that`s a parental influence or a peer influence, whether their girlfriends don`t think it`s a very cool thing to do or whether in fact they think that boys don`t think it`s a very cool thing to do,” he says. ”Or, conversely, whether the boys think it`s a very male thing to do. It depends where the stereotypes are coming from, and we don`t know how much is teacher-oriented, because most high school science teachers are still males.
”It`s very important for us to understand what kind of signals we`re giving to people that tell them that they can plan to live the next 40 years of their life without knowing any science and math. More and more people are going to have to confront at least computers and other aspects of technology in their everyday work.”
Unaware parents may be part of the problem, too. ”In many cases parents do not know about tracking systems in high schools,” says Shirley Malcom, program head of the office of opportunities in science for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. ”They may look and see if their kid is taking math, but they don`t know that there are different kinds of math.
”We`ve worked on developing some new materials aimed at minority parents. There are booklets distributed by way of parent workshops that tell parents they can`t depend on somebody else to watch out and make sure that your kid is taking the right subjects in the right sequence, that if they don`t take them in sequence, they`re essentially handicapped. That is the message that has to get out into the community about what it`s going to take to survive in the 21st Century.
”In the past it was felt that we could make it off of just an elite, a matter of finding and training the best and the brightest. Well, that`s not going to cut it now. We have to worry about the general scientific and technical literacy of the general work force. And that`s a whole other, different problem. It`s a matter of providing for the many that which was previously provided to an elite few.”
Beyond high school there are concerns about the nation`s undergraduate programs. The report of a National Science Board committee organized to assess the state of undergraduate education in science, mathematics and engineering found that those programs ”have declined in quality and scope to such an extent that they are no longer meeting national needs.”
The committee report, released two years ago, singled out dull laboratory instruction and obsolete facilities, faculty members unable to keep up with the burgeoning knowledge in their discipline and courses and curricula that were ”frequently out of date in content, unimaginative and poorly organized . . . and (that) fail to reflect the recent advances in the understanding of teaching and learning.”
Reform must start somewhere, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science has begun with the ambitious Project 2061, a title chosen for its symbolic value. It`s the year Halley`s Comet will return. When the comet appeared the first time in 1910, physicists were just starting to think that the atom might have a nucleus, and in 1985, when it returned, the world was ringed with a nuclear arsenal capable of blowing it into oblivion. Similarly, in 1910 biologists were still learning the genetic rules of plant breeding, and by 1985 they were splicing genes to make new organisms.
Because the year 2061 can be expected to dawn with scientific advances at least as spectacular as those that occurred between 1910 and 1985, the first phase of Project 2061 will answer a fundamental question when it is unveiled this fall: What vital knowledge of science, mathematics and technology will all high school graduates need in the years ahead?
”Kids, most of them, go to school from kindergarten to 12th grade, and we keep claiming that they`re not learning enough science and mathematics,”
says James Rutherford, chief education officer of AAAS and director of Project 2061. ”We felt that part of the reason was that we don`t know what constitutes scientific literacy. What science is worth knowing by all 17- and 18-year-olds without regard to what they want to do with their lives? Until you know that, you can`t have a good curriculum or know how to train teachers, what ought to be in books and what to test for. We have to educate our kids to get through an entire life; now what do they need?
”There will have been about 300 or more people involved-critics, panelists, scientists, engineers, philosophers, historians-all arguing with each other to come up with this sort of statement. Now, of course, that won`t change anything in the world-let alone the schools-but our argument is that real reform takes a long time, 20 or 25 years, and most of the work has to be done at the local level. The only chance we have is to get a strong enough beacon-common cause, common directions. Then our individual works can begin to push in the same direction and make some headway.”
Two more phases of Project 2061 will follow over a period of years:
translating the first document that sets out what all high school graduates should know about science and math into a curriculum and, finally,
implementation and mobilization at the state and school levels.
It seems like a formidable task, indeed, and yet there are examples in other countries, our competitors. Europe and Japan were devastated after World War II, and some countries experienced civil revolution, noted a national convocation of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering in 1982. Despite the adversity, such countries as the Soviet Union, China, Japan and West Germany were able to redirect their educational systems within a comparatively short period of time.
Furthermore, their students must work harder. Their school year averages 240 days, compared with a typical U.S. school year of 180 days that actually averages out to 160 days because of absences. Their students attend school 8 hours a day for 5 1/2 to 6 days a week with short vacations interspersed throughout the year, compared with 4 to 5 hours a day 5 days a week and a 3-month hiatus on learning in America. And specialized study for children in those countries begins in the 6th grade with separate courses in mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics and geography. Those courses last up to six years and are required of all students.
If the prognosis for widespread scientific literacy in America seems unbearably grim, that may be a good thing. After all, when Americans are convinced the perils are great enough, they are able to bite the bullet.
Although he decries his survey`s finding that 1 in 20 Americans arrange their days based, in part, on their horoscope, Jon Miller of Northern Illinois University finds a faint ray of hope. He also notes that half of American adults changed their eating habits based on animal studies on carcinogens.
”Though people may not be very literate about what+science+is or what exactly a scientist does,” he says, ”they do have a high degree of faith in +science+in terms of health matters, and they`re willing to change their behavior.”
What is at stake now, experts say, is no less than the health and survival of the nation.
