58 Comments on “The Quest for Better Science Education”   rss feed

1. collin on Aug 31st, 2005 at 5:36 pm

   But don’t get cocky, folks, because:

   of those, 18 percent said that evolution was “guided by a supreme being”, and 26 percent said that evolution occured through natural selection.

   I’m a bit confused by this. My confusion may be that I’ve never actually studied evolutionary biology. I take natural selection to be one part of the model of evolution.

   But, is this quote saying that only 26% of people define, and believe in, evolution as an evolutionary biologist defines it, while 18% of people define, and believe in, evolution in a distinct manner from the way an evolutionary biologist might (and hence, as an unjustified model)?

   Or is it saying that while 48% of people think evolution as an evolutionary biologist defines it is a model which is wells upported by the data (fossil records, finches, etc.) and is the only such scientific model, 18% of them think that this is all part of god’s plan (or something similar)?

   If it’s the former, then yeah, that’s bad. If it’s the latter, then I think you’re pressing your luck to expect anything different.

2. Joe Bolte on Aug 31st, 2005 at 5:47 pm

   Hi Clifford,
   If I understand correctly, you suggest that we (I am a physics person) try to get more portrayals of scientists in “TV drama and the movies.” I further presume that you mean accurate protrayals, since it won’t help anything to have the kind of god awful science movies I have seen recently. “Godsend” and “The Core” stand out as particularly bad examples of science-drama. So, we need something accurate about science, that people want to watch. Clearly the lives of scientists are out, since the real lives of scientists doing science is incredibly boring. (I am a physics person.) In short, I think working a romanticized version of science into popular dramas is going to misinform the public, rather than inform it.

   Modern media does have something very powerful to offer the public understanding of science. This is something I like to call “totally sweet computer animation.” There’s nothing better to get someone interested in a scientific concept than to have a well-done tsca-aided explanation of it. If you could have cogent 60 second explanations, accompanied by tcsa of DNA unzipping, the solar system forming, the location of the milky way inside the local group etc., You’d have the kids falling all over themselvs to learn science and the grown-ups would take a keen inteest too, I bet.

3. Clifford on Aug 31st, 2005 at 5:48 pm

   Fair points, collin. I did not see the questions. I’m merely quoting. I doubt that the distinctions you draw can be extracted from the data… However, my issue is not neccessarily with the evolution vs creationism thing alone though, but science education in general….

   Cheers,

   -cvj

4. Clifford on Aug 31st, 2005 at 5:51 pm

   Oh, Oh, Oh! Joe Bolte - I disagree. But, please come back for more of a reply to what you say since I have to run to a faculty meeting. Well, it’s in ten minutes, but I have to run to get some strong coffee in preparation for it…..

   Later.

   -cvj

5. Quantoken on Aug 31st, 2005 at 8:05 pm

   This is probably off topic, but it may help save some lifes in New Orleans, as well as educate people of general physics.

   They are dropping huge sand bags hoping to plug the levee leaks. That would not work. Any one has any basic training in fluid dynamics knows why it doesn’t work. The mass of largest solid body flowing water can move is proportional to the SIX power of the velocity. So if the velocity doubles, you need a mass 64 times as heavy. You can’t beat that SIXth power increase.

   Instead, they should first drop large steel frames, made of steel pipes of maybe 10 or 20 meter long, forming some grid structure. Such steel frames can easily sinl to the bottom of water, and stay there. Once that’s achieved, you stay to drop in regular size sand bags, which are just big enough to be caught by the grids of the steel frames. That’s how you can salvage the levee and save the city.

   Know why? Because such steel frame structure only need to increase proportion to the first power of the water flow speed, not sixth power!!! Basic physics. Certainly, when sand bags begin to fill the holes of the grid, it’s 6th power again. But by that time, to total mass of the sand bags caught in the grids will be far more than what the helicopter can lift at one time!!!

   Quantoken

6. CapitalistImperialistPig on Aug 31st, 2005 at 8:15 pm

   My interpretation: Most people are pretty much clueless about Darwin, and answer “Whatever” to these questions. Prof Butler’s idea is a good one, but a really big barrier is the terrible state of elementary and secondary science education. The books suck. Most of the teachers are clueless.

   At one time the NSF (or somebody) sponsored Summer Sciene Institutes for teachers. The teachers got an education, credits, and a stipend. It would be nice if they could bring those back, on a large scale.

   However, even with ideal science education and role models, a lot of kids and adults still won’t like science. I don’t know if there is a cure for that.

7. Adam on Aug 31st, 2005 at 8:33 pm

   I don’t think that the problem with science education in the UK is close to what it is here, Clifford (which isn’t, of course, to say that there isn’t a problem there, but kids do get a minimum of 11 years of biology, physics and chemistry). Political and religious in science education is basically zero.

8. Clifford on Aug 31st, 2005 at 9:15 pm

   Hi Adam,

   It does not take much to suddenly find that an entire generation is lost. I would not be so complacent about the UK. I’ve taught there, and I know teachers in the school system.

   Remember:- When the USA sneezes, the UK catches a cold.

   -cvj

9. Clifford on Aug 31st, 2005 at 9:17 pm

   CapitalistImperialistPig: Ideas on bringing more science into the popular media and the advertising spots on TV are not intended to replace efforts to improve education in schools. It is not one or the other. We can do both.

   -cvj

10. Clifford on Aug 31st, 2005 at 9:32 pm

    Joe Bolte, you said:

    So, we need something accurate about science, that people want to watch. Clearly the lives of scientists are out, since the real lives of scientists doing science is incredibly boring.

    I say: Have a look again at the popular “career” shows, as I call them. LA Law, ER, CSI, The Practice, etc. Then talk to people who actually have those careers. You will learn two things: (1) Their day to day jobs are no more intrinsicaly interesting than ours. Nor less. (2) Nobody is watching these shows especially because they want to hear Dr. So-and-so yelling for 200cc’s of blah blah blah, etc. Nor are they neccessarily tuning in to hear the gory details of tort law. In the real world this is all just as boring as hearing us talk about solving equations, or fixing a vaccuum pump, or calibrating a detector. They are tuning in -largely- to see the lives of real people, who just happen to have those careers in that setting. It is an interesting arena in which to see the drama about all the usual things that involve human beings - love, hate, greed, jealousy, falls from grace, redemption, happiness, sadness, success, failure, etc…. It is almost entirely incidental that they then get some accidental knowledge of details of the medicine, police procedure, legal matters, and forensic procedures, adn form a better appreciation of the thigns which surround those careers and how it fits into society.

    That is why the “physics is boring, who would watch a show about physics?” conplaint is just wrong-headed. It all depends upon what you put into a show. Look also at the spectacular success of HBO’s Six Feet Under: “Who would watch a show about undertakers?”, is I’m sure what several people said.

    Basically, people will watch pretty much anything…. and so you haev a perfect delivery vehicle for doing some educational good while they are focusing on the soap opera aspects of who’s stealing who’s research, who’s sleeping with who, etc.

    Just watch. you’ll see.

    Cheers,

    -cvj

11. Clifford on Aug 31st, 2005 at 9:37 pm

    Oh…. and someone is going to say…. “How is this going to get more people to learn science?” My response is that it is not going to replace efforts elsewhere, but it will do a huge amount to break down several barriers of perception that people have about science, and scientists. (People will find themselves discussing the issues that come up on the shows, mixing up the soap opera aspects with the science issues……those dinner conversations I mentioned will get some science in them by the back door.) Once those barriers are down, the learning has a chance to begin.

    I could say more, but I think you get the idea.

    -cvj

12. damtp dweller on Aug 31st, 2005 at 11:08 pm

    So, we need something accurate about science, that people want to watch. Clearly the lives of scientists are out, since the real lives of scientists doing science is incredibly boring.

    I think the salient point is that scientists actually lead entirely normal lives. Sure, some of the physicists I know are a bit eccentric, but most of us have just as many bills to pay, sports to watch, and beer to drink as the rest of the population. So, if you mean boring in the sense of “ordinary,” then yeah, most of our lives are extremely boring (excepting those of us lucky enough to be swanning around Aspen or Beijing

    On a slightly different note, is it realistic to expect that the work of real scientists such as physicists can provide compelling prime-time viewing in the same manner that lawyers, cops, firefighters, and crime scene investigators do? The common thread that ties cop shows together is the whole good vs. evil thing. It draws the viewer in and makes them feel involved. Unfortunately I think theoretical physics will have a hard time doing that.

    Unless… (runs off to write a screenplay for a gritty new drama involving the struggle between string theorists and loop quantum guys on the mean streets of New York - Flaws and Order).

13. Risa on Sep 1st, 2005 at 12:11 am

    I don’t know, I think most theoretical physicists are more interesting than they look

    But dampt — I also think that the fact that most of us pay bills and drink beer is much better than the image that all of us wear lab coats and have spiky white hair (well, actually, I had spiky white hair for a while, but that’s another story…)

14. Clifford on Sep 1st, 2005 at 12:17 am

    dampt dweller….. for your last comment see this comment on one of my early posts. You’ll find it amusing, I suspect.

    On the question in the paragraph before. See my comment before. Physicists are people first and physicists second. You write a show about people, and you’ll get viewers. If they happen to be people who do physics, then fine. I just don’t know why there is always tihs hang up about this issue whenever I discuss it. It just does not take that much imagination to dream up the right sort of ideas, folks. It’s not rocket science. The only hard thing is selling it to the folks who are looking for formulaic stuff to produce. They’ll assume (like newspaper editors, etc) that the audience won’t get it. But they are wrong. So stuff does not get made, and people like yourself and others, assume that it is because it is intrinisically hard to write good drama about physics. That is just nonsense. Physics is s human endeavour and so you will find drama everywhere with just the slightest bit of imagination.

    Ok. I’ve said enough on this. Just keep an open mind about this. It is just not that hard, by which I mean: no harder than drama about any other career activity. Really. Yep. For real. Uh-huh. Sure. No… really.

    -cvj

15. Dallas Trinkle on Sep 1st, 2005 at 12:41 am

    I’ve often wondered if an entertaining show about science grad. students could be made at some point… *shrug* I think the main point is with most “career” shows (comedy or drama), the specifics of the career is more setting than singular source of material. “Scrubs” is an example: basically an office-comedy in a hospital.

    As for the teaching of creationism/ID in science class, I think Neil Postman had the best idea so far: embrace it. “Intelligent design” is a classic example of an “explanation” that is not science. Creationism was what people thought for centuries, and the basic claims have been proven wrong. Similar to the way that science class teaches the earlier geocentric view before the Copernican revolution, for contrast. As for “Intelligent Design”, it provides an example of something that isn’t science not because it’s “wrong,” but by its very construction, could never be proven wrong. Introducing a mysterious creator provides ever-movable goalposts, that place the idea outside of science. Contrasting it with evolution provides an excellent example of what makes science _science_.

    I do realize that the IDers want ID taught as valid science, and that is a problem… I’ll just dream of a world where science teachers get to teach science and the philosophy of science… –d

16. agm on Sep 1st, 2005 at 12:43 am

    There’s even a possible title lined up, if you can get the rights*:

    The Adventures of a Curious Character.

    *And no one mixes it up with that other Adventures of … from a decade ago.

17. Gavin Polhemus on Sep 1st, 2005 at 4:25 am

    To improve science education, we need to bake more cookies. Anyone reading this blog probably has a pretty good grasp of science. Do you volunteer in your local schools? Do you help raise money for your neighborhood youth center? Have you offered to be a merit badge counselor with the local boy scout or girl scout troop?

    We tend to think that when the school board is setting science policy, we experts can appear to tell them what is what. But the fact is that if nobody on the board recognizes us as someone who cares about kids, then they are going to pay more attention to the active mom (or rare active dad) who they see baking cookies for the bake sale and chaperoning school field trips, even if that person has no idea what they are talking about. If you want people in education to listen to you, you have to prove to them that you care about kids. So coach a soccer team, help with the school play, or offer to give a guest lecture on your favorite topic at the local school. (My high school string theory lecture was standing room only.)

    Do you want to do more? Concern over science education in the public schools played a large role in my decision to get a teaching license and look for a job in the public schools. I live in a small (pop. 150,000) city with a great school system, but none of the physics teachers have physics degrees. I have a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, but no one in the schools was very interested in hearing my ideas about physics curriculum until they saw me in the classroom working with kids. Now teachers ask for copies of my lesson plans and use my laboratory ideas. They invite me to come to talk about topics that get kids excited about physics. I helped select a new textbook for the district. I’m working to make sure that the history of the universe is part of the physics curriculum and that students know that physics is an active field. I know the physics, but now I also know the state science content standards, the classroom environment, and the education speak that makes me an insider in the schools. If there were more science Ph.D.’s lining up to teach in public schools, then the last thing creationists would want us to do is “teach the controversy,” because we would teach it for what it is.

    Several years ago, about the time of the first Kanas School Board creationism push, Scientific American had an great editorial on this subject. (The article is not free, but here is a preview). That article was one of the things that opened my eyes to the need for a grass roots approach to improving science education. You don’t need to wait for the science community to produce some science based reality show (”The Great Race…For the Higgs”) or spiffy public service announcement (brought to you by baryogenisis). You can make a difference all by your self.

    I’d like to see more posts about things cosmic variance readers are doing or are planning to do to improve science education. Not “we should,” but “I will.”

18. Mark on Sep 1st, 2005 at 5:59 am

    Hi Gavin,

    There have been quite a lot of posts about public lectures, Cafe Scientifique, Saturday Morning Physics, museum exhibits, etc… (some of these were on Orange Quark and Preposterous Universe, before this blog started).

    I can’t speak for all of us (just because I don’t know everything my colleagues are doing), but people here at CV are very active in public science education beyond our jobs. The fact that we have this blog is partly a consequence of that involvement, not a substitute for it.

19. Adam on Sep 1st, 2005 at 6:08 am

    Clifford: I was a schoolteacher (teaching primarily physics) in the UK and the problems in science education there don’t, I think, have anything to do with the problems in the US. A large wedge of the suspicion of science that you see in the US appears to me to be religiously motivated and that just isn’t a factor at all in the UK education system (which is somewhat ironic when the US governmental system is set up to be pretty secular, and the British governmental system clearly isn’t). The last really politically motivated intervention in the UK education system was under the Tories, to forbid ‘promotion of homosexuality’ by teachers and that clause has now been removed, I believe; the fact that it was, at the time, a popular intervention has a lot more to do with homophobia and not to do with religion, so the religious connection there is at least once removed (if you claim that homophobia is religiously inspired). And the UK has religious schools in the state sector; I taught at a catholic state school and the only concession in science to religious parents was that their kids could sit out some of the lessons where contraception was mentioned (this was a school policy, rather than a national one, I think), although I never knew of any that did.

    The general trend, even during my time as a teacher, was towards more secularisation rather than less. The legally mandated religious assembly (which has been in the law for donkey’s years, not a new development) has basically disappeared, at least until it gets a sporadic and temporary revival every time that OFSTED inspectors come.

20. Mark on Sep 1st, 2005 at 6:22 am

    I essentially agree with Adam about the differences between the US and UK regarding the influence of religion on education. Clifford is right thought - eternal vigilance is the price of freedom from America’s social diseases.

21. Clifford on Sep 1st, 2005 at 9:19 am

    Adam: You misunderstand me. I did not say anywhere above that the problems in the UK and USA were the same. Just like it is not the case that all the problems here in the USA can all be blamed on the same source. The sources are multiple, asnd certainly not all political. The UK is therefore not immune. It will especially not be immune if people do the usual thing of being complacent, assuming that bad thing only happen the US, while everything is bliss in the Old Country*. Recall my earlier posts about the near absence of regular science coverage by any of the several national newspapers….

    I do appreciate your remarks about your experiences teaching in the UK….but please don’t be complacent.

    cheers,

    -cvj

    *It is like the continual cry you hear from people in the UK about how much better TV is in the UK is than in the USA……Not true by a long shot. But that’s another story.

22. Adam on Sep 1st, 2005 at 10:05 am

    Heh, as someone who relatively recently moved to the US from the UK, I do prefer UK TV, at least the news television. I’m also peturbed by the Federal censorship of television in the US because I find it hard to believe that the government’s job is to protect people from, heaven forbid, the sight of naked flesh or the sound of profanity (and the UK government has significant failings in this regard, too, just not as horribly on the matter of broadcast media as is the case in the US). My concern is that UK TV is becoming like US TV (which might mirror, in part, your concerns about the risk to UK science education), but it’s largely inevitable because US television succeeds because it really is giving the largest number of people what they want, so it’s ‘good’ in that sense, at least. But that’s just my taste, and it’s no more valid than anyone else’s; many of us tend to prefer what we’re used to in many cases, anyhow. Added to which, I am a really big fan of NPR and, to a slightly lesser extent, PBS. I’m not that bothered about television in general, however, so if it all goes to Hell, I won’t much care.

    I do think, incidentally, that the science teaching profession in the UK is on the ball, and aware and outward-looking, in terms of resisting certain degradations to the quality of science education that we might be considering here. The problems that do exist, which are significant, include a serious shortage of teachers in chemistry and physics and the perception that science, particularly physics, is ‘hard’. Having taught a range of subjects, I think that the students are right; while the physics A Levels are at once too bereft of content and difficultly, they are at the same time still being more intellectually challenging than many of the other A Levels. This is against a backdrop (whatever the governments of Thatcher, Major and Blair have claimed; they didn’t force this degredation, though, so much as let the educational establishment get away with it) of slipping standards in many subjects including physics, where exam results miraculously improve year on year and success is annually proclaimed when it’s pretty clear that the exams are getting easier. In physics, the way that exams have gotten easier is in part due to how the questions are asked, as there are no more questions of the ‘here’s a physical situation, prove this equaton for 25 marks’ variety, but also removing the more difficult content. Anyone who’s taught potential-seperation and force-seperation relations at ‘A’ Level knows that they are generally found to be difficult, as are the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Biot-Savart law, etc, which have also been removed or weakened. In their place, to attract more interest, are optional topics such as astrophysics, medical physics, particle physics; I’ve taught all three of those (and some others, like electronics) and the level of physics required to get a moderate grade is even lower than it is in the main ‘A’ Level. My main area of this was in teaching physics (and I marked A Level papers for the Nuffield Physics project and the IOP course that replaces it), but I could also see the same sorts of omissions and degradations in maths and chemistry when I taught those at ‘A’ Level.

    I hadn’t meant to say much about the problems that are most important in UK science education, but they are primarily home-grown. The biggest problems that have in some sense been imported, relate to Blair’s current obsession with getting 50% of the population to college and in this he has apparently to some extent been inspired by America. The problems that I’m talking about, though, have older roots than that, although they aren’t helped by the attempts to increase college enrollment, sadly.

    So, I’m not optimistic or cheerful about the future of science in the UK, but I don’t think that the more serious problems are related to those in the US. In this case, the UK can’t moan about ‘americanisation’ as it does when discussing, say, the rise in obesity amongst the UK population. The failings in the UK education system are not new and aren’t particularly secret.

    With regards to the paucity of after-dinner science conversation or the lack of a lot of science reporting in the media, well, I don’t see why we should expect to be able to compete with news of David Beckham’s newest antics and I’m not sure that we’d benefit enormously from being able to do so anyhow. Having said that, I think that public fascination with science is still pretty high, higher than it was when I was growing up. As soon as people discover that I’m a physicst, I am generally bombarded with questions relating to recent physics news which implies to me that these people are getting their information from somewhere. Not everyone, however, is going to be interested in science however well it’s relayed to them, and fair enough. I often find it hard to maintain interest myself when people talk extensively about guns, for example (although talking about the underlying physics, of course, would be a different matter).

    In case there’s any doubt, I prefer living here, at least at this stage (and that’s all anyone can ever say, I think).

23. Clifford on Sep 1st, 2005 at 11:05 am

    Now, Adam, let’s see. Which is more important? Being able to converse about David Beckham’s antics, or being able to converse about whether or not the rumours are true that the local paper mill is polluting the water you and your kids drink?

    About television. I would say that by far the majority of the most original and challenging dramatic writing for screen (film or television) is taking place on television in the USA, as well as documentaries. Some of the finest directors, writers, and producers, etc, are working in this medium. But still people in hte UK trot out the old chestnuts about superior British television. Its main export in recent times, I remind you, is reality TV, and formulaic quiz shows like millionaire. UK television does produce wonderful and great stuff, mind you. Comedy writing is years ahead of the US (look at the Office, for example), the news is vastly better, and I would say that the overall average on UK tv may well be better, but the lows are pretty bad in the UK too, and the highs on US tv are simply as good as it gets. Get a cable subscription and see what’s out there. Don’t base your opinions on the junk on the networks….

    But my point is that the tendency to think of everything as hunky-dory in the UK on some issue while the USA is all terrible is not good. And I repeat that I never said that the causes were connected. (By the way, litigation is another example of the annoying UK=good, USA=bad attitude….something bad happens in the UK, because of someone’s neglect and the best you can hope for is that a report is written, by some Lord. That’s it. You mention legal action and you can bet your last ridiculously heavy pound coin that someone will sneeringly pipe up with “Oh, we don’t want to be like those Americans, They sue over everything”. Sigh…..Why does it always have to be all one way or another……not a little bit of both?)

    -cvj

24. Joe Bolte on Sep 1st, 2005 at 11:15 am

    Hi Clifford,
    I’d replying to your post #10 above. I have to say I don’t watch follow the shows you mention. It’s not an elitist thing; TV drama just doesn’t float my boat. So, I may be very uninformed about how realistic these shows are. My impression from watching them briefly has always been that they are abusrdly unrealistic: lawyers shouting in courtrooms, cops “roughing up” suspects in the interrogation room, and doctors bending SOP to take better care of their patients. Anyone who acted in real life like the characters in these shows would probably get fired in less than a week. Please correct me if I am way off here, but I think anyone who got their idea of what a job or subject was like from one of these shows would be tragically misinformed. So, if my reading of these shows is accurate, do we really want people adding to already existing misconceptions about science with whatever the screenwriters of our hypothetical science-drama would think was an engaging way to style it?

25. Greg Kuperberg on Sep 1st, 2005 at 11:54 am

    You say that you don’t mean schools, you mean the media. But you should mean schools, because people don’t learn how to think from the media, they only (at best) learn the news. If a staggering 42% of Americans believe that earth’s species are largely static, and if they do not recognize human beings as primates (in the sense of common ancestors), then there is a fundamental problem that can’t possibly be solved by television. The problem is extremely poor intuition about time scales and about biological similarity and mutability. People can only develop the proper intuition either with formal homework or informal (but substantive) apprenticeship. For example if you talk to astronomy, geology, or biology students at universities, most of them have no patience for creationists, and don’t need to be rescued by any public service announcements.

26. Gavin Polhemus on Sep 1st, 2005 at 12:06 pm

    Mark,

    I’m sorry about the confrontational tone of my earlier post. You and the CV team do a lot of outreach, including CV, which I love.

    My frustration is with the broader science community and comes from the following two facts:

    1) Researchers frequently bemoan the terrible state of science education.
    2) When I go to the schools, where science education is supposedly done, I get the impression that I am the first researcher that the students, teachers, and parents have ever seen walk into a classroom and interact with kids.

    The outreach that you mention (public lectures, Cafe Scientifique, Saturday Morning Physics, museum exhibits, and Cosmic Variance itself) is wonderful. I am very excited about all of them and will be going to the Cafe Scientifique in my state at the first opportunity. However, all of these things reach a population that is already fairly educated. I don’t see how these particular types of outreach are going to improve the science literacy of the 42% who believe that “living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.”

    Now, we don’t all have to do everything. Your calling may to bring more opportunities for learning to the intellectually curious. I know that you and the rest of the CV team do a lot in this area, which is why I specifically said I wanted to see more posts from CV readers about what they are doing or would like to do.

    I hope that I can encourage some readers to get involved at the k-12 level. It would be great to hear that there are a few others out there who are already in the schools. It doesn’t need to be everyone. I’d just like to not be alone out there.

    Gavin

27. Adam on Sep 1st, 2005 at 12:35 pm

    I don’t buy the ‘what’s the most important’ argument. Firstly, they’re adults, the people that we’re talking about, they can decide what their interests are. I’d have more science education in American schools than is currently the case, sure, to better inform those later decisions and interests (but not in the UK; science is already the biggest single component of the timetable in Secondary education, although with more specialist teachers, it’d certainly be better taught). Secondly, what’s important really, I think, are the skills that we get through science, and those aren’t only attainable through science. Science is just one way to get there (and, for example, what many of the Ancient Greeks were doing was largely not science at all in the sense that we’re talking about it, and yet I think that many of us would agree that Plato, say, managed to get his head around important concepts). I think that there’s a danger of arrogance as we try to popularise science to the wider public, a conviction that they ought to learn it for their own good rather than because it’s interesting, or fun, or whatever (and, clearly, it won’t be interesting or fun to everyone). I also don’t think ‘you weren’t taught it properly’ when people tell me that they find science boring; some people will just find some things boring.

    Ah, litigation (veering off-topic here). I think that the UK and the US have problems here. Some of them are common, as is the underlying tort law, but each has some unique problems.

    I think that part of the problem with the perception of litigation in the US is that the media misreport it, going for sensationalism rather than the dull recounting of actual facts of the case. The rest of the world’s media, incidentally, does this too (with ghoulish delight), I suspect because they just effectively copy what the US media has said about it. This is how you get the Stella Liebeck case (the infamous McDonalds coffee litigation) which in fact was a strong case and one in which the final award wasn’t insane, either; of course, the media in the US and around the world largely chose to report it as a ‘the coffee was too hot to pour into her lap and now she’s suing/whatever is the world coming to’ story. Myself, I’d keep exemplary/punitive damages, but I wouldn’t award them to the plaintiff, who’d just get the compensatory damages. I’d also make the loser pay the costs of the winner in most cases.

    When I’m comparing things in the US and the UK, of course, I’m only speaking for myself. There’s no clear objective measure to use, after all. My favourite things about the US probably don’t feature much in other people’s assessments, and the things that might annoy me probably don’t either. My overriding thought regarding the US and the UK is that the similarities are far greater than the differences. I certainly don’t think that everything is hunky-dory in the UK, at all; I just gave my professional opinion as to the state of Science education in the UK, really, and I think that I made clear that there are plenty of genuine concerns in that regard. My opinion is just that they’re different to many of those in the US. Arguably, they’re worse, at least for physics, because there is liable to be a collapse in the ability to teach physics in the UK unless something is done, wheras in the US, removing physics from the highschool curriculum isn’t going to have such a proportionally large effect (given that at the schools I was teaching at, physics was something like 8.5% of the curriculum).

28. Clifford on Sep 1st, 2005 at 12:36 pm

    Joe, Greg. (And also Gavin) With all due respect, you’re going for that tired, all-too-often repeated “all one or the other” refrain. Every little bit helps. Working on one thing does not mean that effort on other directions should stop. Come on. It’s like when I set up a Summer school in southern Africa to bring more science to a variety of people. (See a link to ASTI here) A depressing number of people asked me “Why Africa? Why not the USA?”. Sigh.

    Joe. I do not agree that people do not learn anything from television. I just think that belief is a long way along the road to elitism, if you forgive my using that term. If you think that nobody learns anything from television, then fine, you will see my suggestion as pointless. If, however, there is even a small amount that is learned
    on that medium, in view of how much time people spend watching it, then surely there is an opportunity there.

    Also, with regard realistic portrays and depictions of science and scientist. That points you made were all made by me in the comment number 10 to which you refer. Nevertheless, see the comment number 11: dramatazation is not a bad thing. Look how much we all learned -and still learn- from Shakespeare. The historical plays are exaggerations and oversimplifications, but still….wonderful! And they get us interested in history, life-lessons, etc. Are you dismissing Shakespeare too? Ok.

    Cheers,

    -cvj

29. Clifford on Sep 1st, 2005 at 12:45 pm

    Adam:

    (1) Those kids in the schools mostly all grow up to be adults. The problems are linked.

    (2) I never said that science is the only way. However, a better informed citizenry is a more effective and responsible citizenry. We live in a world dominated by science, whether we like it or not. And critical thinking skills and the ability to make informed decisions are mostly what we are looking for here. I’m not asking for people to be discussing string theory on the bus on the way to work…well, not every day anyway The analogy here is that I’m asking that everyone should be able to read, not that they all write novels. See what I’m getting at? You don’t say “reading is just another way of getting the skills we need”. NO. Not in this society….or at least I hope that, as a teacher you don’t believe that!

    (3) Asking for better science education is not the same as saying that everyone should do science. Far from it. One is asking for better statistics as a result of the surveys this post was about, not looking for 100% walking-talking scientists across the board.

    Cheers,

    -cvj

30. Greg Kuperberg on Sep 1st, 2005 at 12:50 pm

    It is true that every little bit helps. But some forms of help have diminishing returns with a horizontal asymptote. Science-enlightened television is a perfect example. You already have NOVA, and the Discovery Channel, and so on. The problem is that these good shows are drowned out by stupidity on other channels. As they always will be if that’s what the audience wants.

    It’s not as if I have any deep-rooted loyalty to the American public school system. When I left it and went to college, it was one of the happiest periods of my life. It’s just my calculation that formal education (both K-12 and college) is by far the biggest lever that we have for this problem. But I agree that television could be a useful supplement to popularize — not teach — the right modes of thought.

    If you worked for education in Africa, more power to you. The criticism that it wasn’t in the USA is just selfishness.

31. Adam on Sep 1st, 2005 at 12:50 pm

    Clifford:

    I think that we should be careful not to think that we are learning history in any sort of direct manner from Shakespeare. He had to write in a political environment in which it paid to flatter important people, in addition to the expected demands of dramatic license. James I considered himself a descendent of Banquo, for example, and unsurprisingly Banquo looks rather heroic in ‘Macbeth’. Shakespeare was no fool and I doubt that he saw himself as a historian.

    Shakespeare is probably more interesting if you already know the history, but it’d be a poor place to actually learn it, I’d say.

32. Clifford on Sep 1st, 2005 at 12:51 pm

    Oh, Adam…. with regards your last paragraph in your comment number 27: I appreciate your points, thanks. And to the last sentence: Aha!

    In your comment immediately above. Sigh. Same thing….all or nothing. No. The only point I was making was that seeing one of the historical plays might inspire one to ask more questions, and get an interest in the history. I did not! say that one should learn history from Shakespeare as a primary source. Any more than I would say that one should learn Quantum Mechanics by going to see Michael Frayn’s wonderful play Copenhagen. Aaaarrrrrrgh! (Sorry.)

    -cvj

33. Adam on Sep 1st, 2005 at 1:00 pm

    Clifford: I do make the point (in my earlier comment) that I would like better science education in schools so as to inform the later decision as to whether or not an interest in science is to be pursued (indeed, that schools have the critical role to play in situating people to make these decisions isn’t in doubt, I don’t think). In the UK I’d like more and better teachers, in the US I’d like that and also a lot more time devoted to physics in particular. A perceived lack of media attention to science isn’t a worrying thing in and of itself, though; it’s just a sign that there isn’t much of a market for it, that people aren’t that interested. That is, of course, part of the concern; the other signal from the media is, I think, the fact (at least, what I perceive as a fact) that of what science coverage there is, much of it is pretty daft. I saw a program on star lifecycles and, seriously, the thrust of the supernovae part was ‘AND WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE IF A SUPERNOVA HAPPENED NEAR EARTH?????’ This also shows an underlying lack of interest, I think, where the way to get the interest of viewers or readers is to go the spectacular route.

    On the other hand, pop science sells pretty well, by all accounts.

34. Clifford on Sep 1st, 2005 at 1:04 pm

    Hi Adam. Again, I say to your last comment : Aha! …

    I believe we are essentially in agreement, after all.

    Cheers,

    -cvj

35. Adam on Sep 1st, 2005 at 1:17 pm

    Clifford:

    Well, dramatisations aren’t bad as ways of drumming up some interest, but I really don’t think that people are learning history from Shakespeare (to use your example). I don’t think that such plays have no merit outside the literary, of course not, but as tools for learning, I’m not keen. That is what I was talking about in any case, responding to your statement that: “Look how much we all learned -and still learn- from Shakespeare” (my emphasis). I don’t object to the idea that watching a play might be a route to drive someone’s interest to learn about something (indeed, once they have learnt it, they’ll probably enjoy the play more, which was the point I was making before, so the actual learning increases the enjoyment of the play, ideally), which was your second point.

    I do think, though, that something like Simon Schama’s ‘A History of Britain’ might be more effective in persuading the average person to learn the history from a particular period. But that’s just a different example, not meant as a counterexample to Shakespeare. “History of Britain” wasn’t too shabby a series, incidentally, in my opinion.

36. Gavin Polhemus on Sep 1st, 2005 at 1:37 pm

    Clifford,

    I’m not particularly concerned about this idea vs. that idea. I’m concerned about “we should” vs. “I will.” Every little “should” doesn’t help. If you want a show or public service announcements, go for it. Let me know how I can help. I’m going to be doing my thing in the schools and if I think of some way you can help me, I will not hesitate to contact you. I’ll be looking at the ASTI site for ideas.

    Greg,

    I’m right with you on the school idea. Are you doing anything in the schools? Would you like to get involved? There are so many opportunities. The text books stink; the curriculum is fossilized; the teachers can’t draw free body diagrams; nobody in math or physics knows what a dot product is. I’m reading about quantum computation and trying to figure out how I can use it to explain quantum mechanics to high school kids. Can you explain QM to kids? I’ve got great lesson plans for special and general relativity, but QM has me stumped.

    Gavin

37. Adam on Sep 1st, 2005 at 1:43 pm

    Clifford; Yeah, I think that we probably are in agreement, overall.

38. Clifford on Sep 1st, 2005 at 1:48 pm

    Gavin. Great. About the “should” vs the “will”, be informed that I don’t just sit here talking about the “should”. See the ASTI site I spoke of. See several talks on general science I give to all sorts of audiences. See the work I do on this website. See (maybe one day) the results of work I get involved in with film-makers. See the fundraising I do. See the science writing I do……I could go on. And then there’s my day job, where I’m a full-time professor doing all that involves. So you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I don’t get around to working on all the other approaches s well. Please contact me if you’d like me to come and give a talk in a school. Or just come and talk to students and teachers informally. I’m always happy to do that.

    Yes, have a look at the ASTI site….please! And if you know of definite sources of support for that work (I need new donors to do the next one) please ask them to contact me, or give me the contact information (send me private email, of course.)

    We’re all working together on this one….Thanks.

    Best,

    -cvj

39. steve on Sep 1st, 2005 at 2:04 pm

    “Science-enlightened television is a perfect example”.

    The situation in the UK seems healthy as far as science-based programming goes. Here are a few examples that made prime-time viewing in the UK in the past few years. First, those involving evolution:

    WALKING WITH DINOSAURS: Science series in 6 parts, filmed in amazing locations in Chile, New Zealand, US etc with totally convincing dinosaurs added in via computer graphics…and they look excellent. This had massive ratings.

    WALKING WITH BEASTS: the sequal in 6 parts. Evolution of the strange and truly amazing mammels that evolved following the dinosaurs extinction, including humans.

    APE MAN:ADVENTURES IN HUMAN EVOLUTION: Factual science program on human evolution and paleo-anthropology in six one-hour programs. Recently, there was another BBC series specifically about evolution, although I missed it. Begins with a guy in a spacesuit walking on what you think is “mars” but its actually the earth billions of years ago. Other series included “Walking with Cavemen” and various “Walking with Dinosaurs” specials. A guy who is a professor of medicine has also had a few series on the human body and evolution.

    Other science series:
    THE PLANETS: science series in 9 parts (I think) each 50 minutes with good (maybe overdone) computer graphics. Space sequences like Sagan’s cosmos.

    UNIVERSE: Science series on channel 4 in 3 1-hour parts narrated by John Hurt. I liked this one. Again, in the style of Carl Sagans Cosmos. Channel 4 has done quite a few series on the universe, cosmology, planets etc. Martin Rees had a series recently on channel 4 in the uk although I missed it. Channel 4 also had 10-minute fillers on astronomy and cosmology at one time but these were often run in the morning as part of the schools programming.

    HORIZON is a long-running BBC science series although it overdramatises now. Award winning one about Andrew Wiles and Fermat’s Last Theorem a few years back. This year they had a 2-parter on Einstein. In 1997 they also did a 2-parter on Einstein. I also remember one on the accelerating universe and dark energy. Covers a very broad range of stuff in science and medicine. Channel 4 had a similar series called EQUINOX although it has’nt been on in a while now.

    Just this last week I caught an episode of “LIGHT FANTASTIC” about the science of light and how it has changed civilisation etc. A few weeks ago Channel 4 showed a docu-drama called “E=mc^{2}” about Einstein and various other scientists who were his forerunners like Faraday etc. BBC also runs the “Learning Zone” from midnight to 6.00am that often covers a lot of science programs. Not particularly deep or anything but sometimes quite interesting. Saw one a few weeks back on the history of French mathematics (Laplace, Lagrange, Fermat, Galois etc.) Most people interested in these tape these (including teachers). Patrick Moore is still on with his SKY AT NIGHT astronomy series, the longest running tv series ever. Saw it a few weeks ago.

    So while these are of various quality a lot of science is being covered. When I was in the US in the mid nineties I saw nothing on any tv station about science. When they do show any its is usually from the the list above, ie made in the UK. The only US series I have seen or heard of is Brian Greene’s one on string theory.

    I can also assure you that this idiotic intelligent design/creation ‘debate’ is strictly limited to the shores of the US. I don’t see “Ape Man” ever getting a screening in the midwest or even the US. Walking with Beasts got an airing but with all the “mating scenes” cut out so I heard.

40. Clifford on Sep 1st, 2005 at 2:13 pm

    Steve, these are all great shows (some with both good and dreadfully bad episodes). I know those programs well. There are several shows of that sort made over in the USA too, you should know. There are also entire TV channels devoted to programming about science and technology, something which has not happened in the UK yet. And there are excellent spots on public radio over here such as Stardate.

    So there’s good on both sides of the Atlantic.

    Thanks.

    -cvj

41. steve on Sep 1st, 2005 at 2:36 pm

    Clifford, glad to hear that. It is just when I lived and studied in the US I could’nt find anything worth watching apart from the Simpsons:) Probably just my own experience and the little time I had for watching tv or channel surfing. I really missed the BBC though not just for science but for a lot of other stuff too. But in some parts of the US, the way things are going, programs that deal with evolution or the Big Bang have a very good chance of never being shown. I also find the whole intelligent design and creationist thing in the US somewhat unsettling. Looking from the outside in, science in the US does seem to be increasingly under attack.

42. Adam on Sep 1st, 2005 at 2:43 pm

    Two great series were ‘The Secret Life of Machines’ (which was a tremendous teaching tool, but fascinating to just about anyone), from Channel 4, maybe as far back as the 80s and ‘The Ascent of Man’ by Jacob Bronowski from the 70s.

43. Adam on Sep 1st, 2005 at 2:45 pm

    I guess that someone has already linked the Dawkins/Coyne article in today’s Guardian? It’s not a paper I read, but a friend linked me to it (the link is http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1559743,00.html but it’s probably linked somewhere above).

44. steve on Sep 1st, 2005 at 2:59 pm

    ‘Ascent of Man’ is still the best. It has en epic quality to it. I have it on video and played it to death these past few years. Bronowski was a polymath, a humanist intellectual equally at home in the humanities as in science and mathematics. The bbc have also just released it this year on dvd, digitally remastered (Region 2 only though). Highly recommended. Full of wonderful poetic lines like when he is in a desolate rift valley in Africa,”…and yet I am in the naval of the world, the birthplace of man…and if this ever was a ‘Garden of Eden’, why it withered millions of years ago.”
    Great stuff.

45. Adam on Sep 1st, 2005 at 3:02 pm

    There was a very powerful scene at Auschwitz, too.

46. Doran on Sep 1st, 2005 at 3:20 pm

    I understand that a lot has been said already on here concerning attempts to make being a scientists more of a topic of daily conversation through various media. If anyone wants to make a show about “lowly graduate students” and even “lower” undergraduates, PLEASE give Jorge Cham, creator of http://www.phdcomics.com a ring. He did a few comics about this very issue back in April of this year.

    http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=579
    http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=580

    The BBC show, The Office, was watched by quite religiously by many, including myself. As Cliff has noted, a show about scientists should be first and foremost a show about people (who happen to be scientists). Of course there will be the varied cast of characters with oddities peculiar to scientists as well as dealing with problems everyone deals with.

    What American hasn’t felt that their life isn’t going anywhere? Not getting tenure, or having your research grants cut by the NSF. I think an audience could relate to personal drama like this

47. Greg Kuperberg on Sep 1st, 2005 at 3:31 pm

    The problem with teaching quantum mechanics (or general relativity, I would think) is that it is very tempting to either be greedy (by rattling off glinty results and conclusions) or mystical (by wallowing in paradoxes without really resolving them). For bright high-school students I would advocate a homework-based version of Feynman’s thin book, QED. He emphasizes path summation. This is a fundamental idea both in classical probability and in quantum mechanics. Feynman has the best approach to the Copenhagen interpretation.

    I’m not quite ready to set aside part of my career for math and science education. Not because I am a research-only person, but because I’m already spending enough professional service time on the arXiv. Moreover, one of the ways that the K-12 system resists change is by keeping reformers busy as foot soldiers. The system is bloated with misdirected job training and misdirected promotions. Direct involvement like yours is very laudable, but it should be leveraged to change standards.

48. Gavin Polhemus on Sep 1st, 2005 at 3:55 pm

    Clifford: I think it is really great that the ASTI school encourages high school teachers to addend we should I will encourage programs here to do that. TASI, at the University of Colorado, is not far from me. I’ll see if that would be an appropriate thing for high school teachers to join next summer.

    Greg: My treatment of GR is totally qualitative. I can do a pretty good quantitative job with special relativity and get them comfortable with space time. Once they have done a bunch of space time diagrams we can try to draw diagrams on curved surfaces. We bend paper and draw light cones, etc. It gives them a taste, but I’m certainly not doing any math.

    I will look again at the QED book. It has been a long time. I like the connection to classical probability that you mention. I would like to be able to do some math with QM, and avoid the “probability cloud” metaphor if I can.

    I don’t know how to do the cool indented quotes, but you said:

    Direct involvement like yours is very laudable, but it should be leveraged to change standards.

    Could you elaborate? What sort of changes would you advocate?

    Gavin

49. Greg Kuperberg on Sep 1st, 2005 at 4:23 pm

    I live in California. The single biggest positive change here in public education in decades was the Stanford-written state math standards. I wouldn’t vote for Pete Wilson or for most Republicans, but I have to give him credit for pushing this through. It was, moreover, a highly partisan fight. I don’t even take sides on the larger battle over standards and testing, but on this one the Republicans were right.

    In 1996, the state board of education drafted new state standards for math. There was an uproar, not only from conversatives but also from many fairly apolitical mathematicians. The draft standards were a triumph of style over substance. They were, moreover, tied to a specific math curriculum called MathLand. The education establishment jumped the gun and started adopting MathLand before the standards were approved. But the opposition prevailed and the governer enlisted some Stanford math professors (because they had been complaining) to write better standards. They did. The adopted standards are not only more stringent, they are also clearer, more logical, and ironically more flexible than the draft standards. It has been personally convenient for us because we have two children in public school. The standards make it easier for us to know where our children stand with regard to the curriculum.

    So the state standards for math and science are an important lever. Beyond that, the most important reform would be for the schools to seek and reward teachers who understand the material, instead of smothering that concern with irrelevant certification requirements, with seniority, and with other purely bureaucratic decisions. I don’t know how you can make the necessary changes, but in any case that is what is needed.

50. Gavin Polhemus on Sep 1st, 2005 at 5:54 pm

    Greg: The colorado physics standards are so vague that they are almost non-existant (paraphrase):

    1) Energy can move around and take different forms.
    2) Matter and Energy are conserved.

    That is it. There are benchmarks for different grades etc. but nothing about Newton’s Laws or E&M. There is also some space science stuff that nobody teaches. I don’t think I will try to fix them because nobody cares about physics standards. I’ll just work on producing good curriculum and show teachers how to use it. Maybe we can get physics education out of the 19th century and into the 21st.

    Your concern about understanding vs. certification hits pretty close to home. Spending two years getting my license was the most ridiculous, insulting thing I think I have ever done. Writing poems about myself, doing skits about education articles out of Newsweek, on and on. It was a total joke, except for the student teaching, which was great. I don’t know how to change that and the seniority system. I guess the best place is by showing them what a difference content understanding can make. Nobody cared about content understanding when I started. But as teachers have watched me in the classroom that have started to see what is possible, they, and a couple of the department heads, are starting to get it. We’ll see if I can start convincing department heads and principals, then we can get some movement.

    Thanks for your thoughts. Now its time to break for some Bush Bashing!

    Gavin

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