How long does it take the Earth to revolve around the Sun? Did the earliest humans and dinosaurs live at the same time? What percent of the Earth’s surface is covered with water? If you don’t know the answers to all three questions (1 year, no, and about 70%) then you have company. Lots of company. Only one out of five American adults know the answer to all three questions, according to a survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences.
Despite the low grasp of science knowledge, about 4 in 5 adults say science education is “absolutely essential” or “very important” to the U.S. healthcare system (86%), the U.S. global reputation (79%), and the U.S. economy (77%). They would know.
Take the quiz yourself at the California Academy of Science website.
(HT: Joanne Jacobs)
Why go to high school when you can go to school high? In an anonymous piece on the Radio Free Exile website “Bob Smith,” a 59-year old former science teacher, describes how years of getting high while planning his lessons provided him with “insights into the educational process” and other “truly important things about teaching.” Take, for example, his solution to the problem of how to explain the concept of density to middle schoolers.
Suddenly, a flash of the legendary insight: I just won’t teach density. Not at all. Never again. Now, as first year teachers learn, you teach what they tell you to teach. But as some teachers soon learn, you can teach what you like if everything you do works. I had been pretty successful in all the other areas of science I was teaching, and I realized that I would be doing everyone a favor if I unilaterally declared that piece of the pie dispensable, which I did, and I’m sure that no one ever missed it.
Believing he was at his most inventive and insightful while stoned, Saturdays became the day when Smith ruminated on his teaching, wrote curriculum, made plans, and got high. “I sometimes laugh to myself when something I’ve designed has gone over well with the students. They would be amazed at the conditions under which the ideas were hatched,” Smith writes.
In fact, I should go so far as to confess that when discussing drugs with students – a requirement of science curriculum in those grades – I have presented to the students the positives as well as the negatives of marijuana use, including ‘reports’ that people often feel more creative and insightful, and that people smoke it because it’s fun. This is an important part of the drug education piece that is always omitted: telling kids why people use drugs.
If you’re concerned about having a teacher like “Bob Smith” giving his fair and balanced view of recreational drug use to kids, fear not. He’s no longer teaching middle school. He’s now an ed school professor.
Higher ed, indeed.
Research has long supported the idea that families with higher incomes and education levels talk more with their children and speak to them in complex sentences. A new study by psychologists at the University of Chicago indicates toddlers who use more physical gestures also have more developed vocabularies by the time they reach school age.
“We actually found extra gesturing in these high socio-economic status [SES] families,” Susan Goldin-Meadow, co-author on the study, tells the BBC. “Gesture and speech go hand-in-hand.”
The researchers studied 50 families from diverse economic backgrounds. They recorded video of children with their parent, or primary caregiver, for 90-minute sessions, during ordinary home activities. Fourteen-month-old children from high-income, well-educated families used gesture to convey an average of 24 different meanings during the 90-minute session. Meanwhile, children from lower-income families conveyed only 13.
Their study, in the journal Science, suggests gestures could play an indirect role in word learning by eliciting speech from parents. “For example, in response to her child’s point at the doll, mother might say, ‘Yes, that’s a doll,’ thus providing a word for the object that is the focus of the child’s attention,” they wrote.
(photos by veader and ellecer on Flickr)
Results of the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) were released Tuesday, and the data proves to be a bit of an educational Rorschach Test. The New York Times sees “solid achievement gains” in math by U.S. 4th and 8th graders, and “spectacular progress” by students in Minnesota and Massachsetts, while science performance remained flat nationwide. “The results showed that several Asian countries continued to outperform the United States greatly in science and math,” notes the Times, “subjects that are crucial to economic competitiveness and research.”
USA Today’s Greg Toppo sees American students “consistently better than average,” but notes that “if there were a math-and-science Olympics for elementary and middle schoolers…the USA never quite makes it to the medal podium.”
At Flypaper, the Fordham Foundation finds reasons to be cheerful. “American students have made steady gains in mathematics performance over the past decade. This progress was especially noteworthy at the eighth grade level, where the U.S. made gains since 1995 that were at least as strong as all of our major economic competitors.” Diane Ravitch disagrees however that 8th grade gains are “noteworthy.”
The gains posted by 8th graders are certainly not a vindication of No Child Left Behind’s testing regime. Eighth-graders registered a 12-point gain in math from 1995-2003, before the imposition of NCLB testing. They posted a 4-point gain from 2003-2007. The students who were tested by TIMSS in 2007 had been subject to NCLB annual tests in every year from third grade onward, yet their scores did not show a dramatic improvement. If anything, the gains were no greater (and possibly smaller) than those registered pre-NCLB.
Democratic Congressman George Miller sees “significant gains” in 4th grade math, but tells the Washington Post it’s “troubling that our students are still behind their international peers in both math and science.” Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution, tells USA Today that the new TIMSS results belie complaints that U.S. students are lagging behind the rest of the world in math. “It’s just not true,” he says. “It hasn’t been true for a long time.” Meanwhile the National Science Teachers Association pronounces itself “discouraged” by the results, noting science scores for minority students are “dismal.” Many districts simply do not value science education, says a statement released by the NSTA Tuesday. ”Science is being eliminated from many K-6 classrooms.”
England’s new Schools Minister thinks single-sex science classes would get more girls to choose careers in science and engineering. “Girls do much better in science in single-sex classes. Sarah McCarthy-Fry tells The Independent. ”They sometimes feel intimidated in mixed-sex classes with the boys hogging the limelight and putting their hands up to answer all the questions.” Mrs Tuck said more people were aware girls learnt differently from boys due to “neurological differences” in the developments of their brains.
“Oh Jeebus, what now? High School Musical-branded Bunsen burners?” groans one wag over at the blog Liberal Conspiracy. “The idea of making the sciences more ‘girl-friendly’ in order to attract more women is not only a crock of s— but, if followed through as a policy objective, yet another nail in the coffin of science education in the UK.”
A slightly more measured take can be found over at Richard Whitmire’s blog, Why Boys Fail.
Asked under oath in a deposition if science is ”part of an adequate education” in the state of Georgia, Joanne Leonard said “I think you can do without science.” What about social studies? Is that part of a child’s ”adequate” education? “I would want them exposed to social studies,” Leonard said, ”but I think they can succeed in the world without social studies, and that is my opinion, my personal opinion.”
Ms. Leonard’s deposition was taken in a lawsuit brought by rural Georgia schools, who say the state isn’t giving them enough money to provide the “adequate education” required under law. Much of the case involves defining “adequate” And who is Joanne Leonard? Only the state Department of Education’s Director of Accountability.
I’m trying to think of what the appropriate response to this should be from Georgians, but I can’t think of anything that doesn’t involve pitchforks and torches. But I can think of something else Georgia can do without.
(HT: Joanne Jacobs)
Interest in environmental education is soaring, due to concerns over global warming and energy prices, notes this USA Today piece. But when does environmental education become advocacy?
West Virginia wants more veterans in the classroom. Not veteran teachers, just veterans. State education officials are looking to expand their involvement in the federal “Troops to Teachers” program, which was created over a decade ago to encourage more National Guard, reserve and former active-duty military veterans to become teachers.
“Veterans possess a wealth of knowledge, talent, skills and experience that they can share with West Virginia students,” the state’s Superintendent of Schools Steve Paine said in a news release. “Many of them have science, math and engineering backgrounds that we desperately need. They also bring a world view to the classroom that works well with our 21st Century Learning initiative to help our children succeed in a global economy.”
I have to admit that I utterly was unaware of this program, which sounds like a rock-solid idea. It’s surprising to hear it’s been in existence since 1994. A study cited on the TTT web site gives the program high marks for bringing more men, more minorities to education, as well as more teachers in inner cities, especially in special education, math and science.
I’d invite anyone involved in the program to post more about it.
How does this sound? “A systemic high-quality education, including the most remote and impoverished communities of this vast country, so that all….can acquire the means to become creative and critical thinkers, capable of developing their own opinions and becoming true contributors to solve the challenges involved in constructing a fair and democratic society.” More? A Federal Institutes for Education, Science and Technology, “which will result in the establishment of a network of 354 institutes dedicated to teaching science and technology to high schoolers and training thousands of new teachers in the public education system.”
What country is Scientific American talking about? Click here.
Sean Cavanagh of Education Week reports:
Students in the highest-performing U.S. states rank well below their peers in the world’s top-achieving countries in mathematics and science skill, according to a new study that judges American youths on an international scale.
The study, published Nov. 14 by the American Institutes for Research, compares the performance of 8th graders in individual American states not against each other, but against students in top-performing foreign nations, such as Japan and South Korea, as well as against children in recent lower-scoring ones, such as Bulgaria, Jordan, and Romania.
The analysis found that, on the one hand, most American states are performing as well as, or better than, most foreign nations in the study in math and science.
But it also concludes that even students in states such as Massachusetts, Minnesota, and North Dakota, which have scored well on recent U.S. exams, do not match students in top-performing foreign countries.
Read the complete Education Week article
Read the complete American Institute for Research press release
Read the complete American Institute for Research report
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