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"Training Citizens Who Are Well-Informed About Scientific Choices"

Thursday 08 October 2009

by: Brigitte Perucca  |  Le Monde

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Educator Florence Robine notes that countries all around the world are waking up to the importance of a high-quality scientific education for everyone in order to have a knowledgeable citizenry capable of making informed choices on issues of public policy. (Photo: woodleywonderworks / Flickr)

    An astonishing convergence: A great number of countries, from China to India by way of Europe, worried by the decrease in scientific vocations, have undertaken an overhaul of their teaching of the sciences. With a change in perspective, however. The primary reason invoked to justify these reforms is no longer economic competitiveness, but the necessity of recreating a sort of democratic contract between citizens and scientific development.

    Initiating children from the earliest ages in order that - when they have become adults - they may make "well-informed choices" as General Inspector for Physics Florence Robine puts it. She coordinated an issue of the Revue internationale d'éducation (International Review of Education) devoted to "a revival in the teaching of the sciences."

    Le Monde: Many countries deem it necessary to reform their science curriculum ...

    Florence RobineThe litany of the decline in scientific vocations has, in fact, done much to feed the public discourse on education the last few years. Even though it's about a problem with respect to economic development capacities in the context of international competition, the debate has recently shifted. Now, countries are realizing the importance of a high-quality scientific education for everyone, not only for training future scientists. A reform has been underway in England since 2004; China launched a pilot program based on "learning by doing"; France continues to actively promote "getting our hands dirty"; India is in the process of giving up rigid apprenticeship norms in favor of experimental activities ...

    Training well-informed citizens, capable of debating the critical choices before us with respect to energy sources, biotechnologies, health, access to food and water, and go beyond fears and beliefs: that's the challenge. And to meet it, it's necessary to expose young people as soon as possible to the scientific approach. Yes, I said approach, that is to say, the modes of scientific thought, the way scientific results we use to understand the world that surrounds us a little better are constructed and validated - not memorization of formulae and principles designed to solve homework problems or to determine academic selection.

    These reforms are designed to end elitist systems. Should we see them as a form of scientist self-criticism?

    I don't believe scientists are guilty in this question of elitism, or else they're guilty of allowing it to happen, of not having adequately broken with the superb isolation of science and extended a hand to the public on the grounds that the issue is one of domains that obviously require a decryption key. Yet, there are many scientists who, alongside educators, have been sounding the alarm. The official report is in: neglecting the training of the citizen, forgetting in the first place to develop a taste for the share of culture science transmits, teaching too quickly imposed an abstraction beyond reach with problems the meaning of which eludes students.

    For China, reform in the teaching of the sciences even prepares "sustainable social development" ...

    It's an idea rich with promise. That scientific education should convey those values linked to democracy and freedom, to the personal development of individuals, is a promise for a future and for better understanding among peoples. That China and India should proclaim these objectives is not the least cause for satisfaction.

    Sweden has undertaken "to restore the taste for mathematics." A central question?

    Sweden has, in fact, undertaken a wide-scale reform in the teaching of mathematics, with support from the highest political levels. One of the first axes has been to work on a clearer representation of the role of mathematics in daily and professional life. There again, it's a matter of changing traditional depictions. The Swedes want to show their children that math nestles everywhere. The production of abstract reasoning is an important aspect of mathematical activity, but it must come in its time.

    --------

    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.

  

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Comments

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These are very interesting

 Mon, 10/12/2009 - 23:05 — Anonymous (not verified)
These are very interesting ideas. They are also very efficient : their proponents have been active in France for the last 15 years, and during that time, the number of people who start university studies in sciences has decreased by 50%; before that, it had been growing for 10 straight years.

Gutting science was a major

 Mon, 10/12/2009 - 23:44 — Anonymous (not verified)
Gutting science was a major objective of Republicans when Reagan took over. Marginal characters like Rushdoony and Jerry Falwell were legitimized and granted unprecedented power over American government. Universities were forced into a new agenda favoring business and gutting humanities. Science was bought and sold during this era, and remains so today. Corporations infected universities and scientific publications so as to replace truth with "the agenda". It's heartening to see that some countries recognize that an ignorant populus is an enslaved populus.

There is a serious

 Tue, 10/13/2009 - 04:44 — Regina (not verified)
There is a serious disconnect between science comprehension and the general public, including those whose education in cultural knowledge is otherwise substantial. Many people attend symphonic concerts, the opera and ballet; many descend upon museums without any personal competence in painting and sculpture. They visit libraries and read books and literary articles; they furnish their homes with books and art objects. Without technical skills, they understand the basic values of these arts, a process known as "appreciation." But when it comes to the sciences, with the possible exception of concerns about their health, the general public draws away from scientific knowledge and even takes pride in ignorance of such esoteric stuff. That's what must change in education, beginning with the education of teachers, because that negativism starts at an early age. It is reinforced in the media as well as in the home life of non-scientist parents. The fully educated adult must understand the principles and discoveries of the sciences without the ability to perform the detailed analyses -- that's the analogy of appreciating the symphonies and concertos of Beethoven without being able to play a note on any instrument.

Gee, imagine that here.

Tue, 10/13/2009 - 05:17 — borisjimbo (not verified)
Gee, imagine that here. Whatever would the birthers, the truthers, the Holocaust deniers, the global warming deniers, the intelligent designers, do?

This is the key concept that

 Tue, 10/13/2009 - 11:17 — mahansens (not verified)
This is the key concept that will save the world. In recent years, our lives in the US have been ruled by fear--manufactured irrational fear. If we can learn to distinguish fact from fiction, we can free ourselves from the domination of fear. The saving grace is that scientific thinking can be totally non-partisan, not the province of any particular power-seeking group.

To anonymous (Mon,

 Thu, 10/15/2009 - 18:53 — Anonymous (not verified)
To anonymous (Mon, 10/12/2009 - 23:05) - that may be so (I don't know) but in no way would disqualify the basic principle, just as a presidency by a GWB does not disqualify "Love your neighbor like yourself".

A decline in the proportion of students going to the university in sciences in France may actually be a positive indicator: France still has the napoleonic "great schools" system for engineering and drop-outs from this very competitive system can usually find a second chance in the university, so maby the engineerign students got better?

On the other hand, having a citizenry able to understand causes and consequences and trained to designing causes in order to get desired consequences can help a lot in explaining/designing policy.

It should be stressed that science alone shall not guide policy-making, lest we want to skid back one century into eugenism ("we improved pigs and rabbits by selection, why not humans?") or historic materialism and subsequent political attempts. Science was behind much of the totalitarian states of the XXth century. Someone could also point out that a recent study found more engineers than any other profession among the ranks of the terrorists.

This is the reason why philosophy and litterature are mainstays for entering ENA (École Nationale d'Administration), the French school that prepares the politicians. As well they should, even if training the general population to scientific (aka pramatic) thinking will help defusing the scare machines and avoid for instance the embarrassment I feel each time an old-timer goes red-in-the-face when told that the government want to take over medicare.

Full disclosure: I am a French-trained engineer.