An Early Story
I entered college at Occidental College in Los Angeles with the express purpose of majoring in biology. I had fallen in love with biology as a youngster and could hardly wait to go to college so I could study it in more depth. During my freshman year an interesting announcement was made in the biology department. Up until that year the department had offered a course named Biology 50, a watered down human anatomy and physiology course for P.E. majors. The announcement was that this year would be the last year that Bio 50 would be offered. From this point forward, P.E. majors could take Comparative Anatomy and Vertebrate Physiology with the Bio Majors and Pre-meds. This move took place with the approval of the biology faculty, the school administration and the Physical Education Department.
I thought this was pretty cool since it meant that the powers to be felt that P.E. majors were ready for the same level of scientific rigor as prospective scientists and physicians. A compliment no doubt.
The Weeniefication of Science Education
From Occidental I became a secondary science teacher. I taught junior high school general science for 8 years and then went on to teach high school biology and physiology for something like 30 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the bigger bureaucracies in the country. Over the years I figured out that there was an institutionalized effort to maintain science illiteracy. At Occidental we had a humanities majors required course called Combined Science which was really just weenie biology, chemistry and physics. At LAUSD there was a basic biology course for non-academic students as well as modern science which was just weenie chemistry and physics. Now these courses were approved by school administrators, most of whom are not science majors.
What I found out was that this was the norm in this country. Most school districts and universities did not have rigorous standards for science education. Although my findings are entirely arbitrary, non systematic, and random, I’ve come to this conclusion by talking to other teachers about their college curricula, thousands of athletes during informal conversations, and thousands of my own students while I was teaching. For comparison I’ve had conversations about this topic with coaches, athletes, and sports administrators from other countries, not to mention the immigrant parents of my own students. My conclusion—we are lagging far behind other countries in the sphere of science education as a cultural value.
No Weenification of Humanities Courses
The same attitude doesn’t work the other way, however. The humanities and social sciences folks don’t seem to think there’s a need to weenify their courses for the poor science majors. And there isn’t.
So why the rigor gap?
Science Literacy
Science is the process of determining the empirical truths of the physical universe. There is a process for pursuing these truths, and every responsible citizen should have an understanding of this process along with the acceptance of the body of knowledge produced by it. This also comes with the understanding that the facts may change as new knowledge becomes affirmed.
Policy makers need to understand the need for science literacy in the decision making process especially when dealing with those items that are affected by scientific facts.
This may be challenging for those policy makers raised in a scientifically illiterate culture and have bought into those beliefs.
Science Illiterates are running things
The current Covid19 crisis is caused by a virus. The actions and activities of viruses and their relationships to hosts are phenomena that are studied by scientists. Dealing with the problems caused by viruses should be undertaken in consultation with scientists. Currently there are obviously too many policy decisions being made by science illiterates who are disregarding the input from scientists, virologists, epidemiologists and healthcare professionals. They are, in some cases, being influenced by the actions of other science illiterates. This is deeply troubling, dangerous and at the very least embarrassing. We could do better.