Science Literacy and Backward Priorities

Art Hobson

Department of Physics, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, ahobson@uark.edu

“The life-enhancing potential of science and technology cannot be realized unless the public in general comes to understand science, mathematics, and technology and to acquire scientific habits of mind; without a scientifically literate population, the outlook for a better world is not promising.” [Italics added.]

The above words are featured in Science for All Americans(1), the handbook of Project 2061, the science literacy project launched in the 1980s by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This statement is even more painfully true today than when it was written in 1989. It implies that every student – every student – needs a culturally and socially relevant physics or astronomy course.

Science literacy is important for many reasons, but the most fundamental of them is this: industrialized democracies cannot survive unless their citizens are scientifically literate.Think about it: science and technology drive every industrialized nation. And in democracies, it’s the people who decide about science-related issues such as energy policy, science in the classroom, and much more. If people don’t understand science, if they reject science, if they are immersed in pseudoscientific baloney, then the outlook for the nation is not good.

But few people are science literate. They don’t know what a molecule is, or what causes the seasons. They can’t or won’t read science-related articles in the newspaper. About 50% of Americans believe that humans did not evolve from other animals. Physicist and educator David Goodstein observes that “our [American] educational system is bad enough to constitute a threat to the ideal of Jeffersonian democracy …Approximately 95 percent of the American public is illiterate in science by any rational definition of science literacy.”(2) Despite our many elite scientific research institutions, America is quite capable of falling into a dismal third-world status brought on by a scientifically ignorant electorate.

The physics community is not taking this responsibility seriously. Look at practically any Ph.D.-granting physics department and ask yourself, “What are this department’s priorities?” Highest on the list will be faculty research, faculty grants, and faculty publications, followed closely by Ph.D. students and graduate-level courses.

Far lower will be undergraduate physics students. Many departments hold their own undergraduate programs in such low esteem that their stream of graduating seniors narrows to just one or two per year. My own department was, for a time, an example. From the 1980s through 1994 we granted an average of only 2 bachelor’s degrees per year. Then, in 1994, we tried something new: we hired Gay Stewart, our first faculty member hired for physics education and physics education research. Because of her focus on undergraduate students and on physics by inquiry, our number of majors immediately picked up until we had about 12 graduates per year during the late 1990s, and over 20 per year for the past three years.

Even lower are the undergraduate courses for engineers, biologists, pre-med students, and other scientists.

Lowest, and sometimes non-existent, is undergraduate education for non-scientists, that is, for that 90 percent of the students who will graduate to become our K-8 teachers, attorneys, journalists, mothers, business people, politicians, and presidents. These are the people who will determine the planet’s future, but you couldn’t tell it from the short shrift they often get in physics departments.

These backward priorities are built into the hiring, promotion, pay, and tenure policies of nearly every Ph.D.-granting physics department. Research is practically the only criterion for hiring and tenure. Untenured faculty members devote time to general introductory courses at their peril, because time devoted to these courses is time not spent on research, and such distractions can cost them their job. Consequently, my department and most others are always short of faculty members who are capable of teaching introductory courses, and such courses are often relegated to graduate assistants and other temporary help.

Although non-Ph.D.-granting colleges do better on the average, I fear that many of them take their cues from the Ph.D.-granting institutions – poor models indeed!

Far from being the lowest priority, physics courses for non-scientists are the most important courses we teach. All the physics research in the world will do little good if the state of our nation and the state of the planet continue deteriorating. Every physics department worth its salt needs to teach physics and astronomy courses for non-scientists; these courses need to be taken by the majority of the non-science undergrads on the campus.

(1) F. James Rutherford, Project 2061: Science for All Americans (American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC, 1989).

(2) David Goodstein, “The science literacy gap: A Karplus Lecture,” J. Sci. Educ. Tech. 1 (3), 149-155 (1992).