Anthony
O’Hear and Michael Redhead
Centre for
Philosophy of Natural and Social Science
London
School of Economics and Political Science
Comments to:
mlr1000@cam.ac.uk
A Paradox
Popular science is a
multi-million pound publishing industry. Books purporting to divulge the
secrets of the universe, of life, of time, of evolutionary psychology, of
consciousness, of quantum theory, and of much else besides now fill large
sections of bookshops in every major town and shopping centre in the country.
Many of these books make it into the best-seller lists. They are widely and
often respectfully reviewed, there are national prizes for them, and their
authors become famous in their own right, with newspaper columns and radio and
television appearances.
Whether the books do what
they (or their publishers) claim they do is another question; and whether, if
they do, they are understood by their readers (or even actually read beyond the
first couple of chapters) is yet another question, and one not unrelated to our
present topic, because if you lack a basic education in science, it is not
clear that the deficit can satisfactorily be made up by a publisher’s
pot-boiler. So there is a question as to whether there really can be ‘popular’
science, that is, scientific understanding in the absence of harder and more
systematic scientific study than can be found in popularly presented books. But
the existence of a market for such things is a striking testament to the fact
that people desire to know the things the books are about and what science can
tell us about them. Science, or what science attempts to do, answers to a basic
human need, as basic in its own different way as literature, music and the arts
generally.
So why is it that in schools
science is often so disliked by pupils? Why is it that many university science
and maths departments have great difficulty filling their places at all, let
alone with good applicants? Why is it that so few people seem to want to study
science, compared to those who want to study business or English or the media?
It is over forty years since
C.P.Snow gave his lecture on ‘The Two Cultures’, lamenting the widespread
ignorance of science which Snow discerned among the general educated public.
Full of cliché, the lecture has itself become a cliché, invoked every time the
subject of science in education is raised. We all deplore what Snow deplored
(ignorance of science). Since Snow there have been countless inquiries, initiatives,
new methods, new curricula, to say nothing of endless speeches in parliament
and newspaper editorials and professorial chairs in science education and the
public understanding of science, all attempting to deal with the problem Snow
pointed to. And all have failed. Science remains deeply unpopular in school and
undersubscribed at university, and, as far as one can see in talking to
undergraduates from subjects other than science, journalists, politicians,
civil servants and the like, the level of general understanding of science no
better than it ever was. That is the paradox: a thirst for scientific
knowledge, together with a woeful inability to satisfy or even stimulate it
among young people in school.
The Problem.
According to the House of
Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology last year, school science is
so outdated and boring that many young people are put off the subject for life.
Actually the situation is rather worse than that. In hard science we are
actually going backwards. A recent survey (see The Times Educational
Supplement, 17/1/03) has shown that in 1980 50,447 candidates took A level
physics; in 2000 the figure was 28,945. In maths the comparable figures were
83,508 and 60,734 respectively. From
1991-2 to 2000, there was a drop of 21% in A level physics entries, and in
maths A level a drop in the same period of 8.5%. In fact, if one looks a little
closer at the period in question, the really significant drops in both physics
and maths entries started after 1989, when the GCSE, including the Double
Science exam, had started to bite, a point to which we will return. Since 1988,
A level science entries have dropped by 12%; over the last three years
applications to university to study biology have fallen by 12%, and to study
the physical sciences by 14%.
The survey from which the
1980 figures were extracted was actually about girls doing physics and
maths. According to Professor Mary Smith, Dean of Applied Science at Lancaster
University, science subjects have now been ‘demasculated’, but, she plaintively
asks, ‘in demasculating them, have we actually made the total number of
students drop?’ (In fact, despite ‘demasculisation’ the number of girls doing
physics A level also dropped, from 9,727 in 1980 to 6,589 in 2000.) Even more
revealing was the comment of the ‘teacher support manager’ in the Institute of
Physics, who said that the
Institute had not hitherto
focused on the falling numbers of boys doing physics: ‘this is an interesting
angle and not one that has been highlighted’.
So demasculisation clearly
hasn’t worked, and one might wonder if obsession with gender and other
‘equality’ issues on the part of academic managers and curriculum planners has
not actually contributed to the problem. Would they not have been better off
simply making the subject in its proper rigour and challenge genuinely more
available to larger numbers of pupils - or, failing that, devising ways of
getting more genuinely qualified teachers?
Obviously both of these
things would help. But we have to be careful here. In contrast to some of the
noises coming out of government, the problem is not to make a subject like
physics more ‘interesting’ or ‘relevant’ in some general sense. Not only is
science extremely interesting as it is - for those prepared to learn. But
science is not easy; and any ‘access’, if it is not a question of patronising
pupils and the subject, must be a matter of finding ways of teaching hard
material successfully. And science is not just hard; since Galileo at least it
has also been formidably counter-intuitive, teaching us that the world is in
fact, at a physical level, very different from how it appears, and also from
how we might think it was, in advance of scientific enlightenment. (This was,
of course, part of what was involved in the transition from Aristotelian ways
of conceptualising the physical world to those of modern science, on matters
such as inertia and atomic structure, and part, too, of Descartes’
philosophical programme: to convince people that we might have good reason to
believe that the world is not as it appears, but as Galileo and other
mathematical physicists demonstrate that it is, which is a conundrum with which
philosophy of science still wrestles.)
So the real problem in
science education is not that the material is not intrinsically interesting. It
is fascinating. The problem is how to put over really hard and
counter-intuitive stuff in a way which does not alienate the pupils or
compromise the material. The real
problem is how to make pupils competent enough to handle the hard material,
because the real problem is not the intrinsic interest of the material, but the
incompetence of pupils - and, as we shall see, teachers. And in this context,
discussions about the morality of cloning or the politics of nuclear power or
of Kyoto are just beside the point, an evasion of the real issue, and, in the
absence of any real scientific understanding, a cruel deception played on
pupils for the sake of apparent and transitory gains.
Apart from the content of
what should be taught, the situation in physics teaching is little short of
catastrophic.
Of people teaching physics
in independent schools, some 79% are qualified in physics. But for the maintained sector, the figure is
32%. Of those in the state sector teaching GCSE physics, 66% do not have a
relevant degree. 30% of them do not even have A level physics. In other words,
nearly a third of those teaching GCSE physics in state schools have no
qualification in the subject above the level at which they are supposed to be
teaching. And if teacher-training figures are anything to go by, the situation
is not improving. Between 1993 and 2000 the number of physicists undertaking
teacher training fell by 70% and the number of chemists by 30% (while
biologists increased by 10%). And there
is a similar problem with qualified maths teachers in schools, down on
government figures from 40,500 in 1983 to 25,200 in 1997, and suspected by many
to be as low as 20,000 currently, and still falling.
One might then say that the
problem about physics in schools is largely to do with teaching (or more
accurately with under or un-qualified teachers). To some extent the problem in
state schools at GCSE is disguised by the fact that state schools generally
take what is known as ‘Double Science’, that is to say an examination in all
three physical sciences (Physics, Chemistry and Biology), which counts as two
rather than three subjects in the GCSE count, but within which it is not easy
to discern the level attained of the various components.
In fact, it is not the
Double Award alone which is to blame, despite the way that in it and in the
national curriculum the words ‘Physics’, ‘Chemistry’ and ‘Biology’ are replaced
by confusing neologisms, such as ‘Sc 4’ and ‘Materials and their Properties’,
presumably to make some point about the supposed artificiality of disciplinary
boundaries (which is not very helpful to the learner, or indeed the teacher,
when the methods of physics and biology, say, are clearly very different).
But ideology and tinkering
with names aside, physics, chemistry and biology are discernible in the Double
Award and indeed in the National Curriculum. And some top independent schools,
such as St Paul’s Girls and North London Collegiate do enter their pupils
exclusively for Double Science. The reasoning there seems to be that enough of
each of the sciences is covered in Double Science to prepare pupils for A level
- providing that each of the three disciplines is taught by a subject specialist,
which in these cases it obviously is.
Where problems arise acutely
is when a teacher from one science attempts to teach another, without
sufficient qualifications or knowledge. To be blunt, as may be inferred from
the figures already quoted, in many state schools physics and chemistry are
being taught by biology teachers who may have little or no grounding in the
other sciences, and quite possibly not much enthusiasm for them either. And
even in the state sector the picture is by no means uniform. There are still
164 grammar schools and a number of good comprehensives and sixth form colleges
where more traditional values and teaching may be expected. But there must be a
very large number of state schools where pupils are just not being taught
physics properly because the right teachers are not there to teach them. And a
similar picture will also appear in maths, where there are also chronic
shortages of well-qualified teachers.
In its recent document on
the future of 14-19 education, the government tells us that there are now 51%
of pupils getting 5 grades A*-C at GCSE level, compared to 37% ten years ago.
With good reason, some might think that this increase represents little more
than rampant grade inflation, as we will see. But what the government does not
tell us itself is that only 39% of 16 year olds get grade C or above in the
three core subjects of maths, English and science, and that this figure goes
down to 34.8% if we look only at pupils who went to non-selective secondary
schools. In other words, in state comprehensives nearly two thirds of pupils
fail to reach what is generally regarded as a basic pass in the core subjects,
after 11 years of compulsory education, and this, of course, includes science.
It would take us too far afield to discuss here the government’s proposed
solution to the problem of under-achievement at GCSE (basically, new and
different exams which more can pass), but the figures for GCSE simply serve to
underline the general poverty of achievement in maths and science at the age of
16. So it is hardly surprising that only comparatively small numbers want to go
on with the subjects, and those that do come disproportionately from the
independent and grammar schools.
And this would be so, even
on the assumption that exams had not got easier. Apart from the very large
increase in good grades over the past decade or so, there is plenty of
anecdotal evidence that in maths and science at GCSE, along with other
subjects, they have. Teachers will tell you that ‘everyone knows that they
have’, while sometimes adding that this is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed,
it may not be, if unnecessary complications and irrelevant material have been
eliminated, and even if some necessary material had gone, it might not matter
so much if we were at least honest about what is going on. Indeed when we seem
inevitably to be drifting towards a six-subject baccalaureate qualification for
18 year olds, honestly is particularly important. There may be arguments in
favour of a qualification in six as opposed to three subjects (though, if there
are, the benefits of such a system have to be set against the dis-benefits of
preventing able and highly motivated 16 and 17 year olds from have the freedom
to specialise in the things which enthuse them); but let us nor pretend that we
could have a six subject qualification that did not erode content and
difficulty, nor that such an erosion could take place without the need for a
major re-consideration of what might be hoped for from senior school science.
But in the area of standards
above all, we are, it seems, constitutionally incapable of public honesty.
Ministers, officials and education experts go on parade each August when the
results come out to assure the general public that standards have been maintained
(and that anyone who dares to raise questions about standards is disparaging
the ‘achievements’ of our young people - rather than criticising those who are
deceiving them and the rest of us). And, against this optimistic view that only
unnecessary complications have been cut out of the science curriculum, we have
it on the authority of David Burghes, Professor of Mathematics in the Education
Department at Exeter University ‘that it has become obvious that a GCSE tells
you nothing. You can get a grade C in mathematics without being able to do long
division and multiplication or anything to do with decimal fractions without a
calculator’.
Despite this and similar
worries from teachers and academics who have looked into the matter, neither
the government nor any of its agencies in prepared to investigate standards
over time in public examinations, and in the late 1990s a proposal by the then
Chief Inspector of Schools to undertake a thoroughgoing review of examination
standards was quashed after his departure.
However, in recent years
there have been some significant non-anecdotal indications that all is not well
in school maths and science courses, and this goes right down to maths at
primary school. Up to the age of 11, pupils do very little manipulative
arithmetic (multiplying and dividing fractions, working out lowest common
denominators, etc.) This leaves them unprepared for algebra at secondary
school, and many actually get very little algebra. You can indeed get a grade B
in maths GCSE with virtually no algebra. And weakness here has a significant
impact on A level maths and science.
In 1995 the London
Mathematical Society, along with the Royal Statistical Society and the
Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, published a report entitled Tackling
the Mathematics Problem. It was highly critical of the lack of essential
technical facility on the part of entrants to university maths courses. They
lacked analytical powers, and often had little understanding of what a
mathematical proof was or of the need for precision in mathematics. It is
noteworthy that during the 1990s at least 50 universities moved from three to
four year courses in maths, presumably to compensate for the decline in
knowledge of their incoming undergraduates.
In 1996 there was a report
published jointly by SCAA and OFSTED on A level standards in maths, chemistry
and English. Contrary to repeated statements by government ministers and
officials to the contrary, this report did not say that there had been
no decline in standards in the subjects concerned. On maths A level it
commented unfavourably on the lack of algebraic content in the syllabus, and
also on a huge increase on the permissible use of formula sheets in the exams.
On chemistry it pointed out that between 1975 and 1995 there had been
significant reductions in the content required, particularly on the detail of
chemical reactions and in knowledge of fundamental chemistry, both organic and
inorganic. And an internal inquiry by SCAA found that in A level physics there
was virtually no calculus at all, partly no doubt as a response to weaknesses
in mathematics at A level and lower down.
More recently an experienced
GCSE level examiner, reported that in 1989 you needed to get 48% in the Oxford
and Cambridge maths GCSE to get a grade C, whereas in 2000 it was a mere 18%.
We also know that now 30% of candidates now get an A grade at A level. To
reinforce this tale of woe, in 2000 the Engineering Council, in conjunction
with the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the London Mathematical
Society and the universities Learning and Teaching Support Network (for Maths,
Stats and OR), published a report entitled Measuring the Mathematics Problem.
In it, among other things, it reported that in a diagnostic test applied to a
1991 cohort at Coventry University the scores of those who got N (a fail) in A
level maths in 1991 were virtually identical to those who got a grade C in
1997. And the continuation of the same study revealed that 1991’s N-graders
were equivalent to 1999’s B-graders. In general, then, on certain basic
mathematical skills, A level standards in maths are dropping one grade every
two years. And in a diagnostic test
given at York University over 15 years, and reported separately in 2001, this
finding is corroborated. A student with an A grade at A level now had a score
on the test would have put him or her near the bottom of the cohort in 1986,
and, even more striking perhaps, an average grade B student at A level was able
to score only marginally better on the York test than could have been done by
random guessing. (See K.L.Todd, ‘A Historical Study of the Correlation between
GCE Advanced Level Grades and the subsequent academic performance of
well-qualified students in a University Engineering Department’, Mathematics
Today, Vol 37, No 5, 2001.)
The Engineering Council
report also referred to the decline in students’ concept of proof and
understanding of algebra at GCSE, which it said ‘undermined’ A level
mathematics ‘at a stroke’ in ‘a key area from which it has not yet recovered’.
It also pointed out that at A level there is a very diminished core (30% of the
course) which, together with modularisation, has led to very different
abilities in students coming to university even with A level maths. By
contrast, the 1960s were a golden age, at least for A level maths. Regulated by the universities and the exam
boards (and not as now by the government and its agencies - which is where some
suspect many of our current problems originate), ‘A level mathematics consisted
mainly of Pure and Mechanics with the latter providing ample scope for the use
and practice of algebra, trigonometry and calculus. With the benefit of
hindsight this is now seen as a “golden age” for A level Mathematics in which
able sixth formers, aiming for university, were inspired and stretched by a
very talented teaching force.’ (p 2)
What clearly seems to be a
reduction of intellectual challenge in school examinations in science and maths
cannot but have an effect on university work, and not just in terms of content.
Pupils who have been poorly taught science in school will not know how to think
scientifically or to solve problems in science. They will tend to rely on
recipes they have been fed by their teachers, whose own grasp of scientific
method may be shaky, as we have seen; pupils may come to believe that in
science they could simply look up answers on the Internet, a phenomenon not
unknown in subjects other than science, as all university teachers will testify.
But reliance on recipes is particularly unfortunate in science, where not
general learning or transferable ‘thinking skills’, but a certain particular
sort of reasoning is of the essence. Undergraduates in science who have not
been sufficiently challenged at school, and who have been given little sense of
the intellectual struggle which science involves will be uncomfortable with the
idea that in solving a problem they ought to go back to first principles and
think things through from the start, in a mixture of empirical and analytical
reasoning. They will lack just the sort of insight crucial to science.
Crucially they will be unprepared for the demands of what ought to be a highly
academic course of the sort that was offered in a fair number of universities
not so long ago. And all this is reflected by the increasing provision in
science courses of remedial courses and diagnostic testing, particularly in
maths, and also by high failure and dropout rates in some science programmes.
Obviously not all young people
would be suitable for an academic course in physics, chemistry, biology or
anything else, nor should they be expected to be, a point to which we will
return. But some surely should be, even in the hard sciences, and there are
worrying signs that in schools we are often not doing enough for the able, for
those who could rise to the intellectual challenge of the subject, but who are
not being given the opportunity. We cannot content ourselves with thinking that
even if we are failing the great mass of pupils scientifically - which we
surely are - we are still doing fine by the top. Many observers and university
teachers believe that at school we are not doing fine by the top any more.
And there is also the
massive problem of what the government calls access. Our leading universities
are currently being cajoled, bribed and punished by the government into
admitting more students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Fine, in principle. But
how can a university run a top class degree in physics, say, if they have to
take undergraduates from schools where there is no adequate provision in
physics? How can very large differences in attainment level be reliably
assessed in the selection process? How can ‘promise’ be detected in those who
have been given no or very little feel for the subject at school or
college? Foundation courses might be
the answer, but who is going to provide them, and in the current dire shortage
of science teachers, who is going to teach them? Nor can such courses cannot simply be bolted on to the first year
of an existing course without fatally eroding the content and standards of that
course.
The Remedy
One obvious reason why maths
and the physical sciences are waning in our educational system is that they are
hard. They also go against the spirit of the time in that in them there are
right and wrong answers, better and worse solutions. That, though, is also
their potential strength, and their challenge.
To illustrate the type of
difficulty involved in science, let us take physics as an example. In dealing with a problem in physics, you
have first of all to identify the phenomena under investigation. Then a
conceptual model for the phenomena has to be elaborated. The model is then formulated in mathematical
terms. Mathematical methods are then
brought to bear to obtain a solution, and this solution then has to be
re-interpreted in physical terms. None of these operations is easy, and even
less easy is being able to move through the whole process, from physical
reality through a model and its mathematical elaboration and application back
to what one hopes is a better understanding of the physical reality. Many
students find the interrelating of the maths to the physics particularly hard,
and some, of course, are better at one part of the process than at the others.
But clearly, someone who has mastered physics at a high level has acquired both
knowledge and a whole battery of problem-solving skills, which is no doubt
partly why good physics graduates are very much sought after not just in
physics itself, but by employers in business and industry generally for roles
where physics itself may not be needed.
It is, though, increasingly
difficult to run high level degrees in physics, and in the light of our
analysis of problem-solving in physics, the stripping out of mathematics from
school physics and the superficial treatment of algebra and calculus in school
maths syllabuses, to say nothing of poor teaching, all of which we have seen
recently, must appear particularly unfortunate. Indeed the mechanics element of
the old A level physics used to train students in precisely the kind of
mathematical modelling and application crucial to physics at a serious level,
but this is no longer the case. But there are other factors, as well, which
militate against expertise in all the hard sciences.
These include the pressure
on pupils - and schools - to maximise grades in public exams, and so a tendency
for pupils to opt for subjects which are easier or, if that is thought to be
offensive to media studies, business, sports studies and other increasingly
popular options, for subjects which are perceived to be easier.
Then there are the connected
factors of modularisation and over-assessment.
Modularisation means that courses are split up into discrete chunks,
which are assessed as and when taken. So far more of school time in the sixth
form is spent on assessment and preparing for assessment than used to be the
case, which is obviously a waste of teaching time. (Effectively most of the
summer term in the first year of the sixth, now that pupils have to do AS
levels, which are themselves examinations with a mechanistic, unintellectual
approach, closer to GCSE than to the old A level, as good pupils have
themselves noticed and are beginning to complain about). But worse, perhaps,
than wasted time, modularisation also means that it is far harder for pupils to
get an overall view of their subject as a whole, and how what they learned at
the start of a course relates to things they encountered later.
Finally there is the
contemporary tendency in education, at university level as much as at school
level, to characterise the enterprise in terms apply to training rather than to
education. Notions like aims, objectives, learning outcomes and the like are
simply not appropriate to education, which is about illumination in the very
thing one is studying, an illumination which cannot be specified independently
of what one is studying (hence no independently specifiable aims, etc).
Learning an academic subject like physics or biology will also involve
ingestion on the part of the learner of a whole raft of tacit knowledge of how
the subject proceeds, and which, by definition, cannot be made explicit. In the
case of scientific subjects this tacit knowledge will include things like a
sense of the weight to be attached to specific pieces of evidence or a nose for
a reasonable hypothesis in a given context and all the matters of judgement
which come only with experience of working in a scientific team or laboratory.
If we want, as we surely
should, to get to a situation in which physics and the other sciences can
flourish at university level, we must first correct those tendencies in school
education which militate against its possibility.
This means first having in
schools sciences courses which will teach science and maths, without
compromising their nature and their difficulties, to a sufficiently high level
to prepare pupils for serious university work in these subjects. We must
reverse the tendencies and both GCSE and A level to erode content and
challenge. And in this context, it is surely not insignificant that the fall in
A level uptake in physics and maths coincided with the introduction of the
GCSE, an exam intended to be for ‘all’, and easier in approach than the more
rigorously academic O level which preceded it.
So some of our current
difficulties arise from an understandable, but misguided attempt to produce a
common curriculum in the sciences for all, at least up to GCSE level. This has
led to less pupils being less well prepared for A level than previously, and
has also had a knock-on effect on A level content. If A level has been eroded,
at least part of the reason has to be that pupils are now embarking on A level
courses with less knowledge and ability than was the case in earlier decades,
even though the numbers of pupils is actually lower. So what is happening
cannot even be defended in terms of access. It is a frightening thought that if
A level science was as hard as it was 20 years ago, even less pupils than
to-day’s reduced numbers would be able to take it.
It is not, of course, the
case that, globally speaking, we would need or expect very large numbers to be
able or willing to take a science degree of high quality (though to remedy the
desperate shortage of teachers in science in schools we need somewhat higher
numbers than now). So we are not saying that a very high proportion of pupils
in schools should be offered or encouraged to go into science courses of a
higher level than the current GCSE. But if A level is to be restored to its
previous level, and if top universities are to be able to continue to offer
seriously good degrees in science that do not require supplementation by
Masters’ courses, it is essential that some significant numbers of pupils, say
10%, be offered a higher level of science education from the age of 14 than is
the case at present (and possibly be allowed to embark straight on the second
year of degree courses, if much of the first year is involved in remedial or
foundation work).
The question which this
proposal immediately raises is whether a higher level science course for a
smallish percentage of teenagers would be compatible with our other aim, of offering
everyone some decent education in science. In principle there is absolutely no
reason why not. Indeed, in some independent schools, such as St Paul’s,
something along these lines already happens. At the start of the GCSE course,
boys are divided into those who will take Double Award science, and those who
will take the three separate sciences at GCSE, obviously on the basis of
observed scientific achievement and potential. If, after one year in the school
(where boys enter at the age of 13), St Paul’s feels able to make distinctions
of this sort, there is absolutely no reason, egalitarian prejudice or laziness
aside, why other schools should not make similar differentiations at that sort
of stage. And given that the whole point of the differentiation is to give each
category of pupil a scientific education tailored to their specific needs and
aspirations, there is absolutely every reason why they should.
That is not to say that the
GCSE and its counterpart the national curriculum, as it currently stands, would
be suitable for all those not doing the accelerated science course, or indeed
for any of them. As we have seen, the select committee obviously thinks it is
not; and the government’s advisors are proposing a new type of science
curriculum which focuses far more on topical issues related to science, such as
cloning, GM foods, pollution and global warming.
It is easy (all too easy) to
see why politicians and those close to them might want school curricula which
focused on topical and political questions, but that does not make it a good
idea in science or in anything else. Actually the new proposals also say that
there will be broad explanations of scientific theories such as to provide
young people with ‘a framework for making sense of the world’. It is hard to
quarrel with that as an aim, but it is equally hard to resist the comment that
physics, chemistry and biology already provide framework(s) for making sense of
(parts of) the world, and the rider that if you want to know what these frameworks
are and what they can tell us, and even make a reasoned estimation of their
power and beauty and also of their limitations, there is absolutely no
substitute for studying physics, chemistry and biology, as traditionally
conceived. Focusing on contemporary
issues raised by science before understanding the underlying scientific
discipline on its own terms is likely to be limiting in itself, and also to
distort understanding of the issues to boot. Doubtless those advocating a
science curriculum which focuses on contemporary issues will say that this will
not be at the expense of fundamental science, and it may not be. But our
experience in the politics of educational reform suggests that one would be
näive in the extreme not to be worried that it might well be.
Making this point in favour
of a notion of education as illumination (as opposed to education as a
propaedeutic to political activism) does not, of course, say just what should
be studied in physics, chemistry and biology, or how much. In a way the how
much question is easier to answer. We could reasonably say that we want
everyone still in compulsory education to be educated in science to the maximum
extent possible for them, recognising in saying that, that this extent will
vary considerably according to the ability (and motivation) of the pupil, and
there may well be need more than one science stream for the 90% (or so) who are
not going to specialise early in science. But it will also doubtless vary
according to the competence of the teacher, the extent to which the teacher is
prepared to challenge and extend the pupil, and also, crucially, according to
the subject matter.
So, we are back with subject
matter; but let us also return to our initial paradox. By a happy convergence
those questions which form the subject matter of most books of popular science
just are the central issues of the sciences: the nature of matter, cosmology,
motion, time, force, energy, atomic structure, physical change, the nature of
life, evolution and so on. This convergence is hardly surprising, for it is
illumination in the most basic questions to do with the natural world which
brings most people to science in the first place, either at school or later,
and this is just what is provided by the fundamental theories and concepts in
the various sciences.
Maybe school science has
tended to concentrate too much on peripheral issues, on low-level observations
and on what can be done in school laboratories, and not enough on fundamental
questions. But this is probably a matter of degree, rather than of principle.
In the national curriculum, as it currently stands, the fundamental issues just
mentioned - and hence the basis for what might be called scientific literacy -
are all present, which makes the extent of scientific illiteracy among our
young people even more puzzling.
Conclusions
A whiff of honesty about
where we are, and what we are trying to do in science education might get us a
long way.
First, we are not trying to
make everyone a scientist. Only a small proportion of the population is ever
going to be a scientist in the sense that they do the subject professionally or
even take a degree in it at a good university. But, for various reasons, partly
to do with lack of teachers but also to do with unchallenging curricula and
undemanding exams at school we are treating this section of the population
badly. In schools, we are not educating scientists, or not educating them as
well as we should be.
We should give up the
pretence that all can follow the same syllabus and take the same exams right up
to the age of 16, and differentiate both pupils and courses in science at the
age of 14 or even earlier. Of course there will be some who are not chosen at
14, and who may show interest and potential later. But these are likely to be a
minority, for whom conversion courses and summer schools could and should be
provided at a later stage. But the
important thing is not to hold back the high-achievers, on egalitarian grounds
or even on the grounds that some others will become high achievers later,
because doing that is bad for to-day’s high achievers and depresses standards
all through the system. Nor should we
force to-day’s high achievers into some baccalaureate style course, where they
are forced to do things they are not interested in, just because some employers
and politicians think it is a good thing. If a bright 16 year old with a good
set of GCSEs in a wide range of subjects is passionate about physics and can’t
stand foreign languages (his or her A* in French notwithstanding), why should
he or she be forced to do foreign languages (or vice versa) just to satisfy
some entirely factitious demand for ‘breadth’?
But if we insist on going down this road, let us at least be honest enough
to admit that breadth and depth are often incompatible, and that breadth is all
too often equivalent to mediocrity.
Secondly, we should define
what level and type (or possibly levels and types) of scientific literacy we
should seek to provide for those unlikely in the first instance to become
professional scientists. We have argued here that scientific literacy should
take as its focus the core theories and concepts of the sciences of physics,
chemistry and biology, as far as this is possible for each level, because it is
here that science provides the illumination all of us seek. In the promised
re-drawing of the general science curriculum, while topical issues should not
be excluded, neither should they displace or downgrade discussion of the
scientific core.
Thirdly, as a corollary of points
one and two, we should think seriously not just about special curricula for the
scientifically able. In order to provide those curricula, we will also need
specialist schools, in order to provide a critical mass of both pupils and
staff. An intensive scientific
education cannot realistically be provided for a just a handful of
scientifically promising pupils in a school where there is in any case
inadequate teaching in the subject. It is these pupils who are most of all let
down by the present system, and as their situation will characteristically be
found in areas of social disadvantage, it is a scandal from all points of view.
The problem will be solved only by the (re-)invention of scientific grammar
schools, particularly in the inner cities.
Fourthly, there should be an
intensive campaign to recruit teachers, particularly in physics and maths. This
may involve offering suitably qualified people better salaries than would be
offered to teachers of English or history, say. And it may involve encouraging
older qualified people from outside the teaching profession to come into
schools on favourable terms. Both these suggestions will be bitterly resisted
by those claiming to speak on behalf of the teaching profession, but if we do
not do either or both these things, we will fail yet more pupils, particularly
those from areas of disadvantage.
Fifthly, the teacher supply
crisis is not going to be solved quickly. So we should explore other ways of
encouraging interest in science in schools, maybe getting physics
undergraduates from our top universities to go and teach specific topics in
schools which need science input. And we should also lay on genuinely academic
course of professional development to re-enthuse to-day’s science teachers and
even to attempt to make up their deficits in knowledge.
Sixthly we should re-examine
the maths curriculum at all stages, including in the early ones. As things
stand, it does not seem to be providing an adequate basis for science at any stage,
which has a knock-on effect on the study of science. It may be that even for
those who will not go on to specialise in science, our current approach to
maths is insufficient, especially in algebra and what relates to algebra.
Finally, depressing as the
situation may be, we do have an opportunity to improve matters. The government
is talking about new curricula and also, more importantly, about greater
differentiation of pupils especially after the age of 14. It talks a lot about
specialist schools. It is also concerned to attract people into teaching in new
and radical ways. And in response to the increasing worries about mathematics
in November 2002 the government did set up and enquiry into post-14
mathematics. The government should be challenged to make good its rhetoric. It
should widen its enquiry to science more generally, and be prepared to take
radical and possibly unpopular steps, such as those canvassed here. The
opportunity should be seized to confront and address our problems directly and
honestly, in the interests both of science and of our young people.
This article was originally
published in June 2003 in the London School of Economics, Centre
for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science Discussion
Paper Series (DP 68/03, Max Steuer (Editor)).