Mercury,
July/August 1996 Table of Contents
(c)
1996 Astronomical Society of the Pacific
An
English professor recently told me that in his students' broken
papers, he is witnessing "the death of language." Tangled tenses,
mangled modifiers -- that's normal. But the lack of ideas and drive
to improve reveals a deeper rot. Science teachers say the same.
Where is students' hunger to learn? Are we witnessing in today's
young people the death of science?
"I've
taught classes where kids were so unmotivated that they wouldn't
even copy [from each other]," said Jonathan Frank, a chemistry
teacher at Lincoln High School in San Francisco. "They just didn't
care."
For
his recent book Beyond the Classroom, Temple University
psychologist Laurence Steinberg surveyed 20,000 high-school students
in Wisconsin and California. Two- fifths said they didn't pay attention
in class. Only one in five said their friends thought it was important
to get good grades.
Immigrant
students slam shut the same lockers and endure the same teachers,
yet they thrive [see "The Generation X Files," p. 33]. Our schools,
whatever their flaws, are still quite capable of educating. Maybe
science-education reformers need to think less about teaching and
more about students' social environment.
Curricula
and standards
Frank
said he quit the American Association for the Advancement of Science's
"Project 2061" because reformers spent their time designing ideal
curricula and neglected the reality of teaching lackadaisical students.
"They
didn't talk about how to enforce standards," Frank said. "They
didn't talk about all the behavior stuff, or restructuring school
to get more accountability in students' day- to-day existence."
Curriculum
reform is the fashionable way that scientists try to help schools,
but teachers say the handy handbooks and reworked workbooks wither
on the shelves. "An emphasis on curriculum development tends to
underestimate the far more difficult problem of curriculum support
and development," Caltech neurobiologist and teacher-trainer James
Bower told a Sigma Xi forum two years ago.
What
teachers need, Frank said, are ways to prove to students that learning
matters -- and that not bothering has tangible consequences. Role
models help, but professors must also lobby their universities to
tighten admissions requirements and eliminate remedial courses.
Frank said the University of California recently made admission
conditional on second- semester senior grades. The result: His seniors
perked up.
"The
kids are smarter than we think," Frank said. "Once those higher
standards exist, a lot of kids will live up to them."
Parents
Few
astronomy-education programs involve parents. The Center for Extreme
Ultraviolet Astrophysics has brought middle-school students and
their parents together [see "The Cosmic Bamba," p. 30]; planetarium
shows are geared toward families. Most programs, however, focus
on the classroom.
Plugging
parents in, Steinberg wrote, is one of the main things education
reformers can do to counter adolescent anti- intellectualism. A
third of the students in his survey said their parents had no idea
how they were doing in school. Half said they could bring home a
grade of 'C' or lower without their parents getting upset.
Young
people
One
group is conspicuously absent from the symposia and workshops of
astronomy education: the students. They can be energetic forces
for change, but too many schools -- not to mention society at large
-- think of the masses as addicts-in- waiting, not as underutilized
citizens.
Only
students can answer many of the key questions: How can schools work
within adolescent society to enhance the profile of academics? How
can adults make themselves available in the right ways? Is the World
Wide Web more than entertainment [see "Crawling Through Cyberspace,"
p. 8]? How can older students reach out to younger ones [see "I
Hope That I Could Come," p. 23]?
"Kids
run schools," Brown University educationalist Ted Sizer wrote in
Horace's Compromise. "If we want our well-intentioned
plans to succeed, we'll have to inspire the adolescents
to join in them -- inspire even the sullen, uninterested kids one
sees in parking lots at the start of a school day."
Inspire
doesn't mean "entertain." Teachers and their allies can demonstrate
why learning is important and give students the resources they'll
need. But the real work? That's up to the students.
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