From Climate Etc.
by Judith Curry
Today I’m participating in a panel on K-12 education, hosted by the National Association of Scholars.
You can watch the event on youtube. The even is launching a new document called the Franklin Standards on K-12 education, which are available online link
JC’s remarks
Hello everyone. I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this panel.
Let me start off by saying that I would be delighted to teach freshman college students that had been taught the content that Franklin proposes.
I strongly endorse Franklin’s recommendations on teaching Scientific Inquiry, History of Science, and Engineering and Technology.
I also abhor the creep of activism and equity into the K-12 curriculum.
That said, I see several broad issues facing the K-12 curriculum, that the Franklin Standards doesn’t directly address.
I would first like to address the motivation of students to study science. In the spirit of Ben Franklin, the Franklin Standards emphasizes curiosity as a motivator, and I agree that this is particularly important in the earlier grade levels. However, nurturing curiosity is not sufficient motivation to increase the number of students majoring in STEM subjects in university. The spirit of Ben Franklin is not just about curiosity, but also about inventions that improve our lives, and political philosophy that provides a societal context for science. These additional dimensions make science more interesting and important to high school students. and help provide motivations to explore a career in STEM fields.
The Franklin Standards emphasize content, which I agree is important. However, the best content won’t produce good learning outcomes without effective pedagogy. I’ve seen that many high school students entering university who have taken AP science courses retain little of the material and show essentially no operational ability to draw on the relevant content. And of course, less motivated students retain even less of the content that they were taught. By contrast, some students have an excellent operational grasp of what they were taught in high school. Invariably, these students had teachers that challenged them not just with content, but engaged them in active learning.
The neuroscience of active learning shows that the more we can activate students’ brains in different ways, the more they learn. I’ve seen this in my own teaching. I include this topic as a result of discussions with my granddaughter, who just finished 8th grade in an accelerated academic program. She has an innate interest in science, but said her science classes were the most boring. The teacher taught a lot of content, but didn’t provide any context for the importance of what they were learning. The labs were pure cookbook, with no opportunity for critical thinking. Surprisingly, she thought her math teacher did a better job, with less obvious material for engagement. Pedagogy matters, and inquiry-based learning is important for the strongest science students.
The Franklin Standards recognizes that there are dual objectives of science education. The first is that of pre-professional education, addressing the needs of students such as my granddaughter. The second is the citizen-focused need to have an understanding of the complex world that they will confront as citizens over their lifespan.
I’ve been asked to comment on the importance of Franklin Standards for the public understanding of science and scientific debate, particularly with reference to climate science.
A major concern raised by the Franklin Standards document is the politicization of the science curriculum and activism. I agree that this is a huge problem. However, apparently strong science content education in the high school curriculum hasn’t inoculated many A students from being convinced that humans face extinction from climate change, and that they can change their sex. I encountered some of these students in the lawsuit filed by Our Children’s Trust against the State of Montana. Where a number of very bright native American high school students were convinced that human-caused climate change was an existential threat to their future.
There are several problems here. Even if schools have a state- or district-adopted curriculum, that doesn’t mean that it’s getting taught. Further, children are being taught materials at the discretion of the individual teacher that have no official oversight or approval.
The bigger issue is that societally-relevant issues related to health, the environment, and climate change are deeply complex, and fraught with ethical ambiguities. It’s naïve to think that providing students with fundamental science content will arm them against wrong beliefs. When experts disagree on both the problems and their solutions.
Engaging students with the societal context for science, both current and historical, not only increases their learning potential and motivation for learning science, but it can also support critical thinking about complex issues facing society.
How is this to be accomplished? We should work to integrate science more broadly across the curriculum. Not just mathematics, but also social studies and English and Language Arts. Among other things, such integration effectively increases the amount of time in the school day that includes science. But more importantly, it promotes critical thinking about complex scientific topics and societal issues.
Instead of endless history courses on wars, why not a course on the History of Science and Discovery? The Franklin curriculum includes material about famous scientists, which can be motivational. But there’s opportunity and need for much more, integrating inquiry and discovery with the history and the social context of science. As an example, Isaac Asimov’s book, Chronology of science and discovery, beautifully describes how science has shaped the world and how it interfaces with technology. Bill Bryson’s A short history of everything is another good resource, describing the events, conversations, feuds, competitions and necessities that drove science forward. Such a course would be motivational for strong students that are potential STEM majors, as well as providing interesting and accessible material to students who find the math and science curriculum to be difficult. With suitable examples, such a course could provide societal context for the science and discovery, and help inoculate against politicized science and enforced consensus.
The bottom line is to promote independent thought and critical thinking, about pure science, technology and related societal issues. This is important for motivating students for the pre-professional track as well as for general education to sensibly think about the increasingly complex science related issues that they will encounter .
Thank you