Toward Wider Public Understanding of Science Available to Purchase

Wider understanding of science will be achieved only by giving students a chance to synthesize experience and thought into knowledge and understanding. Such a chance is not available in the deluge of unintelligible names and jargon precipitated at unmanageable pace and volume in so large a proportion of our college courses, and it is not available in the absence of humanistic, historical, or philosophical perspectives within these courses. Neither will salvation be found in topical courses on currently “popular” matters such as the energy crisis, environmental problems, or societal impact—so long as these problems are plunged into without any genuine prior understanding of the underlying scientific ideas. Some deeply valuable lessons about the learning process, as it occurs in all individuals, are to be learned from among the best of the new elementary science curricula that are now available to the schools. These lessons are transferable to college level and might help us simultaneously develop a new generation of teachers who would begin to disseminate a wider public understanding of science through competent teaching of science in the elementary schools.