Science education: you're doing it wrong

Learning about science in elementary school and in high school has been interesting and enjoyable enough. It's more stimulating and exciting than most subjects; I find myself actually wanting to learn about we talk about in class, a feeling that – now that I think about it – I don't get as often as I should. The quality of any student's learning experience depends largely on their particular teacher, peers (a class of bored students doesn't make for a very exciting time), and dispositions. However, that learning experience is also ultimately governed by what the school board mandates that students learn. The school board's curriculum sets the standard of what science class is supposed to be about and teachers have only so much freedom to diverge from that standard. 

Now, it's easy to be a critic and considerably harder to offer practical alternatives, but I feel like we – a society with kids to educate and inspire – could do so much better. The way science is taught in schools and the way the scientific enterprise is portrayed to students is, to me, greatly wanting. Sure, there are lots of fun experiments and it seems like most elementary school students are exposed to Bill Nye The Science Guy and The Magic School Bus (two wonderful wellsprings of science education), but almost all of the really important stuff is missing. The science I know from books, TV, films, and the Internet is a world of breathtaking new perspectives and mind-blowing ideas, of fascinating debates and stirring new developments. The science I know from the classroom is pH levels and cloud types, plant anatomy and polysaturated fats – interesting enough at times, but emphatically humdrum in comparison. I know not every teacher can be Carl Sagan (and perhaps not every day in even Sagan's science class would be thrilling), but the blandness of the subject matter makes it harder for good science communicators to capture the imaginations of students and it further handicaps less gifted teachers.

Students are missing out on the majesty of science. I would love a science class that challenges my intuitions, makes me marvel at the universe, and bends my mind in ways I never thought it could bend. Why don't we throw out the bland and (from all appearances) arbitrary stuff kids are pointlessly learning now and make science class about what's really important? Let's actually teach students what the scientific method is, for starters, and let kids learn how to think critically. Let's teach them how to employ skepticism in the face of uncertainty, to look for evidence and not to take any claim at face value. Let's give students a rudimentary history of human thought with all the outlandish things people used to believe, and the earth-shaking discoveries that overturned past worldviews. Most people know that our planet is round, not flat, but how do we know that? How did we learn this very important fact? In around 200 BC, the Greek polymath Eratosthenes devised an ingenious experiment to measure the circumference of the Earth by measuring the length of shadows cast by a stick on the same day of the year, in different cities. It's an interesting story, but most people never hear it. And there's one like it for every significant scientific discovery ever made. 

Let's give students an evolutionary perspective. Let's tell them about how Charles Darwin, a British naturalist, formulated one of the most powerful ideas in human history. The idea goes something like this: within any species, many more creatures are born than can survive in the world. Some of those creatures have traits – passed down from generation to generation – that help them survive better than their rivals (sharper claws, for example, or a more sensitive nose). Creatures with traits that aid in their survival will tend to have more offspring than their rivals. Wait for enough generations to pass and the entire species might now have this new trait. This same step-by-step process can generate new limbs, new organs, or as Darwin first postulated, entirely new species. Among scientists, Darwin's view is now the universally accepted explanation for how all life on Earth originated. Darwin called his potent idea, for the sake of brevity, natural selection. 

Evolution alone is rich and fascinating terrain for students to explore, but there is so much more. Let students focus more on the really interesting topics: black holes and the Big Bang, the astounding size and age of the universe, the origin of our solar system and life in it, atoms and the weird things about them (for example, they're made of mostly nothing), the human mind and brain and the evolution of both, and, for the older grades, why not learn about Einstein's relativity and time dilation, the strangess of quantum physics, extra dimensions, and fundmental ideas like space and time? This is the important stuff, the exciting stuff, along with much more I've neglected to mention – or at least it's far more important and exciting than almost everything that's currently being taught. 

I don't blame my friends who think science is dry and technical – fine for those who are into it, but boring for the rest of us. They've been deprived of something really wonderful by a tragic failure of our school system. Science can be appreciated by everyone in the same way music or literature is appreciated by everyone (and like good music or good fiction, it can be lots of fun). Yes, science allows us to build iPods and cure diseases – which are fantastic things – but it is so much more than that. It can nurture our curiosity and unlock alien ways of thinking. It can empower us to think for ourselves and distinguish reality from fantasy. It can move us to probe deeper, ask questions, and come up with hunches of our own. But most of all, it unveils a world – otherwise numbed by familiarity and clouded by ignorance – that is fuller, richer, more bizarre, more mysterious, and more beautiful than we ever could have imagined.