Some Thoughts on Science and Math Education

To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: DOWNLOAD

I have a great deal of work, what with the housekeeping, the children, the teaching and the laboratory, and I don’t know how I shall manage it all. Dr. Marie Curie

1) women are just not so interested as men in making the sacrifices required by high-powered jobs, 2) men have more “intrinsic aptitude” for high-level science and 3) women may be victims of old-fashioned discrimination. Harvard University President Larry Summers

John Mighton might well become the nation’s math conscience. He not only knows that all children can master genuine mathematics but has repeatedly proved so with his brilliant, no-nonsense tutoring program. Andrew Nikiforuk, Education Writer and award-winning author, commenting on JUMP founder John Mighton’s recently published book, The Myth of Ability.

Over the last several years I have gathered together nearly 500 quotations while reading books on various aspects of science and mathematics. I read for stimulation, for curiosity, for exploration. I recorded because I wanted to reconsider later the wisdom in the words I was reading. The quotations have just become a book—Scienceworks—and the reading has left a strong feeling inside me of the joy of scientific exploration and discovery, but also a certain disquietude concerning the place of women in the sciences and the widespread innumeracy and lack of interest in scientific matters in the general public.

While the majority of scientists and mathematicians in North America are men, the balance is slowly adjusting as more women get advanced degrees (1/3 of all science doctorates at the moment). Even among science graduates though, women are more likely to be found in Health Sciences and Psychology than in Engineering and Mathematics. Since more women than men are actually getting their bachelor degrees in the science field, it would look like the problem begins at that point, but more likely the negative messages of the difficulty for a woman to have a career in science were implanted years before in elementary school.

Deborah Stipek, Stanford University’s Dean of Education says “By age 12, children have formed hard and fast beliefs about the subjects at which they excel and those at which they fail.” Barbie is often quoted as an indicator of this. The National Network for child care reported that when, “in 1992, Mattel toys put the first talking Barbie doll on the market, Barbie’s first words were ‘Math class is tough.’ Mattel thought they were simply expressing the feelings of most school-age girls. Many parents and teachers though, thought that Barbie should keep her mouth shut.”

Although the under-representation of women at upper levels of scientific research is of concern, of more concern is the fact that the average citizen is distressingly innumerate and that most people in the humanities are not even aware of their lack of balance in their extraordinary ignorance of “things scientific.” At what level does this general distaste for science and math in the general public, and this marked lack of intellectual curiosity and questioning begin? Is former US President Ronald Reagan’s query “Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?” one the general public asks also?

Is Science education to blame? As far as the general distaste, John Passmore expresses it this way: “Science is often presented as a matter of learning principles and applying them by routine procedures. It is learned from textbooks, not by reading the works of great scientists or even the day-to-day contributions to the scientific literature…The beginning scientist, unlike the beginning humanist, does not have an immediate contact with genius. Indeed…school courses can attract quite the wrong sort of person into science—unimaginative boys and girls who like routine.”

Freeman Dyson, himself a fine example of a non-doctorate who reached a high academic position in the sciences, states “…a minority of children set free from the slavery of the classroom…will pursue science with a passionate enthusiasm that a school of school-trained examination passers cannot match. What the kids in the ghetto need, to open their minds to science, is not more hours of physics and chemistry, but a vision of a future that will be different from the past…And that is what science, if we don’t confuse science with SAT scores, can give.”

And David Deutsch supports this view: “The trouble is that our culture has come to value science only for its accurate predictions and its technological spin-offs. It denigrates explanation as a mere matter of ‘interpretation’ or taste, and its education system ruthlessly selects for those who are most proficient at applying existing ideas faithfully.”

Thomas Kuhn, the historian of science, offers added evidence: “Normal scientific research is a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education.”

So, if the above quotes seem reasonable and can be backed by data, the three big areas where education seems to fail are in the stimulation of question, the encouragement of curiosity and, of course, the systemic and cultural encouragement of women in the sciences and mathematical fields.

Do we have any counters to this failing? Of course we do. People like Sophie Wolfe, a lab-assistant who started an after-school science class that gave birth to three Nobel Prize winners, and a long line of folks who came after her—the many creative and encouraging teachers of today.

Checking out what was available for the “encouragement of girls in the areas of science and math in Canada,” I entered those very words in Google and came up with a slew of exciting and supportive sites—everything from the Alberta Women’s Science Network to Engineer Girl, to GEMS (specifically for 5th and 6th grade girls) and Rich Thinking Resources (Richmond, BC whose material encourages critical thinking). Single-sex classes for Math and Science are also being tested, since boys’ and girls’ brains develop at different speeds.

Of course it is in a healthy society, itself, where the supportive pattern for all children to question and probe and query current ideas should be laid down firmly, as well as the principle that girls and boys should be encouraged equally to exhibit excellence in whatever they do. The difference between them in aptitude in the sciences and mathematics is much less than the difference between poor and affluent students.

Shirley Ann Jackson, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has increased women in her faculty to 67%. But Ms Jackson is equally concerned that there will not be enough students (men and women) to replace the talent that is in the sciences at the moment. Her concern, as ours, should be the total encouragement of students in Science and Math.

Here are just a few of the many web-sites helpful to teachers and parents for the encouragement of students in science and math:

Besides the supportive web-sites, Canada has many fine role models—Cecilia Krieger, Evelyn Nelson, Julie Payette, Roberta Bonder, Ursula Franklin, Sid Altman, Sir Frederick Banting, Bert Brockhouse, Gerhard Herzberg, David Hubel, Rudolph Marcus, John Polanyi, Michael Smith, Henry Taube and Richard Taylor—well yes, I have named more men, and yes, they were all Nobel Prize winners, but male or female, all the folks above are worthy of hero worshipping, and there’s nothing like a little hero worship to encourage emulation.

Naomi Beth Wakan is the author of more than fifteen educational titles, several collections of quotations and a new book of poetry entitled Segues. She lives, writes and paints on Gabriola Island, BC. www.naomiwakan.com