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Science is Music |
| To love and appreciate music, is it necessary to know how to play a musical instrument? |
| So to love and appreciate Science, is it necessary to know how to use a Bunsen burner, dissect a plant or do trigonometry? |
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Why then do we put young people through this torture? |
High school students in England, when asked about secondary school science: "I really don't care how you work out how fast a ball falls if it weighs 10 kg and is falling 4 meters, it's not stimulating and I'm never going to use that information again" "Physics. I have never, nor will I ever, either see the point in or understand physics. It always seemed pointless, spending hours of experimental time proving what was already proven, or that black wasn't a colour, or whatever" "Equations in bonding (chemistry) - for a person who KNOWS that she will not ever go into chemistry, that was pointless, difficult to grasp, and boring" "Chemistry - learning how chemicals are used in industry is very boring - chemicals in the body and used in drugs are more interesting and relevant" - page 11, Student Review of the Science Curriculum 2003, www.planet-science.com/sciteach/index.html?page=/sciteach/review/index.html |
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Is it any wonder there is so much anti-science feeling in modern society? |
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| For example: |
Why should children have to learn science? Posted by Christie Davies 23 September, 2004 www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000166.php Science we are told is something that every child should and must study. Most children hate it, fail to master it and never use it or think about it again after they have left school. It is forced upon unwilling and inept pupils because it is supposed to be good for them. Science is the twenty-first century's version of Latin. A knowledge of science we are assured is essential for a proper understanding of the modern world. It is not. Very few English people whether adults or teenagers have any serious knowledge of the sciences but this does not hinder them in any way when it comes to earning, buying and selling, taking care of their children, playing elaborate games on their computers, tinkering with their car engines, giving up smoking or choosing between one fool and another at election time. It would not assist them in any way to understand the properties of silicon or carbon monoxide or lead tetra-ethyl or serotonin or the nature of thermodynamics or electro-magnetic fields, even though these underlie their activities. Implicit local skills and understandings are enough. The English are competent in their ignorance. Those who have studied national curriculum science are if anything more ignorant but also more competent than their elders. They have a purely nominal knowledge of science like that conveyed by a glossy encyclopaedia or human interest science documentary film from which all difficult thinking have been carefully excluded. It is lowest common denominator science learned by rote, Gradgrind's dream. It is a worthless piece of paper on a par with a Weimar thousand mark note. For those who can not even manage 'nat cur sci' there is tendentious environmental science and for the great uncertificated majority complete incomprehension – National curriculum one, enlightenment nil, sullen resentment considerable. Faced with science even pupils who sparkle during History or English retreat into dull carelessness. A youngster may have something, if only an inane opinion, to contribute in these subjects but science is text book truth. Who can contradict the laws of motion or challenge the coloured beads that make up a molecule of glycol? Worse still there is the tedium of lab work with its twiddling of pipettes, peering down polarizing microscopes or at warped mirrors and dissecting of frogs. Worst of all are field trips in search of the lesser spotted flitter mouse, the fragments of a Silurian trilobite or some vile sludge from a long dead moraine. Both lab work and field trips are an expensive and useless fetish whose main purpose is to force out of existence small private academies that can not afford the capital outlays and high premium insurance policies they require. Elementary science can be taught more cheaply and effectively using videos shown to small classes, but that is heresy to the big science, big comprehensive minds that control the curriculum. For most pupils field trips are the equivalent of day trips to Bologne pour le shoplifting et le questioning par les flics, a pointless and unappreciated frill that pushes up unit costs and produces no extra revenue. There are those with a gift for science or a capacity for enduring boredom who will go on to become what the Russians call specialists but they will not profit from it. We are always being told that there is a shortage of scientists yet their price remains low. Perseverance leads to poverty. Some scientists become rich from their discoveries but most of them find that they are less well rewarded than the patent lawyers who corral their inventions or the marketing executives who entice the customers into using them. Perhaps that is as it should be. In the Soviet Union where great emphasis was placed on science education scientists were respected and relatively well paid and the economy collapsed from an inability to innovate. For most scientists there is no money in science nor in big team science is there any fame. Who wants to be third named author out of seventeen in a specialist journal that few people read let alone understand? What social standing does the phrase 'northern chemist' convey? A tedious life and an ill-paid one, Pennyfeather. It is hardly surprising that most qualified scientists soon get out of science. Those with good science A-Levels rush into medicine though it is difficult to imagine a worse educational preparation for becoming a G.P. who has to listen to patients. Very few of them take degrees in science. Science graduates leave to use their generic training in mathematics, statistics or computing in banking, insurance, risk assessment, or dealing in futures ; anything to find a task more profitable and less boring than science. Even in the civil service, scientists are a lower caste, paid less, gongless, disesteemed by the decision making mandarins. No wonder Dr Kelly , the sudra, was made the scapegoat . Nonetheless we need scientists, not just to keep the entire technical system ticking over but to match and incorporate the innovations of our competitors. Where are we to get them from, now that we feel unable to inflict science on our own unwilling children? Immigration is the answer. We have always imported foreigners to perform the tasks our own children have rejected - German mercenaries in the eighteenth century, Irish navvies building in turn Britain's canals, railways and motorways, Pakistanis willing to do shift work in the cotton industry and the illegal immigrants who now provide cheap labour in catering and cleaning. By long tradition anything disagreeable in Britain is always done by foreigners, so why not science? For talented scientists in poor countries or ones where there is little personal freedom the tedious work done in a laboratory in free and wealthy England is an escape to paradise. All they need are scholarships, contracts and visas. I look forward to having 100,000 new Hindu and Chinese neighbours. Dr Christie Davies is a graduate of Cambridge University who has taught in universities in Britain and Australia and been a younger scientists' visiting scholar in India and a visiting lecturer in America. During a misspent youth he obtained several science and mathematics A-levels and an S-level at grade A when it meant A and a state scholarship in science. |
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"Science is nothing but trained and
organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may
differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense
only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in
which a savage wields his club" |