Science Education

Shortly after Sputnik I went up, a survey of first-and second-year college students in the Mid-west revealed that 10 per cent of them were not aware that Russia had launched a satellite.

Even if the Midwest is granted a certain amount of insularity, this ignorance reflects more than disinterest in current affairs; it indicates the Zeitgeist of a nation which--formerly complacent about its technological superiority--has failed to insist upon rigorous education, especially in science.

The Russian educational system suffers from no such neglect. The Soviet high school graduate has studied five years of physics, five of biology, a year of astronomy, four years of chemistry, and ten of mathematics. Of course, the U.S.S.R. can decree an emphasis upon science teaching; the highest-salaried man in the Soviet Union is the president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

Immediate reaction to the surprise Soviet advancement has been a typically American one--to spend more money. In his recent television speech to the nation President Eisenhower suggested a nationwide science test, with subsidies going to those students who show aptitude. "This suggestion," said New Jersey's Commissioner of Education, was "the most dangerous ever to come out of Washington. If we permit nationwide tests, we will be teaching what the test makers want us to teach; we would have directions on what to teach from the Federal government."

Moreover, this is not attacking the problem at the right spot. Dr. Henry T. Heald, president of the Ford Foundation, asserts that "Scientists cannot be made overnight with any amount of money. They must be produced by the American school system."

About 8,000 math and science teachers entered this system last year, as compared with over 10,000 in social studies, 8,000 in English, and more than 12,000 in physical education. Many attempts to raise the level of science teaching are in progress. New York City has instituted a Bureau of Science and Mathematics to coordinate the curriculum in the public schools, and to try to bring standards nearer those of the Bronx High School of Science. A national education foundation has engaged Oscar-winning Frank Capra to direct some films dramatizing the opportunities in science.

But films and coordinating agencies are not enough. These seem to aim at short-term panaceas to catch up with the Russians. James E. Allen Jr., New York State Commissioner of Education, said that although he was "definitely concerned about the Soviet threat," he was "disturbed as well by the emphasis in Washington on a crash program in science and mathematics." An overemphasis on science and mathematics can result in an exclusion of other necessary fields.

General stiffening of curriculum seems a more practical suggestion. "Too many people turn away from science and engineering in college because they feel so unprepared in math and basic science," Grayson Kirk observed. "Given opportunities for choice, children may take easier subjects, and do."

The question is, then, whether a free society can afford to let those who want to glide through school and thus waste needed talent. Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review, states the case for those who wish to require a more rigorous curriculum. "In the best of all possible worlds, we could be elated that man has unshackled himself from earth gravity. Unfortunately, we don't live in the best of all possible worlds."