“Kids these days!”
It’s one of the oldest, most constant complaints: kids today are ruder, lazier, dumber, etc., than they were at some indeterminate point in the past—usually coinciding with when the complainer was a child. But what if it’s not the kids’ fault? What if they simply aren’t getting the opportunity to learn the basic concepts and skills that previous generations took for granted? For science skills, this might be the case.
A spring 2007 study by UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science and WestEd looked at science education in Bay Area elementary schools. Researchers found that science has been squeezed out of elementary school curriculums to the point that 80% of surveyed teachers reported teaching less than an hour of science each week—and a fifth of those say they don’t spend any time teaching science.
Teachers reported that, in addition to not having much classroom time for science, they don’t feel as prepared to teach science as other subjects, and what’s more they don’t have opportunities for professional development if they do want to improve their science skills.
Here are kids presenting the study’s findings:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/GqZUjR-Ex34" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Those statistics make me, who grew up with science fairs and frog dissections, exclaim, “Schools these days!”
But what if it’s not entirely the schools’ fault, either? School district representatives who were interviewed said that since the No Child Left Behind act took effect, less and less time goes toward science education. This is because all the schools’ energy is focused on meeting NCLB’s testing requirements, which concentrate on basic reading and math.
Where does that leave me in my litany of complaints?
“Education policy these days!!”
Source: “Science courses nearly extinct in elementary grades, study finds,” by Nanette Asimov.
The full LHS report is here.
Photo credit: Notebook photo by Flickr user Bas.K
This reminds me of my own experience in high school - in New York, the curriculum is geared towards passing the standardized Regents exam at the end of the year. My last science class of my high school career was physics, and that year the test was restructured. I barely passed, and many of my classmates failed. Not because we were stupid or lazy, or because our teachers hadn’t done a good job, but many of the questions were poorly written and sketchily covered subjects we hadn’t approached in class.
I think the problem is that science isn’t as easy to standardize for a test…. maybe make science more test-able and we’ll have our science education back?
Our problem is standardized, government controlled schools. There can be nothing that encourages children to independently absorb information, synthisize it and come to their own conclusion. Also, rote memorization has been downplayed.
It is not possible to learn higher mathematics or other subjects without an absolute knowledge of the fundemental building blocks of the subject. There can be no parity either. Kids are not all equal and the sharper must be challenged while the less astute pampered. Everyone is not college material.
Our efforts at one size fits all, politically correct, pablum education is a failure.
Parents need to be involved to the point of pulling their kids out of bad schools and raising a ruckus at the local school board meetings. Elimination of consolidated schools would be a good start.
I’d like to acknowledge the outstanding job of my 3rd grade public school teacher, Mr. Poncho (I don’t think he had a first name).
He really went out of his way to introduce science to our class. I’ll never forget when we went on a field trip to a nearby stream, collected some water, and looked at it under a microscope (for most of us, a first) which he brought from home. The living, spinning, crawling, darting world in that drop of water blew me away!
Jorge, thanks for giving Mr. Poncho a shout-out. It reminded me of how I’m thankful to have had a dedicated, informed, inspiring biology teacher one year in high school.
The other 11 years of public schooling, though, I had good teachers that worked very hard just to get enough of their children above the minimum standards to keep the school funded. I’m sure they didn’t want to teach only the ITBS, TAAS, TAKS, and TASP tests (to name just a few we had here in Texas), but their jobs depended on it. We all learned how to take those tests - too bad that left us wholly unprepared for anything else.
We do need to acknowledge the few who reach out and make a difference, but the opportunity to become inspired and educated shouldn’t be different - it should be the norm.
Many of the current educators seem to have the misconception that it takes more time than should be allocated to teach reading and math. Thus, they short music, art, history, etc., as well as science.
Reading and math teaching goes on for 12+ years! Reasonably good teaching should be able to do the job for most students AND allow adequate time for there subjects.
Judging by the caliber of some (not all), they do not learn adequate math and writing in those years, so as a group, probably have some trouble with the tests.