On Nerds, Science Education, and Horror Films

Abstract

JUST BEFORE the turn of the century, I had a job that kept me on the road about two weeks each month. Mostly what I did on my trips was work directly with public school teachers and other schoolpeople to support their use of community-based teaching practices. (That was, of course, back in the days before the federal government all but banned such practices.) On those trips I got to know some remarkable teachers who were doing incredible work in the face of what often seemed to be overwhelming barriers. Unfortunately, the far-reaching programs and policies spawned by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have destroyed most of their work and, often, pushed them out of their classrooms into early retirement or private schools. But that is, perhaps, a story for another time. The point here is that I traveled a lot--from Maine to California and Washington to Florida, we used to say. And that is pretty much accurate. Once you've collected a hundred or so snow globes, travel gets old, but it remains instructive. For example, did you know that there is a large polka-loving population in Nebraska? I know this because on several occasions I drove the nine-hour trip from Lincoln, Nebraska, to Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and found that the car radio picked up only two stations. One played back-to-back polka tunes, and the other played back-to-back Rush Limbaugh and his compadres. Thus I became a polka aficionado. I also learned an enormous amount about landforms and historic sites, and I can name all the states and capitals in geographical order--something that will serve me well should I ever be a contestant on Jeopardy. One thing I really hated, though, was waking up in a motel room and not knowing what city I was in. That happened a lot. I used to pull the covers over my head and refuse to get out of bed until I figured out where I was and why I was there. Adding to the problem were the local television news programs. The environment seemed to grow more political each day. Yet, regardless of where I found myself, local television was inundated with politicians reading scripts as predictable and lacking in place identifiers as a McDonald's menu, Domino's delivery policies, or a Holiday Inn lobby. At first these scripted debates focused on health care. I thought that was pretty much okay since there seemed no end to the cost increases of my health insurance, and a visit to the doctor always required a several-hour wait for a three-minute exam. Seemed to me some changes were in order. But suggestions of universal health care and the like got the doctors and HMOs pretty hot under the collar. After a while I noticed that health care began to share the stage with education. Then, before I knew it, health care had quietly exited the stage, and education stood alone in the spotlight--something I've always suspected was orchestrated by the high-priced lobbyists for the American Medical Association. At first the education discussion seemed all right, too. But it quickly turned ugly. And soon, it didn't take a crystal ball to predict that hard times were ahead for public education. But who could have imagined that what would spring from the belly of Congress would be no less horrifying or destructive than the monster that sprang from the innards of Sigourney Weaver's crewmates in the Alien movies? If NCLB's goal was to change schools, it certainly did that. Always complex and challenging places, schools have seen their cultures transformed in some scary ways. Most hard-hit are elementary schools, which are under intense pressure to raise test scores--not to improve learning or better prepare children for lives in a democratic society or even to be more competitive in a world economy. Just to raise test scores. And schools have responded to the pressures in some creative ways. For example, many schools have eliminated recess, music, and art. And science instruction has all but disappeared in most elementary schools. …