The Standard Model for Reform in Science Education Does Not Work

Abstract

What might be termed the “Standard Model” of reform in science education calls for less rote learning, more hands-on experience, and more interesting presentation techniques. In reality, science education has gone so far down this path in the last 50 years that any improvements to be gained by this approach should have been obvious by now. The continuing crisis in science education shows that the root causes for the malaise lie not in poor teaching but in trends outside of education: The end of a uniquely favorable era following World War II and the launching of Sputnik.The development of unrealistic and romanticized expectations. There is a widespread but flawed syllogism among educators that goes as follows: children enter school bright and curious, they exit jaded and uninterested in intellectual matters; therefore the educational process must be at fault. Neither the premise nor the conclusion of this syllogism is valid.Anti-intellectual cultural forces, both outside of and within academia. The growth of pseudoscience, while public support for science languishes, suggests that the real reasons for antipathy toward science are that science requires intellectual rigor and conformity to external reality.