Educational Leadership - September 2009

We need to see the world anew. —Albert Einstein

Knowledge empowers.

that form the basis of our predictions of future climates, for example, contain literally hundreds of different factors that have to be accounted for.

For example, in a warming world, there might be less sea ice; sea ice reflects sunlight whereas water absorbs the light. Models have to deal with both the change in ice and the change in energy balance. Add in man-made and natural aerosol particles (which reflect sunlight); changes in vegetation (plants absorb light whereas bare ground

Scientific knowledge
becomes a kind of
entry ticket into the
wider debate.

reflects it); and cloud formation (high clouds reflect sunlight whereas low clouds trap heat)—and you can see the complexity. Because of this, I suspect that no single individual on the planet really understands everything that goes into these models.

Despite this, students are going to have to tackle policy issues that arise from the output of these computer models. In the same way, they will have to deal with the scientific complexity of other issues and the questions that arise. For example, is the depository at Yucca Mountain an appropriate place to put nuclear waste? If we use alternate energy generators, such as windmills, how many birds will these windmills kill?

Is there anything in the current education system that will prepare students to make judgments about this new kind of science? I don’t see it. Certainly the standard cookbook experiments so beloved of advocates of teaching the scientific

method aren’t going to help. Given the glacial pace at which major curriculum changes are made in our current system, it’s not too early for us to start thinking about how we’re going to integrate this aspect of the modern, computer-dominated world into science classrooms.

It would be helpful, for example, to have computer labs in which students make different assumptions about a process like cloud formation, which is highly uncertain from a science point of view. Students could then observe how their choices affect the computer predictions that result from the set of assumptions that they plugged in. If nothing else, such exercises would rid students forever of the naive belief that if something comes from a computer, it must be true.

So what will the science education of the future look like? It will start, as it must, with introducing students to the basic laws that govern the universe. Instead of presenting these laws in a compartmentalized way—divided into physics, chemistry, and biology— teachers would get across the notion that nature presents itself to us in a seamless web, without artificial labels. A student in a physics class might study the transmission of nerve signals as well as the laws governing electrical circuits; a student in biology might learn about the process of energy flow while studying ecosystems.

It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work!

Authors’ note: For a longer treatment of this topic, see James Trefil’s latest book, Why Science? (Teachers College Press & National Science Teachers Association Press, 2008).

EL

James Trefil is the Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Physics at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia; jtrefil@gmu .edu. Wanda O’Brien-Trefil teaches 8th grade English at Thomas Pyle Middle School in Bethesda, Maryland.