Indeed, I’m gratified and surprised that so many people are interested in dinosaurs, the Large Hadron Collider or alien life all blazingly irrelevant to our day-to-day lives. We should be grateful to David Attenborough, Robert Winston, Brian Cox and other popular writers and television presenters for generating such interest. But it’s depressing that all too often this natural enthusiasm of the young has been stifled by the time they leave school.
That’s sad, because science is important for its own sake. It is a cultural deprivation not to appreciate the wonderful panorama offered by modern cosmology, DNA and Darwinian evolution. This common understanding should transcend all national differences and all faiths, too. It should be part of global culture; but even in the UK a group of scientists including Attenborough has this week felt the need to reassert this.
Science education must also be high on the agenda as an ever-growing fraction of jobs need specific skills ranging from basic technical competence through to professional scientists, medics and engineers. More of our young people need to attain each of these levels of expertise. But everyone needs a “feel” for science, for our environment, and a realistic assessment of risk. And the “problem solving” that motivates all scientists whether a cosmologist, or an engineer facing a down-to-earth design conundrum is also an essential skill. The Swedish engineer who invented the zip fastener made a greater intellectual leap than many scientists do in a lifetime.
In his state of the union address last January President Obama said spearheading science education and research would be the engine of economic recovery, and gave a nice metaphor: if you’re on an aeroplane that’s overweight, it doesn’t help to throw out an engine .
This is a far more urgent message for the UK. We mustn’t get trapped in a downward spiral. University tutors are dismayed that so many young people aren’t sufficiently prepared by schools to qualify for the most challenging courses. Businesses find that many aren’t qualified for apprenticeships. That’s because there are too few good teachers. Pupils in many secondary schools don’t get exposed even to one. And less than a third of primary schools have even a single teacher with any scientific qualifications.
This shortage can’t be remedied quickly. But we must reduce the fraction of young teachers who rapidly drop out, facilitate mid-career transfer into the profession (from, for instance, industry, universities or the armed forces), and promote links between schools and their local universities.
We need, too, to enliven what is taught. Newton, when young, made model windmills and clocks the hi-tech artefacts of his time. Darwin collected fossils and beetles. The young Einstein was fascinated by the electric motors and dynamos in his father’s factory. Fifty years ago inquisitive children could take apart a clock, radio set or motorbike, figure out how it worked, and even put it together again.
But it’s different today. There’s now, for the first time, a huge gulf between the artefacts of our everyday life and what even a single expert, let alone the average child, can comprehend. The gadgets that now pervade young people’s lives, iPhones and suchlike, are baffling “black boxes” pure magic to most people. Even if you take them apart you’ll find few clues to their arcane miniaturised mechanisms. And you certainly can’t put them together again.
The extreme sophistication of modern technology wonderful though its benefits are is, ironically, an impediment to engaging young people with basics: with learning how things work. Likewise, town dwellers are more distanced from the natural world than earlier generations were. Crucial to science education is hands-on involvement: showing, not just telling; real experiments and field trips and not just “virtual reality”.
But there are reasons to be cheerful. There is a huge educational upside from computers and the web, allowing young people to participate in frontier science. For example, in the Galaxy Zoo project, images of 3m galaxies can be viewed, and the labour-intensive task of classifying them is being shared by thousands of keen amateur astronomers, many of school age.
These technologies can enhance the impact of outstanding teachers. But it can never eliminate the need for high-quality professionals in the classroom. We should emulate Finland, where teachers have high status and are mainly drawn from the top 10% of graduates. Otherwise we may end up having to import teachers from India or Korea, and being outclassed by those nations in frontier technology a shameful comedown, and an economic calamity.
ESP have a brand new Science range available to take learning outdoors. This brand new range of playground equipment has been an instant hit in primary, secondary and SEN schools throughout the UK.
ESP are carrying out a launch of how to take learning outdoors on the 14th October at Croftway Primary School in the north east. The day is highlighting the importance of oudoor learning using inclusive, fun and cross curricular activities with the school’s new playground equipment in order to enhance the learning of Science, Maths and PE.
Our playground equipment concept has been tested by a range universities to measure the impact of our concept. To view the research reports please visit www.espplay.co.uk.
