Shamos and Bybee discuss scientific literacy at NYAS

This Newsletter has covered Morris Shamos' ideas about the unfeasibility of scientific literacy as set forth in a large number of settings: the Physics Club of New York (January 1984 issue), the Scientific Literacy Seminar at Columbia University (Spring 1990 and Winter 1996 issues), the NASTS Technological Literacy Conference (Spring 1990 issue), and the NSTA Convention in Atlanta (Spring 1990 issue). He has expressed his views by himself and in dialog with others (heretofore Audrey Champagne, Bob Yager, and Joe Piel).

To close their 1995-96 series focusing on the National Science Education Standards, the Science Education Section of the New York Academy of Sciences invited Shamos to discuss scientific literacy with Rodger Bybee, Chairman of the Content Standards Group, because "it would appear that the goal of the National Science Education Standards is scientific literacy, whatever that is."

Bybee began by citing Shamos as one of his mentors since graduate school days and recalled Shamos' first writing his views on scientific literacy in the National Association of Secondary School Principals Bulletin way back in 1963. He praised Shamos for the consistency with which he maintained and developed his views, yet expressed puzzlement upon reading Shamos' The Myth of Scientific Literacy (reviewed in our Fall 1995 issue). Though he found himself agreeing with many of Shamos' individual points, Bybee disagreed with Shamos' conclusion that scientific literacy is a myth -- in the sense that Shamos uses the term "myth."

Bybee felt, instead, that scientific literacy fit the more classic definition of myth, namely something that helps us make sense of things. And, for those who would add "whatever that is" in reference to scientific literacy, Bybee maintained that it had been defined -- by both the Standards and Project 2061's Benchmarks -- though not with the simplicity of a bumper sticker.

Bybee dated the term "scientific literacy" to a book by James Bryant Conant in the 1950s (contemporary with the primacy claimed by Paul Hurd in Educational Leadership, 16(1), 13-16 (Oct 58), as cited on page 6 of our Fall 1992 issue). Just as Shamos' views on scientific literacy have been consistent throughout the years, so also have been the themes associated with scientific literacy.

Shamos responded to Bybee that he used the term "myth" synonymously with "fallacy," and that his concern is with scientific literacy in adults rather than in students. To buttress his argument, he observed that the call for scientific literacy has resounded since the nineteenth century, but that its voices have been inadequately heard -- those of Poincar‚, Bronowski, and Snow. As a result, we do not have more than 5% of our population scientifically literate -- although a larger percentage value science for its technological benefits (both inventions and health).

Shamos thus disagreed with the Standards' premise that scientific literacy deepens through a lifetime. Instead, Shamos finds the reverse to be true: students lose interest in science as they grow older, although their teachers become more knowledgeable. These students reach their conclusions from observing adults who are living fulfilling lives without science or from finding science difficult to understand or not taught in an appealing manner.

Shamos criticized both NSTA's Scope, Sequence & Coordination and AAAS' Project 2061 for basing precollege curricula on a college curriculum model. To Shamos the question is not what science to teach but rather why it should be taught. If we don't come to grips with this question, Shamos warned, science in the curriculum might well go the route of Latin -- and he added that "scientific literacy" is not the answer.

Nor is the answer the training of future scientists for the job market. Since the Enlightenment, Shamos said, society has sent us the message: "Give us the useful end products of science, but don't expect us to learn basic science." If society gives us this message, we ought to listen, he emphasized.

As he has argued on previous occasions, Shamos then advocated teaching science appreciation as a cultural imperative, as a practical imperative, with proper use of scientific experts. He proposed a specific science curriculum of 18 topics (listed in Irma Jarcho's review of Shamos' The Myth of Scientific Literacy, page 30 of our Fall 1995 issue). Shamos emphasized that his recommended curriculum was one for science in general rather than one of specific topics. This set his curriculum apart from the more conventional science curriculum suggested by the national content standards, and that to him constituted the Standards' fallacy.

"Recognizing the role of the scientific endeavor and how science, mathematics, and technology interact with society is one of the basic dimensions of scientific literacy."



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