Lederman describes ARISE science education program
by John L. Roeder
Being the keynote speaker at the Northeast Regional Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers at Yale University on 7 November 1998 gave Leon Lederman a cherished opportunity to share his ideas about science education with a large group of teachers of introductory physics. The meeting program said he would talk about "Quarks, Genes, Law and Science Education," a composite which he said the meeting organizers had drawn from several titles he had suggested, but he made it very clear at the outset that the last part of that composite title was uppermost in his mind.
"What is the purpose of schools?" he began. "To produce graduates who can cope in the world* into which they emerge," he responded -- but not without noting that the asterisk following "world" meant that the world is changing. Human knowledge now doubles every eight years, and this doubling time is expected to dwindle to one year by 2020. Computer power doubles in 15 months, he added, and the Internet doubles in a year. In the evening's only references to quarks and genes, Lederman noted the quantum, DNA, and computer revolutions, leading to better understanding of matter, life, and the mind, respectively. And while twentieth century reductionism predicts a merger of these three revolutions, he noted several limitations of modern science. We cannot safely extrapolate the human reaction to the achievements of modern science. Moreover, modern science does not touch the need of humans for comfort, inspiration, and hope, nor has it solved all the world's problems. Instead, it has brought us exploding technology with an exponentially increasing data base in a shrinking world.
Among today's growth industries Lederman listed computers; software; robotics; materials science; fiber optics; digital processing; information storage, processing and retrieval; superconductivity; nanotechnology; and aerospace. We need to prepare and motivate students for these fields, he said, noting that several CEOs have gone on record advocating skills requirements of the work force. Even janitors need to know about biohazards, he added.
The battle in producing graduates "who can cope in the world into which they emerge" requires enlisting students to develop skills and knowledge and bring them to bear on the world's problems -- e.g., global environmental crises, population growth, the gap between rich and poor, epidemics, natural and human-made disasters, urban drabness, destruction of biodiversity, limits of agricultural productivity and energy resources, and growth of antiscience.
Although we now have the National Science Education Standards and Project 2061's Benchmarks, growing acceptance of three or more years of math and science as requirements for a high school diploma, and recognition of education as a "hot" topic, there are too many unqualified science teachers teaching a fragmented curriculum -- usually starting with biology, yielding chemistry students with no knowledge of what a molecule is. They in turn leave chemistry with no knowledge of the basic interactions of nature. Why not "seize the day," Lederman asked, to create a new, coherent science curriculum? His ARISE (American Renaissance In Science Education)_ group has proposed a national three-year science core curriculum, the first year of which is mostly physics: mechanics (including Michael Jordan's "hang time"), electricity, energy transforms, circular motion, vibration, radiant energy, photons, electrons, atoms, and spectroscopy. The chemically-focused second year includes chemical changes and reactions, gas laws, chemical bonds, equilibrium, enzymes, organic chemistry, and photochemical reactions. The third year calls upon students to apply the physics and chemistry they have learned to how structure supports function and various other aspects of biology. "In a war on ignorance we need a general staff to set a guiding educational strategy," Lederman counseled.
The three-year curriculum advocated by ARISE includes computer skills, technology, some history, qualities of respect and skepticism, risk and probability, and forecasting. It is based on the criteria of coherence, integration, evolution from concrete to abstract, inquiry, history (how we know and learn) and applications (science in society). According to Lederman, graduates of the program could go on to jobs, liberal arts college, or scientific and technological colleges.
Lederman and his ARISE group are not alone in their advocacy of a physics-chemistry-biology sequence in science education, nor were they the first to advocate it. Lederman noted the championing of this idea by Kevin Real in the 1980s and cited Uri Haber-Schaim's lists of chemistry prerequisites in biology texts and physics prerequisites in chemistry texts in his opinion piece, "High school physics should be taught before chemistry and biology," in the May 1984 issue of The Physics Teacher. Nor is the ARISE group itself new: Irma Jarcho cited it in Lederman's article in the April 1996 issue of Technology Review in her "Observations" column of our Spring 1996 issue, an issue which also notes a similar advocacy by the National Association of Secondary Schools Principals (their February 1996 Bulletin is listed as Resource #11).
In his piece with Marjorie Bardeen in the 10 July 1998 issue of Science, Lederman reported knowing of about two dozen schools (out of 15,000 throughout the U.S.) teaching science in the physics-chemistry-biology order. By the time of his presentation in November this number had increased to 30, and it increased by about another half dozen that night, as members of the audience, myself included, called out that they had been teaching "physics first" too.
But three dozen out of 15,000 still leaves a long way to go, and ARISE recognizes that real progress will require real money -- for new facilities, teaching materials, teacher training, and time for teachers to talk with each other (Lederman recommends three hours a day). It also requires getting five times as many physics teachers as we presently have (to cover the present 20% enrollment rate). Lederman acknowledged this to be a problem, which requires making teaching physics more attractive.
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