Beyond the Bunsen burner
SCIENCE AND technology create new knowledge, cool products, and merciful medical treatments, but newly released MCAS scores suggest that a lot of public school students are missing out on the excitement: 26 percent of high school students failed last spring's tests in biology, chemistry, physics or technology/engineering. And only 9 percent scored at the "advanced" level.
Students will have to work harder to pass, because the science MCAS becomes part of the graduation requirement in 2010. But the state also has a responsibility: to turn its schools into hotbeds of science education.
"Students should do science as scientists do," Ioannis Miaoulis, the president of the Museum of Science, said in an interview. He argues that the K-12 science curriculum should be infused with engineering, so that students can grapple with real-world problems that will inspire their interest in the underlying science and math.
For example, Miaoulis once taught a class at Tufts University called Gourmet Engineering, which explored the science of cooking. It was a hands-on way to teach a course about heat transfer. It's an approach the museum is using in its Engineering is Elementary project, an effort to increase children's engineering and technology literacy by exploring topics such as how potato chips are made. Next month, the museum is set to open a new engineering exhibit.
Massachusetts should join the party, stepping up its efforts to develop an innovative science education by investing more resources. "We're reckoning with what 21st-century schools should look like," said Paul Reville, chairman of the state Board of Education.
One challenge is outdated science labs. As the Globe's James Vaznis recently reported, thousands of students are working in aging labs and teachers are scrambling to get access to limited lab space. That's poor form. In the iPod era, labs should be modern and compelling, ideally one of the coolest places in schools. A bill filed in the State House by Senator Edward Augustus, a Worcester Democrat, could help by requiring the state's School Building Authority to set standards for building science labs and classrooms in newly constructed middle and high schools.
Improving science and technology education also requires having more passionate teachers at every level: in preschool and elementary classrooms when children are wide open to knowledge, and in middle and high school when they're trying to figure out who they might be in the world. And teachers need more time, either longer school days or a longer school year, to teach both the facts and the practice of science.
This state's economy is fueled by scientific innovation. So it's essential to invest in the state's budding scientists and engineers.
