FROM THE PRESIDENT
Science, Society and the Schools
The social goal of scientific literacy requires that effective
scientific education be imparted in the schools and that it reach
all students.
The participation of the body politic in the science and technology
decision-making process may be represented by a pyramid (G. Almond,
1950, The American People and Foreign Policy, Harcourt
Brace). At the top are the government officials (executive,
legislative, judiciary) in charge of making and executing political
decisions. Just below them are the policy advisers: experts who
provide the policy makers with scientific and technical analysis of
the issues, including their economic and public health consequences.
The third level of the pyramid is represented by the scientists,
engineers and technicians who embody the technological expertise of
the body politic, who get the industrial and technological engine
engaged by introducing new inventions, developing technologies,
improving manufacturing processes and the like; scientists and
engineers who advance and impart knowledge also belong on this level.
At the base of the pyramid is the labor force, the large majority of
those involved in the productive sector of the economy. They need to
be scientifically literate in order to fulfill the needs of modern
industry and commerce. Practical politics and the exercise of
democratic freedoms and powers require that the public at large must
also be included in the large base of the scientific pyramid,
because all citizens are (or, by right, should be) involved in the
election of government officials, who are selected on the basis of
their performance or the promises of a political platform.
Science and technology have commercial, strategic, bureaucratic and
public-health consequences not at their margins, but at the core of
these essential components of the political process. A participatory
democracy requires that the electorate—the public at
large—be scientifically literate so that it may or may not
support the proposals or decisions of officials, and endorse or not
their election based on some understanding of the implications of
those proposals or decisions.
The science education of the public at large is primarily a
responsibility of the primary and secondary schools. They must
prepare the students who will go on to technical schools, colleges
and universities and become the scientists and engineers who occupy
critical positions in the industrial and economic development of
modern nations. Schools must also prepare the workforce demanded by
science-based industries and by the increasingly numerous
enterprises that require technically skilled labor. Finally, the
schools must accomplish the goal of preparing people for
participatory citizenship, which requires as a minimum some
understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge.
These broad goals make it imperative that science education be
started in the early school grades and continued through all years
of mandatory education. The success of science and mathematics
teaching will, of course, be largely predicated on the preparation
and dedication of the teachers of primary and secondary schools and
demands suitable investments by the school districts, the states,
and the federal government.