About ten days ago, I read an opinion piece in The New York Times entitled Why Republicans Keep Telling
Everyone They’re Not Scientists. Here
As I do in the autumn of every
year, I had a flu shot a few weeks ago. When a couple I know returned from
South Africa in early September, I did not fear catching Ebola from them. When
a friend was able to start a new therapy for her advanced breast cancer in late
October, I felt happy that she qualified for clinical trials.
Some of us are old enough to
remember how our relieved parents took time off work one summer day in 1954 to
take us to queue up in a school cafeteria for our first polio shot. Haven’t
most of us used our smartphones in the past 24 hours to send or receive a text,
talk to someone in another part of the country, check email, or use a net-based
app?
Do we have to be scientists to benefit a thousand ways
from science every day, to make informed science-based decisions? Do we need
to be scientists to take flu or polio shots,
to use our mobile phones, to be alert to the predicted tracks of dangerous
storm systems, to seek out the best treatments for our cancers, to understand
how unlikely it would be to contract Ebola from someone who’d been thousands of
miles from any reported cases?
I won’t accept that science is
optional, a matter of opinion,
I'll-take-my-flu-shot-and-reject-evolution-of-species (without which there
could be no flu shots). As an educator, I completely reject the ignorance that
drives school districts to cower before parents who demand that the science
curriculum be sliced and diced or confused with ignorant and superstitious
counter-possibilities.
My last few years as a principal
were enlivened by our school district’s DESERT Project. A handful of intrepid
science-loving educators landed over $5 million to bring to our teachers and
kids engaged, hands-on, inquiry-based, thought-provoking REAL science.
Beginning in kindergarten, kids would do science and learn to observe
systematically. They’d think and talk about what they were seeing, smelling, touching,
hearing, then write and draw in science notebooks, and become immersed in
authentic scientific method. They would not just read about science in
pre-digested and boring paragraphs as I did through my own years in elementary
school.
But then I retired and the
Twenty-First Century arrived, accelerating the ascendancy of nonsense over
science. I didn’t notice how extreme this had become until a 2013 trip to
Australia and New Zealand, where the natural world was persistently described
and discussed by scientists, science teachers, and zoo managers without apology
or pulled-punches. No, “In my opinion,” or "I hope I'm not offending
anyone" buffering, but “this is how it is.” This is the history of volcanic eruption
and earthquakes here, this is the evolutionary biology of this
animal, this is why our planet is experiencing
increasing weather extremes.
Be afraid of how American schools
are backing away from science and informed interpretation of natural phenomena.
Speak up about anti-science and pseudo-science just as you would about racism.