The Denial of Science: Be Very Afraid

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.