Science-Technology-Society: Science Education for the 1980s

explore science through reading, discussion, and direct learning experiences in the classroom, laboratory, and field.

Middle/junior high school science should contribute to the development of scientifically literate persons and not simply prepare them for the next science course. National studies have shown that often middle/junior high school science is designed to prepare students for high school biology with no emphasis on physical science. In addition, studies show that fewer than one half of the junior high students going on to high school take chemistry and physics. Therefore, it is imperative that an important thrust of middle/junior high school science be toward the physical and earth sciences.

Middle/junior high school students should continue to develop science process skills and content. Middle/junior high school science should emphasize the application of both skills and content to the students' personal life situations and enable students to begin examining societal issues that have a scientific and technological basis. Middle/junior high school students need to apply what they have learned soon after their instruction to insure the lasting value of the experience.

High School Science

The high school science curriculum should enable students to further develop their scientific and technological literacy. Courses incorporating well-designed laboratory and field work help to meet this need.

A balanced core of two years of science should be required of all students, consisting of one year of life science and one year of physical science-boch taught in a science-technology-society context. The courses should provide students with opportunities to develop skills in identifying science-based societal problems and in making decisions about their resolution.

Students interested in exploring or preparing for careers in science, engineering, or technical fields should have the opportunity to take additional discipline-based courses in advanced biology, chemistry, physics, and earth sciences. These courses should be planned and sequenced to take advantage of the students' increasing command of mathematics.

Time on science learning

Emphasis on science education for the aduls general population • Schools should provide educational opportunities in science for all the adult population in their community.

•Colleges, universities, and national organizations should increase emphasis on science education for adults through public lectures and seminars.

• The important contributions of out-of-school education programs such as museums, TV, planetariums, and zoos, should be recognized and utilized by all those involved.

Emphasis on the professional development of science teachers sbrough inservice opportunities

• Colleges, universities, and other agencies should develop teacher education and inservice education programs that are consistent with this policy statement.

• School districts should provide opportunities, encouragement, and recognition for teachers who maintain a high level of profes sional competence.

Emphasis of laboratory and field activities

⚫ Elementary level laboratory and field activities should stress the development of basic inquiry skills.

• Middle/junior high school level laboratory and field activities should stress the application and extension of inquiry skills as a means of obtaining knowledge and resolving problems.

• High school level laboratory and field activities should emphasize not only the acquisition of knowledge, but also problem solving and decision making.

Science instruction matches students' cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development

• Schools should provide objectives, content, and instructional strategies that are appropriate to the student's stage of mental, moral, and physical development.

• Varying strategies and materials should be provided at all grades to accommodate students with various levels of learning skills and mental development.

Emphasis on science-related societal issues

● Elementary level: a minimum of 5 percent of science instruction should be directed toward science-related societal issues. • Middle/junior high school level: a minimum of 15 percent of science instruction should be directed toward science-related societal issues.

• Senior high school level: a minimum of 20 percent of science instruction should be directed toward science-related societal

Senator STAFFORD. Thank you very much, Mr. Aldridge. We are 5 minutes into the vote that is over on the floor, so the Chair is going to have to, with reluctance, temporarily recess the hearing. We will start with you, Dr. Willoughby, as soon as I can get back here. [Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.]

Senator STAFFORD. The subcommittee will please come to order. Dr. Willoughby, Senator Weicker has especially asked me to welcome you in his name, as well as that of the subcommittee. In addition to the vote which we both just ran to, Senator Weicker is chairing a hearing for the Subcommittee on Energy Conservation.

He would say if he were here that Dr. Willoughby is president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Dr. Willoughby received his AB and his MAT from Harvard University, and his doctorate of education from Columbia University.

Doctor, you are currently the director of math education and professor of mathematics at New York University, and you are the author of a number of professional works, including the elementary school math text, Real Math.

For the subcommittee and for Senator Weicker, I welcome you to the subcommittee and we would be glad to hear your testimony. Dr. WILLOUGHBY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator STAFFORD. You have to pull that mike up a little. Those are not very good ones and you need to speak almost right into them.

Dr. WILLOUGHBY. Thank you. One of the problems about testifying before this committee is these are the good guys who are already converted, and what we really ought to be talking to is the people who do not fully understand the problem.

The problem has been delineated very nicely by several people already. The demands of an increasingly technological society for a quantitatively literate population are great and are growing.

Solutions to the problem have been proposed by various different groups, and most of them are very minor solutions, very inexpensive solutions, and will not work. One of the difficulties is that if you, in fact, retrain teachers or prepare new people to become teachers of mathematics or the quantitative sciences-physics, mathematics and chemistry-what you will do is also prepare them for jobs in industry, which pays them approximately twice as much and which gives them much, much better working conditions. Therefore, a large number of these people will promptly leave the teaching profession and go into industry.

It seems to me that one of the problems that has bothered a lot of people is the question of whether or not the Federal Government ought to be interested in education. According to the Constitution, the Congress is responsible for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. There is nothing that is more important to the long-term common defense and general welfare of the United States than the education of our children today, and we must at this point begin to invest the kind of money and the kind of time in education that is necessary to protect our defense and our economy in the future.

Some of the short-range solutions that have been proposed and some of the bills before Congress come up with such remarkable sums as $400 million, which seems a great deal to me since I have

been a teacher all of my life, but is, in fact, less than six-hundredths of one percent of the entire Federal budget.

Senator STAFFORD. Doctor, let me just interpose that it also is eight times as much as this administration has proposed to be spent on this subject.

Dr. WILLOUGHBY. I am very conscious of that, and the comments I am making I would prefer to be heard by the administration than by the people who have proposed the $400 million.

Some of the short-term solutions have scholarships of relatively small amounts of money; summer institutes and other procedures to increase the number of mathematics and science teachers. These, in general, are not going to have very much effect as long as we do not do something about the conditions that exist in the schools.

Differential salaries for teachers in shortage subjects will, for the most part, do nothing more than reallocate the teachers that are available. As one State increases the salaries for mathematics and science teachers, that State will attract teachers from other States. If the difference is of the magnitude of $10,000 or more, then we may attract people out of industry into the school system if we can also, at the same time, substantially improve the conditions within the school.

Something that has not been mentioned today, as far as I have heard, is that many teachers are seriously in fear for their lives when they go to school. You should get combat pay for going into many of the schools that teachers are trying to teach in. It is amazing how many good, excellent teachers we still have in mathematics and science in the schools today.

It is amazing that, in fact, our best students are better than those from most other countries and are getting, in fact, a better education. This will not continue to be the case unless we do something drastic in the immediate future.

Rather than asking how we are going to pay for the education of our children, it seems to me that what we must do is reorder our priorities and put the education of our children first, since that will, in the long run, drastically reduce the amount of money spent for jobs bills, for jails, for welfare, for retraining citizens to function effectively in our society, and will ultimately produce a much stronger defense establishment for less money.

We need citizens and leaders who have the vision of a better future and who are willing to commit sufficient resources now to the realization of that vision. If a true commitment were to be made to the education of our youth, I would propose the following four steps: first of all, improve the conditions within the schools to make them more attractive and efficient places to teach; make them as attractive as industry is to teach in; make it a nice environment; make it at least an environment in which the teacher does not have to worry about whether he or she is going to be attacked during the day by somebody, either a student or somebody off the street.

I would recommend increasing the length of the school day and the length of the school year so that we get more education and possibly better education. I would strongly recommend that we im

prove the standards for becoming a teacher and for remaining a teacher.

As of now, we have large numbers of incompetent people teaching mathematics and science who are not even certified in many cases. I know of one instance in New York State where a teacher failed 10th grade geometry on five separate occasions, never passed it, and is certified not only to teach 10th grade geometry, but the courses that come after that course, 11th grade algebra and trigonometry, without ever having passed a course more advanced than 10th grade geometry.

Finally, and this is all a package and one part will not work without the other, it is essential that we pay a living wage to teachers. I believe that we should double the salary of every teacher in the Nation, and that a major portion of the funds for that doubling should come from the Federal Government. Unless we do something of that sort, these other minor moves that we are making will have had relatively little effect in the long run.

There is a crisis in education today that will profoundly affect the future of the Nation. If we act by doing just a little, we may fool ourselves into believing that we have solved the problem when we have, in fact, only put it out of our minds. Too little action may be worse than no action at all. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Willoughby follows:]