Elementary+Science

=Education Week= Published Online: October 9, 2007Published in Print: October 10, 2007 Commentary =Science Education’s ‘Overlooked Ingredient’=

Why the Path to Global Competitiveness Begins in Elementary School
By Harold Pratt



NOTES:


 * But a key ingredient—arguably the most important ingredient in effective science education—is being undervalued and overlooked: creative, engaging, and demanding elementary science.
 * If the current expectations of most grade schools are left intact, elementary science will never adequately contribute to the effort to increase American competitiveness. For multiple reasons, elementary science takes a back seat in the curriculum and in school and district improvement plans. Many elementary educators feel undertrained in science, and therefore hesitant about emphasizing it in their classrooms.
 * And many educators assume that children can “catch up” on science when they reach middle school and high school. This is a flawed assumption, for three reasons.
 * First, it disregards the importance of catching children’s attention when they are most open, most curious, and most naturally disposed to asking questions about the world around them.
 * Second, science learning is cumulative, in both process and content. If we wait too long, we will find that we have not built a strong enough fluency in the language of science, and learners will be crippled by their lack of basic understanding.
 * A third reason is that, as a recent study published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science shows, most students have made core decisions about their academic interests by middle school.

=As the great science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, himself a scientist, warned: “Science can be introduced to children well or poorly. If poorly, children can be turned away from science; they can develop a lifelong antipathy; they will be in a far worse condition than if they had never been introduced to science at all.”=