This is from <http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.hts/editorial/935934>. -ML June 10, 2001, 6:17PM Atrocious textbooks turn kids away from science By JOHN L. HUBISZ WHY do our eighth-graders do so poorly in math and science compared with students around the world? Why is it that 80 percent of U.S. high school graduates never go on to take a college physics course? Why do so many American graduate schools attract more foreign students than U.S. citizens to their science and engineering programs? One reason is that the science textbooks found in most American classrooms are, in a word, atrocious. They are riddled with errors, sloppy thinking and glitzy illustrations that illustrate little in the way of actual science. We shouldn't be surprised that American children are turning away from science when their introduction to it is at best incoherent. I say this not as a curmudgeon, but as the author of a recent study of the 12 physical science textbooks most commonly used in middle schools around the country. What I found was horrifying. None of the books -- not a single one -- was deemed adequate by nine primary reviewers and a host of other experts who offered comments. Each contained hundreds of factual errors, as well as experiments that couldn't possibly work and diagrams and drawings that represented impossible situations. One can laugh at the silly mistakes -- the equator going through Texas, say. Far more serious are the routine garblings of basic science: misstating Newton's laws; claiming that no solid substance can contain a plasma; and on and on. Such errors might seem trivial; teachers can correct them on the fly or students can learn better as they move to more advanced courses (where the textbooks are, in fact, a bit more accurate). Failing all of that, we can rest assured that most kids won't grow up to be scientists anyway, so they need only grasp a few broad ideas -- perhaps that Earth is round and orbits the sun -- to function in the modern world. Unfortunately, none of these arguments holds up. Four out of five science teachers at the middle-school level have never taken a college physical science course. They can hardly be expected to correct the errors of a presumably "authoritative" textbook. And a growing body of evidence shows that many students choose never to take another physical science course, which means they will never have the opportunity to have their faulty education repaired. There is also clear evidence that early-established misinformation is very difficult to overcome. "Hardwiring" is the common term used to describe how rigidly students (and adults) hold on to conceptions learned early in life. Perhaps most damaging, though, is the assumption that those who aren't scientists require no real science education. Teaching science well is important not just because it leads to technological innovation, but also because it produces technologically savvy citizens. We face a variety of important decisions about technology, from how to legislate privacy to what to do about cloning. Is the Earth warming and, if so, is it the result of human activity? Is nuclear power really more dangerous than the alternatives? If an electorate fails to achieve basic science literacy, it will be incapable of responsibly judging its own course. Getting the facts right is only the first step. Our students, this country's future, must learn how to raise questions such as: How do we know ... ? Why do we believe ... ? What is the evidence for ... ? Our current crop of textbooks teaches them only that such questions can be answered incorrectly, and that no one seems to mind. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hubisz, who wrote this piece for The Industry Standard, is a professor at North Carolina State University. His full report is at www.psrc-online.org/curriculum/book.html. -- This is the ISTA-talk mailing list. To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For more information: <http://www.ista-il.org/ista-talk.asp> To search the archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>
