Children get turned off to science early, says Scientific American, saying, “Studies have found that children in kindergarten are already forming negative views about science that could cast a shadow across their entire educational careers. . . . Furthermore, even before first grade, fewer girls than boys say they like science.”
One solution, from educational psychology researchers at Purdue University, is to teach science in kindergarten by integrating it with language teaching. Bravo—that’s the kind of integrated instruction I’ve written about before. President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act focused on reading and math to the detriment of other subjects, but there’s no reason one can’t learn to read and write by reading and writing about science, or history, or social studies. It really took a major university study to figure this out?
The article does, however, make the excellent point that: “The goal of science education at the earliest levels should be to encourage and refine children’s innate love of exploring the world around them and to help that enthusiastic behavior grow into true scientific literacy.”
I should add that I’m not one to value scientific education over that of history, literature, or the arts. I’m a big believer in the full range of the liberal arts as the basis of an education. Since scientific literacy is a part of that, however, I’m all for it.
The article is worth a read if you’re an educator or have young children.
On a related note, SciAm just published an intriguing article on teaching physics via comic books, science fiction, and the like.
This looks like a great program. Scientific method could also be naturally integrated into the oft-stated priority of teaching “critical thinking.” But we also need to prepare teachers better, starting with doing a better job of teaching science to humanities majors in college.
Agreed–and teaching humanities to science majors (writing skills, for example).
This sounds like a good idea. I think kids do not get enough interesting science early on and by the time they are really exposed to it they resist it. SHould be made more fun and appetizing to the earllier. Unfortunately, public schools have very little money to create such programs.