December 11, 2008
I am used to waking up to disturbing stories in the paper. Today, I read this interesting article on decreasing science scores in the local public schools here in
Lancaster
County
. Here it is:
What is wrong? Scores are falling in the very area where we are investing massive amounts of money and attention. How could this happen? There could be many reasons, but I have one educational suggestion:
Logic is missing.
Teaching science in school is actually a recent innovation. One of my teachers remembered that in her youth, science was not taught at her school. The debut of Sputnik launched science education in
America
. To do science and math well, however, you have to train and exercise the rational and logic faculties. Few schools today have Logic classes and if they do it is an elective for a tiny sliver of students. All students, however, need to learn to think clearly and critically. If we continue to ignore Logic (the underlying skill), we should not have hope in improving in our Biology, Chemistry and Physics.
