Science Education & Policy

End-of-year academic stress getting you down? Here’s a spirit-lifting tip: Open your browser and Google “Heartland billboard.” You’ll quickly find The Heartland Institute’s latest propaganda piece: a mugshot of Ted Kaczynski next to the words, “I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?” Heartland’s not-so-subtle subtext: If you think the climate is changing, you’re no better than terrorists like the Unabomber. The billboard, which appeared alongside a Chicago highway, was the first in a series that, Heartland said, would have included other standout characters like Osama bin Laden and…

Which countries are the best at providing higher education?  The Universitas 21 Ranking was announced today at Lund University in Sweden. Universitas 21, a network of research universities, has developed their own ranking as a benchmark for governments, education institutions and individuals to highlight the importance of creating a strong environment for higher education institutions that will contribute to economic and cultural development, provide a high-quality experience for students and help institutions compete for overseas applicants.  So calibrate accordingly when the…

Here's a pretty good kickstart for a science resume; inventing a disease-fighting, anti-aging compound using nano-particles from trees at age 16. Janelle Tam took top honors at  the 2012 Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada. Her super anti-oxidant compound could one day help improve health and anti-aging products by neutralizing harmful free-radicals found in the body.  Tam, a Grade 12 student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, was awarded the $5,000 first prize by Canadian scientists assembled at the Ottawa headquarters of the National Research Council of Canada.  Her…

“Let’s play “Jeopardy.” Round One: Science Literacy. Category: Evolution. For $500: Which is the largest demographic group to reject Darwin’s theory of evolution?” According to Chris Mooney’s bestselling new book, The Republican Brain, a follow up to his 2007 polemic The Republican War on Science, the answer is easy: Tea party Republicans. From 50% to 80% of Americans, depending on the poll and how one interprets the data, do not believe in evolution. Yet natural selection theory has been settled science for more than a century. Even the Catholic Church agrees that evolution doesn’t have to…

We carry some press releases on Science 2.0 and of course that is what Science Codex in our sidebar is. It's been an intentional effort since the communications arm of Science 2.0 began in 2006. The first, and most important reason, for that is because we think the audience is smart and don't need journalists putting context to most stories. Our audience just wants to know first so if something looks interesting, it will hit this page on the minute the embargo lifts. Everything else is written by scientists or at least (mostly) knowledgeable people(1). So we have an advantage mainstream media…

The National Academies Press will roll out some new national science standards for K-12 educators and for the first time, those standards will include guidelines on teaching climate change. Good luck with that.  As No Child Left Behind showed, positive results and the welfare of kids will not matter in a political fight - any attempts to create an education standard and accountability are going to flop unless education unions buy into it and any attempts to create a science standard for climate education will flop unless teachers do.  And a lot of them don't. In teaching hyper-…

I have been invited to give a 30 minute presentation to high-school kids next week about Free Fall. The physics teacher who is organizing this event also has some nice plans to include a theatrical play, a couple presentations on Galileo's story by the students and an introductory talk by one of his colleague on the same matter. The request to my side was to prepare something to expand the horizons of students related to the entirely different perspectives on bodies motion in the gravitational field by Aristotle and Galileo. As a reminder, I have to tell you that this particular event is…

Evolution has various mechanisms and one of them is natural selection. While most religious people have no disagreement with science overall, Biblical literalists contend man cannot have changed or evolved.  Some confusion about evolution is understandable - evolution is darn complex - and the disagreement with evolution does not fall strongly into any demographic except the religious. In America, we hear more about 'the religious right' but primarily we hear about them from the secular left - while noting that 39% of Republicans don't accept evolution they fail to mention 30% of…

During the educational reform efforts of the No Child Left Behind Act, females achieved parity with males on math tests for the first time in history, yet stereotypes die hard.  Some people think females are just not as good at math.  Is there truth to it? When it comes to women, there is a special sort of rationalization that goes on in science, math and engineering; namely, that if they don't have equal numbers in classes, or the classes are not more polite, young women will be turned away.  Yet if you replace 'females' with another minority, 'Republicans', in that same…

Every few years, an international test is given and American students finish in the middle of the pack.  They went up during the 2000s but American kids have never been at the top - international students learn facts and American kids learn 'how to think'. Americans were 11th out of 12 countries taking the international assessment the first time it was given in the early 1960s.  They are not testing what American students are learning. Given the rampant criticism educators, the government and students get from cultural pundits ('dismal', 'being left behind', etc.) each time one of…