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OCR for page 360
360
THE LIFE SCIENCES
doubled in 1966 a period during which similar figures for the physical
sciences had fallen by half. Thus the requirements for support of research
training in the life sciences are generated not only by the demands of
society, but also by the wants of intelligent students who sense that biology
is ready for new discoveries and that the life sciences seem both most
relevant to human problems and most distant *am military use or the
furtherance of polluting forms of technology.
An important activity of the biological community is neglected if one
considers only its contribution to the store of knowledge. It must also
provide, directly and through the training of primary and secondary school
teachers, for the instruction of large numbers of future citizens who, though
not scientists themselves, will be asked to make decisions concerning public
issues affecting or affected by science.
ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
Education in the life sciences at these levels is apt to involve exposure to
"science" or "general science" in the elementary or junior high school
grades and to a course in biology in high school. The overwhelming ma-
jority of secondary school students study biology in the tenth grade; a small
but increasing fraction are exposed to an advanced-level course later. Two
aspects of the secondary school experience are of special interest: it pro-
vides the only formal exposure to a science for many of the large number
of citizens who will not become professional scientists; and it must supply
the background and the motivating force for those students who will under-
take work in the life sciences at the university level.
The elementary level is nearly terra incognita in understanding of how
learning about science occurs. Among the few scientists now beginning
to work seriously in this area, the general feeling is that methods of science
teaching need drastic reorientation in particular, toward taking advantage
of the child's natural tendency to explore and to make use of materials.
These considerations lead naturally into an experimental approach in which
the child is left to reach independent conclusions, not to work toward a
set of results that have been given textbook justifications in advance. Some
experienced scientists who have worked with elementary school children
state that this new approach demands a new philosophy of educating the
teacher. There is little correlation between the success of teachers in com-
municating science in this manner and the teacher's own science training.
Unfortunately, this approach is also expensive. Even the simplest collection
of experimental materials-caterpillars, flowerpots, and aquaria-cost more
than books.
OCR for page 361
EDUCATION IN BIOLOGY
The secondary school curriculum has been the more frequent target of
reform by professional life scientists. As a part of the assault on science
education in general, biologists examined the secondary school curriculum
and found it wanting. Compared to the excitement and stir in "modern
bio. logy," the average high school course was strongly oriented toward
systematics and comparative morphology. The new insights of molecular
biology and genetics were missing; so were up-to-date treatments of the
biology of populations, of animal behavior, and of physiology.
Secondary school curriculum revision in the life sciences has been prin-
cipally effected by one group, the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study-
an organization staffed largely by professional biologists, with its policies
established by a steering committee drawn from the scientific community.
The Study was organized in 1958 by the American Institute of Biological
Sciences and has been financed by the National Science Foundation since
1961. Using writing teams drawn from both secondary school and uni-
versity faculties, the Study has completed three major secondary-level
textbooks. All are comprehensive and reasonably modern in that they
have increased emphasis on chemical biology, genetics, and other topics,
but they differ in approach. The "blue" version is more biochemically
oriented, the "yellow" uses development and genetics as a unifying focus,
and the "green" version stresses environmental biology. With their sup-
plementary volumes (teachers' guides, laboratory exercises, options for
advanced students, film clips, and the like) these books comprise an im-
posing shelf. They have been produced at a cost of over $10 million, much
or all of which will be recovered by the government in royalty payments
from users.
What results has this curriculum reform produced? As with all such
efforts, evaluation is difficult. About 1.5 million of these books had been
sold through 1967; apparently, however, less than 20 percent of the students
in secondary school biology used the Study materials in 1967. Surveys
currently in progress tend to show that colleges receiving students who used
this material are pleased with their performance, but this is difficult to
separate from the general improvement in secondary education and from
increasingly selective admissions policies at most colleges. Critical appraisal
of the Study materials has been generally favorable, although biologists
have criticized them for being too molecular, for treating complex modern
topics in a way that provides verbal facility without real understanding, for
slighting development and "organismic biology," and for a variety of more
minor sins. These judgments notwithstanding, the Study materials represent
a major increment in quality over what had gone before.
For a substantial percentage of high school students, the biology course
is not a foundation for other studies; it is a terminal course. Some biol
361
OCR for page 362
362
THE LIFE SCIENCES
ogists have asked whether "professionally oriented" curricula like the Bio-
logical Sciences Curriculum Study are optimally designed to meet the needs
of these students as well as the college-preparatory group. To meet this
need, future consideration might be given to a course that might be described
as "humanistic biology." It could be called "human biology" as indeed
it is in some nascent university curricula-except that, at the secondary
level, by previous usage "human biology" is equated with human physi-
ology. Human physiology should be a proper part of the secondary school
course, but only a part; more attention should be paid to man's place in the
living world. This would include a recounting of the evolution of the
physical world and its biological inhabitants in such a way as to give an
appreciation of their dimensions in space and in time; attention should be
given to the present position of man in the biosphere. Current concern for
environmental quality suggests that the approach should be essentially
ecological. The complex interdependencies of living organisms lead to the
basic rule of practical ecology that "we can never do merely one thing to
an ecosystem," that the more man manages the natural environment, the
more he generates the necessity for yet more management. By historical
examples, the future citizen needs to be shown that knowledge is a pre-
requisite to intelligent interference in the scheme of nature, and that there
are practical limits to what man can do. Problems of food production,
pesticides, radiation, pollution, conservation, and population all have their
place in secondary school biology courses and will find an appreciative,
understanding audience. These considerations are crucial if we want a
citizenry equipped to make intelligent decisions about the variety of ques-
tions facing society that have biological roots. The nature of our environ-
ment is determined in large part by decisions about landscape management
that are made at local levels by zoning boards, county supervisors, etc.
These decisions are thus especially sensitive to the wishes of immediately
concerned local constituencies, and it is in the nation's interest that these
decision-makers have the greatest possible awareness of the scientific issues
and complexities underlying their decisions. It seems likely that a course so
structured could be maximally useful to future citizens, while including a
sufficient presentation of cellular and genetic biology to afford a tempting
glimpse of the elegance and intellectual attraction of current frontiers of
biological progress.
Perhaps the greatest problem confronting the adoption of this and other
experimental courses in the high schools is the education of a sufficient
number of teachers with the training, insight, and enthusiasm to teach
them effectively. The difficulties are grounded not so much in intellectual
considerations as in the sociology of science. Biology teachers must be
OCR for page 363
EDUCATION IN BIOLOGY
trained in colleges, but the curricula of colleges and universities are often
structured almost entirely to meet the needs of college teachers, research
biologists, or future physicians. With rare exceptions, college biology
curricula are neither broad nor humanistic. High school teachers, so trained,
tend to structure their high school courses in the same way. The resultant
instruction may be well suited to proselytizing students for careers in bio-
logical research, but it is ill suited to the education of the citizen. With the
best of motives and largely ignorant of what they do, university faculties
deflect would-be high school teachers from preparing themselves for edu-
cating the citizen. Since the number of high school biology teachers is
several times larger than the number of Ph.D. researchers, this is a massive
and indefensible deflection.
Various remedial actions can be suggested, depending on local circum-
stances. One general proposal that universities create curricula in human
biology-should be seriously considered. Such a program could well in-
clude instruction in the specialties of human physiology, physical anthro-
pology, human engineering, human genetics, ecology (both general and
human), and population studies. Whatever the specialties of its members,
the faculty should be recruited on the basis of interest in the scientific
aspects of the relation of man to man and man to his environment. The
education of teachers of biology in high schools and junior colleges would
be a central concern of a program of this kind.
Many secondary school teachers are simply unprepared for new cur-
ricular materials. In some areas of the United States, only three semester
units of college biology is considered adequate preparation to teach on the
secondary level. Over 50 percent of the nation's high school teachers in
the life sciences have had less than an undergraduate college minor in
biology. Clearly, retraining and updating of teachers, as well as methods
of recruiting better trained ones, are a large part of the secondary education
problem; such methods are discussed in a later section.
New curricula developed by the professionals in a particular discipline
often carry the taint of paternalism; occasionally, they have been resented
by local officials or teachers. An additional pressure confronts biology:
The programs of the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study have been
attacked because their treatment of evolution offended some fundamentalist
religious groups, or because their rather restrained treatment of sexual
reproduction was held to be lascivious. Such irrational pressures prejudice
the acceptance of new curricula and can rob thousands of students of edu-
cational advantages that ought to be theirs. One part of the process of
curriculum improvement is the development of an intellectual climate
appropriate for its acceptance.
363
Representative terms from entire chapter:
school teachers
