Is science taught correctly?

According to many evaluations, education at the elementary and secondary levels is faulty. Every year, students arrive at the university knowing less, which makes it necessary to lower the level at the university or use desperate remedies, such as the implementation of level zero courses.

On the other hand, textbook publishers sometimes launch a race. Secondary education is supposed to provide students with general, non-specialized training. However, in some subjects, such as chemistry and biology, students may be made to learn questions or solve problems that should be encountered in college, several years later. It seems a contradiction that they are forced to learn more, but actually get out knowing less.

As a justification for the increase in content, it is sometimes asserted that scientific knowledge increases, therefore learning should be increased at the lower levels, to make room for new advances that will have to be dealt with in the university. Perhaps this could be applied, to some extent, to biology, but in other sciences there have been no revolutions similar to genetic engineering. It obviously does not apply to mathematics, where recent advances are of interest to specialists, but beyond the reach of the average citizen.

Speaking about mathematics, it must be noted that the introduction of set theory and Boolean algebra at the lowest levels of education was a blunder, comparable to the introduction of transformational linguistics in elementary language teaching. Not every age has the same capacity. When I studied set theory at seventeen, it was explained to me in a couple of hours and I had no problem to understand it. At that age it is trivial, but a six-year-old child cannot grasp it, whatever some educators say.

One of the failures of education is the long time elapsing from the moment a scientific simplification is introduced until it reaches the lowest levels. Simplifications facilitate learning and leave room for new advances. The introduction of the decimal metric system, for instance, removed unnecessary burdens from teaching. Let us look at a personal example of this inertia:

Prototype meter
between 1889 and 1960

When I was studying, one of the main difficulties in the last years of high school was caused by the existence in physics of three systems of measurements and the need to make conversions between them: MKS (based on meter-kilogram-second), CGS (centimeter-gram-second) and Technical or Terrestrial (with strange units, like the kilogram-force or kilopond). In the sixties, all three systems were officially replaced by the International System of Units (SI). However, decades later, the old systems were still being taught.

By the way, when will the United States adopt the SI? Just three countries are still using old measurement systems (Burma and Liberia are the other two). This discrepancy has caused important losses to the U.S., as when the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed against Mars because American units of distance had been mixed with SI units, which should be the only ones used in science.

Primary education should be really basic: in mathematics, the four rules, a little geometry, fractions and the rule of three; in physics, the elementary concepts of movement; in chemistry, non-traditional nomenclatures should not be taught, even though they are internationally accepted; more attention can be devoted to biology, without going too deep.

Who is guilty? Probably everybody. Publishers, who sometimes launch a war for the market, the most worrying symptom being the publication of increasingly cumbersome books. Teachers, who let themselves be dragged into this war, and choose precisely the most cumbersome books. Public authorities, who let this happen. Maximum contents should be established for every subject, not just minimum.

The same post in Spanish

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Manuel Alfonseca