Exhortations for Enhancing the Quality of Science and Technology Education
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Exhortations for Enhancing the Quality of Science and Technology Education 7992 MRS Spring Meeting Plenary Address Bassam Z. Shakhashiri I want to share with you some important convictions about the status of science and engineering education in the United States. These convictions are the basis for much of what I, and so many others across the country, believe should be happening in terms of reform. To me, the purpose of education is to enable individuals to fulfill their human potential. The ultimate goal of reform is not only to influence the quality of science and technology education, but to influence all of education. Improvements in science and technology education are but vehicles to bring about fundamental, comprehensive, systemic changes in our society. In my judgment, the country now faces a situation far more critical and more consequential than what we faced in the immediate post-Sputnik era. Let me give you three reasons. First, in the past 35 years or so, the population of the United States has increased by about 50 million people. This is the approximate population of Great Britain and twice the population of Canada. You might say, "So what, that's a big number. What does it mean?" It means that we have more students to teach now and that we need more qualified teachers at all educational levels. So, the first reason can be summarized as change in scale. All societal institutions are sluggish in responding to changes of that magnitude. Education, especially, continues to be sluggish in responding to that change. MRS BULLETIN/JULY 1992
A second reason the situation is more critical and more consequential now than in the late 1950s and early 1960s is that for the United States to maintain its international pre-eminence in science and technology, in the global economy, in the arts and the humanities, and in all walks of life, we need a good supply of scientists and engineers coming through the educational system. After Sputnik, the summer teacher institutes, the curriculum development projects, the graduate traineeships and fellowships, etc., were aimed at increasing the flow of talent into careers in science and engineering and were largely successful. Now, we face an alarming situation in terms of maintaining the flow of talent into those careers.
The ultimate goal of reform is not only to influence the quality of science and technology education, but to influence all of education. The third and, in my judgment, the most important reason is that we now live in a more advanced scientific and technological
society and we must pay attention to the education of nonspecialists in science and in technology. Our fellow citizens must be able to distinguish between astronomy and astrology, to deal successfully with the complex issues related to animal rights and pollution control, and to understand why burning the rain forests in South America is bad for the global environment, even if it is good for the local economy (just as burning down forests was good for the economy in this country about 100-150 year
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