The Problem of Scientific Literacy

In 1905, at a gathering of the world’s greatest minds in the physical sciences, Henri Poincare´ reflected on the rapid progress of scientific inquiry and the means through which the scientific community at the turn of the twentieth century and beyond would refine our understanding of the world. In his historical address, Poincare´ warned against the seduction of reducing science to a domain of seeming facts, stating, "Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a heap of stones is a house" (1905/2001, p. 141). A century later, his admonition against the framing of science as a "rhetoric of conclusion" (Schwab 1962, p. 24) still holds, with science scholars and educators from Dewey on repeatedly warning us against the teaching of science as only content rather than process. In Dewey’s own words, "the future of our civilization depends upon the widening spread and deepening hold of the scientific habit of mind [italics added]… the problem of problems in our education is therefore to discover how to mature and make effective this scientific habit (1910, p. 127)."

In today’s world of massive globalization and technological interconnectivity, the need for a scientifically literate citizenry in the United States has only grown more urgent; yet, by some measures, it seems we have done a poor job at fostering the right habits of mind in our schools. Currently only one in five Americans are scientifically literate (Miller 2004), despite mandatory instruction in science. In a recent study of contemporary classroom practice, Chinn and Malhotra (2002) found that standard "inquiry" activities not only failed to engender scientific habits of mind, but in fact actually fostered epistemological beliefs directly antithetical to them. Recent assessment of high school laboratory activities by the National Research Council (Singer et al. 2005) reaches similar conclusions: science labs, long heralded as the site for engaging students in science practice, fail. Meanwhile, the public seems to grow increasingly hostile to the scientific enterprise (Elsner 2005).

We are failing students by treating science as a collection of facts rather than a method of thought.