The truth is that plenty of students are plenty bright today. But they are learning about the world in a different, darker way from what intellectual achievers of another generation might prefer.
They are street smart. They worry about money, material acquisition, family problems, drugs, sexuality, assimilating or keeping apart--culturally or linguistically--or simply getting through the problems of growing up. These concerns are particularly disrupting to the science educator--by definition a high intellectual achiever of another generation--who still must teach pretty much within the same environment and pedagogic structure of a generation ago.
The real crisis in science education is internal. It is a set of personal and uneasy relationships between student and professor and between professors themselves. The problem isn't the students--at least it doesn't start with them. It's the alleged role models, from fledgling science teachers to the academic elite. It's a sense of expecting students to want ...
