Trying To Attract The Young To Science: Let's Be Realistic

In a recent speech (delivered Sept. 22, 1988 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.), Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan la mented the extended and dramatic downward trend in science, education, and literacy among U.S. schoolchildren and, perhaps correctly, pointed out what he believes to be the major reasons for the decline of science literacy. Sagan’s explanations include lack of publicity, poor teaching in the elementary and high schools, and the negative but well-publicized influence of astrology and science fiction. These explanations for declining test scores of U.S. children are probably correct as far as they go, but Sagan and many others may be underestimating the “bread and butter” intelligence and values of American youngsters. For example, when I’m asked to talk about my research and science to young students, one of the first questions I’m asked is: “How much money do you make?” The next questions usually focus on how science and research are supported. They will ask things like: “How do. you buy microscopes?” and “How do you buy all the chemicals and test tubes to perform science?” Kids aren’t stupid. They can be very practical when it comes to dreaming about their futures. They’re asking: “How is a scientist supported in conducting the work he is marginally paid for?” Answering this is a heartbreaker for both me and the kids. I explain to them the capricious and fitful nature of the liberally instituted, bureaucratic federal NIH/NSF grant-funding mechanism of supporting American research. “What happens if you can’t get a grant?” they ask. “You can’t work,” I reply. One can easily imagine what is going through a youngster’s mind in terms of his future consideration of science as a career—and it’s not good. Being at the mercy of capricious funding instruments in order to work will remove as much incentive from American schoolchildren for producing science, asperhaps it does from communal farm workers in the Soviet Union for producing food. Youngsters will also always ask how long it takes to become educated for whatever it is they have their hearts set on. I must always answer this question with something like “seven to 10 years of postgraduate training after college.” What conclusions do we make about all this, and what relevance does it have to Carl Sagan’s lament about the crisis in U.S. science and science education? Simply this: Anybody that’s interested, should recognize that we in the U. S. ask a youngster interested in science to spend the better part of his or her youth building up debts, to be educated in science so that he can be paid a marginal salary to beg federal grant-funding agencies to support his work the rest of his career. like I said, the kids have "bread and butter” values, and they look at each other and say: “That’s a career?” Hey, who wants to busttheir back for 10 years after college to work for peanuts knowing that they have less than a 20% chance of getting their work supported by a grant? (That’s a realistic figure based on numbers of grants NIH receives each year and how many are actually funded.) Somebody once said that the monetary and social values a society places on a particular profession correlate directly with any success in the attraction of younger recruits. In this country, we don’t place much value either socially or monetarily on science and (or teaching, so it is no won- der we have the Carl Sagans shaking their heads and wishing for a “Japanese renaissance” in American education, as if that is the remedy for technologic decline and ignorance. It’s time to be realistic. It is no longer enough to entice kids with the thrill of discovery and the creation of new knowledge, as it was a generation ago these kids now ask whether their investment and choice of career is going to pay off, and when. They observe the life styles of their peers whose fathers’ or mothers might be businesspeople, lawyers, or clinicians. They compare, and they make decisions based on these comparisons. As the-world and our society become more and more technologi cally dependent, we are going to have to develop mechanisms that will make the “doing” of science and the teaching of science attractive once more to our young people. The issues of individual incentive, reward, and support for investigative work are questions that will have to be confronted beyond the general weaknesses in science education. A good start would be for Congress to overhaul the present selfserving, politically motivated peer-review mechanisms that both the NIH arid NSF use to award research funds. These funds, for instance, are disproportionately funneled to the major, liberal institutions on the East and West coasts of the country. Past and present data suggest that bureaucrats and their advisers in Washington have prescribed that American scientific brainpower needs some sort of proximal “oceanic influence” for sustenance, although there is no evidence for this in the scientific literature. Substantial modifications of the peer-review mechanismsmight assure that future young scientists would at least have reasonable expectations toward the development of their individual capabilities and the support of their work. The issue of freedom of expression of ideas, probably more than any other issue, stifles the urge of our future aspirants to teach and perform American science. For example, any professor or scientist with even a shred of imagination and who has had to deal with the federal grant-funding agencies knows that novel, creative, imaginative research proposals stand an almost. zero chance for support. While many of these proposals are reviewed by liberalleaning, yet competent people, their defense of freedom of expression often stops short when it comes to research proposals that might challenge current dogma or entrenched ideas. With peer review, often it is our own science establishment that sabotages the efforts of many in our education-scientific community by refusing to support their ideas. The American scientific community has plenty of available brainpower, but it needs to be nourished and supported—and much of it will not necessarily be localized in Massachusetts or California. It is time for the political powers in the country at large to start lobbying Congress for a broader-based support for science and education rather than placing all of our national eggs in East or West coast baskets. If you want to attract young peopIe to science, then you must make it attractive for today’s potential aspirant, not yesterday’s. Right now our present system of funding research, our style of education, and our societal values toward science and scientists are not doing that. Ronald E. Paque is an associate professor of microbiology at the at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio.

Trying To Attract The Young To Science: Let's Be Realistic

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