Good afternoon, and welcome to another in a series of signs Town meetings. I'm rich diekman your host for this town meeting and it is a joint production would like to remind you of the Science Museum of Minnesota and Minnesota Public Radio. It's also being broadcast live from the Arts and Science Center Auditorium in downtown Saint Paul. These signs Town meetings are presented in part with funds provided by the Medtronic Foundation.The debate over Science Education in this country has come full circle in the last 25 years when the Soviets launched the first satellite into Earth orbit in 1959. America's leaders were frantic lady cried what they called the science Gap and they charge their schools didn't make more emphasis on science. We might well not only lose the Space Race but also our freedom is well a lot of course didn't happen science was King in the sixties and we were first to the moon but now we're again hearing those warnings then unless we devote more time and energy to the study of science. We will again fall behind this time as technological leaders of the world. It's not clear yet which way this new debate will go on. The one hand state budgets are being cut and science study is suffering like everything else on the other hand Private Industry does seem to begin to beginning to lend an ear to the problem and adding at least it's verbal support two more science. Our main speaker today has had a lot of experience with a Science Education Khan.Mercy dr. James Rutherford is a former assistant secretary of education is also a former assistant director for Science Education at the National Science Foundation. He currently is science education consultant to the American Association for the advancement of Science in Washington also with us today at this town meeting to give us a regional perspective on the science education debate is mr. Dick Clark. Mr. Clark is science program specialist with the Minnesota Department of Education and he will offer his observations after doctor Rutherford's remarks here now is dr. James Rutherford to address the topic Science Education in the schools. Are we failing? Dr. Rutherford?Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here in this state that I've been able to visit from time to time reason. It is a pleasure. Usually is that there when it comes to things in Science Education, this state has over the years really been one of the leaders. Things may be changing. However in the state, they're certainly changing across the land what I want to talk about with you for a for a bit is the nature of this crisis in the nation in relation to Science and Mathematics and engineering education. I think it's a real crisis. Although I hesitate to say that if you live in Washington as I do you find out if everything is a crisis, it's everyone comes to town says if you don't do this or you don't do that, the nation will suffer it will collapse and we just have to have help so that when one more voice speaks out and says there's a crisis and Science Education get sap to get lost in the noise and thought of as hyperbole but I think it's there and I think it's different than what happened the last time in 1959 when the Soviets brought to our attention the Science Education Gap and let me try to to see if I can suggest what the nature of it is and to do that one wants to thank why should we care whether youngsters study science in school or not? What's the real reason? What's to be gained from it? I think the answer is in this time in history in the 20th century are really quite clear. Some of them were valid 300 years ago I suppose but some of them have special pertinence to where we are in the history of the world public education in America has has always had two purposes. It's been there to serve the youngsters to help individual. People make their way have better lives. But public education has been supported beyond that because it serves the larger society we pay for it out of tax funds not simply to help individuals, but because we have a deep faith in this country that upgrading the entire quality of Education strengthens the nation. So if you look at Science Education and in that way and you ask how does it serve Why is it important to individuals into the society? I think there are some fairly clear answers. I thinking of individual students as human beings that person's the real value of Science of course is better than riches their lives. You know for four decades now, in fact for several hundred years science has been happening in a way that enriches our vision of the world. Would you walk out there and you look at the sky or you look at the Earth. Are you look at living thing you look at the interactions of people and and other living organisms Through The Eyes of Science and you see more and more interesting and life is more worth living. That's not the only thing but it is certainly fair to say if we are going to invest billions of dollars and trying to understand how things work in our world is that all of us ought to have a chance to share in that knowledge. Each individual regardless of what that individual is going to do later in life regardless of their age or anything else. But of course as individuals, we have to go out into the world and make our way and that means earning a living for almost all of us and earn a living. You have to present to the world some skills some knowledge something that's worth having to it from the eyes of the employer and Shirley when you look around the world today at America today, you see that job after job profession after profession requires that the individual have some kinds of scientific knowledge. Is able to think in scientific and quantitative ways. It's not just professors of physics. It's not just Engineers. It's in almost every line of work. Originally, the president of the United States held up a said the other job thing isn't so bad. Look at all the want ads waved paper. Well, I suggest that you look at the water and see what the requirements are to get those jobs and they asked about computer skills and mathematical skills and knowledge of science. They weren't just jobs available at they're requiring little knowledge of science or mathematics. And this is going to increase. The way the nation is going with information science on the increase, the utilization of knowledge being the nature of more jobs more and more and more. It's going to be more true in the future even that it is now. But that's from the individuals perspective. Let's look at it from ourselves collectively that is from the perspective of our community our city or state or the entire nation. And ask why is science education so important that all students should have it in school and I think the first answer is for citizenship purposes, you know, the schools of America have always taken seriously the business of Preparing People to go out become citizens in a Democratic Society. Now what it takes to be a good citizen changes as history changes as the world changes the problems before us but you know, what America today we are citizens vote on whether or not we're going to have nuclear reactors here or there what rules were going to impose with regard to the disposal of waste. One issue after another involves science. So to be a good citizen to participate to help us as a nation make better decisions. We're going to have to see that all of us understand science just a little better. And finally from the standpoint of the nation and the seems to me, this is the the theme that's a predominant in America today. If we are going to be secure as a nation. If we are going to have an economy that will allow us to construct the kind of life in America that we want for all of our people. Then we are going to have a society based upon technological advancement and that advancement is based on science intern. We can build all the weapons in the world. And be vulnerable if we haven't people who understand them and can make them operate and that's precisely the case today. The economy isn't going to work by Magic it's going to be made to work. If we have people who can get in the workforce and produce and using the new processes using a new technologies. So in the long run at least the security of the country and its economy is dependent upon not just having a few more sinus and Engineers a few wise are businessmen and legislate but in having a general society that understands better those kinds of things that it takes to run a technologically based society that can contribute to our safe in our economy. Show is if you look at Science Education in that way you say yes, it really does make sense. That's different than before split Nick. We said we're short of Science and engineers and we have to do everything we can to get the schools going to produce these people so that we can beat the Soviets to the Moon. That's not what I'm saying this time with you think about these needs of an educated electorate educated body of workers as individuals were prepared for the kinds of jobs are going to exist out there that tells it this time we have to be concerned about the scientific education of every youngster every person not just those were going to go on into scientific and engineering careers are much more difficult job, but in the end of much more important one day we have to do that even while we continue to have corset produce outstanding scientists and engineers in sufficient numbers to provide leadership. So if that's the case one would say let's look at the schools of America and see if in fact in the face of this new need this incredible National demand for scientific education. What's happening? Are we addressing the problem? Well, let's take a look and see just look at the students. What do we find happening in our schools? I'm talking now primarily about our elementary and Junior and senior high schools rather than fan post-secondary. We look at our students and we find that they are taking less science. Not more science. They are taking less and less chemistry that is fewer students are taking chemistry even fewer are taking physics Across the Nation now, it appears that among our high school graduates in this country only about eight or nine percent will have had a course in physics ever. Incidentally, those are among the students would then go on to college and you find out that very few of the students who go to college take physics either. We're probably the only industrial nation in the world in which a tiny fraction of of the adult population is all they have ever studied that particular science chemistry is not far behind advanced mathematics isn't doing much better. Our students are turning away from the advanced courses in science mathematics furthermore among those who are studying science in many ways. They seem to be doing less. Well, I mean fewer of them studying science it but some are but somehow rather the performance measure than one way or another is disappointing. you look and see that many of our students in the school seem to be distracted by video games by television that they're doing something like a An hour and a half of homework a week and scarcely sufficient to do a Science and Mathematics alone. Anything else? In other words are students do not seem to be addressing the problem left to their own virtues and their parents aren't requiring them to study science more deeply nor are the leaders in the schools. The students are being permitted to turn away from the study of science exactly the time when we should be acquiring more I want to look at the teacher situation what we find there. That's scarcely any more reassuring and indeed in many ways more disturbing. We find that an increasing number of persons who teach Science and Mathematics in the Junior and senior high schools of America are unprepared in Science and Mathematics in some states. The number of mathematics teachers who are teaching out of license that is teaching mathematics, even though not prepared in that mathematics approaches 50% Other states may be higher depending on how they keep their statistics. But in any case what we find is that some of the best teachers are leaving the schools to go into other lines of work into industry and in the business. And as teaching staff shrink. Instead of replacing physics teachers with other physics teachers or mathematics teachers with other mathematics teachers. They are being replaced with other teachers in the system from other subjects such as history or social science or whatever. Furthermore the teachers who are there are generally speaking across the land badly out of date in their subject. You know teachers used to in the sixties. One of the things was happening as a teacher's went back to four Summers for study and they studied during the Academic Year their in-service training opportunities of one kind and another that started tailing off at the end of the six days and during most of the 1970s the Science and Mathematics teachers of America have not had a chance to go back and be brought up-to-date and their feels feels that are in changing rapidly. I'll explain some of the reason for that. Finally, the teacher situation is being exacerbated being made worse by the fact that across this land. We are not at the moment producing new physics chemistry and Mathematics teachers for a high schools state after state after state has produced not one single new physics teacher in the last one to three years. So the teachers are there are less well prepared in the audit be some of them have no preparation. And there is not a flow of new well-prepared people into the profession and what's behind them. I mean it isn't enough that students have to make choices. We need the right kinds of teachers but suppose we did have the right kinds of teachers in the school and the students do on to take science as it is true and some schools in some places. What do we find? We find that the teachers like a support system to allow them to teach contemporary science. For example day. They haven't the materials. You really can't teach science satisfactorily out of a textbook. It's not that kind of a subject things have to be done handled data gathered things pushed and pulled and thought about is an active science itself as active and while a textbook is important is certainly isn't sufficient, but the teachers the budgets in the schools have been such that bit by bit. The apparatus is disappearing. It isn't being replaced isn't being repaired new materials aren't there the film's and supplementary materials that are needed to enrich this kind of teaching are disappearing. And even the budgets the teachers used to have to take science students out on field trips a very important matter in the teaching of science has disappeared. There's a lack of technical support for the teachers in a science teachers to help keep the apparatus going to help them use computers and put new things in the the counseling back up for science in the schools is rather feeble, you know that in most schools that the kids really haven't. The kind of counseling service to get them to understand why mathematics is important why they should study science and that they cannot accommodate it and and the like so we find that then the system that are backup the teacher for example requirements. The students do studies and science would help. I just discovered in this very state that a student can graduate. From high school without taking any science. There is no requirement in this state to study any science whatsoever. This is true and some other states also a little bit as required in junior high school what you see that lack of support for the teacher and the system makes it difficult to to move the kids into these kinds of subjects. If you look at the science curriculum in the Mathematics Curriculum, what you find is that it hasn't really been worked on for about 10 years. That may be all right in some feels although I doubt it, but certainly not in Science and Mathematics too much is happening. It constantly needs to be refreshing updated all the more. So if we recall that were talking about all youngsters studying science. So you say it isn't sufficient just to say let's pump all the kids in school into a chemist to standard chemistry class and standard physics class and standard algebra and geometry and trigonometry that isn't sufficient. What we need to do is develop the kind of Science and Mathematics Curriculum, that makes sense for those youngsters who are not going to become sinus but are going to be citizens are going to lead our business enterprises are going to write our newspapers and magazines are going to be our legislators. We need science designed for them. Took to help them do the kinds of things are going to do as individuals and part of society and that simply is not being done across the land hasn't been touched in years finally and maybe worst the worst indictment of all when you look at the schools and one place and another around the country talk to teacher talk to superintendent to talk to the people in the University's talk to legislators. I think what you would find. At least I think I see it. He is a lack of Direction a lack of a sense of purpose. It's alright to say yes science is important mathematics is important we ought to do something about it, but that's not the same as saying here's where we need to be 5 10 15 years from now in this nation in our scientific and mathematical education for our students and here are some ways we can get there. Here's a kind of partnership. We ought to have between the federal government and state government are local governments and the private sector. There's just concern here and there about the problems but no sense of togetherness purpose or Direction. now that's kind of a dismal picture that I painted but I'm having difficulty these days painting a bright one. Let me tell you why in the face of this. the federal government of this country has just decided that it will get out of dealing with the problem of Science and Mathematics education all together. The National Science Foundation founded in 1950 to support scientific research in this country and scientific education did both of those jobs beautifully and we certainly see that we are the leading scientific nation in the world has now decided then decided by the administration that it will discontinue its efforts to help the nation upgrade a scientific education. It was the federal government that provided a lot of the scientific apparatus in the school's it was the federal government that provided training opportunities for science teachers summer after summer so they could be up-to-date and their work. It was the national it was a National Science Foundation that helped local people identify Bright Young high school students were interested in science and took them into Laboratories and into the universities during the summer so they could pursue their work and stay interested and move ahead. It was the National Science Foundation that help science museums like this and others establish themselves and serve the population. It was the National Science Foundation that provided funding for television shows would reach out to young children to interest them in science, and that's all being stopped. Well one reason is being stopped is that they say in Washington these days that it's up to the states. That's one thing they say. Well many some states are trying to do to help their trying to get four sources, but the state of Minnesota state of Michigan and state of Washington and state of California and many others. I could name for having desperate financial budgetary problems of their own or in the process of cutting back on Educational Funding at all levels and scarcely in the position to undertake new expenses in education at this time. I personally feel that while some states will do more than others that the likelihood that there will be an aggressive investment in Science Education of the magnitude that's needed from the individual states. It is unlikely furthermore, even if some states do that's not sufficient. We have a national problem and if a poor state is not able to do this Well that someone has to do it because those students are real people and and deserve a good education. The other solution is called the new voluntourism. It says from now on Private Industry business will voluntarily help by providing money for educational things things in science, and I talked to some people and some companies and they want to help out there interested. They care about the future of the nation, but you know these days they tell me they are being besieged by people from the Arts and Humanities Sciences the technical Fields fields of Mental Health. All sorts of places where funding has been cut off from Washington are now coming to Industry asking for help seems to be unlikely that in the schools as opposed to the colleges universities that we can really do this incredibly important and difficult job by depending solely upon the Goodwill and the Really nationally disorganized efforts to to invest in the scientific capability of our schools around the country. All of this incidentally should be put in the perspective of what other nations are doing faced with the same realities and let me just mention a couple that we happen to have data on a know something about the Soviet Union decided in the mid-sixties that it would radically revise its educational system, you know up until then the Soviet Union just had adopted the European system and that's just some classically says you identify as early as possible your most talented students and your concentration educational resources on them in your filter out the other they had practice that they found out that they could not run their factories that their military defense apparatus wouldn't work sufficiently well because the workers and the people in the military were not well educated in Science and Mathematics and they said henceforth every student in the Russian schools will be educated in Science and Mathematics regardless. Whether they're headed to higher education or not. And incidentally in the Soviet Union more than 95% of the youngsters Who start school graduate from high school in the United States of America. It's less than 80% these days and falling. In Japan, they have a rigorous educational system for all students including those who are going to go in the factory work right after they finish high school and one outcome of this incidentally is the the promise industrial powers of the Japanese is based. You know, I'm worker participation the workers in a factory meet weekly, they meet with the managers and they redesign the factories when they're going to robotics or whatever. They have a part in the design and they make it work and they can do that because they've had a solid education in Science and Mathematics in the nation is set up centers to revise a curriculum process for constantly renewing the education of Science and Math teachers and so forth Frances in the process now. Applying the new technologies in all of their schools and colleges to use the new computer capabilities to modernize education particularly in Science and Mathematics in Germany. Another competitor of ours the same thing is happening and I'll just point one out one other in China People's Republic of China in the secondary school know not everybody goes but in the cities those students who go to secondary school that's 5 years Take 5 years of mathematics and for physics and three of chemistry and one-and-a-half a biology and it doesn't matter whether you're going to higher education or not. And incidentally, those are the same mathematics courses. No Shepherd in a watered-down courses for people who are presumed to be weaker. Well, the next the world seems to be going one way and ourselves a leading technological Nation. We think somehow or other educationally find ourselves going another way. Let me close my remarks of without trying to offer many solutions for have some can come up in the discussion. But to say that there is a bitter irony in this. And it is that in the century Shirley. If not for the last hundred years. United States has been the most inventive the most Innovative country in the world in education. You know this country really invented the notion of public education that everyone not just an elite could profit from education only hundred years ago incidentally, but we started and we've been working to make it come true. What we failed a great very often along the line, but the point is we invented the system and been working all these years to try and make it make it work. The land grant college system put together education and science to help local farmers and a change farming and Agriculture and where the strongest nation in the world in agriculture. And that was a thing of the American people worked on together the GI Bill demonstrated that at least half of the population. Population could profit from college and never been tried in any other nation in the world and in the 1960s when we had curriculum development projects and teacher training activities going on. We built a model that is now being used by all the nations in the world industrial nations in the world at the very time that we ourselves have cut these processes off processes that brought together sinus and school people and school administrators + communities in working together to improve scientific and mathematics education. Well, I think we just have to to get back on the track and it has to involve in my judgment the active participation of the federal government every state having a major role in addressing this as one of their key educational objectives for problems and issues of the of the next decade with each Community looking at the problems and trying to see how they can go and their individual schools and their needs to be helped from the private sector, but somehow I rather we have to put ourselves together set a goal. and Glastron Thank you. Thank you very much doctor James Rutherford to of the American Association for the advancement of Science in case you tuned in late to or came into the auditorium here at the science center. Late to we're in the process of discussing Science Education in the schools, they quality and quantity their oven. And then we're going to take a look now at a local and Regional perspective of that question and here to do that for us is mr. Dick Clark who is a science program specialist with the State Department of Education is to Clark. Thank you very much. I wish I could say Jim that now here's the good news. I'm afraid Minnesota's getting more like the rest of the country is as as the years pass and and the problems that that we always felt protected from our right on our doorstep today. Adjust a brief profile of our of our secondary science picture. Is this about 85% of all students and secondary schools elected take some biology about about 25% like to take some chemistry and less than 10% elect to take a physics and this is down been been declining steadily from about 20% about 15 years ago. 60% of the schools in Minnesota require some science to graduate and 90% of the schools in the Twin Cities require some science to graduate. We're finding ourselves with an aging staff of science teachers. For some reason for some quirk in our license your law. We've been able to cover the physical science basis. We've been able to meet our supply and demand in physics and chemistry. But as the years go on five years down the road, perhaps we'll space a severe shortage of science teacher discusses his doctor Rutherford said we are not educating enough new physical science teachers to meet the demand. And there is no solution. That's that's becoming a parent unless you'd consider differential salary schedules or something like that. I think that that they're the problem with in-service I think is true in Minnesota as well teachers are becoming out a date for two reasons one. There's not enough local money to to buy substitute time to permit teachers, even if they wanted to pay for it out of their own pocket to attend workshops regionally within the state or nationally. I think that that in addition to all the other woes that we've heard I feel that the science establishment in this country and certainly in Minnesota. specifically Science Education suffers from an image problem the extent of that problem came home to me a couple weeks ago when the State Board of Education rejected the state department proposal to increase the secondary science requirement for grade 7 through 9 from 240 hours to 360 hours currently mathematics social studies and Communications. That's English. Aller at 360 hours the board appointed a task force and that task force worked over a year to collect data in order to establish a case for need and reasonableness. After hearing all sides of the issue the board rejected the Department's proposal for the three among those who voted against the measure was a vice president of one of the leading technology firms in the United States. The science methods instructor in one of the universities in Minnesota said that he was ambivalent. Among the reasons people cited for opposing the the new rule were that science was elitist. It catered only a small segment of the school population. It catered only the college preparatory student. That the Arts would be severely impacted by any change in the curriculum. However, the change were requesting only would have impacted 4% of the seven through nine curriculum. That the Arts were more important because they were Humane. The implication is somehow science is inhumane. After all the Smoke by down it was clear to me that science did have an image problem. I feel that the public holds that science is not relevant to our daily living. I would agree with Doctor Rutherford that that's a problem. I would guess that the average person in the street distress distress distrusts the science establishment. Too often in the past school people have done little or nothing to refute The Stereotype of science as cold analytical and impersonal. In fact, we may have even encouraged it by our attitude. Reserving science for only 20 or 30% of the total School population. It's true that students to graduate without taking any science at all grade 7 through 12. Northern Tier States, like Minnesota that are currently having energy-related economic problems are going to have to depend more and more on industries that use high technology. computer products video des and so forth to a large part success and converting from energy-intensive standard manufacturing Industries to high-tech will depend in part on a scientifically literate public. More over a public that will elect science related fields as career choices. If we're going to turn present public attitudes around the science Community will have to unite we can't only depend on the federal government. We're going to have to get their attention. We're going to have to get the Public's attention and we all together we'll have to to to make enough noise to to have the feds reconsider. We all must we all must lend our our Collective Prestige. So that schools will again have the resources to develop and adopt new programs that focus on science for the citizen. Has Jim said not to train New Scientist? What we really want to do is provide the skills of science to the everyday life of the citizen. Organizations such as the American Association for the advancement of science would seem Paramount to this effort. And and given our present economic woes a United effort is our only hope. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Clark. I would like to invite our audience here in the science center Auditorium. Now if they have questions of either or both of our speakers today to come up to either one of the microphones in the aisle here and while you're doing that. I have a couple of questions for you myself. I guess the first two more for dr. Rutherford, you mentioned a bit ago that to Private Industry is besieged right now with requests for money from all sectors including science and but so far they haven't at least come to the aid lock-stock-and-barrel if you will to science. I'm wondering since you work in Washington, if you get a sense for the attitude of large corporations that have their basis in science if they are at least aware and doing some kind of lobbying and if so, what kind of lobbying they're doing it with regard to the age of science. Well, I think we talked about large companies with a technological sciencebase. You're talkin about it quite a large array of different sorts of companies some are very distressed and concerned about this problem. And in fact are making substantial investments in Science and Mathematics, even at the lower grades and I could cite his as one outstanding example Phillips petroleum company in Oklahoma that is working very hard to help us a AAA is produced some materials for mathematics students in the junior high school. But many of the companies are really focused more on other aspects of the economic scene for the moment. Then they are on the Science Education. They know there's a problem there but they haven't in my judgment come to grips with it part of it is as some of the large Industries think about corporate giving in the sense of Charity doing good works for this and that and the other thing they want to distribute a fairly. That's one point of view. I think the more modern view of an Exxon or Philips or some of the other companies is that their corporate giving needs to be thought of as an investment in the future the scientific and technological future of the nation 10 15 years down those companies are the ones were more likely to be helping and being concerned on the lobbying side. Everybody who comes to Washington lobbies and people who live there Lobby each other that's sort of what the work is in Town & Industries doing some of this but in my observation so far very little in behalf of Science Education. A couple of people who have questions. Let's take care of first question from this gentleman right here. Go ahead place for years of physics 3 years of chemistry. Can you relate that to the the general science which we teach sup through 9th grade, which doesn't break it down into physics or chemistry and biology is there any is really similar in just under different words? I would say it's more advanced. I look mostly at the physics and the I have the texts and gone through them with some care. I would say that the physics four years of physics starch from a level that would be comprable to a junior high school Physics course through a standard classical American High School Physics course not pssc your project physics and ends up at the level somewhere around a good high school course or an advanced placement level. It's quite extensive. I think chemistry is something like that very few applications. I would like to add one thing about China why they can get so many students to take courses that are considered difficult there as well as hear a teacher in China teaches. Two classes that is anywhere from 6 to 10 hours a week and American High School teacher of science generally teaches 25 hours a week that difference in time allows the science teacher in China to have more time to work on in with individual students. Does your go ahead? Dr. Rutherford, you have identified the problem most essentially I think telling us that something less than 10% of the graduating students have an interesting science graduate. This really goes back to the parents and I think all these empty seats here today to testify that the parents are interested. This is a closed loop and it was positive feedback in the negative Direction. And like many of these closed-loop problems, you have to open that Loop out to attempt to correct it how shall we try to open that loop at present time the Institute of electrical and electronic engineers and never anxious have set up a cabinet-level department of Science and Engineering do you feel there's any hope in that direction? Well, you certainly hit on a facet of the problem has this most difficult in the end parents the adult population going to have to see this as a problem yet how do you reach them because they themselves of course were victims of a poor scientific education I think we're going to do it by lots of us in our own organizations working harder to reach out things such as this incidentally today. I would say as a step in that direction. The American Association for the advancement of science. We're in the process now of trying to build a Consortium of scientific and Engineering societies so that we can collectively organize our efforts to get the arguments together. Learn how to reach the public and then work out through clear to the chapter level in the state levels to inform state legislators and the public in general including learning how to participate in school board actions by By attending and participating in debate and getting on the board, but we're one organization. The engineer several engineering groups are hard at work science museums in this country incidentally are very well attended and I think are having some effect at slowly getting people to understand, you know, the adults bring their kids junior high school kids particular and when they're here, I think something of the ideas go through to them but it's a long and slow process. I think we have to work more through popular journalism. The Triple H has a new magazine called this year's science 82. It's now being subscribed to by over 700,000 people is Popular Science and their other magazines. I recently have discovered. That there if you identify them there are journalists who will write articles about this issue in magazines such as the Qantas Club magazine or or other a popular things are each particular groups. I think we have to learn to communicate as scientists and Engineers with the journalists. television people who daily are communicating to The Wider population 4 questions for either of our guests or both of our guests this afternoon. Guess you're go ahead. I have two questions for both of the speakers one is if you were in a school board now, it has to make some decisions about where to place resources to turn this around. What would you do would you put into Elementary education or secondary education? The second question is if you were sitting in the legislature and looking at this problem and wanted to do something about it, how would you handle that? Where would you try to direct the resources would it be to things like a science museums or a groups to author accurate pieces in? Newspapers or journals about the problem or would it be to put more money into a universities and colleges? Well, I think Start of asking the converted I thought I was on a school board and and I read in the paper I think was last night that some of this is happening now. I think I'd have to look at some basic reasons. Why why I'm there and why students are there there there for an education so they are to become a functioning parts of the society and that's got to come first. And so the first the first priority is to divert all available resources toward that in that include salaries curriculum and materials if there's anything left over then it goes to the other functions of the school. And I'd almost include for for many of us the hot lunch program except that that's unnecessary. The other the other question dealt with the legislature, I think that some some of some of the the the responsible people and government are looking at the problem holistically. They're going down the road a bit and saying if we're going to be a solvent state if we're going to continue our our our Rich are Richard living environment here in Minnesota. What must we be like And they're looking at the amount of Industry that leaves the state for the warmer climes or certainly the Richard climbs and they're saying what do we do? What must we do to to to to keep flourishing and they are looking at high technology. The governor has established the Wellspring project. I'm sure you've all heard of that to encourage science to encourage science career science related careers to encourage High technical industry to encourage jobs in those areas. If I run a school board in resources were limited and I had to make the sort of choice that you suggested as where to put the emphasis Elementary the middle or you said Elementary or secondary. I would say halfway between that is I think the 10 to 15 year old child the early adolescent the youngster in the intermediate or Junior High School at those are the key years in my judgment. That's when young people change is when they form and almost cement into themselves their attitudes, but what they can learn what's worth learning what they can do in life. And if they come out of it, if they enter those years open to the world and ready to learn and not afraid of Science and Mathematics in the natural world and they come out as they seem to some years later believe in a cat learn science afraid of mathematics this interested in Exploration and adventure in the natural world. Then after that everything else is very very difficult. I would concentrate on those middle years further more of those are the years that have been neglected in most of the school systems in America. on the legislative side I think I would done number one try at work very hard to promote graduation requirements that reflected a proper balance of what an educated person needs coming out of after 12 years of study and it would include substantially more Science and Mathematics than has been true in the past, but it would also include work in the Arts and Humanities in my judgment also include working using tools and shop and it would involve typing and maybe lots of other things or whatever it is. I would think that is the part of the legislature to work with the administration at the in the state department to formulate a pattern that says in our state we believe that an educated person coming out of high school has should have had these kinds of experiences. The other thing I would do it on the legislature is put money in once again provide help to people like Dick Clark and to help the school districts in the early grades provide science specialist. The elementary teachers in South has not been well prepared in science. They need help. We learned that if given help they will do things with youngsters. They will help them but it's hard for them to go to the lawn and Most states used to have such Services one by one because of economics has withdrawn it I would I would go put some resources there. 4 question test your go-ahead for the attitudes of adult Society seem to be clearly very important in all this the way that citizens is a whole relate to science think about science and technology. It seems that in the last probably in the last 10 or 15 years of the news media and other places. I've been full of a lot of the bad news the ugly side environmental degradation and the threat of nuclear Annihilation and so on to what extent is this Sort of influencing people in STL to look at all these bad things may beat me or maybe it's not so important to teach these sorts of things and if in fact people are being swayed and in the direction against Science and Technology education, how can you how can you bring that around without making it a whitewash and without saying everything is fine. But my own belief is having read most of the data they've been collected on his issue. Is that in fact, most Americans have A+ you about science? I don't think they've been the Three Mile Island and the other things disturb them. But as a kind of special event the mindset there is against nuclear power or or or that kind of danger, you know, most of the Studies have shown that dumb. Americans for some number of years have not rated any of the professions very highly the distrust legislators and they just trust lawyers and Physicians and Educators and teachers and so forth even ministers, but in that array the sinus of more than held their own channel 8 speaking it at the top and if you ask about science most of the examinations of showing a positive response, but it depends a great deal and how you asked the question and if you explore a little bit, I think it very often turns out in the minds of many people remember have not study science. Confuse medicine the practice of medicine and what it does and the start of the glories of the new breakthroughs with science itself. We have time for one more brief question and a brief answer about a minute and a half left to go ahead sir. Dr. Rutherford, you see this whole picture from a national perspective that we do not see here and I just like to ask you this question because I agree with almost everything you say but how far are we going to have to sink into this scientific ignorance of Quagmire before we really get our current crop of decision-makers to open their eyes will take a war. Will it take a deep breath cracked depression a complete shift in textbook control or will it take a complete folding up of the Public School Systems really get people wound up on this? Okay, that's a big question to have to answer in 30 seconds. But that's about all that's going to be the end of everything. So that's no solution to be sought about. I think we're going to Mush down or things going to get worse before they start getting better. I think what will turn the decision-makers are Is when the Japanese I don't worry about the Russian so much in the Japanese take over a few more of our Industries. They beat us in the radios take me automobiles. They're doing it to us now and computers the beginning to talk airframes. They've done it and die tools of all things that we always led to wear on a few more of these more people out of work. We slipped down second and third place and productivity. I think when the American see how they're going to say stop and I think the argument will make sense to them then the Science and Mathematics and Engineering is was going to turn it around. Alright, thank you very much doctor James Rutherford of the American Association for the advancement of Science in Washington, and mr. Dick Clark from the State Department of Education, Minnesota for being our guest this afternoon. Also thanks to our technical crew here today John tomor here at the Science Museum and Fred washer back in the studio. Thanks to Dave Chittenden for making arrangements Davis with the science Museum's continuing education department arranged for the speakers to be here today sign Stone meetings are presented in park by the Medtronic Foundation participation of today's guest speakers was made possible by the mobile foundation. This is the last in our current series of science town meeting. We hope that you found them interesting and that the perhaps they provoked a thought or two. Thanks for coming today, and thanks for listening. Thank you.