What Science Should Contribute to Cultural Literacy

o be culturally literate today, every person must understand and use science and technology, inasmuch as they affect everyone in central and vital ways. Unfortunately, the typical school science program does nothing to contribute to such literacy. Most students can study science and see in it no usefulness for themselves and no significance for the resolution of societal problems. During the last five years, many studies have been conducted that illuminate problems with science instruction. It appears that student attitudes concerning science study, science classes, science teachers, and science careers become progressively more negative as students progress through the school program (Yager and Penick 1986). Science programs do little or nothing to stimulate or use students' creativity (Penick 1982). Cognitive science studies reveal that most students accept naive theories about natural phenomena; misconceptions seem to be more prevalent than accepted scientific explanations. Champagne and Klopfer (1984) have summarized this research and report that 80 percent of university physics majors tested had similar misconceptions of natural phenomena. This is shocking, because these students are generally classified as the most successful of the upper 1 percent of high school graduating classes. School science classes typically present basic concepts from various scientific disciplines, which students are to master at certain grade levels. These concepts are organized into state or local-district curriculum guides. Invariably such lists are related to the topics and chapters in textbooks. Researchers have reported that there is only 10 percent variation in the topics covered in the textbooks available for a given course at a particular grade level (Harms and Yager 1981; Hurd et al. 1981). And the typical teacher (90 percent of the sample studied) uses the textbook nearly 95 percent of the time. The science textbook represents what most people conceive science to be: