5 reasons why science education is a prerequisite for modern democracy
Article one on science education.
Teacher students in Norway debate on Facebook what subjects they should choose in their teacher training education. The answers from teachers vary between music and the arts, English and social sciences. And Maths. But hardly anyone recommends teacher students to choose or study the natural sciences, which, to my mind, is a disaster waiting to happen. Here’s why:
1.
When the general population knows little about science, they become very dependent on those who do know their science. Our communication systems — phones, computers and the Internet as well as our cars, trucks and trains are constructions based on science. How electrons work, how different materials lead electrical impulses, how computers are programmed and what material they are made of and dependent on, how water is made drinkable before it comes out of our taps, how engines work and why they work better this way or that. It’s all science.
And we all depend on these communication systems for our food supplies, our clothes, our building materials, our electricity, our water and sewage systems. We need people to make these communication systems, to operate them and to maintain them. And we need people — a lot of people — who understand how they work for the days they don’t and need fixing. Also, if something goes wrong in your own house, with your own car or computer, or your light, a little bit of knowledge may help you fix simple problems yourself instead of paying somebody else with money you don’t have.
2.
Not only are we dependent on others for infrastructures in our daily lives as light and heating, but also when serious trouble comes around, as it did a couple of years ago with the Covid-19 pandemic. Then we needed help from scientists to develop a vaccine. These scientists have of course specialized: studied science at university and earned their PhDs so that they can do research. However, the rest of us need to know a bit of basic science in order to at least trust the scientists and in order to trust science as a methodology and a means to safeguard us from humbug and dangerous beliefs that could potentially do more harm than good. The growth of conspiracy theories in the wake of the vaccine development shows us that.
A local acquaintance of mine posted on social media that ‘no one has ever been able to identify a virus, ever!’ This is why I think we all need basic science education at primary (elementary) level and at high school level. All young people need to have learnt at least some basics in science that can help them make sense of ‘news’, like the vaccine was, when they are adult. There are many other current issues of general public interest that require rudimentary knowledge of the natural sciences. Examples are: nuclear power, the greenhouse effect of CO2 and methane and its link to anthropogenic climate change, biodiversity and ecological systems, (bio)chemistry of food and other products and their advantageous or disadvantageous effects on our bodies and on the environment (i.e. basic (bio)chemistry in order to later understand pollution, nutrition, medicine). As a society, we need people to have basic understanding of these and other issues in order to know what kind of policies on wants to vote for and why.
3.
Conspiracy theories, by the way, tend to grow where there is something unknown that needs to be understood. It is better that basic and reliable scientific knowledge fills in the blanks, than ideas of or beliefs in mystical conspiracies taking place among undefined or defined enemies. Just as we fill in the gaps in broken visual figures, to make it whole, or we fill in letters in incomplete texts, we fill in and add (whatever) to make sense of situations or new pieces of information we do not quite understand.
Also, where there is lack of knowledge one will find someone else to trust instead of oneself. Lack of basic knowledge of science in general and of the natural sciences in particular, one is more easily swayed by other (irrelevant) characteristics of whom to trust, like charisma, status, looks or apparent authority. This is dangerous for the rest of us who prefer to trust science and scientists. It’s ok to disagree with politicians, political choices and policies, but not so much if your opinions or disagreements rely on misinformation or … plain lack of knowledge.
Basic science education will not only help citizens understand basic science — what we already know to be true and/or workable — but also to understand the way science operates: the way we acquire and find ‘new’ knowledge and understanding. Science is not a God or religion, as some may have it, but an approach and a methodology to know, to question, to understand and test: to know what we know and what we do not know. Both knowledge of the sciences and of their methodology are therefore important to keep conspiracy theories at bay and to ‘vote’ for policies and politicians ‘within (scientific) reason’.
4. Everybody’s vote counts equally much (at least in theory), and so every vote should be well and equally informed (not fully possible or probable, but at least one should aim for that). Understanding (new) information relies on basic, previous knowledge. I find it grossly unfair and undemocratic that my vote counts as much as the vote of somebody whose knowledge and understanding of what is at stake is nil.
The consequences could be grave, and affect me and my welfare as well as my neighbour’s and my environment’s welfare. An example of what can happen when both voters and politicians lack knowledge and thus do not understand new information is Trump’s suggestion of ‘injecting bleach’ or disinfectant. … and some people doing exactly that, as he suggested! Worse, still, was his disbanding of the specialized US pandemic response team that the Obama administration set up, or, as Nature.com states that scientists were ‘sidelined, silenced and ignored’. With the present state of the earth with ferocious climate changes, loss of crucial biodiversity and probably the spread of more ‘new’ diseases in their wake, I would like political leaders, other politicians and voters to at least have some basic knowledge of science, and I would like countries all around the world to foster good scientists. More time allocated to science education in obligatory schooling is a prerequisite for democracies to ‘survive’ and steer sensibly in a rapidly changing and challenged world.
5. People around the globe have spent hours and hours and years and years to build up our common knowledge pool within the sciences. We need to safeguard this knowledge against being lost. One generation without basic science skills can jeopardise all what we have come to know. Even if the next generation after that again ‘regret’ this, want to make amends and recover our knowledge, who’s then going to teach their young ones? And who is, eventually, going to build, maintain and fix our infrastructures, cure cancer, or make sensible decisions on how to make sure everybody can live a decent life?
We all know that our democratic institutions, our laws and regulations help us have reasonably ordered societies. So, I am not arguing against social sciences or the humanities. What I do want to pinpoint, though, is that knowledge in and of the natural sciences have been built up over generations, and we cannot afford to lose that knowledge by not passing it on to the masses and thereby also recruiting new scientists. Knowledge of the natural sciences makes up so much of what we rely on in our modern societies, and not understanding even the basics of the natural sciences make us vulnerable and highly dependent on the few who do. Finally, we have so many ethical, life-on-earth-impacting decisions to make, as a society — so much is at stake — that we cannot afford to rely on or include too many ignorant people in the decision-making processes we have ahead of us. How to teach the natural sciences is a topic I’ll leave for my next article. For now, though, I will just say that we can start by teaching all our children the names and workings of local plants, animals, insects and soils and how they interact and depend on one another, before it’s all forgotten.