Science for All Americans: Seeking a Common Knowledge Core Across Disciplines

It is not difficult to see why K–12 science education is in trouble. In his letter, Art Hobson (Physics Today, December 2002, page 12 ) approvingly quotes the authors of Science for All Americans for their view that, “without a scientifically literate population, the outlook for a better world is not promising.” ¹ However the authors of that document promote obsolete and incorrect information about the foundations of physics. On page 47 , for example, they write, “Scientists continue to investigate atoms and have discovered even smaller constituents of which electrons … are made.” That same sentence is repeated in Benchmarks for Science Literacy, ² which is currently used as the foundation for curriculum reform across the US.

Much more serious than any specific erroneous statement is the document’s almost grotesque failure at the foundation of physics. You probably thought that the basic premise of the modern theory of matter was quantum mechanics, or at least that it was the standard model, right? Well, Science for All Americans says, “The basic premise of the modern theory of matter is that the elements consist of a few different kinds of atoms—particles far too tiny to see in a microscope—that join together in different configurations to form substances. There are one or more—but never many—kinds of these atoms for each of the approximately 100 elements.” The first sentence indicates that the way you form “substances” is by combining different isotopes of a single element!

Is it any wonder that our K–12 education system is in such bad shape when such an illiterate, antiquated report has been circulated and used for more than a decade?

NASA’s Maryland Space Grant Consortium has been trying for the past decade to bring university-level science professionalism into Maryland’s K–12 school system. It is an uphill task.