Disenchantment and a Moral Imperative
editorially speaking
Disenchantment with science by ordinarily responsible individuals or groups has been an on-and-off thing for centuries. During the Renaissance the superstitions of the people-especially the educated people--retarded the development of science and the progress of civilization much more than did opposition from the church. In our own day, fear of the baneful uses and of the complexities of science competes with respect for its obvious contributions to our welfare and with hope for its incontestable promise of minimizing traditional human ills, to produce in many students and faculty members an anxiety akin to desperation. This anxiety, when coupled with the alleged failure of an alarming fraction of contemporary college science courses to provide fulfilling insight or enriching educational experiences, is probably the strongest single cause of the rising wave of disenchantment with science on the campus today. The discomfort produced by this wave is felt by science faculties everywhere. Possibly because it is in the nature of science to expect and to accommodate new knowledge and new situations, many science teachers are responding almost impulsively to this discomfort by attempting to make their courses and curricula more appealing, more "relevant," and more "consumer oriented." Thus there bas appeared a rash of hastily written and published texts exploiting the relevance theme-population, pollution, technology, sociochemistry. (Not a few of these also feature politics, polemics, and psychodelicity). Introductory courses for nonscience majors are being redesigned along multidisciplinary lines, hopefully to increase their appeal by demonstrating how knowledge from various scientific disciplines contributes to pressing practical problems. Mini coursescourses of two to four weeks duration-in individual disciplines or addressed to major social problems have been introduced. Laboratory experiences have been personalized and made more dramatic. Teachers are experimenting with different methods of presenting the material, methods that involve greatly improved selfstudy techniques such as video-tutorial or computerinstruction modules, and others in traditional classroom situations that involve greater teacher-student instruction modules and others in traditional classgreat principles of science evolved. There is considerable evidence that college science teachers are becoming much more involved in teaching and learning than ever before. Tbis can only be a blessing. However, there is much more at stake a t this time than simply recapturing the interest of students in science. Unless this generatiorl of students can take with it, as it proceeds from college, a good deal more
real understanding of and appreciation for science than its predecessors have taken, there simply cannot be an improvement in the quality of life. Ignorance of science is surely one of the major crippling infirmities of the American society today. Tbis ignorance has resulted in many of our most serious problems, and a continued paucity of scientific sophistication can only make th'mgs worse. For academic scientists there would appear to be no alternative, short of callous irresponsibility, to greatly intensified and vastly more effective programs for improving student understanding of science. While a few teachers and administrators would look upon the present disinterest in science as an opportunity to reduce the commitment to the nonscience student and even to use the valuable, emerging concept of multidisciplinary science courses as a device to decrease science requirements, reason does appear to prevail in the great majority of institutions. Few of us can claim that our courses provide for the majority of students the kind of educational experiences we or they would hope for. If the courses had provided this, no anxiety borne of misuse of the products of science could keep the students away. It would be a mistake, however, to think that our courses and, our approach were without merit. Scientists and engineers trained in our colleges and universities have posted a truly remarkable record of achievement. A system that can produce such excellence in its specialists surely is obligated to reach and motivate the nonspecialist. It also would be a mistake to think that relevance is an adequate substitute for substance in the education of an American citizen, especially in the sciences. Science courses worth their salt will continue to stretch the minds and tax the energies of the students. They will continue to show students that fact without reason or reason without facts is worthless, that brilliance without discipline is the ultimate immaturity, that criticism without remedy is as barren as ignorance without desire to learn, and that confidence in identifying and tackling problems comes with practice and not by instinct. Somewhere between the rigor and the discipline of pure science and the aesthetically fulfilling, soulreleasing lyricism of the truly creative act is where we want to be with our students. It is here that we can capture and convey the substance of science and the very essence of the intellectual experience. Not enough of us have reached this point with our students, but their disenchantment with science a t a time that scientific knowledge is a moral imperative may well be the spur we need to take our own "one small step." WTL Voluine 47,Number 5, Moy 1970
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