Education
Foreign precollege curricula give strong dose of science Japanese, Soviet, and German education systems devote more time to teaching science and math to elementary, secondary students than does the U.S. Science educators in the U.S. are taking a serious look at the way science is taught at the elementary and secondary school levels in foreign countries to see if some of the methods used there could improve science education in the U.S. As a start, speakers at a symposium at the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C., described how science and mathematics are taught at the precollege level in some of the countries that are the U.S.'s chief competitors in science and technology fields. Nearly all Japanese children complete 12 years of precollege public education, and they study science during each year of this program, explains Vivian E. Todd, a curriculum consultant from Long Beach, Calif. In the earlier grades, the study emphasizes group activities that develop
scientific thinking, such as caring for plants growing in the shade or in the sunshine or experimenting with a seesaw to balance known weights against unknown ones. Older students continue to perform experiments in groups, but they spend an increasing amount of their class time memorizing specific facts about science. This shift comes in part to help prepare the students for nationwide examinations that are the principal criterion for college entrance or acceptance into betterpaying jobs. There seems to be none of the fear of science and mathematics among Japanese school children that is often found, particularly among girls, in U.S. schools, both Todd and Kay M. Troost of North Carolina State University told the symposium. The reason, Todd suggests, may lie with Japanese science teachers who generally are better trained in science than their American counterparts and less willing to allow students to fail. Japanese teachers arrange for a student having difficulty to be helped either at home, by other students, or by working with the teacher during school vacations. A very different science education program has developed in the U.S.S.R., says mathematics professor
Japanese elementary school class conducts experiment about properties of oxygen 42
C&ENJan. 25, 1982
Izaak Wirszup of the University of Chicago. Soviet youngsters have 10 years of precollege schooling, and they study science and mathematics each year. One striking difference between Soviet science education and that in the U.S., Wirszup says, is the scientific credentials of people who prepare the curriculum that is used. The Soviet Academy of Sciences is responsible for setting educational policy in science and mathematics and for directing curriculum development. Several internationally renowned research scientists and mathematicians who are members of the academy spend a significant part of their time preparing textbooks that are used in Soviet elementary and secondary schools. The biggest difference in Wirszup's mind between U.S. and Soviet science education, however, is the amount of time children spend studying these subjects. In the U.S.S.R. children study geometry for 10 years, compared with a one-year course, if that, in the U.S. Similarly, Soviet children have five years of compulsory physics classes, four years of chemistry, four and a half of biology, and one of astronomy. They also take part in workshops and technical training programs each of the 10 years they are in school that are designed, among other things, to show the students the relevance of scientific study to life in a highly technological society. The differences in East and West Germany's science education programs reflect the differences found in other aspects of society, says Margrete S. Klein of the National Science Foundation. The West German system is patterned after traditional European education in which children attend different types of schools after age 10 according to the type of work they are expected to do when they are grown. About 30% go to an academic secondary school that prepares them to enter a university. East Germany, on the other hand, has a system much like the Soviet one which includes both academic study and more practical technical training programs. However, both German systems are different from the U.S. system in several ways, Klein points out. Both place relatively more emphasis on science and mathematics and less on humanities and social studies, both require several years of science at the secondary level instead of offering such courses as électives, and both teach different branches of science over a period of years, rather than in intensive one-year courses. D
