Economist Bill Goffe
(2010) recently alerted PhysLrnR's to Janet Raloff's (2010) "Science
News" report "Science Literacy: U.S. College Courses Really
Count" at <http://tinyurl.com/ydayp9z>.
Raloff wrote [bracketed by lines "RRRRRR. . . .
"]:
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Jon Miller <http://dsme.msu.edu/people/jomiller.htm> of
Michigan State University reported the numbers at the American
Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting
<http://www.aaas.org/>, this afternoon, during a session on
civic science literacy assessments around the world.
The new U.S. rate, based on questionnaires administered in 2008, is
seven percentage points behind Sweden, the only European nation to
exceed the Americans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
America's improving science and tech literacy does not appear to
reflect better K-12 science education, Miller says, since scores on
tests assessing kids' science literacy has remained fairly stable -
and not that high. Indeed, he notes, U.S. high school students "are
below average and below most European countries" on virtually every
international achievement test administered throughout the past 30
years. . . . . . . . . one is tempted to ask how science
literacy among U.S. adults could have risen to become second only to
the Swedes'.
The likely answer, [Miller] contends, traces to the U.S. undergraduate
curriculum.
"The United States is the only country in the world, right now, that
requires all of its university students take a year of general
education," Miller says. "Which means they all have a year of
science, a year of social science, and a year of humanities." It's
something he contends European and other nations would do well to
match.
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Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana
University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands.
<[log in to unmask]>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/>
<http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com/>
<http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake>
REFERENCES [Tiny URL's courtesy
<http://tinyurl.com/create.php>.]
Goffe, B. 2010."Science
literacy: U.S. college courses really count," PhysLrnR post of 28
Feb 2010 16:02:44-0500 online at <http://tinyurl.com/ydayp9z>.
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Raloff, J. 2010.
"Science Literacy: U.S. College Courses Really Count,"
Science News 177(6): 13; online at
<http://tinyurl.com/y8mkvcf>.