More than two months after pub, the dialogue continues...now Isis is reviewing the book, and so far I have really enjoyed what she had to say--e.g., the following:
To be entirely honest, I could give two left nuts if some quiz tells us that some Americans don't remember that an electron is smaller than an atom. I guarantee that if I were quizzed on some topic outside of the scholarly areas I have chosen to pursue as an adult, I might come out looking like a dumbass. A hot dumbass, but a dumbass none the less. There is plenty of information that I don't think about everyday that I learned about as a high school or college student that I could not instantly recall. If that is the definition of illiteracy, then we're all pretty much screwed. I would argue, however, that what keeps me from being "illiterate" is the fact that I could find the knowledge if I ever came to need it again, that I have the ability to discern high quality information from low quality information, and that I have the tools to think critically about a problem. A major source of scientific illiteracy, or unscientific-ness, is a result of the public's exposure to pseudoscience and antiscience that they have been unable or unwilling to distinguish from the real deal.
You can read her first post on the book here
--and now there is a second
about networking scientists for better communication, which contained this nugget:
I'll grant you that our public schools are in dire need of resources. After all, that's why many of us are participating in the DonorsChoose program. That said, if we have to rely on educating children who are in kindergarten now to cure scientific ignorance and apathy (I think I like these terms more than illiteracy) then it's going to be at least 30 years before we begin to see a change in the nation's scientific climate. 30+ years! Dr. Isis will still be hot, but she'll be well into her 60s. Some of you folks will be in diapers by then and FWDAOTI from your nursing homes. In the meantime, there is a lot that the people in charge can fuck up waiting for our well-educated children to finally come of age. So, I am not going to discount the idea of reforming science education in our schools, but I am going to call bullshit in the idea that it is a sufficient solution.
I deliberately quote all of this before going on to link a negative review
in American Scientist that we just received from political scientist Jon Miller of Michigan State. Miller is a top expert on international scientific literacy--we cite his work numerous times in the book--but in a paradigm we have diverged from. While it's hard to account for perceptions sometimes, I don't think we devalue science education in the book as much as Miller seems to suggest. Our view is essentially Isis's view quoted above: Science education is critically important, woefully underfunded, and lamentably under attack; but fixing it is not a cure-all, either, given how long that project would take and the problems that lie before us much more immediately. If I take any issue with Miller's review, it's probably in his dismissal of us for a "light and journalistic treatment" of the topic; the word "journalism" is one he seems to repeatedly use with disdain. As you might imagine, I feel very differently about the virtues of journalistic treatments and popularizations; and this is something I plan to say more about...
