As I've said before in this space, I've always felt that the concept of having clear, specific, national standards for science education is a good one. Now, however, with the release of the final version of the National Academy of Science's National Science Education Standards (National Academy Press, 1996, 262 p., hereinafter simply "Standards"), I've had to admit that I was naively wrong. After devoting some considerable amount of time and effort to studying the "Standards," I've come to feel that, despite its impressive pedigree, the report constitutes a giant step backwards for American science education. My reasons are threefold: first, the "Standards" fragments and attempts to deal separately with concepts, approaches, skills, and understandings that should be dealt with in an integrated fashion; second, the "Standards" is replete with invalid and unsupported assertions and claims about science education; and third, the specification of the science content itself is so hopelessly vague and incomplete that it cannot possibly serve as a "standard" for teaching, learning, or knowing science. I'll discuss my criticisms in that order, but I will have to be brief.

The "Standards" breaks its subject down into "eight categories of content standards" (p. 104): 1. Unifying concepts and processes in science, 2. Science as inquiry, 3. Physical science, 4. Life science, 5. Earth and space science, 6. Science and technology, 7. Science in personal and social perspectives, and 8. History and nature of science, and then deals with each category separately, an approach that is virtually guaranteed to produce misconceptions, fragmentation, and fog rather than clarity and comprehension. What this approach inevitably leads to is the kind of edubabble nicely displayed in Table 6.1 (p. 105) that lists the science-as-inquiry standards separately for grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. The supposed "standard" consists of two phrases that are identical for each of these three levels: "Abilities necessary to scientific inquiry," and "Understanding about scientific inquiry," and the discussion provided is equally vague. In fact, the separation of "inquiry" from "content" is clearly a fundamental error that greatly diminishes the value of the "Standards." I can't help but feel that Richard Feynman, whose inspiring words about the beauty of science are printed as a kind of benediction on p. viii of the "Standards," would cringe with embarrassment to be associated with such an approach.

My second criticism of the "Standards" is that it is full of highly questionable assertions about education. For example, on p. 113 we find the claim that the "Standards" puts less emphasis on "knowing scientific facts and information" and more emphasis on "understanding scientific concepts," which prompts me to ask, "Where was it ever demonstrated that school children could develop a deeper understanding of anything by knowing fewer facts? Can one "understand" the earth without knowing lots of specifics about rocks and minerals and how they form and change. Of course, it is certainly possible to burden children with too much factual material, like requiring them to memorize the hardnesses of 50 minerals, but knowing the hardness of, say, ten minerals, like those in the Mohs hardness scale, would certainly be more useful than having only a vague idea that minerals vary in hardness. In the same table it is said that the national standards puts less emphasis on "activities that demonstrate and verify scientific content" and more on "activities that analyze science questions." The difference here is small, but important. What this says is that the emphasis for students should not be on what the scientific community has learned by three-hundred years of applying scientific methods, but on questioning scientific conclusions. Of course, skepticism is an important value, but does it really make good educational sense to emphasize doubt regarding the atomic structure of matter, the structure and behavior of the solar system, the chemical formula of water, the shape and size of the Earth, the relationship of frequency to pitch, the role of oxygen in combustion, or other topics students might investigate? This is nonsense, pure and simple. Then, on p. 116 we are gravely informed that "Systems and subsystems, the nature of models, and conservation are fundamental concepts and processes included in this standard," an assertion that I simply don't understand. Does the word "system" designate a "concept?" Is "the nature of models" a "concept?" Is "conservation" a "process" in any useful sense?

My third criticism of the standards is that they are simply too vague and generalized to serve as "criteria to judge the quality: the quality of what students know and are able to do" (p. 12). In fact, there seems to be no place in the "Standards" where it says directly and unequivocally that "students will know" anything in particular or "students will be able to do" anything; instead, what we find is the weaseling assertion that "students will develop an understanding of." And then we find long lists of broadly specified topics like "energy," "global climate," "geochemical cycles," and "geologic time." But what the "Standards" most emphatically does not do is to precisely specify what students are supposed to know and be able to do. For example, the "Standards" mentions "rocks" repeatedly, but never once specifies "sedimentary," "igneous," or "metamorphic" rocks. The word "mineral" appears only once as far as I could determine, and not even one specific mineral is named. The word "processes" is used many times, but, incredibly, the authors do not seem to know what processes are, because "the presence of ozone and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," and "cloud cover" are explicitly identified as processes rather than conditions, whereas most geological processes aren't even mentioned. Just for example, "crystallization," "lithification," and "metamorphism" are never mentioned, nor are "glaciation," "percolation," "folding," "faulting," "intrusion," "extrusion," etc., etc., etc. The list of omissions is too long to do more than give examples here.

In short, the "Standards" aren't going to contribute anything positive to the improvement of science education. The National Academy of Sciences had a marvelous opportunity here to strike a blow for real, improved science education, but they've squandered that chance. Too Bad!

James H. Shea

March, 1998

Copyright 1998
James H. Shea
Journal of Geoscience Education
Reproduced by Permission