San Jose Mercury News
October 19, 1998
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
THANKS and congratulations for publishing Joanne Jacobs' column "Science standards ask more of kids, teachers" (Opinion, Oct. 15). As one who worked hard to bring these excellent standards into being, I have read disappointing and untrue news stories about them from all over the state. Jacobs seems to be the first journalist to have actually (what a concept!) checked the document itself to see if the charges made against them have merit. They don't.
Under the standards, small children are asked to know that the periodic table exists, and high school students are asked to know how to use it to glean certain kinds of chemical information. Nor do the standards argue against experimentation as a way of teaching or a classroom activity. Rather, they are studiously neutral on teaching methods, as they were required to be. But they do require students to know how to plan and perform simple experiments.
I wish this column could be read by every parent and teacher in the state.
Martha Schwartz
Research associate, USC Paleomagnetism Lab
Los Angeles
Published in the San Jose Mercury News
Monday, Oct. 19, 1998
Reproduced by permission