Which style guide are you using?

I think the roots of the anti-science and anti-intellectual attitudes go back to early childhood experiences, as Stephanie Z’s excellent comment above implies (at least in my interpretation). If a young child is repeatedly punished and labeled as a discipline problem, for being curious, asking questions, and engaging in creative, unstructured play, what is the likelihood that he or she will be particularly receptive to science-related learning, regardless of the teacher or the teaching method? Forget the child of extraordinary intelligence and resilience (a group which apparently includes most bloggers and their commenters) – I’m talking about your average kid, or perhaps even a child with below-average intelligence, due to inadequate nutrition or exposure to teratogens. Maybe even a child with abusive or neglectful parents.

Thing is, a lot of children fall into this category, with a less-than-optimal development environment, not conducive to learning or creativity or even adequate brain myelination. If you deny that this is so, then I will politely suggest that you must live in the privileged enclave of Richfuckistan, and that your contacts and interactions with people of different socioeconomic groups is pretty damned limited. Limited, perhaps, to the times when you seek them out to coiffeur your lawn and shrubberies, or to dust your lame-ass intramural softball trophies from graduate school and launder your prized collection of ironic webcomix T-shirts or whatever.

And oh, yeah, I totally understand the moral discomfort and guilt that acknowledging such disparities and injustices can bring, as I’m kind of a “to the manor born” type of gal myself, with academician parents who sent me outside to play and made sure the house was filled with books and art supplies. But there’s really no excuse, IMHO, for pretending that environmental and experiential differences throughout early childhood won’t influence learning abilities and receptiveness to new ways of thinking later in life. I’m not saying that such hurdles can’t be overcome, but the problem is not a simple one, and its extent, even in the US, is pretty daunting. To me it makes endlessly discussing blogosphere ego controversies and arguments about whether Pluto is a planet or whatever seem pretty petty and insubstantial.

Dave W [6]: You make a good argument that everyone should come out of school knowing the Krebs cycle so that when the policy issues relatedto it come up they are ready for that. The problem is that a similar argument can be made for almost everything.

That’s why I appended “or at least being willing and able to look it up and understand it.” And I wasn’t talking about policy, but was coming more from a defend-yourself-from-the-conmen angle.

For a long time I’ve thought that schools should be more invested in teaching kids how to obtain knowledge than in teaching kids facts and dates.

Science: applied curiosity.

Critical thinking: formalized curiosity.

This notion that there is one thing that is the scientific method is inaccurate (there’s a lot of back and forth between evidence gathering and hypothesis formation).
The notion that “The Scientific Method” can be reduced to a formulaic checklist and knowledge of it can be evaluated meaningfully via a multiple choice test question is pernicious.
If you want people to be able to do science or at least to evaluate it, and if you want them to be ‘critical thinkers’ or whatever education-buzzwords are currently standing in for ‘not excessively gullible’, you have to instill a love of questioning. Particularly the question “how do you know that?”, with all the myriad ramifications thereof.
Everything else is just garnish.

I am still in favour of streaming of students, at least from 10th grade onwards. The end of 9th grade is a good place for a student to decide if she is more interested in the sciences or the arts. The latter should get a general history of the development of ideas in a chosen discipline along with some serious critical thinking skills (maybe one science course of their choice per year, or two courses over 3 years, or something). The former should take science course where they can do the labs and discover the history hands-on, along with a healthy dose of theory to explain various behaviors. Both streams should end with scientific literacy, but the less rigorous especially requires teachers not only teach a subject, but teach a worldview. The students will not have large and detailed backgrounds in specific information, but they will be able to apply the rational, scientific way of thinking to their life. This is where we fail the children by teaching to the test. Science is everywhere, but its relevance is dwarfed by mere trivialities in the grand scheme.