Science, The Rebel Educator

Lynn Margulis writing in the American Scientist:

The ridiculous but effective public-relations tactics of hype and guile serve our television culture. Pressures to produce and consume generate deceptions and half-truths. On the dominant side of the cultural abyss, hard-sell tactics contradict the demands of science: honesty, rigor and logic. Scientific inquiry, on the other side of the abyss, is a search for truth—whether or not, to paraphrase the wise, recently deceased physicist David Bohm, the truth pleases us.

....

When he described America as a self-imagined nation of "pragmatic, pious businessmen," Baldwin unwittingly exemplified science education. Science for schools is written, controlled and produced by publishers whose goal is to sell materials in huge quantities to avoid sales taxes. Qualified scientists and teachers are not paid for comprehensibility, accuracy or logic, but rather bribed to rapidly approve "content" that no one understands. Such beleaguered experts rush to meet publishers’ deadlines for "up-to-date" consumer products that quickly earn money. To maximize profit, books, digital media, supplies, even equipment are planned to be obsolete within the academic year.

Posted by Rebecca Cole at December 16, 2005 11:31 AM
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