Science in schools: decline and fall?

BMJ 1994;308:284-285 (29 January)

Editorials

Science in schools: decline and fall?

Sciences are learning facts from a book and not thinking foryourself; I wanted to express my own ideas and think for myself.(A level student quoted in New Statesman¹)

The dog days of August are a difficult time: for journaliststhere is little important news, while for students at schoolthe only news that matters is the results of their general certificateof secondary education (GCSE) and A level examinations. Notsurprisingly, the two interests combine in newspaper articlesclaiming that standards are slipping (or perhaps improving),quality is rising (or perhaps falling), or, as last year, talkof a "decline in science" (Financial Times), a "science slump"(Times Education Supplement), a "continuing decline in [science]qualifications" (Nature), or "science... losing its grip onthe syllabus" (Times). More recently an article in New Scientistheaded "Classroom science goes into free fall" quoted John Patten,the education secretary, as . . . [Full text of this article]

Add to CiteULike CiteULike Add to Complore Complore Add to Connotea Connotea Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us Add to Digg Digg Add to Reddit Reddit Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon Add to Technorati Technorati What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

McManus, I C (2002). Medical school applications---a critical situation. BMJ 325: 786-787 [Full text]
Charlton, B G, Calvert, N, White, M, Rye, G P, Conrad, W, van Zwanenberg, T (1994). Health promotion priorities for general practice: constructing and using "indicative prevalences". BMJ 308: 1019-1022 [Abstract] [Full text]