At 2221

Taken from Seed Magazine in July/August 2008's issue.

Q & A: Rita Colwell
Seed: Is the state of science education responsible for weak support for basic research?
Very much so. I find the way science is taught in today's schools depressing. When I was going through school, science was interesting and fun; in fact it was a class in bacteriology I took as an undergraduate at Perdue University, taught by a wonderful mentor, Dr. Dorothy Powelson, that inspired me to study microbiology. That came from doing experiments, not in a cookbook way, but in a discovery-based way. It was the same in high school: The teachers were grounded in science.

Seed: What can be done to get back to that?
I think there are a lot of things to be done. Some of them are programs that I started at NSF. One of them is called the GK12 -Graduate Kindergarten through 12- program, in which students who are studying math, engineering, science, for a doctorate would spend 15 to 20 horus a week in primary or in secondary school classrooms. Not as assistants; they simply do the teaching in their fields. And that has proved to be an enormous success, because participants are young people teaching something they love.
It would be good to see a formal linkage of the museums, science centers, and aquariums with both elementary and middle schools. Instead of throwing latchkey kids out in the street in the afternoon until their parents get home, the kid would have a good time in a safe place, and they would be learning. And although it would be informal, it would be linked to the formal training that comes in the schools. We also must deal with the problem of teachers assigned to teach science who do not have the experience or the desire to teach science, who may not even like it, which makes the problems for science even worse.