(Originally posted by Pat on 3/22/2010)
The United States government very much seems to like declaring "war"
on things. Poverty, drugs, terrorism... strangely we don't often seem to
declare war on actual nations. Instead we "send in peacekeepers" or
"engage in police actions" or deploy "security contractors". If we're
using policy to eliminate some uncontroversially undesirable
abstraction, it's "war"; if we are actually deploying men with guns to
foreign countries, it's... something other than war.
Actually, we
never officially declared "war" upon science, but nonetheless it was
clear from the decisions made under the Bush administration that science
was at best a low priority and at worst actually in opposition to the
Right's agenda.
Fortunately, this is no longer the case. As you
may know, John Holdren, Obama's chief science advisor, came to speak at
the UMich campus earlier today. He spoke to the whole campus in the Wege
lecture, and before that he spoke specifically to a few classes,
including my environmental psychology class. (By far the best lecture
we've had in that class, but I digress.) Holdren made it very clear that
the War on Science has ended, that environmental policy, climate
change, and science education are now high priorities in Obama's
administration.
This
can only be good news for secularism, and indeed it supports the
hypothesis that Obama really is a secularist leader (perhaps even an
atheist leader), merely one who is politically savvy enough to realize
that declaring this openly would be very dangerous in contemporary
American society. He was the first President to ever explicitly mention
"non-believers" as an important minority, and people were offended by
this; though nominally Christian he hardly ever attends church; and now,
he declares that evolution and climate change are undeniable facts and
science education is a top priority. (On the other hand, he did nothing
to cut down the "faith-based initiatives" Bush enacted, so it's hard to
say.)
Holdren's speeches were thorough and enlightening---if
anything, too much so. Both in my class and in the larger event he went
through so many facts and figures so quickly it was difficult to follow
what he was saying. The gist of it was this: Obama thinks science is
important, and he's willing to back it up with lots of government
funding and support. Where most politicians give lip service to "the
importance of education for our future", Obama actually dramatically
increased funding for education (particularly in so called "STEM"
subjects, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and cut
funding from other areas.
I wasn't thrilled to see increases in
the budget for Department of Defense R&D (already by far the largest
military R&D budget of any country in history), but since Obama did
cut the pointless F-22 program even against Republican protests,
perhaps this new funding really is going towards technologies that will
be genuinely useful for national defense. Better drone aircraft?
Stronger, lighter body armor? More reliable explosives detection
equipment? Most of these projects are top secret, so from the outside we
can only speculate.
Holdren also made a point of the fact that
these new science education initiatives will focus on scientific
methodology rather than scientific facts. This would be great, if true;
but we've heard this sort of thing before, and rarely does it work out
that way. Most science classes involving memorizing long lists of facts,
because that's the easiest way to make a consistent and testable
science curriculum. And honestly, that might be all right; in a nation
in which 40% of people think the world is 10,000 years old and 16% think
global warming is a hoax, a large dose of scientific facts might be
entirely worthwhile.
Apparently Obama's goal is to "race to the
top", return the US to the top of the list of nations with the highest
scientific literacy. I must admit that this sort of relative goal
strikes me as odd; what difference does it make if we're number 1 or
number 7? The important thing for me is the absolute goal of making 100 %
of Americans understand the basic facts of science that will be
critical for survival in he 21st century. I don't care if Norway does
better on calculus tests; what worries me is that 40% of our fellow
citizens have basically zero understanding of geology, biology, and
astronomy.
Another concern for me is the fact that so many people
are afraid of math. It is said that every equation in a book halves its
sales. Though clearly a vague estimate (If it were strictly true then my
first book, which mostly consisted of hundreds of equations and sold
about 300 copies, would have sold enough copies to fill the known
universe had it been entirely blank.), this is nonetheless worrisome.
Why do people fear math? Why do they run in terror from algebra of
all things, when in fact algebra is one of the few things in this world
that is undeniably correct and indisputably useful? This fear of
algebra makes it impossible to have a reasonable discussion of not only
science but also economic policy, since making sense of fiscal and
monetary decisions can only be done through algebraic arguments. I can
only hope that this administration's new focus upon science education
includes a dedication to eliminating people's fear of math.
As
when Obama was first elected, I am in a state of cautious hope. Hope
because the words are sound and the visions are good; cautious because
we have been deceived before, and because many great visions have been
destroyed by the compromises of realpolitik.
All I can say for now is this: We'll see.
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