Science Education 2000

By Paul DeHart Hurd

Pressure for the "reinvention" of school science goals and curricula has been with us for the past 25 years. Revolutionary changes are taking place in the culture and practice of sciences, as well in our economy and how people live and work. The main response to these conditions has been the identification of over a thousand standards to update the concepts and principles of science disciplines such as biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics that are to be taught within the traditional mode of scientific inquiry.

This does not represent a reinvention of goals or curricula. And as Albert Einstein once commented, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

The curriculum problems we face today are more complicated than ever before. We need to recognize that a new civilization is emerging. Some of its characteristics are these: (1) a global economy; (2) an information age characterized by the Internet; (3) changing family structures; (4) a knowledge-intensive society resulting in a new world of work; and (5) new developments in the cognitive sciences recognizing how individuals...