Here is a story in Education Week (subscription required) that marks out a strange discrepancy in science literacy.
“Science literacy” it defines as “the ability to understand science, its role in society, and make informed decisions as citizens, based on scientific evidence and knowledge.” The state of science literacy among the public has become a pressing worry for some given a few Bush administration decisions over science research and school-board decisions involving the standing of evolution in the curriculum (see here). The worry increased when the 2006 PISA scores came in for the “combined science-literacy scale.” In that international test of 15-year-olds, U.S. kids ranked 21st out of 30 nations, 11 points below the international average.
But when the Michigan State professor Jon Miller measured science literacy of adult Americans, he found that the United States came in second, just behind Sweden. Miller attributes the gains to more science requirements in U.S. colleges than in European and Asian colleges, as well as to the spread of museums, aquariums, zoos, and other leisure knowledge sites. (Here is a 2005 story in The New York Times on Miller’s work that is much more skeptical than the Education Week story.)
Perhaps, though, we should wait and see what this recent cohort of high-school students does as it passes into adulthood. Will the United States retain its high ranking once today’s 15-year-olds reach their thirties?
