COLUMN ONE : How U.S. Failed in Science : A post-Sputnik experiment in teaching the brightest students left most of a generation bored and inept. Now educators are trying to catch up with foreign competition.

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 33 years ago, it awakened in Americans the frightening realization that the United States was no longer the world leader in science and technology. It signaled a failing, critics said, of American schools.

In response, teachers and school administrators tried to do what scientists and politicians told them they had to do: identify the best and brightest students and create for them the most sophisticated educational materials available anywhere in the world.

By all accounts, the plan has backfired.

While the U.S. today surely has some of the world’s best scientists and mathematicians, its citizenry is now among the most undereducated and least sophisticated in science anywhere in the industrialized world, lagging behind not only the Soviet Union, but also Japan, Germany, France, England, Ireland and Spain, to name a few.

“We are now in the peculiar situation of believing that we have an egalitarian system in which we offer all kids a chance for an education, while the rest of the world has an elite system of education for only the privileged few. But in science, the reverse is true. They educate everyone equally, and we educate only the elite,” said Bill G. Aldridge, executive director of the National Science Teachers Assn.

The irony is that the current problems facing the United States and its schools in large measure are a result of the last major reform movement in science and math education. Before Sputnik, many science and math courses tended to be practical in nature: the chemistry of food for future homemakers, the geometry of woodworking for would-be carpenters.

To be sure, important and innovative programs emerged during the post-Sputnik era. With the help of new, more sophisticated textbooks, designed not by teachers but by leading scientists and mathematicians, high school students were exposed to abstract theories, not just practical problems. And in some cases, students began to do their own research in newly equipped school laboratories.

Yet most of the reforms were for the benefit of only a select few. While the new curricula may have worked for the smartest students in the best schools in New York City, they befuddled not only most of the students but many of the teachers in the rest of the country.

Purged of fun, bereft of everyday problems with practical, interesting solutions, most science and math courses seemed too abstract and theoretical for the average person to comprehend. And while the annual science fair may have captured the attention of many youngsters, it was hardly enough, given all that there was to learn.

The vast majority of American students were simply left behind, turned off to science and math altogether.

“We lost a whole generation of students,” said Aldridge, who was educated in the pre-Sputnik years and taught classes during the post-Sputnik years.

What’s worse, he said, is that U.S. educators assumed an attitude that was--and still is--largely unique to American education. “We came to believe,” he said, “that only some people could learn science and math--namely, Asian immigrants and a handful of white males with extraordinary IQs.

“This is,” he lamented, “an interesting contrast with the attitude in Japan where such children who excel are viewed as those who work harder than other children.”

In an effort to document the science and math difficulties now facing America’s schools, more than 300 studies have been published--so many that the National Science Foundation recently released a voluminous compilation of them, titled “Science and Mathematics Education Briefing Book.”

In virtually every international comparison over the past decade, the U.S. has ranked far below the top--and in an alarming number of cases very near the bottom.

One study found that only one in two high school seniors could reason mathematically. Another found that U.S. ninth-graders were tied with students in Singapore and Thailand for next to last place in science achievement. In biology, the most popular of science courses in the U.S., American students ranked last in comparisons with their counterparts overseas.

Children themselves know what’s wrong with science and math education in this country, the briefing book found: It’s boring, it’s irrelevant and, in too many places, it’s virtually non-existent.

One study found that only about one-quarter of American third-graders had daily lessons in science. Roughly half the students questioned reported studying science once a week or less. One out of 10 students said they had never studied science.

Moreover, the longer they are in school, the less likely American students are to say they like science and math.

By the time they are adults, most Americans may think they know something about scientific and technological fields--but, in fact, their knowledge is very slim, according to a 1988 survey of public science literacy and attitudes toward science and technology conducted for the National Science Foundation.

When asked what a molecule is, for example, 27% of Americans claimed they had a clear idea, though only 10% could give a “satisfactory definition, even by generous standards.” While 18% of a sample of Americans said they know how a telephone works, only 8% could come close to describing it.

The reason, in many cases, is that Americans were taught by teachers who themselves do not know the subjects they are teaching. In one survey, 19% of biology teachers said they thought humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, even though there was at least 60 million years between the extinction of the one and the emergence of the other.

“I’ll admit it to you, but don’t you dare tell my principal,” said one Los Angeles elementary school teacher. “I’m scared to death of science and math. I teach as little of it as possible because I figure, if I’m scared, all I’ll do is make them (the students) scared, too.”

According to national surveys, only about half of the mathematics and science teachers hired in recent years are certified in their assigned fields. As a result of shortages of trained teachers in math and science, biology classes end up being taught by home economics teachers and algebra classes by physical education teachers.

That is in striking contrast to most other industrialized countries, where teaching posts in science and math are highly sought, and where students receive four or five years of progressively rigorous training in all areas of math and science at the high school level, preceded by as much as six carefully coordinated years of math and science classes at the elementary level.

“The problem with today’s schools is not that they are no longer as good as they once were. The problem . . . is that they are precisely what they always were--while the world around them has changed so significantly.” That’s the assessment of a recent report prepared by a group of educators, union officials, business leaders and policy-makers under the direction of Shirley M. McBay, dean of student affairs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“It is hard for people to fathom,” said Aldridge of the National Science Teachers Assn., “how a country could have industries and universities that are as scientifically and technologically sophisticated as those in the United States and yet also have schools where the technology and teaching . . . resemble that of a Third World nation.

“But that,” he concluded, “has become the case.”

It comes as “no surprise” that the longer they are in school, the worse U.S. students perform in science and math and the further behind the rest of the world they fall, said Glenn T. Seaborg, winner of the 1940 Nobel Prize for the discovery of plutonium and former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

“The nation is in the middle of a crisis,” Seaborg added, “one of the worst crises it has ever faced. . . . Scientists and mathematicians need to drop everything as they did 30 years ago and try to find solutions to these problems, but in some cases, we need to find very different solutions from the ones we used before.”

To undo or at least to alter much of what the last reform movement left behind, educators and policy-makers are now trying to rally support for a whole new kind of education reform in America.

Over two dozen bills have been introduced in Congress, many of them designed to get students who would not ordinarily be interested in science and mathematics to at least try courses in those fields. Over the past several years, virtually every state has tried to raise graduation standards in science and mathematics and built new public specialty schools for gifted students. And a few states--California among them--have begun to experiment with major changes in the content and sequence of science and math courses.

Several federal agencies, most notably the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, have rechanneled funds away from purely esoteric research at the graduate and postgraduate level and begun to support educational programs in high schools and elementary schools.

A number of prestigious national scientific organizations--including the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Assn. and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics--are now trying to revise the nation’s science and math curricula, beginning in kindergarten and extending through college and beyond.

President Bush has acknowledged the seriousness of the problem. By the year 2000, he has pledged, the United States will significantly raise its high school graduation rates, wipe out illiteracy and become “first” in the world in science and math achievement.

Many experts are skeptical that any country, let alone one as large and complex as the United States, could change science and math programs as quickly as the President would like them changed.

“Just look at the magnitude of the problem, and you’ll see this is not something we can fix overnight,” said F. James Rutherford, chief education officer for the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, which is holding a major national conference on science education starting Friday in Washington.

“But the cost of not fixing the system is so enormous,” Rutherford said, “we can no longer shrug our shoulders or throw our hands in the air.”

And, Rutherford asked, what of the students who are not considered smart enough--or lucky enough--to be part of America’s scientific and mathematic elite? What will become of them, the youngsters who will make up the next generation of workers?

In the first place, they most certainly will not pursue careers or jobs in science or medicine or any of a number of technological fields. The decline has already become apparent in the teaching profession.

According to the National Science Foundation, the number of students who graduated from college with degrees in mathematics education dropped by 60% between 1971 and 1982. During that same period, the number of education majors dropped by roughly one-third.

Five years from now, the science foundation estimates, the United States will face an annual shortage of 9,600 doctoral-level scientists. Within 10 years, the country will need nearly half a million more scientists and engineers than it will be able to produce. By the year 2010, the shortfall of professional scientists and engineers will approach 1 million, if current trends persist.

And it is not only science teachers and professional scientists who are in short supply. Many experts say the vast majority of American schoolchildren are now so poorly educated in technical and scientific subjects that fewer and fewer U.S. citizens will be able to hold down jobs in any field.

Within a decade, according to the Labor Department, the bulk of the would-be workers who are U.S. citizens will be female and members of minority groups--yet these are the very people who continue to be the least likely to pursue advanced courses in science and math.

Either for cultural reasons or because of fundamental inequities in the U.S. educational system, many minority groups--especially blacks and Latinos--have never been particularly drawn to science and math. And while women have made some advances in earning doctorates in scientific fields in recent years, the situation is expected to reverse itself within a matter of years. The latest figures from the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science show that the percentages of women earning undergraduate degrees in science and engineering has actually and inexplicably been declining for the past two years.

“There seems to be the public attitude that we have solved the problem for women,” said Marsha Matyas, director of the association’s program on women and science. “In fact, we are backsliding.”

The problem, however, goes beyond race and gender, experts contend.

Carl Sagan, an astronomer at Cornell University and author of numerous books and articles that attempt to explain science to the lay public, argues that without a basic understanding of science and math, Americans cannot even vote intelligently in a world of malathion and MX missiles.

“What about fusion, supercomputers, abortion . . . addiction, high-resolution TV, airline and airport safety, food additives, animal rights, superconductivity . . . going to Mars, finding cures for AIDS and cancer?” Sagan asked in a recent article.

Whoever or whatever the cause of the current situation, many educators and politicians now agree the time for political bickering and finger-pointing is over.

At a conference on science and math education sponsored last fall by the Department of Energy, Adm. James D. Watkins, secretary of the Department of Energy, put it this way: “It would be a mistake to spend the next two years trying to figure out who shot John in math and science.”

Concluded Fred Easter, director of MESA, an engineering and science program for minority students with headquarters in Berkeley, “There’s no confusion about what the problem is. There’s not much else to be said about who is and who is not to blame. There’s not even much debate over what needs to be done. The issue is: Can we get to enough schools and enough kids in time?”

SCIENCE LITERACY QUIZ

From the National Science Foundation’s 1988 Public Science Literacy and Attitudes Toward Science and Technology Survey: Are the statements true or false? (Answers on Page A46.) 1. The center of the Earth is very hot. 2. The oxygen we breathe comes from plants. 3. Lasers work by focusing sound waves. 4. Electrons are smaller than atoms. 5. Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria. 6. The universe began with a huge explosion. 7. In the entire universe, there are thousands of planets like our own on which life could have developed. 8. The continents on which we live have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move in the future. 9. The earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. 10. Light travels faster than sound. SCIENCE QUIZ ANSWERS

Correct responses to the true-false statements that appear on Page A45 are in bold type. Numbers and percentages indicate how Americans who were surveyed responded to the questions.

No. of Response Responses % STATEMENT 1 True 1,639 80.3 False 117 5.7 Not sure 285 14.0 TOTAL 2,041 100.0 STATEMENT 2 True 1,644 80.6 False 262 12.8 Not sure 135 6.6 TOTAL 2,041 100.0 STATEMENT 3 True 600 29.4 False 735 36.0 Not sure 706 34.6 TOTAL 2,041 100.0 STATEMENT 4 True 873 42.7 False 408 20.0 Not sure 760 37.3 TOTAL 2,041 100.0 STATEMENT 5 True 1,294 63.4 False 520 25.5 Not sure 226 11.1 TOTAL 2,041 100.0 STATEMENT 6 Definitely true 443 21.7 Probably true 663 32.5 Probably false 175 8.6 Definitely false 161 7.9 Not sure 599 29.3 TOTAL 2,041 100.0 STATEMENT 7 True 1,374 67.3 False 321 15.7 Not sure 346 16.9 TOTAL 2,041 100.0 STATEMENT 8 True 1,636 80.1 False 165 8.1 Not sure 240 11.8 TOTAL 2,041 100.0 STATEMENT 9 True 925 45.3 False 751 36.8 Not sure 365 17.9 TOTAL 2,041 100.0 STATEMENT 10 True 1,553 76.1 False 379 18.6 Both the same 3 0.1 Not sure 106 5.2 TOTAL 2,041 100.0

SCIENCE IN U.S. CLASSROOMS Frequency of science lessons reported by third-grade students Daily: 27% Several times/week: 25% Weekly: 23% Less than once/week: 13% Never: 11% High schools offering advanced science and math classes Trigonometry: 59% Biology (2nd year): 53% Calculus: 31% Chemistry: 28% Physics (2nd year): 11% Minutes per day spent teaching specific subjects Grades K-3 Reading: 77 Mathematics: 43 Social Studies: 18 Science: 18 Grades 4-6 Reading: 63 Mathematics: 52 Social Studies: 33 Science: 29 Source: National Science Foundation