Science education

I feel most emboldened to discuss education in science and maths, as compared to English, since I have two degrees in Science and have spent my working life in the area, From university research and teaching, all the way through to technology investment, and everywhere in between.

Note that, in my world view maths is just another science subject; it certainly is so at university and a precursor requirement for just about every Science degree one might earn. However it is also one of the critical tools for all engineering, finance and economics and many others. So it has a role outside of science and thus fairly gets to stand on its own.

I can state this with some certainty; we in Australia are training too many scientists. There simply are not the jobs for them all. The over-supply is a result of the Dawkins reforms and the resulting enlargement of the university system. Every former TAFE is now churning out ‘scientists’. Over-training leads to reduction in average salaries in a sector which then puts downwards pressure on the top-end quality of students entering a degree sector; this is a downward spiral and we are in it. It is also quite demoralising for kids to train in an area and then not be able to apply their hard-fought for skills.

Policy is the solution. The over-training in the science is a result of a dumb funding system that rewards universities for doing so. More on this another day.

So we don’t need more scientists. But we could do with better scientists. However the truth is that our society hardly needs scientists at all. Economically we run on exports of resources and internally we thrive on services. Just about all the technology that we use is imported and the role of our locally-developed science, in the context of our current well-being, is fairly minimal.

So why do we teach high school students all this science?

I suppose in one context it’s an insurance policy. We may one day need to develop a technology sector when our economy suffers because, say, we run out of resources. Keeping the flame alive (and it barely is, trust me on this) for this reason makes sense. More on this later.

Our university segment would argue that it is a large part of their foreign earnings (foreign students in science) and therefore needs to be promoted and promulgated for this reason.

However there is a more ‘social’ context; the teaching of science results in a great big dyke that keeps the rabid dogmas at bay. Since the enlightenment reason has triumphed over former dogmas (such as religion) and society has, on average, benefited. However these gains are now being taken for granted and we are at risk of slipping back towards whence we came. The teaching of high quality science is critical if we are to minimise the damaging influence of the ‘nutters’.

We have a global resources bust (where key resources simply run out for ever) looming and I suspect the role of science and technology will become central to our survival as a species. Therefore, and in summary, it’s probably actually the time to turbo-charge our efforts in Science and Maths. If we get ahead of the curve in this respect we might stand a chance. The trouble is that this approach requires government input and expenditure on an issue that is barely recognised; oooh, I don’t like out chances.

Oddly I feel very uncomfortable with any problem where any government agency is central to the solution. In my experience government intervention rarely leads to good outcomes. Policy should be at the ‘strategic’ level but in our country it seems to drift into the ‘tactical’ level and then also into direct intervention and funding, which pretty much fucks up the whole process.