21st CENTURY SCIENCE EDUCATION
Leon M. Lederman
In the early phase of the 21st century, industrial and emerging
societies throughout the world are deeply concerned about their
educational systems. Education is deeply embedded in the culture
of most societies and, in turn, strongly related to the economic
and technological status of nations.
The combined growth of 21st century technology and globalization
has vastly increased the stakes in science and mathematics education.
More completely, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)
is universally related to quality of life, environment, democratic
process and prosperity. STEM education has two overriding objectives:
(1) the creation of STEM experts to contribute to innovative, technological
industry and (2) creating a population that can judge and encourage
national decisions needed to solve local, national and international
environmental problems as well as allocating resources for research
and education appropriate for the 21st century.
In the U.S. STEM education has been studied exhaustively with increasing
evidence of drastic failure in both objectives. U.S. is unique in
its insistence on a decentralized, local system. We have 50 States,
divided into 15,000 school districts, managed by Boards whose memberships
are mostly devoid of educators or scientists. However, the problems
are shared by many nations and the concerns apply to student apathy,
poor teacher training, rigid and out-of-date curricula, textbooks,
and educational technology. To these we can add parental indifference,
the influence of media, the competition of easier avenues to success
than science and mathematics with its small rewards and lack of
My discussion will deal with these issues and emphasize the crucial
role that scientists can play in solving the problems.