Building a generation of science literates

Q: You have become a big advocate of science literacy. What is it exactly?

In truth, it might be better to talk about science "literacies." Because in my mind, the concept is more a net than a single thing. Science literacies encompass knowledge of basic scientific concepts and processes. But the concept also involves developing cognitive skills such as information management, analysis and problem-solving.

And why are those literacies important?

The simplest answer is that science and its sister, technology, are what fundamentally define modern life. We love and hate and fear and hope much like people did in the past, but science and technology give us a very different world-view. We feel we can understand and control our lives and our world in ways that never existed. Science and technology have made us rich in ways people have never been before. But if you are not science-literate, you can't understand and advance the links between science, technology, innovation, the economy, the environment and our society. You can't decipher what food labels really mean or how to differentiate a media headline promoting a new cure from typical media hype.

So being science-literate helps even non-scientists feel as if they are part of the modern world?

Feel part of and, even more important, want to be part of. One of the big problems in this country is that while the need for a scientifically and technologically savvy workforce keeps increasing, the numbers of students going into these fields both as graduates and undergraduates keeps going down. We've been relying on immigration to fill the gaps. But you know, the economic rise of places like India and China may cause that kind of transfusion of skilled blood to come to an abrupt end.

It seems so counterintuitive that while the riches of modern life come from science and technology, Canadian students shy away from studying them.

It's not just us. An international study called Relevance of Science Education (ROSE) suggests that there is also a negative correlation between youth interest in science and how rich their country is. In developing countries like India, China and Mexico, young people tend to see science as critical to building the economy and so they aspire to become scientists. People like Bill Gates are stars in the eyes of people in those countries. In the developed world, Britney Spears seems to be most young people's idea of a true star, while Bill Gates is just some extremely rich guy.

So what do we do about raising science literacy and creating a more S&T positive culture?

Public policy has to collectively say: We want our children to have a positive feeling about the role of science and technology in their lives. We want our children to be numerate. We want to have teachers in the kindergarten through Grade 12 stream who have the resources to overcome the fear that many have that science is something they are not well prepared to teach. And, yes, it's good to have Canadian hockey stars and movie stars, but we want to glorify our science and technology stars too. We want to have kids who know that Ontario-developed Marquis wheat helped end famine, know that Ontario inventors created the music synthesizer and the paint roller, and that Till and McCullough identified the first stem cell. We want our children's life anthem to be: We are Canadians. We're the people who make and discover new things.

And if we don't?

Then expect a troubling future. It seems as if standing in place economically in Ontario today means running up a down escalator. And in my view, without building a science culture, no matter how fast we try to run up, we still may be going down.