Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson calls for an overhaul of how we teach science
Celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson hopes his latest series will foster fascination, arguing science isn’t taught as a way of querying nature. But it should be.
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The science of wondering why is the key to Australian students learning how the world works and sparking new ideas.
Instead, an education system entrenched in drilling facts is raising a generation of students only understanding portions of science without an umbrella view.
According to world leading astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, it’s time to overhaul the entire method of teaching science and abandon the approach of separating its various disciplines.
Put simply, you can’t teach someone how to drive a car if you only test their knowledge of traffic light colours and steering wheel function.
“I look at the school system, and I realise science isn’t taught as a way of querying nature,” deGrasse Tyson said.
“It’s taught as ‘Learn this’, and then you get a test and that is science, and you come home and say ‘Oh I know what DNA molecule is’ or ‘I know what an engine is’ and we think that’s science.
“My solution is the time delay of fixing the educational system, if you learn that science is learning the way the world works rather than a satchel of facts, then you’re open to new ideas and you’re not thinking ‘These are the facts, therefore anything different from these facts can’t be right’.
“It is how nimble is your learning capacity.”
There is no question that something is going wrong. Australian students recorded their lowest results in science literacy ever in 2018, overtaken by children from China and Estonia.
A global study released last December (Programme for International Student Assessment) revealed Australia’s class of 2018 dipped rapidly in understanding science, a trend that had already been tracking downward for a number of years.
Bringing chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy and Earth science under one umbrella of learning is the method adopted by new documentary series Cosmos: Possible Worlds, to explain some of the finer points and quirks of the planet we live on, and the vast expanse of universe around it.
Popular science identity deGrasse Tyson resumes his role as host of this, the third iteration of the global phenomenon first presented by guru Carl Sagan in 1980.
The late Sagan’s wife Ann Druyan co-wrote the original Cosmos: A Personal Voyage – the most watched science series in the history of American television – then produced the 2014 follow-up Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey where deGrasse Tyson’s on-screen charisma spiked the curiosity of a new generation of big-question wonderers.
“The genius of science,” Druyan says, “is that it reserves its highest awards for the person who proves our most cherished belief is wrong.
“It’s not that scepticism robs us of the joy and romance of life – not at all. It’s scepticism with an equal amount of wonder. You put those together, that’s what powers the ship of the imagination.”
At a time where more information is available to the masses than at any other time in human history, a decrease in science literacy among our youth, and the uninspiring response to climate change from world leaders is worrying, but fixable.
“I’m 70, I was born in an even uglier time than this one,” Druyan said.
“I was born in a time of such racism, homophobia, sexism on a level you can’t even imagine, where the intelligence of women was the number one absolute topic A for comedians – how stupid women are.
“And I live now in a time where those problems haven’t been solved, but where there’s a consensus in the great middle that those things are wrong, and it wasn’t that way when I was growing up.
“So that’s why I’m so filled with hope.”
DeGrasse Tyson adds: “It’s not as simple as training people to ask questions … you have to learn when evidence matters, and when it is of a convincing level. Because if you’re just going to question all evidence to no end, then you’re never going to understand how it is you land on what is objectively true in the world.
“I have less energy than Carl Sagan did to confront people after they’ve already been ossified in their views, which includes publicly complaining about politicians. You need that, otherwise it’s not an open democracy, but I just don’t have the energy for that.
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“Instead, I look back, because for every politician who is elected and is scientifically illiterate, that generally means everyone who voted for them is scientifically illiterate. You can swap out a politician but there’s still the matter of tens of millions of people who voted in that exact same way.
“So I try to turn my chair around and look back at who did the voting, then I look at the school system, and I realise science isn’t taught as a way of querying nature.”
The accelerated expansion of the universe, black holes, gravitational waves that can bend time, the dark energy that takes up 70 per cent of the universe, human beings living on different planets and moons, how selfishness sabotaged decades of scientific advancement are all navigated in the new Cosmos.
“All the matter of the entire universe that seems so vast to us, was once essentially compressed into the size of a marble,” Druyan said.
“How can that be true? How can these giant stars, hundreds of billions of galaxies which are composed of hundreds of billions of stars and worlds, how can that be true?
“And yet so far, of all the independent lines of evidence, there is nothing to disprove it, yet it seems to be the single most counterintuitive idea.
“And I can live with it.”
Cosmos: Possible Worlds airs March 9 on Foxtel’s National Geographic
Originally published as Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson calls for an overhaul of how we teach science
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