Teaching Science to ALL Students

The issue with this is that the educational system that is in place hasn’t changed fast enough to accommodate for the change in the economy and the job market. The system still “weeds out” students from the math and sciences, which are now pertinent to economic success in the new economy of computers. This “weeding out” occurs not only at the secondary level but at the post-secondary level as well, seems even more so from my experience. However, the challenge for me as a future science teacher at the secondary level is that I have to adequately prepare all students for college level science so that they have the learning tools critical to preventing them from being eliminated from the math and science pool.

Interestingly in the book by Robert Moses, Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project, he compares the acquisition of math literacies for minority groups to the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi. The correlation is that the fight for the right to vote and to have political power is similar to the now fight for the right of minority groups to be taught math and science. Moses argues that being taught math and science literacy is and should be as important as being taught reading and writing literacies, because of the need for “knowledge workers” in postmodern society. In being denied math and science literacies minority groups lose access to economic and political power.

Importantly, in order to be successful in the movement toward prioritizing the teaching of math and science literacies at the same level as reading and writing literacies students and communities need to be involved; they need to find a voice and be empowered to speak for themselves, as African Americans had in the Civil Rights movement (Moses). Science, which is intimately related to math, has historically been denied to minority groups. Traditionally, students with parents who are doctors they too will be doctors, same is true with scientists, chemists, physicists and so on. This tradition needs to be challenged and it begins in the classroom, with the teacher; as a future science teacher I will need to prepare all students to be successful in the sciences that I teach.