Bruce Albert's lecture focused on his two terms and what he learned as President of the National Academy of Sciences from 1993 to 2005. From visits with Kenyan scientists
and subsistence farms of Lake Victoria to helping establish wireless technology in Pondicherry, India, and an Indian cooperative that produced parasitic moths in villages
that had previously relied on pesticides that were linked to illness, Alberts said his biggest takeaway was "that science is much more important than most scientists think."
He spoke of the National Science Education Standards, a 250-page report from 1996 that took four years to produce at the request of 50 state governors. He said that the policies in its wake combined with what were supposed to be voluntary national standards resulted in a "disaster" and "tremendous time wasted by curriculum developers trying to make the textbooks match the needs of multiple states." Albert said that real science is different than what appears in the students' textbooks, resulting in the loss of potential scientists.
An example is California's insistence that seventh grade students memorize the 12 parts of a human cell. Instead, he insisted, skills should emphasize the capacity for abstract thought, fit the needs of business and industry, and solving real-world problems involving the use of science and technology that result in more than one right answer. "Fifty different states' standards doesn't work," he posited. The result is that among 15-year-olds, the US ranked 25th among 30 industrialized nations in math and 24th in science. "Every two years a new school superintendent has a new magic bullet," Albert said.
He said that school districts need PhD scientists to convert into scientific curriculum specialists. As editor of Science Magazine, Alberts has helped establish a competition for the best free science education Web sites. He cited the 1956 book by Jacob Bronowski, "Science and Human Values," which credits science with humanizing societal values while exploring the truth. Bronowski flew over Hiroshima and Nagasaki and afterwards turned to biology to better understand the nature of violence.
