On April 1^st, at the end of Whyville’s month long celebration of 14 years of existence, the coveted “oldbee” medals were handed out to thousands of Whyville’s longest members.  Remarkably, nearly half the total metals were given to users who have been active on Whyville for more than 5 years with some on the site for more than 10 years.  That means that some of Whyville’s users started when they were 12 and are now graduating from college.

Last week I visited both Penn State and New York Universities, both in the throws of quite visible upheaval, but with challenges not different in kind from many if not most other Universities.  Over the last 10-15 years, many have seen a dramatic bloating of middle management (Deans, Vice Deans, Assistant Vice Deans, Vice Presidents, Assistant Vice Presidents, etc.) and associated dramatic increases in costs.  At the same time, a growing number of faculty seem aware that both undergraduates and graduate students are having a harder and harder time ‘cashing in’ on their degrees with an astounding number of new college graduates now living back at home and working minimum wage jobs.  From “middle management”, faculty are hearing that they are now actually part of a business (rather than the academic institution they originally signed up for), and are under more and more pressure to raise money (largely to support the bloated and overpaid administration) and offer services to more for less.  Tenured faculty who are unwilling to do so, are being replaced by non-tenure track, ‘contract teachers’, who are cheap and will do whatever the administration wants (or be fired).  Faculty are being told that MOOCs are the future (one faculty member, thousands of students) but seem not at all clear how this will work for anyone other than the Universities that already have mass appeal (Harvard, MIT, Stanford, you know who you are).  It is not even clear that those so-called ‘elite’ universities have a viable MOOC business plan  (don’t they know that the public still expects information on the Internet to be free??, and for years we have hired new employees based on real-world performance tests rather than their degrees).

Perhaps, therefore, despite their ivory towers, and 600 years of stubborn survivability,  even universities may be subject to the upheaval going on in the rest of the ‘business’ world.

But what is to be done?

What I suggest is that perhaps it is time to rethink and reconsider one of the most basic assumptions underlying the modern university system – that we train students for life.   Perhaps the bloating of university middle management is evidence that 40 years ago, when many of the faculty who have now taken assistant deanships went to college, there was such a thing as a lifetime career.  That a certificate obtained by isolating yourself for 4 years as an undergraduate, and perhaps another 4 as a graduate student, would launch you on a 50 year career.  However, evidence suggests that in most cases (perhaps even in universities) those careers are gone.  Most of today’s college graduates, once they find a job, are likely to change that job multiple times, in some cases dramatically, over the next 50 years.

Whyville has now influenced and stayed connected to students from 6^th grade to college graduation with no end in sight.  With lifetime connectivity possible, shouldn’t educational institutions be enrolling students pre-K and continuing to serve them for their lifetimes.  Instead of a certificate and a handshake, shouldn’t they continue to offer services, on demand, depending on the needs of their permanent enrollees?  Wouldn’t that also make it more likely that the offerings were relevant to the real world?

As many Whyvillians in their early 20s last week celebrated long continuous involvement with a rather odd educational site they first joined when they were 12 – shouldn’t someone take notice?  We did  

A week ago I found myself once again in a completely over run and outmatched Austin Texas, at the start of what has become a string of SxSW (‘south by’ newbies learn quickly), festivals starting with the relatively new SxSW edu.  It is rumored that when the original SxSW music festival started in 1987, one could buy a pass to every performance for under $20.  This year a platinum badge cost almost $1,600 and that didn’t get you into all the events, many requiring corporate connections.  In fact, in what is an old story with ‘successful’ events of this type, SxSW has become completely corporate, through and through.  Thanks Twitter J

As I sat in panel after panel at SxSW edu I found myself reflecting on how the ‘corporate nature’ of SxSW as a whole was playing out at edu.  Yes, of course, the corporate sponsors including the College Board (who brings you the SATs), the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, Scholastic, the Pearson and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations and others in what a friend of mine now refers to as ‘the educational cabal’ were omni present – on the walls and in the talks.

In fact the biggest continuous set of presentations was organized around inBloom,  rumored to have received many millions of dollars to aggregate digital assets so that individual teachers could build customized educational experiences for their individual students.  The inBloom folks had enough funding, apparently, to offer free beer and snacks every afternoon for the entire meeting, assuring attendance.  In contrast, I felt sorry for the poor corporate speakers in the big Google sponsored e-learning Lounge who lectured enthusiastically about what is essentially the same basic idea in ‘Google world’ without altering their scripted regular requests for feedback from an audience not present, probably due to the lack of beer.  (Don’t these guys know why most people now come to SxSW??).

Anyway, in these corporate presentations and the largely corporate styled panel-based product pitches, the theme over and over again seemed to be that ‘digitalization’ (a more general version of ‘gamification’) was the future of the educational system.  This trend made glaringly obvious when an executive of one of the ‘former’ textbook publishers made the specific point that they were now in the digital media market not the textbook publishing business.  (hmmm, the product he showed sure looked an awful lot like a digitized textbook).

So what was going on here?  What teachers and which educational system have the time or expertise to individually customize digital assets for individual students?  (the beer-drinking teachers in the  back of the inBloom room seemed to think that this was marvelously amusing and THEY were at SxSW  J ).  And what teachers or students for that matter were being referred to by the panelist who proclaimed that teachers need to teach children how to use digital media?  (Do the actually KNOW any children – clearly haven’t spent any time on Whyville).   And did anyone really expect Bill Gates (the former CEO of Microsoft you remember) to offer an insightful evaluation of the current state of the educational system and its future – instead of pitching more examples of digitalization Gates certified?  Do they all really believe that putting a digital cover over the current educational system is going to protect it from being undermined by tech savvy children?

Ghost Dancing:

Ah yes, again, history might be instructive.  In 1889, near the end of the U.S. Indian Wars, the prophet Wovoka of the Northern Paiutes Nation had a vision during a total eclipse of the sun, in which his God told him that if every Indian danced a new “Ghost Dance” all evil in the world (read the white man) would be swept away leaving the Western United States filled with food, love and faith.  The Ghost Dancing movement spread across the plains and all the way to the coast of California, adapted to the cultures and beliefs of individual tribes.  The Sioux, locked in a running battle with the U.S. Cavalry, introduced Ghost Shirts to the celebration, believing that by wearing the shirts their warriors would be impervious to the white man’s bullets.  Sadly, Wounded Knee was the last Ghost Dance for the Sioux.

The strong sense that I had at SxSW (and increasingly elsewhere) is that we were all being lulled into a Ghost Dance that involved covering up the mess of the educational system with digital ghost shirts.  Don’t projects like inBloom, for example, miss the point that children are already using the Internet to teach themselves and customize their own learning experiences?  Instead of providing tools for the existing educational system to impose its own preferred order, shouldn’t we be building communities in which not only teachers, but parents, grand parents and others encourage and engage with what children are already doing?   Shouldn’t we be asking, what does this new technology natively allow us to do, rather than how can we paste what we have always done into this new technology?  In Wovoka’s original vision, he himself was chosen by God to manage the people of the Western United States, leaving the (white) President of the United States to manage the East.  Is Ghost dancing in the world of education also about control, and protecting the old established order from the onward march of a new technology and the kids that use it?  Surveys today already suggest that many parents believe that their children are learning more on the Internet than in school and that most parents now regard at least K-8 as primarily custodial.  Will the SxSW panel pickers next year accept my proposed panel titled “Improving the custodial function of public education”?  Or will we hear more panels and more corporate presentations explaining how a digital ghost shirt will save the day (and their old top-down business models)?  It seems to me that far from instructing children in the use of digital technology the question is whether the educational system, given its encumbrances, including the industry long arrayed around it, is going to be able to catch up to what children are already doing?  If it can’t (and I have my doubts), is it headed to its own Wounded Knee?

Perhaps I will organize a raid of children (I do have the horses nearby) on SxSW next year – might be interesting.  J

20 years ago, I was asked by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to participate in a special panel at the National Research Council charged with reviewing and recommending best practices for university-based science education interventions in public pre-college science education.  At the time I was co-director of the Caltech Pre College Science Initiative (CAPSI), and the panel as a whole was made up of directors for other such programs around the country.  The only other practicing scientist on the committee however, was its chairman (and NAS member) Sam Ward, then at the University of Arizona in Tucson.   To make a long story short, at the end of the two year investigation, I felt that it was important to independently summarize what I had learned from the process – which I did in the form of a document titled Myth, Methods, and Madness in Science Education Reform.

Now 20 years later through my involvement in Whyville.net, I am watching well meaning university faculty and staff once again attempting to intervene in science education now using new digital technology including gaming and virtual worlds.  Based on what I have seen in many of these efforts, I thought it might, perhaps, be useful to once again publish Myths, Methods, and Madness – included below in its entirety.  This document might also provide some additional insight, for those interested, in Whyville’s origins as well as some of its structure.

The more things change, the more some things seem to stay the same.

Front cover of a version of the Myths document rewritten in the form of a children’s story – art work by Erika Oller

Originally published as:

Bower, J.M. (1994) Scientists and science education reform:  Myths,  methods, and madness.  In:  Scientists, Educators and National Standards: Action at the Local Level , Sigma Xi Forum, Edwards Brothers Inc. North Carolina. pp. 123-130.

Over the last several years, the deplorable state of public science education and the perceived consequences for our nation’s economic and intellectual vitality has attracted not only the attention of educators and politicians, but also an increasing number of professional scientists and engineers.  As a consequence a remarkable number of science professionals are becoming or are already involved in attempts to improve public science education.  While, in principle, this increased involvement of the scientific community is encouraging, it is also the case that scientific training often includes little or no focus on science education itself.  Instead, it is simply assumed that a PhD in experimental science is adequate preparation for ones eventual educational responsibilities.  Based on ten years of involvement in elementary science education reform, I can assure you that this is not the case.

For the last eleven years, myself and my Caltech colleague Dr. Jerry Pine have been involved in a close collaborative partnership with the Pasadena Unified School District in an attempt to introduce and support high quality inquiry based “hands on” science teaching for all children.  As of the fall of 1993, all 650 K-6 teachers in this large urban school district teach 4, 10-12 week science units each year.  These units emphasize an open ended experiment-based approach to understanding science.  We have also developed a substantial professional development program in science for all teachers in the district as well as an extensive materials support system.  Program extensions are now being made into middle and high school classrooms as well as preservice teacher training.  Over the last five years, we have also transplanted this project into two additional school districts, one in California and one on the island of Maui.  As a result of these successes, in the fall of 1994, the National Science Foundation established a center at Caltech intended to transfer our model for systemic reform to 14 new school districts in the state of California.  At present we are working with 9 new school districts located throughout Central and Southern California.

“Myths” of science education reform

 While I believe that our efforts to change science teaching in public schools has met with some success, this success absolutely required that I, as a scientist, reexamine many of the most basic educational assumptions I had developed as a result of my own science education.  While I started these projects 10 years ago with enthusiasm and a sense of great need, I realize in retrospect that I was, in fact, poorly equipped for my role as a partner in change.  I knew essentially nothing about education in general, or science education in particular.  Many of the assumptions I had made about the change process, as well as what good science education looked like were flat wrong.  I also had little or no real understanding of the structure of school districts, teacher capabilities, or the effort really required to produce lasting change in public science education.  Ten years later I continue to learn important lessons regularly, guided by our school district collaborators.

Never-the-less, based on the initial success of the Pasadena projects, I am increasingly asked to evaluate other science reform efforts involving scientists.  From this exposure it has become clear that many of the incorrect assumptions I myself initially made are often evident in the plans of other science education reform efforts involving scientists and scientific organizations.  In fact, these assumptions appear to be strong enough that scientists often invent nearly identical science education reform programs often with limited success.  The purpose of this article is to explicitly identify some of these “common myths of science education reform”.  While several of the points made will probably be regarded as controversial, at a minimum this listing will expose potential reform advocates to several important program design issues.  After all whatever the final structure of a particular program, no program, just as no research project, should be created or run in a vacuum.

Myth 1 – The problem with public science education is that a large percentage of teachers are incompetent.

It is remarkable how widespread the view is that teachers, especially in early grades are minimally functioning human beings.  It is also remarkable how rapidly this notion disappears when one becomes seriously involved with teachers and the worlds they live in.  Teachers in California public schools are now expected to manage the learning of 30-40 students per classroom with almost no outside help, and almost no budget.  It is absolutely remarkable that more of them do not quit outright.  The reason they do not, in our experience, is that almost all of them have a deep personal commitment to student learning.  With such a commitment, and a rational approach to science education reform, we have found that the vast majority of teachers enthusiastically participate in improving the quality of science education.

Myth 2 – Teachers are under motivated to teach science because they do not understand how exciting it is.

When surveyed teachers actually report that they already consider science to be one of the most exciting contemporary fields of study.  However, attempts to transfer the excitement of science through lectures never give teachers the opportunity to experience the thrill of doing science themselves.  Instead, science is presented as the purview of the elite.  Even programs that combine “science excitement lectures” with later “hands on” experiments usually reinforce unproductive attitudes.  For example, in most cases, the “hands-on” activities are do-it-yourself “cook-book” demonstrations of the sort professors design for their own undergraduates.  These are usually primarily intended to assure that everyone gets the same, right answer.  This type of lab is in sharp contrast to inquiries which give teachers opportunities for real open ended scientific discovery.  Obviously, they also reflect that fact that in “real science” the answer is often not simple, singular, stable, or in many cases even known.

Myth 3 – The primary reason teachers do not teach science well is a lack of science content knowledge:

It is perhaps not surprising that many program’s run by scientists focus on increasing the scientific content knowledge of teachers.  In my view this directly reflects the structure of undergraduate and graduate level science education which is most often predicated on the assumption that a strong understanding of science content is a necessary prerequisite for eventual success in research.  While I personally doubt that this is true even in higher education, in the context of K-12 science education reform, there is no question that an inordinate upfront focus on science content only reinforces the inadequacy many teachers already feel with their own science content knowledge.  This, in turn, reduces the likelihood, especially in younger grades, that teachers will actual teach science.

When the focus of science education is changed from science content, to science process, the hesitation of teachers to teach science greatly diminishes.  As teachers understand that the skills they need to teach science are not substantially different from those necessary to teach other subjects, their willingness to engage their students in real scientific inquiry increases dramatically.

Myth 3 – Supplemental teacher training is necessary because too few teachers especially in the early grades, have been required to take science classes in college.

We have found that a teacher with adequate materials, enough time, and good classroom and science experiment management skills can actually provide their students with an excellent science education with remarkably little science content knowledge.  In fact, in general, the more college science courses a teacher has taken, the more likely they are to model their teaching on the lecture based approach of most university science professors.  Accordingly, teachers with fewer college lecture-based science courses are often more amenable to fundamental change to inquiry teaching methods than are those whose examples for science teaching come from college and university professors.  In our experience, as these teachers become involved in real science experiments in their classrooms, they inevitably seek additional science content knowledge.  However, in this case the information they seek is directly related to their own needs as science teachers, not to lists of “what all teachers (or students) should know” generated by others.

Myth 4 – The key to scientist involvement with teacher training is to provide complex information in as digestible a form as possible.

 It follows from my previous statements that distributing simplified scientific information is about the last thing that a scientist should do.  Watered down lectures only serve to reinforce in teachers the sense that they are not really capable of understanding scientific principles, reinforcing the insecurity that many teachers already feel about science.  As I have also stated, scientific information in this form is almost worthless to teachers in any event.  Young students, unlike those in college and graduate school, have not yet learned what questions not to ask, and therefore will rapidly expose holes in the knowledge of a teacher trained to be a “mini-expert”.  In fact, these students regularly expose holes in my own scientific knowledge.  On the other hand, if the role of the teacher is as a guide to students in their own scientific investigations, then the lack of detailed knowledge of the teacher is a source of motivation and ownership by students.  Of course, this change also substantially alters the role of the scientist in educational reform.  The “classroom management” skills now required to organize time and materials or help students work in cooperative groups are not something that most scientists know anything about.  However, what scientists do know about is how to conduct investigations.  Accordingly, in our programs the primary role of the scientist is to model inquiry, not to fill in teacher backgrounds.  Just as we are comfortable guiding our graduate students to explore subjects for which we do not yet know the answer, teachers should be comfortable guiding their students explorations.

Myth 5 – The problem with science education is a lack of good curriculum and therefore we must develop it.

If the emphasis of the reform project is on grades K-6, this statement is absolutely wrong.  Over the last several years, numerous companies have begun marketing excellent early science curriculum.  In fact, I believe that, at this point, there is almost no need for further curriculum development in K-6.  Instead, reform programs should focus on how to implement and support the use of this existing curriculum.

Beyond the elementary school level, however, there is as yet almost no good readily available inquiry-based curriculum.  This is one of the many reasons that I believe reform efforts should being in elementary school.  The vast majority of what is available in higher grades is either fundamentally lecture based, or based on “cook book” hands on activities intended (as in our undergraduate laboratories) to assure that every student gets the “right” answer.  As I have stated, enforced “correct” answers should have no place in real science education.

This said, however, the answer to this problem is NOT to have reform efforts develop their own curriculum.  Curriculum development is a much more costly and time consuming process than most scientists believe, requiring long term revision, field testing and evaluation by a highly talented, motivated, and educated development team.  A reasonable estimate of the cost of developing a real 12 week curriculum module for elementary school, for example, is $400,000 and three years.  Curriculum developed in the context of reform efforts is often mostly of the demonstration variety that does not support good inquiry teaching.  Further, an emphasis on curriculum development tends to underestimate the far more difficult problem of curriculum support and implementation.  Many millions of education dollars spent on “grass-roots” curriculum development programs have not corrected the perilous state of science education in our schools.

Myth 6 – One reason to develop new curriculum is to introduce modern scientific techniques derived from current laboratory experiments.

It is my view that the drive to make curriculum “modern” is misplaced.  While understanding the political and social implications of modern science is clearly important, a specific focus on this objective often indicates a hidden agenda.  For example, a teacher training program in modern biology might be intended to directly counteract the effectiveness of animal rights activists.  Such political considerations, when they are primary, often directly undermine the open inquiry process that is supposed to define scientific methods.  It also places science training programs at risk of using the same tactics as those they are attempting to counteract.  Further, modern experiments and experimental techniques are often not accessible to deep process knowledge or active exploration, instead they infrequently come across as being more magical than scientific.  Classroom activities developed from research laboratory experiments, in particular, are very often only simple demonstrations of previously presented science facts.  Such activities bear little resemblance to real experimental science and seldom support inquiry-based learning.

In my view, any subject considered as a base for science curriculum should be evaluated for its value in teaching and learning, not solely for its degree of contemporary content.  While questions of relevance are often important to teachers and students, especially in higher grades, we have found that any real scientific investigation, correctly conceived and supported is regarded as a valuable experience.

Myth 7 Training a few highly motivated teachers will produce “trickle down” reform when they return to their schools.

Regardless of the emphasis on content or process, the most common form of educational reform project is one that assumes that a small number of highly trained teachers will transfer their abilities and enthusiasm to other teachers in a school or district.  Again, this approach to educational reform reflects the hierarchical structure of science education in universities.  In fact, there is little evidence that individual training courses have much effect outside the classroom of the trained teacher.  Teachers that have elected to take these courses are often regarded as “special teachers” by other teachers, in effect isolating them from their colleagues, and reducing their effectiveness as reformers.  Further, real teachers seldom have the means or time to support or transform the teaching techniques of their colleagues.

If systemic change is the objective, then it must be the specific target not an assumed side benefit.  In Pasadena, our initial focus on all teachers, not just the recognized mentor teachers, in a single school produced the local proof of concept necessary to convince the rest of the district to make the change.  The fact that the majority of teachers in the initial school were enthusiastic about the program, in effect, certified for the other teachers in the district that this was something that they too could do.  As we now move into other school districts, the primary problem is slowing down the implementation, not convincing other teachers to try it.

Myth 8 – If teachers are motivated enough during training, they will find a way to obtain the material necessary to teach science in their classrooms.

Over the last several years, there has been a clear migration away from lecture-based instruction towards more hands-on approaches.  Unfortunately, however, most programs supporting this change still do not take into account the need to provide material support to teachers back in their own school districts.  In fact, far too many university-based programs seem to assume that participation in a summer workshop will provide the necessary teacher motivation to change classroom instruction.  There is little evidence that this is true.  Instead, to be effective a program needs to take into account, at the outset, that indistrict support and follow-up will be necessary for success.  This is particularly true with respect to science instruction materials.  Very few public schools in the 1990s have budgets that can support the materials necessary to teach science well.  Teachers often do not have the political clout necessary to obtain what minimal money is available.  For most of our teachers today, teaching is a lonely and personally expensive occupation.  If a program intends to maintain a lasting commitment from the teachers it has trained, direct and continuing school district support is essential.  The lessons of the last 30 years make this absolutely clear.  The wonderful hands-on materials developed in the 60’s remained completely unused without support for the material and professional development needs of teachers.  Unfortunately, this means that school districts as well as project coordinators have to deal with the nuts and bolts issues involved in supporting real experimental science at the beginning and throughout a project.  Without this support it is well known that good science teaching can not be sustained.

Myth 9 – Reform can be accomplished with existing resources if they are simply allocated more efficiently.

In my view, this is perhaps the greatest myth of education reform.  While it may be the case that 30 years ago resource allocation could fuel reform efforts, it is no longer the case today.  Public school districts, especially those serving poor children (i.e.  districts that can not rely on direct parental financial support) have been cut so close to the bone that there is little money left to support even the existing curriculum.  With cuts in social services, these school districts are rapidly becoming social service agencies, rather than educational institutions.  The basic health and safety of their students inevitably takes priority over something as relatively esoteric as science education, let alone its reform.  For this reason, no matter what else happens, if public schools continue to be denied the resources they need, no reform effort will be sustainable, and the cultural, educational and political spiral we find ourselves in now will continue.  As an advocate for science education reform, I now also spend considerable time evaluating educational projects in third world countries.  It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish schools in these regions of the world with our own public schools.  As the richest and most economically vital country in the world, there is no excuse for this situation.

What can I do as a scientist?

 While the forgoing list of “don’ts” might be daunting, in fact, I believe that scientists should be encouraged to get involved in science education reform.  Scientists can play a critical role in the process of reform, even if the role they actually play is somewhat different from the role they imagine they should play.  The following partial list is based on our experience with several school districts and the many scientists involved in our programs.

Program Validation: Perhaps surprisingly I believe that the largest contribution the scientific community can make to science education reform is related to the popular perception of scientists rather than their scientific knowledge directly.  Through involvement in a reform program scientists can certify the validity of a program.  For teachers, parents, administrators, students and even funding agencies, the involvement of real working scientists in a science education program can lend essential political support for a project.  While this political clout may be a result of what, in my opinion, is the mistaken public impression that professional science content knowledge is a critical component of any science education reform effort, it provides scientists a tremendous opportunity not available to many other sectors of society (or members of the traditional educational community).  Of course, this makes it especially important that we use the opportunity wisely.

Teacher support: The involvement of working scientists can have a profound effect on teacher optimism.  Changing teaching style and/or adopting new curriculum requires tremendous energy and commitment on the part of the teachers involved.  Through supportive participation in the process, scientists can provide crucial emotional support for teachers and also advocate for teachers within a program, school district, and/or community.

Resource acquisition: To be a professional scientists in today’s world it is necessary to have exemplary grant writing and communication skills.  Such skills, or the time to use them, are often lacking in school systems.  As the current financial conditions of most public schools make the need for outside funding of reform projects critical, scientists can provide an extremely valuable service as grant writers and administrators.  Without outside funding, today’s reality in public education virtually assures that innovative programs can not exist.

Modeling the scientific process: While scientists must be very careful in the use of their content knowledge, real science whether in the laboratory or the classroom depends substantially on the application of good scientific process.  By scientific process I do not mean the famous four steps in the scientific method that are drilled into the heads of children from grade 3.  Instead I mean the real scientific skills of investigation, critical thinking, imagination, intuition, playfulness, and thinking on your feet and with your hands that are essential to success in scientific research.  We have found that trained scientists, properly prepared and with attitudes adjusted, can easily apply these skills independent of their particular area of expertise.  In fact, in our programs we intentionally assign scientists to teacher training groups outside their area of expertise to reduce the likelihood that fun and exploration is replaced by a quickly offered factual answer.  In our experience, when scientists and teachers are mixed together in inquiry teams where no one has the answer (or better yet, where a “correct” answer does not even exist), the result can be extremely valuable for teachers.  There is no more effective means to convey the excitement of science than to let teachers, and their students really do science where doing is dependent on involvement in an open ended, inquiry-based, student driven exploration of almost any subject.

In Conclusion

 All Teachers, All Children:  The myths I have considered in the previous sections are obvious and understandable given the type of science education most scientists themselves have encountered.  However, there is another myth that is perhaps more sinister and deeply buried than these and that is that only a select subset of our society can really be involved in scientific exploration.  In this view the rest of our society simply become consumers of scientific facts.  Those programs that focus on exceptional teachers or on so-called gifted students, reinforce elitist views of who can and can not do science.  Our experience in the elementary school grades of the urban and predominantly minority Pasadena Unified School District suggests that every teacher and every child can benefit from high quality science instruction when given the opportunity.  For these reasons, I believe that effective reform of precollege science education in our nation depends on supporting the professional development of all teachers in service to all students.  To do this, it is necessary to explicitly design programs that involve entire school systems, all teachers, and all students.  Any other approach effectively reinforces science as an elite subject for elite teachers and special students.  We are already living with the educational and political consequences of this attitude.

Educate and Reform Thyself: While most of the above discussion concerns scientist involvement in the public schools, perhaps the most important personal consequence of my involvement with science education reform has been a growing awareness of how poorly I have taught my own students (c.f. Bower, 1995, Systemic reform from the inside out: Look who’s changing now.  The Catalyst, #3, NRC Press, Washington, D.C.).  Prior to involvement in this project, I knew remarkably little about good science education.  After ten years of involvement with precollege science,  I have become profoundly aware of the negative effect the poor teaching of science in colleges and universities has on the rest of the educational system.  In many ways, colleges and universities set the standards for the entire educational system.  So, while I wish to encourage scientists to contribute to the public schools, the most significant consequence of this involvement may very well be fundamental reform in the way we educate our own students.  After all,  the curriculum we ourselves control should be the easiest to change.

A couple of weeks ago, once again on the road, I attended the 10^th annual IdeaFestival http://www.ideafestival.com in Louisville Kentucky.  Louisville as a city reminds me a bit of West Berlin before the wall came down – a local center of good bread, good coffee, interesting conversation, and innovators interested in new ideas: surrounded by something quite different.

On the first day of IdeaFest, I listened to Kevin Colleran the 7^th employee at Facebook, talk about the early Facebook days (the hook) as well as his new approach to investment (the consequence).  During the Q and A, Kevin was asked about digital privacy at Facebook, to which he answered: “you can trust Mark “.  In other words, instead of relying on real protective privacy laws, we are instead being asked to rely on the morals and ethics of corporate owners and executives to protect our personal privacy interests.

Hmmm.

Of course, I view the question of corporate responsibility at social networking sites like Facebook from the perspective of building and managing the very social world of Whyville.net and the online lives of our millions of young children.  In particular, while Whyville is explicitly open to users of any age, Facebook and most other social network sites are officially open only to users over the age of 13, although, in fact, these sites know full well that they have millions of underage users who have simply lied about their age to get in.   It turns out that this (largely artificial) age restriction has resulted from  U.S. Federal law that provides children under the age of 13 special information privacy, as granted by COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (www.coppa.org).   Originally passed by the U.S. Congress in 1988, COPPA significantly restricts the amount of ‘identifiable information” you can collect about users under the age of 13.  For young users, for example, website operators are explicitly restricted from selling or even collecting information related to their ““hobbies and interests” and can not collect, “information collected through cookies or other types of tracking mechanisms”.  It seems to me that one should at least ask the question whether the protections provided by federal law for children under the age of 13 should be applied to everyone.  Shouldn’t the rest of us also be protected from mechanisms that most of us don’t understand or even realize are being applied?

Seems reasonable to me.

So, the question you might then ask is why does Whyville allow or even encourage users under 13, 13 and over 13 to participate in our virtual social learning world?  Well first, we actually do believe that individualized information collected from anyone of any age should only be used with their (or their parents) knowledge and consent.  So we are more than happy to apply COPPA to everyone.  In Whyville children who want to be part of an internet based study can sign up to be part of the ‘Whyology Center” used by the educational research community to better understand virtual world learning.   Of course, formal parental permission is required but being part of a Whyology Center study also gives our users first hand experience with how their behavior and interests can be tracked on line.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the magic Internet dividing age of 13 sits right in the middle of what is probably the most critical period of social development in an individual’s life.  As an educational website, we wanted to be there to guide, nurture and facilitate that transition.  This is likely why COPPA chose age 13 as the dividing line, the unfortunate effect being that most Internet websites are artificially divided between those that serve children under the age of 13 and those that require users to claim that they are over age 13.  Of course, kids go through the important social and emotional transitions of early adolescence whether they are in Whyville or (illegally) on Facebook, or Microsoft Instant Messenger, Twitter, or any of the thousands of other social media websites that essentially require them to lie about their ages to exercise and explore their growing social natures, so that these sites can collect and sell information on their users.

IMHO, while it is is fine to talk in the abstract about corporate responsibility and claim that we, as users pumping our personal information into their websites will be protected by abstract ethical and moral commitments of owners and operators, in fact, it seems to me that the ethical situation would be much clearer if the social media world simply fessed up to the fact that young children use their sites, and as a consequence extend COPPA privacy protections to everyone.