Do not be misled or put off by the title of this text: it concerns not
animal rights but rather the wrongdoings of science educationalists. It
is a summary of an interesting and innovative research project aimed at
finding out why so many students at first-rate universities in the US fail
to take up places in degree courses in the physical sciences.

The author has several recommendations for improving matters but before
considering these we should first appreciate the differences between science
education in the US and in England. (As a Scot, I am happy to say ‘England’
here; the Scottish system actually lies somewhere between the two).

The time for choice of career is quite different in the two systems.
In England, most pupils have to choose between a science or an arts based
career roughly at the age of 16 before embarking on their A-level course.
More than 70 per cent of students who apply for a science based degree course
in further education have at least two A levels from the major four on offer:
mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics.

The North American system is much more heterogeneous and leisurely in
that both science and arts courses are taken up to the end of high school.
Even at university the first year is used largely for settling on the final
degree to be pursued. Scotland is similar to the US in that entry into an
honours course is sometimes postponed until the end of the second year.

In the US a much higher proportion of young people attain places in
higher education than in Britain. Yet there is still a significant shortfall
in trained scientists and engineers. The low output from British universities
was highlighted by Sir Claus Moser in his presidential address to the British
Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Swansea last summer.
He maintained that nothing short of an educational revolution was necessary
to provide an adequate number of trained scientists in Britain. Similar
shortages have also been predicted in several other European countries where
numbers completing physical science courses at university have also declined
recently .

Why do so many counties with quite disparate educational systems share
this problem? In Britain, we tend to believe that a shortfall at the supply
end is largely to blame. If only we had the throughput of the American system
then all would be well. Sheila Tobias’s findings suggest that it might not.

Since input was not a problem, she reasoned that ‘haemorrhaging of the
pope’ must be occurring. Students with excellent high school qualifications
were not emerging as trained physicists and chemists. What is more, it seemed
that a goodly proportion of those that embarked on such a career at a University
eventually fell by the wayside.

She therefore decided ‘to seriously audit’ undergraduate physics and
chemistry classes by paying six postgraduate students and one professor
to attend first-year university classes in these subjects. Most of the students
had obtained good high school science qualifications and were enthusiastic
about science, but had chosen an arts-based degree course at university.

Each of the auditors kept a journal or day book where he (or she) noted
their progress in and attitude to the course. They also monitored the attitudes
of fellow students. As most of the auditors were ‘English majors’, perhaps
it is not surprising that entries concerning their fellow students were
often voluminous.

The reports from the journals provided the data for the survey, and
Tobias quotes large sections verbatim in the book. They yield an objective
and illuminating assessment of the courses involved. The researchers found
several possible reasons for a generally low student satisfaction with elementary
science courses, which may well explain some of the drift away from the
subjects. It appeared that the students generally attended lectures in oppressively
large numbers. There was little rapport with either the lecturer or fellow
students.

The observers noted that the atmosphere in science contact sessions
was generally competitive, rather than cooperative. This competitiveness
had been absent in their arts based courses. The auditors also commented
on a slavish adherence by the lecturers to an obtrusive course grading system.
(It appears to me that in the US oppression by grades has replaced the oppression
by class associated with this country.)

Any candidate for the honours physics school at Harvard whose CV is
blotted by a single B grade would have as much chance of success as Aveline
from Bread would have in securing a post as Royal nanny. Students have to
avoid the B grade at all costs. As examiners appear to apply ‘curve-grading’
(only awarding a certain defined proportion of A grades), the students in
physical sciences are aware that they are in a highly competitive environment.
The researchers felt that this awareness contributed to the relatively hostile
atmosphere within the class.

They also concluded that in general there was little attempt to provide
a coherent historical or philosophical background to the subject. Science
was largely seen in terms of heroes and competitive races. Both lectures
and tutorials often appeared to become bogged down in petty details-although
one illuminating and enjoyable experience remarked on by more than one observer
occurred when the lecturer digressed to explain the nuclear physics background
to the then recent Chernobyl disaster. In other words, the physical sciences
were not in general, being related to everyday life.

The book ends with speculations and, indeed, recommendations about how
the university preliminary science education in US universities could be
vastly improved, and reminds science lecturers that the remedy lies within
their own grasp. ‘The biggest and most lasting reforms of undergraduate
education will come when individual faculty or small groups of instructors
adopt the view of themselves as reformers within their immediate sphere
of influence, the classes they teach every day.’

Such power to influence the supply of physical scientists is, however,
not given directly to lecturers in this country. We are dependent on the
structures of the GCSE and A-level syllabuses and the ability of successive
teachers to inspire pupils to take these courses. While I have every confidence
in the ability of the teaching profession, I have already voiced my concern
on the stultifying nature of the A-level syllabus, at least in physics (Forum,
11 August 1990).

In England there are too many places along the supply pipeline where
the flow can be interrupted. We must move towards the American and Scottish
models, where a goodly supply of candidates stays through to the institutes
of higher education.

Our English revolution will have to begin with the A-level system. We
will have to replace the monolithic three by a more flexible four or five.
This will permit training across a much wider front and for a longer period.
These changes must, of course, be allied to a radical rethink of syllabuses,
so that the physical science courses address the modern world.

Reading this book, I found that my work as a teacher of preliminary
university science courses had also been audited and found wanting in some
respects. It has stimulated me to try to make my lecture and tutorial rooms
less hostile environments. I believe that the text could also be read to
great advantage by educational planners and syllabus compilers.

*Science News Books, 1719 N Street NW, Washing DC 20036, Send Dollors
4 for postage and packing to Europe, Dollors 2 for the US. The booklet is
free.

George Duncan is a reader in Biophysics at the University of EAst Angila.
He wrote Physics in the Life Science, published by Blackwell Scientific
Publications, Oxford.

It is the work of atmospheric physicists that has led to a better understanding
of the dynamics of the ozone layer and of the greenhouse warming effect.
Geophysicists are at the forefront of the increasingly important search
for new energy and mineral reserves. And biophysicists are leading research
into the structure of membrane proteins which is helping us to understand
the molecular basis of how nerve and receptor cells function.

These are only a few examples of the importance of physics in our modern
world, but the subject itself does not seem to inspire most pupils to study
it. The reason for this might lie in the manner in which the subject is
taught in schools: a glance at the syllabuses put out by most of the examination
boards in both England and Scotland suggests that the modern world has left
the physics of the schoolroom far behind.

In the early years of this century, physics departments at British universities
were populous and buoyant because the subject was relevant. The physics
of the steam engine was a central theme. A thorough knowledge of lenses
and mirrors for the better design of telescopes and microscopes was universally
acknowledged as essential. The disciplines of electricity and electro magnetism
were gaining in importance for the design and construction of transformers
and electromotors.

How little in today’s syllabuses seems to have altered from 50 years
ago, and although this might just be acceptable at GCSE level where a ‘thorough
grounding in the basics’ may be deemed necessary, it is not at A-level,
where a comprehension of at least the scope of modern physics is essential.

Many of the more attractive themes of modern physics are missing at
all levels. For example, in today’s world great efforts are directed towards
producing and analysing images. Yet, how many sixth-formers could describe
the physical and chemical principles involved in the production of photographic
images (black-and-white or coloured); a fax image; or the image on the screen
which they watch on average at least three hours per day? Class work on
the TV image could follow directly from the cathode-ray oscilloscope, but
few examination boards include television in their syllabuses. Colour itself
is woefully ignored, yet it brings together the fields of heat (colour temperature),
optics (refraction and interference colours), quantum physics (absorption,
emission and fluorescence spectra) and finally, of course, the physics of
vision and colour perception in humans.

On a more advanced level, there are the images obtained from the vast
range of machines that are used in clinical medicine: the X-ray CAT scan,
NMR and ultra sound. A-level pupils should at least know of the existence
of such images and the principles behind their acquisition.

Nuclear physics is certainly included by almost all the examination
boards, and the treatment is generally excellent. But it should be extended
to include a more lengthy discussion both of the uses of isotopes (in medical
imaging, for example) and of the polluting consequences of nuclear accidents
such as Chernobyl. A discussion of why the Laplanders were so severely affected
after Chernobyl would bring together the fields of meteorology, nutrition
and nuclear physics.

Another aspect of physics which today’s syllabuses neglect is an appreciation
of the historical roots of the subject. This not only adds another dimension
to physics, but also demonstrates that devices the early physicists developed
were rapidly taken up by their contemporaries, and put to use in a research
field quite different from that for which they were originally intended.

The pulsilogium is a good example of this. A friend of Galileo, Sanctorius
of Padua was a physician who was interested in researching the pulse rate,
and constructed many different forms of Galileo’s pendulum to do this. They
were probably the first biophysical instruments, and at their simplest consisted
of a silk cord with a lead bullet at the free end. Sanctorius would synchronise
the swing of the pendulum to the pulse of his patient by altering the length
of the cord. He would tie a knot on the cord to give the synchronous length
for that particular patient. He found, of course, that the position of the
knot could vary for a patient depending on mood or excitement.

It is an experiment worthy of repetition in schools today for several
reasons. First, there is undoubtedly no better use for a bullet. Secondly,
it provides a good example not only of the much used ‘null method’ in physics,
but also of a measurement in one domain (time) being transformed into another
domain (length). Then, pupils will find it quite difficult to synchronise
the pendulum while measuring pulse rate, and so can directly relate to the
difficulties experienced by Sanctorious in his experiments of 400 years
ago. Finally, it provides ample scope for improvement of experimental protocol,
and the students may then be interested in exploring the relationship between
length of the pendulum and time (period) determined by a stop watch.

We in science have much to learn from educational advances in GCSE and
A-level programmes in the humanities. For example, the history GCSE syllabus
makes provision for in-depth treatment of a wide range of issues including
the politics of Ireland and the role of propaganda in the Second World War.
The syllabuses for GCSE and A-level physics should also include a range
of modern topics, and make provision for work that the students can research
alone and discuss later in class.

The present examination syllabuses appear very solid, but they belong
to the Syrup of Figs philosophy of education. The subject matter may not
taste good now, but it holds the promise, if absorbed, of some beneficial
effect in the not too distant future. This approach has not served physics
well in the past 20 years. The time has come to inject some vitality into
the old subject.

George Duncan is a reader in biophysics at the University of East Anglia,
and author of Physics in the Life Sciences (Blackwell Scientific).