Introduction
The epoch that we are all living in is a rather specific epoch. The new standards of living bring new ideals and values to the people’s lives and the things that were greatly appreciated in the past are no longer considered to be prestigious and valuable. The examples of such time-conditioned changes are numerous, and education, namely science as its part, is one of them. It is sad truth that the modern young people are far less concerned with the issues of their education, and being interested in science is not only out of prestige among them, it is considered to be “not cool” if use the youth slang here (Anglier, 2008). This paper is aimed at finding out the reasons for such a situation and offering possible solutions to the stated problem.
Main Text
To start with, let us see what has changed in the social mind over the several recent decades. The first thing that comes to mind is the culture and the standards of upbringing. If yet in 1950s parents taught their children that science is the way of understanding the world and overall education is the sign of good upbringing, nowadays it is not so. Mainly, this happens due to the modern pop-culture which is rather influential and establishes new standards of what good and bad is. Thus, modern children are more taught by television and mass media than by teachers and parents. It is no wonder, consequently, that the average level of education is decreasing and can not even be compared to the one of the past: “The average adult American knows less about biology than the average 10-year old living in the Amazon, or than the average American of two hundred years ago.” (Anglier, 22).
However, the culture is not the only factor influencing the decrease of interest in science. Another important point of this issue is the general attitude towards science. Among the modern youth it is considered to be a dull matter consisting only of memorizing facts, formulas and figures. There is nothing in the science that could catch the attention of the youth, at least in the science as taught in the majority of the educational establishments in our country. But this point of view, according to Anglier (2008), is rather misleading in its essence: “Science is not a body of facts. Science is a state of mind. It’s a way of viewing the world, of facing reality square on but taking nothing on its face. It is about attacking the problem with the most manicured of claws and tearing it down into sensible, edible pieces.” (Anglier, 19) It is obvious that science is thought of not in the way it exists, i. e. public opinion prevents it from being popular among young people at school or in the university. And here the role of a teacher comes to the spotlight as the main one in forming the students’ interest in science.
To be sincere, I agree with the saying that a person can not be taught, he or she can only learn something, but nevertheless the role of a teacher should not be underestimated here. Teacher as the person who introduces science to each particular student is responsible for the future attitude of this student towards science: “Many of teachers who don’t have a deep appreciation of science present it as a set of facts…What is often missing is the idea of critical thinking, how you assess which ideas are reasonable and which are not.” (Anglier, 19) If the subject of study is presented in an original creative way able to capture attention of a young mind, then science becomes an interesting matter which allows learning much about the world around us and us as its part.
To conclude, it is obvious that public opinion about science is rather mistaken and can be changed by new methods of science teaching that will capture attention of students and dismantle the myths created by the pop-culture bringing science back to the sphere of interests of the modern youth.
References
Anglier, N. The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the beautiful basics of science. Mariner Books, 2008.