House of Lords debate

The Lords held a debate about science education in schools on the 3rd May 2007. One of the speakers was Lord Winston who made a contribution that seems to endorse that a course such as Science for Public Understanding can make to the education of future scientists. This is what he said:

One of the things that concerns me as a scientist in a university is the poverty of ability of so many young scientists to communicate their science to other people, both in written material when they write reports when they are eventually published, but also in how they communicate their science outside. That should be an essential part of the university course. We should also recognise the relevance of science to society and face the fact that we as scientists do not own the science that we do. It is a public matter and something about which we need to listen to the public and understand.

It is also surprising that, as far as I know, no university in the United Kingdom teaches ethics as a matter of routine to its science undergraduates. We do so in medical schools in that part of university, but not in general to the rest of our undergraduates. That is something that we should address now and think about more carefully.

The nature of science is something that we too often neglect. We think of science in terms of certainty rather than uncertainty. Seeing that he has been mentioned already once this morning, the sad thing about the title of the book The God Delusion is that it implies a kind of certainty about the universe that a good scientist should not entirely share.

Later in the debate Lord Adonis made this contribution endorsing the approach adopted in our course:

Moreover science education is not just about producing scientists, any more than teaching knowledge of the past is about producing historians. A scientifically literate society means a society of people better qualified to make sensible choices about their health, to reflect upon the benefits and potential perils of technological advances, to appreciate the environmental challenges ahead and, as my noble friend Lord Winston emphasised, to appreciate the ethical dimension to all that they seek to do.

To read more about the debate click here.