Background: Traditional science teaching places greater emphasis on factual knowledge than on conceptual understanding. It relies heavily on rote memorization of facts and formula. The inquiry-centered approach that is advocated by both the National Science Education Standards and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy relies on students learning science by discovery, i.e. by doing experiments and analyzing the results to achieve real understanding. Discovery, analysis, and understanding take more time than learning by rote.

Evidence for this defect: Readers of this document will be amazed by the amount of very specific material that has been included. In the high-school physical science section on waves, phenomena such as diffraction, refraction, polarization, and interference and beats are all called out as standards. While these are important concepts, are they things that we should expect all students to understand? Throughout the document, there is a strong bent toward including every aspect of a subject, often in considerable factual detail.

Background: What we know about cognitive development is far more than we knew even ten years ago, far more than we knew when the parents and grandparents of today's children went to school. It simply is not correct that we can teach young children anything at any age if we do it with enough skill. Since the goal is general scientific literacy, we should be guided by cognitive studies that provide insights into what most children can do and understand and not focus on the select few who will become scientists themselves.

Evidence for this defect: The atomic nature of matter and the periodic table are introduced in the 3rd grade. These concepts involve significant abstractions well beyond a child's ability to experience concretely, and the periodic table involves at least two independent and several dependent variables. This kind of reasoning is way beyond the ability of young children.

Background: Scientists almost uniformly say they want children to have real understanding in preference to knowing a lot of isolated and disconnected facts. Of course, one must know facts to have understanding, because otherwise there's nothing to understand. But there is a belief by some that the more facts one knows, the easier it is to learn still more. Unfortunately, as any scientist knows, in science knowing more and more facts doesn't carry with it, ipso facto, understanding. This is also true for children, especially if there is no attempt, or no time, to teach for understanding. In traditional ways of teaching science, facts are taught and are to be accepted (either because they are made plausible or because they come from authorities like the book and teacher) and experiments, when done, are means to verify the facts, not investigations into the nature of the real world.

Evidence for this defect: At the high-school level, one standard reads "chemical bonds between atoms in molecules such as H2, CH4, NH3, H2CCH2, N2, Cl2 and many large biological molecules are covalent." Is this a piece of information that is really crucial and relates to a big picture?

Background: Historically, academic science learning was geared to produce children who might go on to study science at the university. "Everyday science" was learned from real life experiences, on the farm or in the kitchen or wherever young people had to do things for themselves. The "average" student today learns less and less science outside of the classroom, while the demands for basic scientific knowledge and understanding on the part of the average citizen have grown dramatically. In the revolution in science education of the sixties (which was driven by Sputtnik and a felt need for more scientists), the emphasis was on the elite student, the future scientist; today, the emphasis of both the Benchmarks and the NSES is on the average student. The key phrase, coined by the AAAS and the title of the first book of their Project 2061, is "Science for All Americans".

Evidence for this defect: The proposed California Science Content Standards attempt to carry students far too far along academic pathways in the study of various areas of science (one could say that they are somewhat watered-down treatments of the same science in each field that a major in that field would study at the university). As a result, they totally miss areas that would be of great interest and importance to the average student, to all Americans. For example, they have almost nothing about applications of science, about technology, or about the role of science and technology in society. They also have almost nothing about the history of science. This is in sharp contrast to the NSES and Benchmarks, with which the proposed standards are so badly aligned.

Implications of this defect: