While you’re at it, add cellular respiration to that as well. But don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate photosynthesis or cellular respiration. What kind of biology teacher would you be if you hated the two most important energy processes in living things? Without photosynthesis, life as we know it on Mother Earth would not exist.
What I, and many of my colleagues, don’t like is teaching these two processes in the great amount of detail that we have to go through, which is required by state standards today. I risk the ire of every biology teacher in the world by saying this, but really, do high school students really have to know what glucose-6 phosphatase is and what it does? Come on. How many times have any of you reading this been asked what glucose-6 phosphatase is in a dinner? I thought so. Actually, I’d be delighted if you could get the kids to spell it correctly.
This is just one example of how far we are in teaching science that is truly beneficial to our children. Teaching photosynthesis and cellular respiration is like giving children barbiturates. They get glassy-eyed and sleepy and just get distracted. And I’ve finally figured out who to blame for all of this. I blame Dr. Werner von Braun.
Dr. von Braun was America’s foremost rocket engineer during the exciting days of our space program. It was his rocket design and engineering that got us to the moon. So how do I blame America’s most famous rocket engineer, a former Nazi by the way, for the way we teach photosynthesis?
The history of all this madness can be traced back to a single event in October 1957. That was the month the Soviet Union successfully launched the world’s first artificial satellite. A shocked America gasped as little Sputnik beeped over the US every night. And every night was a reminder that we were “behind” the Soviets in technology. Or at least that’s the perception we were led to believe. Even a very surprised Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier at the time, took political advantage of the event to embarrass the United States and vowed to “bury us” in superior Soviet technology.
How could the Soviets beat us, the United States, in space? Who was to blame for this embarrassment to American prestige, know-how, and pride? Someone was to blame. Someone had to be blamed. Isn’t that what politicians do, blame someone for our shortcomings? How else could our archenemy be better than us if someone didn’t do their job correctly?
So the “blame” for the failure of American technology fell on poor scientific education. Why not. If Soviet scientists and engineers could launch a satellite, and we didn’t, then of course their scientists and engineers would be better educated. But the focus should have been on America’s know-how to launch a satellite into outer space, not the perception of how bad our schools were.
The success of the Soviet launch of Sputnik was not an American educational failure. We came out of World War II as the strongest country in the world by all accounts. It was the strength of the American economy, industry, scientific research, and the sheer number of well-educated people that led to our ultimate victory. And with that force we went from a sleepy and politically isolated nation to a leader of the free world. It was American ingenuity and inventiveness that produced the machinery to win the war.
So what happened between 1945 and 1957? Did we suddenly become stupid? Did all the returning veterans, many of whom took advantage of the new GI Bill and earned college degrees, not take advantage of their education? Remember, it is this group of men and women that corporate America hired in the late 1940s and 1950s to boost the American economy and lift Europe from the ashes of World War II.
The key historical point that led to Soviet success in 1957 was the development of Nazi Germany’s rocket program in the 1930s. A program that was led by none other than Dr. Werner von Braun. The von Braun group designed the feared V1 and V2 rockets that terrorized England in the last days of the war. When the Nazi regime collapsed, the Soviets and the Allies saw the potential to capture not only von Braun and his entire workforce, but also the rockets themselves. Unlike von Braun, both sides understood the potential these rockets had as military weapons, not space vehicles. von Braun always saw the designs of him taking Man into outer space.
As the Soviets closed in on Nazi Germany from the east and the Allies from the west, a major effort was made to track down and capture von Braun and his operation. von Braun knew what his fate would be in Soviet hands and in a story of courage, and basically treason, he and his core group of engineers headed into Allied-occupied territory and surrendered. When the war ended, the Allies had not only the key engineers, but also the blueprints and parts for many operational rockets in their possession. The Soviets were also successful, but they didn’t have what we had, von Braun. The West did not know how much the Soviets captured. Until 1957, that is.
von Braun and his group were quickly evacuated from Europe and sent to a camp in New Mexico, as prisoners of war, where they were held incommunicado for many years. We didn’t bring you here to develop a rocket program, as von Braun originally thought. Politically and militarily we did not need rockets. We had the ultimate weapon. We had The Bomb. We brought it here to keep it out of the reach of the Soviets.
In 1950, von Braun’s group was transferred to the Army’s Redstone Arsenal outside Huntsville, Alabama. Through much political maneuvering, they lost their “prisoner” status and were allowed to work with the Army to develop strategic missiles. But von Braun never lost sight of the stars and already had the basic design work done for a rocket that could launch a man into space.
With the Army, Navy, and Air Force competing for limited military funding, it is not surprising that no centralized effort was made to develop a true ICBM. The only man who could do it, who had the experience to do it, as well as the engineering knowledge to do it, was the ex-Nazi, Werner von Braun. In the 1950s, with Senator Joe McCarthy and his Red Scare creating hysteria by finding communists behind every utility pole and bush in America, having an ex-Nazi developing our missile defense, let alone a manned space vehicle, it would not have played well with American sensibilities.
The Soviets, on the other hand, had a specific plan. And they spent a lot of money on rocket research and development to implement the plan. We had neither a plan nor the desire to spend the money to develop our own rocket program. Was it the fault of the bad schools? But was it a political decision? von Braun went to great lengths trying to convince the government that he could launch a space vehicle. But the US government did not see the need. They didn’t say we couldn’t do this because our kids were poorly prepared in science and math. They did not say that our schools were a failure and that we needed to reform them before we could take on such a challenge. Nor did they say that we did not have the industrial capacity to undertake the task. They just didn’t see the point in spending all that money just to launch an artificial satellite. A purely political decision based on underestimating the capabilities of the Soviets.
Sputnik changed everything. Now we had the “need”. We were threatened by the apparent superiority of Soviet science, technology, and education. Almost overnight millions of dollars were allocated to fund the first major science education reform movement administered through the National Science Foundation.
In general, this was not a bad thing for science education. Did science education need a reform? By all directions, the answer is yes. But without some encouragement, it wasn’t going to happen on its own or quickly. As a result of this new source of funding, several excellent science programs were implemented and developed in the 1950s. Programs such as the Physical Science Studies Curriculum (PSSC), ChemStudy, and the Biological Sciences Studies Curriculum (BSCS) were popularized and approached science teaching through an inquiry method. The philosophy behind these programs is to expose students to how science is really done through firsthand experience.
Interestingly these programs were not developed by educators, but by real scientists. People who had a blank slate to design their “dream” science program. They had a vested interest in keeping science alive in the classroom. They knew that federal funding of research programs depended on the education of the generation that would eventually replace them in the laboratories of the United States.
This seemingly minor point is often overlooked when examining the why of what we teach in science. These newly developed curricula were excellent and still are. But his main reason for development was self-service. They were designed by scientists who felt that science needed to be constantly in the public eye, that science was necessary for a strong economy and nation. They felt that their source of government funding could very well be in jeopardy if Americans lost interest in science and research. They wanted to expose as many children to as much science as they could in the hope that many would pursue careers in scientific research.
The foundations of what we teach and why in science classrooms were laid in those days. And every assessment of the new science curricula is measured against those early “standards.” But in these evaluations, do they ask questions about the real need? Are you asking questions about what Americans really need to know about science? They are, of course, but not with the answers we think are relevant.
How much detailed science does the average American really need to make sound, reasoned decisions about national science policy? Is it important to teach such a massive amount of science and miss the true understanding? Or is it better to teach a smaller amount with a deeper understanding? Is it better to have people who maybe remember the processes of photosynthesis, or is it better to understand the importance of photosynthesis for life on the planet?
Could we have launched a satellite before the Soviets? The answer is definitely yes. If we had done that, if someone had given von Braun the go-ahead to continue development of a rocket, think how differently everything could have been. There may not have been a “space race” or the massive education reforms we experienced. And maybe, just maybe, me and all my colleagues wouldn’t be pulling our hair out trying to get kids to understand what glucose-6 phosphatase is.
