Is science really just a matter of choice?

T he first time it dawned on me that I was capable of making scientific discoveries for myself was at my perfectly suburban secondary school in Winchester when, during the absence of our usual physics teacher, we were forced to take part in a tiresomely obvious experimental circus of activities based, we were assured, on scientific skills.

My co-conspirator and I swooped around the lab completing every task in quick succession and to the minimum required standard, until we got to the sealed tin. This tin was odd. It was apparently a normal bean tin, but painted matt black and obviously re-sealed. It had water inside it and we had been asked to gauge the depth of the water to the nearest millimetre. ‘Can’t be done’ we smirked, confident that we had identified the deliberate red herring. The annoyingly confident cover teacher, who happened to be the head of science, was unimpressed by our conclusion and equally irked by our slapdash approach to his – I will now freely admit with the experience of age — wonderfully varied and challenging set of activities, so he asked us to come back at break time.

I felt dreadfully wronged; how could a teacher have the right to detain two such enthusiastic and witty lads as us? How could the tin possibly give up its secret without popping off the lid? How were we going to solve the problem in the five minutes ‘before the water warmed to room temperature’? And ‘it’s impossible, isn’t it Sir?’ Of course, if you ask enough questions you will get to the right ones, namely: Why was the water in the tin so icy cold?

Why was there water on the outside of the tin?

Why was it only condensing in a layer up to 55mm above the base?

I felt a huge (but grudging) respect for the teacher from that point on. He had seen us playing fast but loose with scientific ideas and had taken the time to encourage us to solve something in our own time, without the props of prior notes, textbooks, or telling us. I also felt empowered. And I still remember the feeling of discovery, as if the cold contents of the tin had been emptied down my back.

There are times in teaching my subject when I get that feeling vicariously, for example every time a student forms a clear image of the window on their exercise book using a concave mirror (‘It’s in colour, Sir!’); it is why I teach and it never gets less thrilling.

At Year 9 parents’ evenings I spend most of my time trying to use subliminal suggestion to encourage as many parents as possible that the sciences are the only important subjects their child would ever need in life, while overtly agreeing that their choice of a full and varied timetable may preclude separate sciences, and of course double music and extra literature with Finnish will give them just as good a start in life.

I appreciate hugely the diversity that a wide curriculum such as that here at Lancing College produces, but I also believe that we can never give tomorrow’s population too much science. I also think that the science they will need is fundamentally different to the science we learned even ten years ago.

There has been any number of issues over the last ten years that have illustrated the need for a more informed and scientifically literate press and populace, but I would like to draw attention to just two.

An issue close to most peoples’ hearts (or heads) is that of mobile phone masts. There is strong opinion among some people that the often obtrusive microwave repeater masts must cause ill health.

Surely, the argument goes, if microwaves are used to cook food, then a transmitter that can reach across miles of open country must be far more powerful and therefore able to damage living tissue?

When efficient, unbiased studies are carried out (it is possible to do thoroughly unbiased science; please let’s not get into that one) on the effects of mobile phone mast radiation, it is very difficult to identify any pattern in the results that might suggest increased dangers. This statement does not sound very convincing. Surely ‘No Risk from Masts, it’s Official’ would be much more compelling? But science cannot do that; it does not work in certainties; it is never dogmatic. Well, not for very long. This is one of the perceived problems with science, but I think it is a strength; the ability to change your view and still be right.

The earth’s ten-mile-thick skin of air and water that sustains all known life is host to a huge diversity of organisms.

This variety has been achieved, most would agree, by an incredibly protracted and ongoing process of mutation and interaction between the building blocks of life, namely the DNA which makes up our genes. Mankind’s deliberate mediation in this process began before the discovery of the double helix by Franklin, Watson and Crick; the selective inter-breeding of dogs for docility and the optimisation of seed crops for yield in the fertile crescent of Sumer (modern Iraq) were probably going on 10,000 years ago. In the last 50 years, mankind has established enough understanding of the process and enough technological control to be able to fine-tune our intervention to aim for very specific outcomes in one hit.

To describe Genetically Modified (GM) crops as a contentious issue is an understatement, and I will not attempt to address either side of the argument in this article. I would, however, like to try to make a point about the quality of debate that I see going on in the media and therefore the general populace.

The benefits already achieved by genetic modification in agriculture include the improvement of salt resistance in crops for use in increasingly saline environments, and the introduction of pesticides into plants to reduce the need for spraying of pesticides.

Both of these examples have been shown to produce significantly improved yields, but each has its own legitimate problems: salt-resistant crops are proving invaluable in countries where irrigation has degraded the soil quality below a sustainable level, such as Ethiopia and Pakistan; a study in Science magazine of 42 different research reports concluded that the reduction in environmental insecticides due to spraying contributed to an increase in biodiversity. Chris Leaver, a plant scientist at Oxford University, who was not involved in the research, said ‘If you want to have decent yields from maize and cotton you often have to protect the crops against insect pests.

This research shows clearly that GM ways of doing so are less damaging to insect wildlife than the use of chemical insecticides. An example of an anti-GM argument is the opinion that the introduction of GM crops can encourage farming practices that damage rural biodiversity.

Also, there is the constant worry about crossover of a selected trait to wild species, which would then have the same selected characteristics or perhaps a different, unexpected and undesirable quality.

The pertinence and importance of these questions are not enough, I believe, to put a permanent stop to all research into genetic modification, but the debate must be sustained, constantly refreshed and, most importantly, rational.

There was a lot of discussion a couple of years ago, when the new GCSE science specifications were first revealed to schools and colleges, of the disastrous dumbing down in science education.

I started teaching in 1987 when the first GCSEs were introduced to replace the CSEs and O Levels that I (and probably you) studied, and I remember similar comments flying around then, too. They were perceived to be short on substantive material, simplistic and too prescriptive; not a rigorous test of academic ability at all. There is no doubt that someone who got an A at O-Level in 1979 would find the majority of June’s GCSE exam papers in science quite a doddle. There are some questions, however, that I suspect would give us some grief: discussing the possibility of bias in the data from a manufacturer; the financial benefits of making models of complex structures; the pros and cons of wind generators for small communities. These issues are included under the umbrella term ‘How Science Works’ and it is questions like these that have always been missing from science curricula in the past. I don’t think our future scientists will be worse off for having considered them in school.

Today’s pupils also learn to design their own valid experiments, are aware of the implications of precision to measurements, know that there are numerous variables that must be controlled, monitored or discounted, and understand the value or indeed necessity of repeating an experiment to improve the reliability of the data.

These are all important skills that people need. Not just scientists, but everyone. It makes them a more informed populace. A key point to acknowledge here is that the single GCSE in Science is a pretty thin affair, and was the target of the majority of the ire expressed in 2006 when introduced. Some academics, for example Sir Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial College London, also expressed concern that the double award provided by the Additional Science qualification would not prepare students for sciences at A-Level and university. The revision in 2006 allowed exam boards to offer their own interpretation(s) of GCSEs in science. There is now a variety of specifications offering a range of subjects under the science umbrella.

Each one has a unique slant on what constitutes worthwhile subject material and the best ways to assess understanding of that content, and each is represented somewhere in the country at both state and independent schools. The advantage of this is that it enables each school to select a course or courses which are of most benefit to their students.

While the quality debate resurfaces every year (at least around results day), I am confident that in the right environment, every child can flourish. It is down to science teachers to make the lessons fun and full of learning, whichever specification they follow. To quote Richard Gerver, head teacher and co-founder of The Curriculum Foundation: “As the debate regarding curriculum development and school transformation gathers pace, please, please let’s stop arguing about what to call the subjects, what wars and rivers we should teach, and start the real debate which is how do we develop the culture of entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation that will help us out of the mess that we are in.”

I hope that, when you start to look at the next school for your child or children, one of the issues you will want to address is the type and breadth of science that each upper school offers. Being head of science at Lancing College means that I think science is the single most important aspect of a school career, but I am also a father of three children under eight, which has allowed me the insight described so beautifully by children’s author Andy Stanton: “Some things are so strange that they cannot be explained away with science. Or maths. Or even PE.’ This article first appeared in the autumn 2009 issue of Attain — the magazine for the parents of children attending IAPS prep schools across the UK. Visit the website: www.attainmagazine.co.uk