In the USA, we like to arrogantly, and naively, believe that we still lead the world in all modern thinking and historic wondering — but when we’re faced with the hard facts that we’re losing the battle of the minds in BioScience — will we dedicate billions of dollars to win that international “war” as we have done in Iraq and Afghanistan, or are we forever stuck in our destination of the middling mind?
Here’s the educational slap in the face we need to wake up and start spending money to solve our lack of ongoing BioScience progression:
States across America are failing to prepare students for pursuing biosciences in higher education–a key pipeline for developing the bioscience workforce of the future. A new report funded and researched by BIO, Battelle, and the Biotechnology Institute provides the first ever comprehensive study of middle and high school bioscience education in the 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia.
The report also finds a wide disparity across measures of student achievement in overall science and biosciences, an uneven record across states in incorporating the biosciences in state science standards, supporting focused bioscience education programs and higher level bioscience courses, and ensuring science and bioscience teachers are well qualified.
How did we fall so far behind in BioScience education?
Did we think we knew enough as a people that we didn’t need to spend any more time or resources in an ongoing BioScience education?
Or did we just allow our national lack of curiosity to fail us?