Kathleen calls from Thailand, lamenting that the scientific method, the search for reproducible results, is just not part of life in her small village. She misses the US standard of education, misses people who discuss ideas and share a common knowledge of things like biology and physics, who wonder how things work and expect to find answers.
In the US, we often hear how other nations are surpassing us in numbers of college graduates, in people with advanced degrees, in standardized test scores at various ages. We forget that other nations are not attempting the grand plan that Americans take for granted -- that every last one of us deserves the chance to get an education. India may be blossoming in the technology fields, China may be up and coming on the manufacturing scene, but both countries have vast areas where even a basic grade school education is not available.
So I'm shilling for science education today, not for reasons of money or power, but because science is part of our common American culture.
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