For over a decade, a serious decline in science education and literacy has been noted among the nation's youth. While student interest in science and technology studies is high at the end of primary school, it declines rapidly during the secondary school years, especially for girls (from 30% among 7th graders to 10% among 12th graders). If today's youth is to successfully contribute to and lead society in the 21st century, they must have a deep understanding of the physical world, the scientific process for uncovering its guiding principles, and the ways these ideas are transformed into useful technologies. Many organizations are responding to the problem, concentrating on the 50 million children in primary and secondary schools. The National Academy of Science completed its National Science Education Standards; the AAAS is promoting its Project 2061 Benchmarks for Science Literacy; the Congress passed the Goals 2000: Educate America Act of 1994; and Pennsylvania produced its Science and Technology Curriculum Framework. The Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University wishes to contribute to this effort by training teachers in modern astronomy.
Astronomy may at first seem an unlikely subject for emphasis. It was the principal physical science taught in U.S. high schools in the 18-19th centuries, but began to disappear in the late 1800s as the biology-chemistry-physics curriculum began to take hold. However, no other field of physical science has so influenced the young public's imagination today with its discoveries of black holes, explosive gamma-ray bursts, and planets orbiting other stars raising the possibilities of life elsewhere in the Galaxy. This enthusiasm has stimulated a recent resurgence in astronomy education. At our university campus, for example, about one-fourth of the student body fulfills part of its general science requirement with astronomy. Secondary science educators can also grasp the broad public interest in astronomy and use it as a lever to sustain and elevate student interest in the physical sciences during the critical middle- and high-school years. Students' understanding of the structure and laws of the physical universe are nourished within astronomy's appealing coating of planets, black holes, and Big Bangs. Astronomy now plays an important role in National Science Education Standards.