Juan Carreón

Science of Manipulating Super-Small Objects Inches Its Way Into Classrooms

By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 19, 2006; A10

Scientist Robert P.H. Chang of Northwestern University had no trouble persuading education officials in Mexico to introduce the burgeoning field of nanotechnology to schools there, but it's been a far tougher sell in the United States.

In Mexico, Chang said he had only to speak about the subject to top government officials, who then simply ordered school officials to teach it.

For better or worse, things work differently here at home.

Multiple factors make it tough for new fields such as nanotechnology -- manipulating matter at the smallest of scales to create new materials -- to get introduced in classrooms in a broad way, educators say. They include:

· 15,000 school systems in the country, each with its own curriculum.

· Differing state standards that spell out what kids should know.

· Different high-stakes standardized tests that assess whether students meet the standards.

Recognizing that changing curricula can be next to impossible, the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network is developing and distributing programs aimed at engaging schools in nanoscale science and engineering education, said Carol Lynn Alpert, director of strategic projects at the Museum of Science, Boston, and a co-principal investigator of the network.

It is vital, she said, for Americans to have some understanding of today's scientific revolutions and the risks and benefits they offer.

"We are living in a democracy, imperfect as it is, in which the notion is that we jointly make decisions about the investment of our research dollars," Alpert said. "It's important that people have a sense of what is the new science."

Nanotechnology presents an especially difficult challenge in education. It is not a traditional discipline but rather a combination involving physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, engineering and technology.

It holds the promise of creating more effective medicines, cleaner fuel and other products to improve quality of life, according to Andrew Maynard, science adviser to the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center's Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. And it is likely to force changes in the way universities organize their departments and how students are taught.

But first they need to know what it is.

Leah Gonzalez, 14, certainly didn't know what it was when she, along with other kids on Team Tikki of McLean, first learned that it would be the theme for a 2006 competition sponsored by the First Lego League, an international children's program that promotes interest in science with a hands-on interactive robotics program in a sportslike atmosphere.

She'd never heard about it in school, she said, and for that matter, her mother, the team's sponsor, didn't know what nanotechnology was, either.

But they learned about it through Internet research and by visiting the Wilson Center's nanotechnology program, ultimately settling on a project involving a quest for a more comfortable prosthesis to help injured people. The team landed in next year's final competition.

"Everybody should learn what it is," said Leah, an eighth-grader at Longfellow Middle School in Falls Church. "It could be incorporated into science curriculum for different age groups and taught differently. But I think it would be great to teach students about the new science that they might be working in when they grow up."

Chang's university is part of a consortium of 14 museums, research centers and educational outreach institutions also working to educate the public -- inside and outside of schools -- about nanotechnology.

"The informal is very important," said Gerry Wheeler, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. "Count up the minutes a kid is in the classroom and the kid is outside the classroom. Family involvement, outside learning, is very important."

Museums also are developing exhibits, demonstrations and activities for people of all ages to learn about the field. There's also a proliferation of supplemental materials being created -- including learning modules with ready-made experiments, fact sheets and teaching tips -- that educators can insert into their standard curricula.

That's what Chang has been developing as he directs Northwestern's new national center for the university's Materials World Modules program, charged with creating materials on nanotechnology for students in grades seven through 12.

Part of the goal, Chang said, is that young people will become interested enough to want to enter the field, which he said needs tens of thousands nano-literate workers. Helping kids understand how science directly applies to the quality of their lives is crucial to attracting more workers, he and other scientists said.

It is unclear whether the current array of educational efforts will be enough to accomplish their goals. Wheeler said he doubts it. Supplemental materials and many professional development programs are helpful for some teachers but often don't reach far enough, he said.

"The alpha science teacher does look forward to these new things and finds a way to get the subject into his or her classroom," Wheeler said. "But they really can't put a lot of time into that because of the standards and the testing."

Dec 13th 2006 | BREMEN
From The Economist print edition

THERE are many rich Germans. In 2003 private assets are estimated to have been worth €5 trillion ($5.6 trillion), half of which belongs to the richest tenth of the population. But with money comes stinginess, especially when it comes to giving to higher education. America devotes twice as much of its income to universities and colleges as Germany (2.6% of GDP, against 1.1%) mainly because of higher private spending—and bigger donations.

Next year's figures should be less embarrassing. In November Klaus Jacobs, a German-born billionaire living abroad, announced that he would donate €200m to the International University Bremen (IUB)—the biggest such gift ever. It saved the IUB, Germany's only fully fledged private and international university (with 30 programmes and 1,000 students from 86 countries) from bankruptcy. It may also soften the country's still rigid approach to higher education.

German higher education has long been almost entirely a state-run affair, not least because universities were meant to produce top civil servants. After 1945 the German states were put in charge, deciding on such details as examination and admission rules. Reforms in the 1970s made things worse by strengthening, in the name of democracy, a layer of bureaucracy in the form of committees of self-governance.

Tuition fees were scrapped in the name of access for all. But ever-rising student numbers then met ever-shrinking budgets, so the reforms backfired. Today the number of college drop-outs is among the highest in the rich world, making tertiary education an elite activity: only 22% of young Germans obtain a degree, compared with 31% in Britain and 39% in America. German universities come low in world rankings, so good students often go abroad.

In the 1980s it was hoped that private universities might make a difference. Witten-Herdecke University, founded in 1980, was the first. Teaching at IUB, which will change its name to Jacobs University soon, began in 2001. Today, there are 69 (non-faith-based) private institutions of higher learning, up from 24 a decade ago. There is growing competition, particularly among business schools.

At the same time the states have been introducing private enterprise into higher education. In 2003 Lower Saxony turned five universities into foundations, with more autonomy. Others have won more control over their own budgets. Some states have also started to charge tuition fees. And in October a jury announced the winners of the first round of the “excellence initiative”—a national competition among universities for extra cash.

Yet all this has led to only small improvements. Private universities educate only 3% of Germany's 2m-odd students, which may be why they find it hard to raise money. It also explains why many focus on lucrative subjects, such as the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. Others have come to depend on public money. Only recently have rich individuals' foundations made big investments, as at IUB or at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

Public universities, meanwhile, still have not been granted much autonomy. There is less direct control, but far more “administered competition”: a new bureaucracy to check the achievement of certain goals. This might all be avoided through price competition, but tuition fees, now €1,000 a year on average, are fixed centrally by each state. The excellence initiative is a mere drop in the bucket.

That is why Mr Jacobs's donation matters. For the first time, Germany will have a private university worth the name and with a solid financial footing (if it keeps up its academic performance, that is: Mr Jacobs has promised to donate €15m annually over the next five years and another €125m in 2011 to boost the endowment, but only if things go well). If it works, other rich Germans may be tempted into investing in higher education too.

Even so, private universities will play a small part in German higher education for the foreseeable future. This does not mean that public universities should be privatised. But they need more autonomy and an incentive to compete with one another—whether for students, staff or donors. With luck, Mr Jacobs's gift will not only induce other German billionaires to follow suit, but also help to persuade the states to set their universities free.