Science is Cool!

I've been sitting in on a 5th grade class at Allen Elementary to observe how science it currently taught. It's been very educational and will greatly help in crafting my master's degree final project.

I'm excited at working to solve a problem in California schools; the lack of science education they get per week. According to a report earlier in the year, students are lucky to get 1 hour of science education a week. 1 hour!?!


The United States of America needs more engineers, chemists, biologists, mathematicians and many many other types of science/math people. It keeps us economically competative. It also benefits society by increasing the number of individuals who can successfully listen to, analyze and draw conclusions from the enormous amount of media we're bombarded with daily.

I believe that most Americans need these skills in order to:

• protect themselves from being taken advantage of (i.e. consumer debt)
• challenge their governing bodies/institutions (i.e. civil rights infringment sanctioned by legislation such as the Patriot Act) and


• help advance humanity in a positive direction through better decision making (i.e. choosing to use mass transit instead of driving, paying more for "green" products instead of products that use destructive chemicals and manufacturing processes).

While my project focuses on a specific aspect of science education, increasing it, I hope that it has far reaching effects upon society and people.